Tuesday November 02, 2004

TCP/IP Sockets In Java As a side project I've been learning Java lately. I've read the Gosling/Arnold/Holmes book and written small programs along the way. Recently I was buying some CDs¹ and books for my neice's birthday and noticed a thin book entitled TCP/IP Sockets In Java by Kenneth L. Calvert and Michael J. Donahoo². This is a book in a series of "Practical Guide for Programmers" which seems to have grown out of a need for focused class material for the authors. The books is broken up into 5 chapters.

The first chapter is just an simple introduction to TCP/IP, naming, basic addressing, etc. This is expected introduction material although I doubt most who read the book won't already know it and those who don't know it would really learn much from it.

The second chapter is a general introduction about how to write simple TCP and UDP clients and servers. These are nice short well explained recipes that I expect will provide most of the leg up on the topic that the average reader will need before jumping into reading the reference pages.

The third chapter talks about how to format data for the wire. Unfortunately this complex topic is not treated very well. There are some words thrown at different character encodings (internationalization) but not really enough to more then confuse the uninitiated. The example is simplistic and wouldn't be done in that manner they describe. Instead they should have picked something more typical of the wire defined world and implemented some piece of it (HTTP, SMTP, etc. all are good simple examples; something like a RTP header might have also been good as its not text). The words they throw out at the end of the chapter about Serializable and Externalizable are really not enough given the example they used are more likely to be done that way then by hand.

The fourth chapter, entitled Beyond the Basics, covers a potpourri of issues including demultiplexing socket I/O using threads or nonblocking I/O, multicast and broadcast, socket options, and half closes. This might be the best chapter of the book. It contains some very nice examples and in this day of distributed computing the description of how to write a server is concise without being too thin. The multicast coverage is way to thin to really be of much use but thats to be expected. Even though they talk a little about the downside of broadcasting I wish they would be even clearer that it should rarely be used.

The fifth and last chapter, Under the Hood, discusses a model for understanding what is going on underneath your application. How the various network buffers interact with your program. They use this to describe how deadlock can happen and to give some straightforward rules for how to avoid it. They also describe in a high level fashion the TCP state machine and describe how to deal with the TIME_WAIT state. The thing missing from this chapter is a short introduction to sniffers and how to use them. One page encouraging the reader to learn how to use snoop/tcpdump/etc. would be worth many pages of protocol details that the reader could get from the RFCs.

For a book of this level their bibliography is well done. It is a bit uneven with several references to IPv6³, NFS, and SNMP which isn't specifically interesting to the reader but otherwise a nice selection of RFCs and books which will lead the reader to discover more about network programming.

¹Buying her the Ashlee Simpson CD was painful but I doubt my taste was much better at that age....

²ISBN: 1-55860-685-8, 116 pages, Morgan Kaufmann, 2002, U$15.95

³The text merely says that IPv6 isn't supported at the time of its writing (Java 1.3). I believe the basic support is transparent in Java 1.5. ( Nov 02 2004, 02:05:37 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday June 18, 2004

_Tahoe Blowup_ I read _Tahoe Blowup_ by Todd Borg (ISBN 1-931296-12-X, 319 pages, published by Thriller Press) some time ago but just ran across it on my book shelf and thought it was worth a Friday mention. Todd Borg is a Tahoe resident who writes mysteries set in his own backyard. His private eye hero Own McKenna is a retired SF policeman who enjoys the Tahoe Sierra like most of its residents. Working just enough to pay the rent, hike in the summer, and ski in the winter. It was hard for me not to enjoy this book as its set in an area of Tahoe I've spent a lot of time in. At first read I was fairly sure Owen's girlfriend lived within a few hundred meters of my sister-in-law. Several of Owen's adventures take place in part of Tahoe I've cross country hiked across. The general plot development is fast enough to make this book an easy read. Some of the character development is a little thin, but thats only a slight annoyance at the edge of a generally good piece of fiction. ( Jun 18 2004, 11:52:57 AM PDT ) Permalink

Wednesday June 16, 2004

Good tournament NLHE video Howard Lederer recently put out a video entitled "Howard Lederer's Secrets of No Limit Hold'em: The Ultimate Guide To All-In Texas Hold'em". It is produced by All-In Enterprises, LLC. At the beginning of the Video Howard is really nervous. As an example when he is doing the intro he is swaying enough to make the background look unstable. As the video progresses he becomes more comfortable and the signs of nervousness disappear. The video is accompanied by two separate pieces of paper. One is an odds chart and the other is an example home game tournament setup. These two pieces of paper were shipped separately from the DVD case and should have been incorparated into the case somehow (they are easily lost). For the first part of the video I thought the aim was too low to be of real interest. Howard goes over home game setup, chips, and simple action. But once the preliminaries are finished I think Howard covers good ground for beginners. If followed his opening standards would work fine for many people. ( Jun 16 2004, 08:34:49 AM PDT ) Permalink

Tuesday June 15, 2004

_Sierra Nevada: A Naturalists's Companion_ I recently finished _Sierra Nevada: A Naturalists's Companion_ by Verna R. Johnston (ISBN 0-520-22488-4, 207 pages, University of California Press). I found the book while wondering around Nevada City on a sale shelf. As a resident of Lake Tahoe and somebody who had backpacked in the Sierras since I was 5 (as a youngster in the Southern Sierras on the West side, later in the central Sierras on the East side, and now in the Northern Sierras) any book on the Sierras draws my attention. This book is a very nice overview of the Sierra ecology with forays into how the history of both native peoples and Europeans have effected it. On walks I take in my neighborhood I see evidence of many different kinds of rodents, birds, insects, Coyote, Bear, Deer, Badger, Porcupine, and other animals. Through reading this book I've been reminded of several animals I've only seen glimpes of (example: Big Horn Sheep), those I've love to see (example: Cougar), and those I'd only had a hazy idea about but would love to see (example: Wolverine). Additional I've been made more aware of certain flora that has previously only been background to my wanderings. The level of information in the book is aimed at the casual naturalist but gives plenty of opportunity for further research into topics interesting to the reader. ( Jun 15 2004, 03:54:41 PM PDT ) Permalink

Thursday June 10, 2004

_How good is your Pot-Limit Omaha?_ I recently worked my way through _How good is your Pot-Limit Omaha_ by Stewart Reuben (ISBN 1-904468-07-1, 192 pages, D&B Publishing). Stewart is the coauthor of the leading book _Pot-Limit and No-Limit Poker_ along with Bob Ciaffone. In that book I like Bob's writting better then Stewart's. Partly because Stewart's raming-jamming style is pretty far from what I was able to pull off at the time I read the book. Forward a few years and my mind has mellowed a little to what Stewart is saying. Stewart is still a very aggressive player but a lot of his advice makes sense. _How good is your Pot-Limit Omaha_ is written as a set of quizes. Its somewhat hard not to "learn" Stewart's style and start to answer as you think he would instead of how one would play but thats a fault of most poker quiz style books. The analysis sections do a very good job of pointing out why certain actions are favored over others and where an alternate action might be fine depending on what your plan was going forwards. One comment I've heard on the book that I think is unfair is that Stewart is really only talking about very deep PLO and that his comments are not applicable to other PLO games. I still think that learning how to think about the game better provides good insight in how to play in these smaller games. A criticism I have of Stewart's book is that in multiple places he doesn't mention the relevant stack sizes until fairly deep in the hand exposition. Sometimes after the information would be useful to makeing a decision. Even given that criticism this is one of the best books on PLO out there. I'm seriously hoping my opponents don't read it. ( Jun 10 2004, 09:45:40 AM PDT ) Permalink

Wednesday June 09, 2004

_Wireless Hacks_

I just completed reading[1] _Wireless Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools_ by Rob Flickenger (ISBN 0-596-00559-8, published by O'Reilly, 286 pages). I essentially bought it for the information on 802.11 antennas. I've been wanting to cover some of the mountain behind my house. Eventhough I'm pretty much a math and software geek and not very good with hardware the antenna tips were provided at a level I could follow. The opening section on standards would be a good place to start for a complete wireless neophyte but might be a little bit basic for anybody else. In addition to the antenna info I found a few things I can do with some of the wireless devices I have around the house that could be useful. I also found that much of the information in the book (including the pingles antenna) is published in the o'reilly _building wireless communities_ book. A wild guess is that there is 20% overlap. The author spreads pointers to a large number of other resources for wireless information throughout the book.

[1] This book isn't really meant to be read cover to cover. I skimmed some tips and read others. I read all the topic heads and probably read on the order of 60% of the text. The "tip" structure of the book makes it useful as a reference. ( Jun 09 2004, 02:36:51 PM PDT ) Permalink

Tuesday June 08, 2004

Two O'Reilly books I recently read _Essential Blogging_ by Cory Doctorow, et. al. (ISBN 0-596-00388-9) and _Content Syndication with RSS_ by Ben Hammersley (ISBN 0-596-00383-8) both published by O'Reilly. Both books are roughly 200 pages and are fairly easy reads. The blogging book is a hands on manual to the various blogging packages that are available. Its does a reasonable job at helping somebody pick some software to use and then get up the blogging learning curve. As a blogging practitioners guide its a reasonable book. It contains some design tips, but that is definitely not its strength. The RSS book covers the RSS protocols as well as some of the software you might use. In covering the various branches of the RSS protocol the author is also forced into covering the history of RSS as well as some of the community issues. This makes for an interesting read. ( Jun 08 2004, 04:20:17 PM PDT ) Permalink