Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Helpful Acronyms


Acronyms are SHIT (Sensible, Helpful, Interesting, Timesavers).


Friday, March 27, 2009

php ws-*


We're looking around for a good means of implementing ws-* services (& clients) in php.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the guys at WS02, weel kent in Apache circles thanks to Paul Freemantle, have a PHP Web Services Framework.

Not only is it reassuring that folks who are instrumental in pushing Java implementations of these standards forward are re-purposing their expertise into php, but also it appears to be well documented too. Here's hoping it live up to its promise.


thrift is the new black


Save money at home. Don't buy expensive whiteboards, write on your fridge.


Wednesday, March 25, 2009

New map == Older map


Google maps have replaced a fairly recent but poor quality satellite image of my home with one four or five (or more?) years older.
Its like looking back in time to my (comparative) youth!


Happy Birthday Apache!


The Apache Software Foundation celebrates its 10th birthday today!

Since I became a commiter (on Wed. 26th Sepember 2001) we have weathered a few storms, and there have been more than a few changes, but today the ASF seems to be well set up to face the future, and a future that encourages participation by more people than ever.

Happy birthday ASF, have an award.


Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Eclipse Oracle 11g


Oracle have released a plugin for eclipse

This certified set of Eclipse plug-ins is designed to help develop, deploy and debug applications for Oracle WebLogic Server. It installs as a plug-in to your existing Eclipse, or will install Eclipse for you, and enhances Eclipse's capabilities for Java, Java EE, Spring, ORM and WebServices.

Make use of the tools we like to use, sounds like the Right Thing Oracle. Though I'm surprised and intrigued that they claim it will enhance "Eclipse's capablities for Java", frankly I find it hard to imagine what else Eclipse could offer for JSE development, unless its UI stuff. I must investigate.

Anyhow, nice to see Oracle following through on their promises and joining in with the rest of java-world.


This sucks...


Google Mail voice and video chat is not yet available for Linux.

What more need I say... :-(


In the event of a crisis Strike Fear into the hearts of your users


I quite like this simple statement from the WASP framework docs;

Every framework needs an error screen. Pink is used in WASP because it is especially frightening
I don't think it's very wise to make your error screen frightening, but boy is it ever tempting, and because they have had the balls to do it they get an award.

I wonder what ever happened to the project? Their latest release was in 2006.

Perhaps the idea of making PHP more like Java didn't catch on! No award for that I'm afraid.


Friday, March 20, 2009

New Online Store


Today's big news is that REISS UK online store has gone live with little or no unnecessary fuss.
Sadly for my foreign friends it uses geo ip to filter out non-UK folks.
However if you do appear to be in the UK, go mad, buy yourself a cardi http://www.reiss.co.uk


Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Most amusing task description ever to cross my desk


In our task management system today, under the excellent heading:

Photoshop Thongs - URGENT
We find the even more excellent description:
Please remove the "camel toe" (sorry I don't know how else to describe it) from all womens thongs appearing on the site as a matter of urgency
Colleague X, Have an award :-)


Friday, March 06, 2009

Quote of the [specify period]




As you can see from the photo I have now got Ubuntu 8.1 and Compiz running on my HP Mini Note. You may also recogise Eclipse as the window on the front left face of the cube.
Awesome.
Whilst getting all this stuff in place I came across this quote (Found here)

This is due to a bug in the "workaround" plugin
Fantastic, you couldn't make it up, and I'm sure you'll agree its a worthy winner.


Thursday, March 05, 2009

Spring Summer 09


Allsaints launch SS09 today, reported here Which is nice :-)


Tuesday, March 03, 2009

lights camera action


Just a quick note b4 I go home, but thatks to the guys at http://www.pendrivelinux.com I've managed to install ubuntu 8.1 on my mini-note and it gives all the appearance of actually working.

It was a little nervewracking as I downgraded the firmware and formatted the whole hdd in the space of a few minutes! But fortune favours the brave.


Average time to first failure, or, What does Oops ... #500 mean?



(I've phrased the title of this post as a question[1].)

Is it just me or has gmail been experiencing problems recently? Over the past few days I seem to get this message much more frequently. In fact until a few days ago I only really ever saw any error messages if I lost my connection.

I wonder if they've been trying something new? If so hurry up and iron out the wrinkles, what has happened to your QA? Or perhaps its infrastructure, it must be a barrel of laughs keeping all those servers working.

At Apachecon US in New Orleans last November I heard the employee of a Big Name make the self-evident but not so obvious point that if a hard drive has an average time to first failure of 3000 hours and you have 3000 of them then you can expect one an hour to pop its clogs. If you have 300,000 thats one every 36 seconds.

"So," we acolytes asked, in awe, "do you have a guy on rollerblades with a messanger bag coasting the asiles of the datacentre, with his ipod on, replacing these drives?"

"No" our guru responded, "when a certain proportion of the drives in san cabinet fail they switch the box off, and when a certain proportion of the cabinets in a rack fail they toss the whole rack"

Blimey. So if I need a new hdd I guess I need to go skip (dumpster) diving round the back of that datacentre, might pick up a whole san cabinet

Anyhow. I'm having to use the vanilla HTML version more and more, which is a shame because the ajax one is really pretty good, and genuinely useful, not something you can often say honestly about web applications in general or ajax in particular.

On the other hand you get what you pay for, and I can always ask for my money back ;-)


[1] Its an experiment because I read a post[2] by I forget who (sorry!) saying that this was one way to improve search engine rankings. I'll let you know if this post sees any more traffic than any of the other pointless drivel on this blog.

[2]The post was syndicated either on planetapache or on Sam Ruby's excellent planet intertwingly (Great feed Sam, have an Award) possibly both.


I know nothing, I'm not a fortune teller, and you'd be insane to think that I am. This disclaimer was cribbed from an email footer I once received. It is so ridiculous I had to have it for myself.

Statements in this blog that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements including, without limitation, statements regarding my expectations, objectives, anticipations, plans, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward looking statements include risks and uncertainties such as any unforeseen event or any unforeseen system failures, and other risks. It is important to note that actual outcomes could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements.

Danny Angus Copyright © 2006-2013 (OMG that's seven years of this nonsense)