Helzerman's Odd Bits : Weblog

Tuesday Jan 23, 2007

My new blog is at helzerman.com

Hi. For those folks still visiting this site, just wanted to remind you that I've moved my blog to http://helzerman.com. Please update your bookmarks and blogrolls.

Posted at 07:05AM Jan 23, 2007 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[1] Tag it:

Tuesday Jan 16, 2007

Leaving Sun....

Hi. Just wanted to give a shout out that I've decided to leave Sun for another opportunity and my last day will be in a couple weeks (week from Friday actually).

I've met some great folks here and wish everyone the best of luck.

For those of you who get my blog via feedburner, you don't need to change a thing. The address will automatically get fed from my blog on helzerman.com. For those of you who visit me here and wish to stick with me, please visit my blog at http://helzerman.com

Posted at 05:39PM Jan 16, 2007 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[2] Tag it:

Friday Dec 15, 2006

Nice Web 2.x rant.....

Found this on Out of the Woodwork today.... excellent rant on the term "Web 2.0" Below is an excerpt. Please visit the blog to read the whole entry (it's worth it).

Just say three-dot-NO

Ever love something but hate its name? You know, kind of the way you feel about your Aunt Mertalina. (Just kidding, Auntie--you know I love you!) That's how many people feel about Web 2.0: great ideas and fun to use, but stuck with one horribly hype-driven name.

I'm actually not in that camp (at least not any more). I'm willing to accept the idea that Web 2.0 has emerged as an example of useful jargon. It's been thrown around enough that most people who care know what it means. So we're stuck with it and there is no going back. I've accepted this and must recommend that you do the same.

Still, there is an undeniable dark side to the name... ( more )

Posted at 01:25PM Dec 15, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[2] Tag it:

Thursday Dec 14, 2006

Holiday all hands

We had our holiday all hands party today. Duke was in good spirits and Santa stopped by.

Posted at 09:29PM Dec 14, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[0] Tag it:

Please help me in my quest...

I'm looking for a very good web-based email/calendar application that can handle IMAP. Any ideas? Otherwise, anyone know a good email/calendar product for Solaris (that is not Thunderbird or Evolution)? As my coworkers will gladly tell you, I'm a bit calendar obsessed and looking for a nice application. (special note to Ed Brill, no snarky comments allowed! )

Posted at 09:02PM Dec 14, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[2] Tag it:

Wednesday Dec 13, 2006

Top 10 reasons to upgrade to Java SE6

Link of the day: Danny Coward's top 10 reasons to upgrade to Java SE6.

Posted at 08:04PM Dec 13, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[0] Tag it:

Sunday Dec 10, 2006

Jonathan Schwartz on PBS' Now with David Brancacio

Jonathan Schwartz appeared on PBS' "Now with David Brancaccio" Friday to
discuss the role corporations play in driving social and economic
progress. Vinod Khosla was also interviewed on the future of
bio-fuels and green technology.

See the video here:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/249/index.html

Posted at 10:33AM Dec 10, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[0] Tag it:

Thursday Dec 07, 2006

sun.com - new look/features launched today

Check out the new look of the Sun.com site and see what you think. I've tried it on Mozilla/Solaris only, so would love to hear how it looks in Safari, Firefox and (gulp) IE.

http://www.sun.com/

Posted at 08:59AM Dec 07, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[2] Tag it:

Cedars-Sinai using Sun systems for ground breaking medical research

I'm working in Sun's San Francisco office (you'll remember it as the one with the 70's-era lamp and exit that goes straight into an alley - stunning really). SF is always good for some wacky pics so I'll post a few if I have time. In the meanwhile, I wanted to quickly give a heads up on a Sun release that just went out this morning. Cool stuff.

"Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW), the creator of the Solaris™ Operating System (OS), announced today that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is now using a Sun™ Grid Rack system, comprised of 400 Sun Fire™ x64 servers, Sun StorageTek™ solutions, Sun N1™ software and pre-integrated by Sun Customer Ready Systems, to process and analyze vast amounts of complex data in the pursuit of medical discoveries that could lead to new treatments for life-threatening and chronic diseases. One of the largest academic medical centers in the United States and a leader in clinical research, Cedars-Sinai expects to more than quadruple its previous data processing capacity using the Sun high-performance computing grid, while also decreasing cost and power consumption.

At the new Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, researchers are doing highly complex analyses of the proteins in patient blood samples in order to discover and develop treatments—for cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, high cholesterol and other diseases—that are based on an individual’s biochemical makeup and medical history. To undertake this task, Cedars-Sinai sought a supercomputer capable of massive computational power and data storage to process multiple terabytes of raw data daily and reveal patterns that could be correlated to clinical outcomes."

Posted at 08:49AM Dec 07, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[1] Tag it:

Tuesday Dec 05, 2006

24,000 Kiwi U2 fans make poverty history with Sun Microsystems

Mnet reports,

"With assistance of Sun Microsystems, some 24,000
New Zealanders have responded to a call from U2's Bono to join the campaign to
make poverty history.

The campaigners are part of almost half
million concert goers who have signed up to the Make Poverty History campaign during
U2's world Vertigo Tour."

Cool Stuff. Read the whole article with details here.

Posted at 07:08PM Dec 05, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[0] Tag it:

Thursday Nov 30, 2006

Cool happenings in November

Mark Herring in Java Brand and Community Marketing has put together a list of just some of the cool stuff they worked on this month. Because some of the links (such as sdn channel) are just plain useful and a lot of marketing folks read this blog, I thought I'd pass this along (with his permission of course )

Java brand:Sony PlayStation 3 consoles hit shelves with Java Powered branding on packaging and user manuals. Duke went Open Source with Java! And set up his; MySpace account:
www.myspace.com/dukejava .

java.com had the highest traffic ever with the release of Java Runtime Environment(JRE) 1.5.0 Update 9 late last month: more than 18.3M visitors and over 75.3M page views. It also served up over 14.8 downloads.

Eco-Campaign: In conjunction with Climate Protection Summit and Dave Douglas's keynote, sun.com published a byline as well as its 2nd and 3rd eco podcasts,1st with green guru Joel Makower and Dave Douglas, 2nd with several speaker spotlights from summit. http://www.sun.com/2006-1031/green/index.jsp

Innovation Campaign New programs - with blogs and podcasts - went live this month: Project DReaM, Innovation Video with J. Schwartz and G. Papadopoulos, Open sourcing Java Technology, and Try and Buy Program. http://blogs.sun.com/innovation

SDN Channel: Launched with a 2-part edition on JavaScript
showcasing both server-side and client-side scripting. http://.blogs.sun.com/sdnchannel

StartUp Camp:Sun delivered its first unconference. 400 attendees created their own agenda and breakout sessions to talk about business and technology issues. www.startupcamp.org

< end shameless promotion here >

Posted at 09:55PM Nov 30, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[0] Tag it:

Tuesday Nov 28, 2006

Sunray, PC, no space? no problem.

When we moved to the Bay Area we gave up our big house for a smaller one with the idea that (eventually) we'll be empty-nester's. In the mean time, I needed to fit my new Sunray and PC into a very small working space. Look how small!

Since I only have the one desk (the other surfaces being dominated by philosophy books -husband's- and clothes -mine) I needed to get both the Sunray and PC working from one monitor/keyboard/mouse. That was accomplished by using an IOGear port switch.

I also needed to have them both connected to the Internet. This was challenge number one. As it happens I live in a narrow three level house pre-wired for Ethernet. The router and cable modem live in the garage. My desk is on the third floor. I had an extra linksys router which I connected to the PC (which would then connect to a Cisco router for the SunRay), however the Linksys was not happy about being made to handle switch duty and insisted on holding on to the coveted 192.168.1.x IP addresses (thus confusing all of the poor machines attached to it).

Connecting the Sunray to the Cisco router worked, however the PC did not fancy being made to occupy ports 2+ (it was still longing for a direct connection to the Linksys).

In the end, I decided to connect the Sunray to the Linksys in the basement (via the port in my wall) and bought a cheap yet effective wireless Linksys USB card for the desktop. Eventually, I might punch a hole through the wall and get another Ethernet port up here, however by the time I get around to doing that, either our 18 or 19 year old will be out of the house and we will have two home offices any way!

The desktop and the Sunray

Cisco router. White cable goes to the wall, yellow to Sunray

SecondLife - the only reason I run Windows! (do I hear a call for a Solaris beta?)

Solaris...

My reward for setting up all of this gear....

Solaris SunRay Sun Windows

Posted at 06:15PM Nov 28, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[0] Tag it:

Thursday Nov 16, 2006

Sun tech days in Prague

Petr Sumbera has some nice photos posted from Sun Tech Days in Prague. Check out his blog for the full entry.

Posted at 05:21PM Nov 16, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[0] Tag it:

Wednesday Nov 15, 2006

Check this out if you're into JavaScript

Quick plug for The JavaScript edition of SDN channel. If you're interested in JavaScript, check it out.

New this Month

- Hear from Roberto Chinnici, Sr. Staff Engineer, Java Platform as he discusses the benefits of Phobos

- Ed Burns talks about JSF and why server-side frameworks are so important

- New aggregate blog for Sun JavaScript Bloggers

- Great article written by Jennifer Ball on new technologies - a perfect fit for this edition

- Check back in a few weeks to hear from Greg Murray on client-side scripting and jMaki

Posted at 06:42PM Nov 15, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[3] Tag it:

Sun doubles presence on Top500 List of Supercomputers

Today at Supercomputing 2006, Sun announced that it has doubled its presence on the TOP500
list of the world's largest supercomputers. New entries include: the
Mississippi State University (MSU) High Performance Computing Collaboratory
(HPC2), Sun Solution Center for HPC (high performance computing) and Sun Grid
Compute Utility. Today, the MSU HPC2 installation represents Sun's largest HPC
cluster based on the Solaris 10 Operating System.

Posted at 09:58AM Nov 15, 2006 by Catherine Helzerman in Sun | Comments[1] Tag it: