Category Archives: Java

Debian, Java, JavaScript, Linux, Music, programming

Stuff I’ve read or reading …

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Some links to stuff I’ve either read or plan to read which I think is interesting:

Python is not Java, tips for Java programmers starting w/ Python:
http://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html
Python for Bioinformatics:
http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/sis/formation/python/index.html
BioPython:
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.html

I need to know Selenium better, it’s possible that I might consider using it for a project I might be working on (that sounds like it might have some UI bugs/issues/problems):
http://seleniumhq.org/

10 things every programmer should read (this will take a while to wade through):
http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/02/26/10-papers-every-programmer-should-read-at-least-twice

Xen Cluster Mgt using Ganeti for Debian Lenny:
http://www.howtoforge.com/xen-cluster-management-with-ganeti-on-debian-lenny
Ganeti admin guide and install guide:
http://ganeti-doc.googlecode.com/svn/ganeti-1.2/admin.html
http://ganeti-doc.googlecode.com/svn/ganeti-1.2/install.html

David Byrne (of Talking Heads) interviews Thom Yorke (of Radiohead):
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke?currentPage=all

With a great quote, that shows how well the record companies treat their performing artists (that’s sarcasm in case you don’t have a sense of humour). First Radiohead made zip/zilch/nada from EMI sales of digitized versions of their music:

Yorke: In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff …

Yorke: … It’s about whether the music affects you or not. And why would you worry about an artist or a company going after people copying their music if the music itself is not valued?

Then he talks about how the music iteself isn’t valued, but the business processes surrounding the marketing and selling of music:

Byrne: You’re valuing the delivery system as opposed to the relationship and the emotional thing…

Yorke: You’re valuing the company or the interest of the artists rather than the music itself. I don’t know. We’ve always been quite naive. We don’t have any alternative to doing this. It’s the only obvious thing to do.

Debian, Java, programming

Netbeans 6.5 on Debian

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Doesn’t perform badly, I’ve been using it recently with Ruby code, and I like how it colourises the code to make editing code easier, and performs it auto-completion and method lookup (basically all the features you’d expect with a modern IDE).

It’s does’t startup as fast as using Emacs, or vi, but I find the features very handy and very convenient. It doesn’t look  bad either. It runs better on my PC at home running Debian Linux than it does on my PC at work running WinXP. This is probably because I’m using a 1.5 JVM on WinXP and a 1.6 JVM on Debian. Running on 1.6 JVM’s means that Netbeans will automatically use anti-aliased fonts if you have anti-aliased fonts enabled (much easier on the eyes if your using a LCD screen).

Debian, Java, Linux, programming

Eclipse 3.3.2 and Debian

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So I wanted to install Eclipse at home, the version that comes with Debian is 3.2.2-5 and I wanted to try 3.3.x and install WTP and some other plugins that aren’t packaged with Debian (anyone know why?).

After downloading and installing Eclipse the welcome screen would appear with an error message saying:

Error creating the view.

org.elipse.core.runtime.Plugin

This is because the default jvm or java executable on my system was one provided by gcj and for some reason Eclipse’s eclipse doesn’t seem to work properly with gcj (or I had a too old version), Debian’s 3.2.2 Eclipse packages seem to work fine with gcj. Gcj is an Open Source Java compiler provided by GNU.

Using Sun’s JVM solved this. To install Sun’s JVM, if you don’t already have it, issue the following command:

aptitude install sun-java5-bin

Debian uses what’s called alternatives, this means that the java executable /usr/bin/java is actually a symbolic link to /etc/alternatives/java which itself is a symbolic link to the real java executable. You can manually change the links in /etc/alternatives or run:

update-alternatives –all

And change all the java tools to point to the ones that come with the Sun JVM. Alternatively, you can install galternatives which is an easy to use GUI tool to manage alternatives.

Updated March 2008: Corrected misspellings, and grammatical mistakes.

Java, Tech

Jetspeed build

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Is borked! First, changes to some spring projects that it depends on broke the Jetspeed. Jetspeed uses Maven 2, so the spring it uses is an imported Maven project which had a depenceny that wasn’t required and was undownloadable and causes the Jetspeed build to fail. Now I get an error that few people can duplicate:

[echo] portlet-api.version=1.0
[echo] org.apache.jetspeed.deploy.version=2.1-dev
[echo] org.apache.jetspeed.deploy.groupid=org.apache.portals.jetspeed-2
Downloading: mockrunner/mockrunner/0.2.7/mockrunner-0.2.7.pom
[INFO] ————————————————————————
[ERROR] BUILD ERROR
[INFO] ————————————————————————
[INFO] Error executing ant tasks

Embedded error: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/tmp/CUSTOM_PORTAL1/portal-2/etc/build.xml:297: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/tmp/CUSTOM_PORTAL1/portal-2/etc/build.xml:302: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/tmp/CUSTOM_PORTAL1/portal-2/etc/build.xml:489: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.apache.maven.usability.MojoFailureExceptionDiagnoser

[INFO] ————————————————————————

Trying to see if I can get a successful build on my personal laptop at home … bugger same errors msgs.