buzzco.org

Java 1.4.2 and I are not speaking.

jimby — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:05:44 +0000

I am not a developer. I am a tinkerer

I write small stuff. At work, I have been tricked into doing some java development. Its kinda fun, getting make into the grind. But there are some things that I have be finding ( or refinding; its been a long time since I wrote usable java.)

Anyway, I was implementing the singleton design pattern. You may have heard of this. I have done it many times in many different languages, but never really had to make it enterprise ready. So I started to look into it making sure I understood the voodoo.

First I normally use something like double-check locking.
Well I shouldn’t. I see lots of articles on the web that use this. Well it really doesn’t work. Me not being the best java programmer didn’t know that. But then I found this.

So instead, I am using something like this.
The cause for double-check locking to fail for use on singletons is complicated, and was hotly debated before the Java Memory Map was revised in 5.0.

I am really glad I didn’t just go with the double-check locking. I have a feeling that the rare race condition that is exposed would be really hard to detect.

The things I do.

jimby — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:24:10 +0000

I have been using google reader for a while now. I like the way I can get my “internets” spoon fed to me.
My shared items are here. There is an rss also.

I have a bunch of good feeds, and I don’t always share some of them.
Since I am a bit of a music freak, I wanted to highlight some sites that have rss feeds that I like.

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/
http://www.cokemachineglow.com

I really like tinymixtapes. I am even a “robot”. Basically, anyone can go to the site, and enter a few words on which to have a mixtape generated. Then, one of use “robots” can create a mixtape (well, really a playlist) that we feel captures the mood of the request. Think exploding dog for playlists.

Its fun.

Fspot, flickr and wordpress

jimby — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:49:13 +0000

I run this site using wordpress. I have been looking for a way to share the photos I take with my RAZR on my website. The WordPress Flickr Photo Album plugin for wordpress allows me to easily cache my flickr photos that I post with fspot. It provides a sidebar widget and a nice interface to add pictures to any post.

I like this web 2.0 crap.

RAZR and Ubuntu

jimby — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:40:06 +0000

Before vacation I bought a Motorola RAZR. Its a need little phone. Since I have the V3m, it has a micro sd card slot. For Christmas I got a 1 gig card, so I have been playing with the camera on it. Its a 1.3 megapixel with no flash, so the photos are kinda crappy.

Since I am not in Poughkeepsie, I don’t have a way to grab the photos of the micro sd card. Bluetooth to the rescue. I followed this guide to get a gnome-vfs in ubuntu for obex.

I think this is just want I need. Its wireless, graphical and it works fairly well.

Vacation

jimby — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:02:29 +0000

Today starts my vacation. I am just getting over a cold and have lined up some reading materials. First of was “You shall know our velocity” by Dave Eggers.

I have been reading this book for like 4 months, I finished it today. It was pretty good. Then end was much better then the beginning.Â I liked the other Egger book I read, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (fantastic title) a lot better that YSKOV. The character development was much more involved in AHWoSG.

Next on the list is The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. This is the last book in a series by Stephen King. I have loved every page of this series though, it has taken me over 2 years to get this far. This book is over a thousand pages long.. each book has been longer than the last. The story line is fantastic and they are making a graphic novel soon.

my network

jimby — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:52:27 +0000

Cheesefry and I have a nice little network set up. We have an ubuntu box that acts as our router. I also installed dnsmaq to handle internal dns and dhcp. We have many machines that connect to the Cisco 3500xl 24 port switch in my root. It has 2 giga ports, and I have two IBM fiber channel cards that I’m installing for the internal san.

We like to use bit torrent to get our linux distribution and what not, but our cable provider seems to have a packet shaper set up to almost kill any bittorrent upload.Â This made it hard to work from home and administrate remote machines. That stinks.

Thanks to a small program called wondershaper, no more problems. I don’t know how it works, but I am a fan of magic.

Bash Completion

jimby — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 02:33:39 +0000

I use ubuntu on all of my computers. One thing I always wanted to get working was bash_completion. So after a little digging around, I found that if I uncommented the following lines in /etc/bash.bashrc I had bash completion for subversion and apt-* (among others)

# enable bash completion in interactive shells
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
. /etc/bash_completion
fi

+44

jimby — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:05:10 +0000

I got the new +44 album. After blink 182 broke up, the world was blessed with Tom Delonge’s new band Angles and Airwaves. I thought that was a fantastic album. It was even played a a good friend of mine’s wedding.

+44 is the rest of blink, Mark and Travis. It seems to carry on the sound that blink helped popularize. There is still the crappy punk sound, along with the emotional lyrics that range from the break up of blink to Marks more personal feelings.

“When your heart stops beating” is a pretty good record. I’m sure it will be on my ipod for a good 6 months. Im glad that all the members of blink ( well Scott Raynor left after Dude ranch so I’m not counting him) continue to make the music that they love. And I’m glad I’m still angsty enough to enjoy it.

Turkey Day

jimby — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 15:52:16 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving!!
It was a fun day for us here in elmira, what with the eat and drinking.

My friend Taft ended up in the hospital, having to have his appendix removed yesterday, so I have been going to the hospital to visit.

Also I cut my eyeball so I only got one eye. No depth perception makes playing beer pong very difficult.

Heading back to Poughkeepsie tomorrow.

New Blog

jimby — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:49:59 +0000

I have managed to move my blog to wordpress, mostly cause I don’t have time any more to screw around with pybloxsom.

Since its been awhile since I posted let us re cap what has happened in the world of buzzco this year.

Move from Clinton Corners New York back to Poughkeepsie. I live right in from of IBM now
I have a new job, an IT architect for the IBM Design Center for OnDemand. Fancy huh?
A bunch of my friend got / are getting married

Ya. The whole year, three bullets.

The rest of the stuff is either personal, stupid, or I was too drunk to remember.