vetula: chris kelley’s blog

As of May 4 2008, the search query “jPod (TV Series)” returns about 230,000 hits in Google. Pretty good for a canceled TV show that only lasted one season. There is alot of love for jPod - even a website devoted to saving the show, which was recently marked for cancellation by the Canadian Broadcasting Centre: http://savejpod.ca/ .

Since I live in South Africa and jPod is not available here, my friend Bit Torrent lent me the series. I had a bit of history w/ the jPod concept since I loved Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs and enjoyed the follow-up book jPod. I’m also a programmer so I appreciate the culture behind jPod, even though compromises have been made to suit TV. That’s OK with me. I hope the community that has sprung up around the apparent loss of this TV show portends a new direction for entertainment companies - perhaps a way for them to make a profit and for us to get some enjoyable entertainment - and perhaps even some interaction.

CBC: Embrace the power of the Long Tail and listen to this community. Please renew jPod! Everyone else: Sign the petition!

I’m doing some Java profiling of a Tomcat 5.5 webapp with HAT, The Java Heap Analysis Tool. Here’s some steps to make it work:

• Download HAT from http://hat.dev.java.net/.
• Open the Tomcat Monitor app, click configure, Java tab, and add the following line to Java Options: -Xrunhprof:file=dump.hprof,format=b,heap=all
• You may need to add more memory to Tomcat as well (Maximum memory pool).
• To launch it on the command-line:
  java -jar hat.jar -port 7002 “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 5.5\dump.hprof”
• If you run into memory problems w/ hat, give it more:
  java -XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=128M -Xms700M -Xmx700M -jar hat.jar -port 7002 “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 5.5\dump.hprof”
• View the Hat webapp at http://localhost:7002/
• The docs included w/ the HAT download outline the capabilities of the HAT app pretty well.

I recently upgraded Struts and instrantly ran into errors relating to using the template tag, which is now deprecated. Here’s a list of changes I had to make when upgrading from Struts template to tiles.

• Add the tiles-related files from the struts distro.
• Replace < %@ taglib uri='/WEB-INF/struts-template.tld' prefix='template' %> with
  < %@ taglib uri='/WEB-INF/struts-tiles.tld' prefix='template' %>
• Add direct=’true’ to all of my template:put lines. - this solves a NullPointerException issue.
• If one of the items you’ve named in your template is not in it’s referred jsp file, struts will throw the following error:
  The requested resource (/zeprs/WEB-INF/templates/whatever) is not available
  Try the following:
  • Add ignore=”true” to the template:get tag
  • If this does not solve the problem, add an empty tag to your jsp page:
    template:put name='header' direct='true'

So far it’s been a pretty smooth transition. Yeah!

Baylor Gay Purge Extends To Grads: Baylor University is becoming as embarrassing to its (admittedly few liberal and/or gay) alumni as Doonesbury’s Walden. Seems like it is crossing over to Bob Jones University territory…

I’ve got some code in my current project that uses JDBC rather than Hibernate. I’m using datasources, so using simple JDBC connection was not going to work. Most of the datasource-related code for junit that I’ve found on the web assumes hibernate, so it was a bit difficult to solve this problem. I found a good solution: Spring framework’s DriverManagerDataSource, which creates a simple datasource on-the-fly:

try {
Context init = new InitialContext();
Context ctx = null;
ctx = (Context) init.lookup("java:comp/env");
dataSource = (DataSource) ctx.lookup("jdbc/myDB");
} catch (NamingException e) {
DriverManagerDataSource ds = new DriverManagerDataSource();
ds.setDriverClassName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
ds.setUrl("jdbc:mysql://localhost/myProject");
ds.setUsername("username");
ds.setPassword("password");
dataSource = ds;
}


I’m not using Spring for this project but I simply added spring.jar to my classpath, and Bob’s yer uncle. Works fine!

On a related manner, logging was not working - I was getting a FileNotFoundException. Here’s my log4j.properties entry for the logfile:

log4j.appender.R.File=${catalina.home}/logs/my.log

${catalina.home} was not getting initialized, so I simply set the path manually:

log4j.appender.R.File=/tomcat/logs/my.log

When I get a chance, I’ll figure out how to declare that variable manually so I don’t have to change my log4j when I deploy.

I’ve decided to become one of the micropatrons of Jason Kottke, who has quit his job to do kottke.org as a full-time job. Although I don’t visit his site very often, when I do, I learn alot. I really like what he’s doing, and I believe that just as I support compelling theatre/movies/art, I should support outstanding web developers as well. (Actually, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen any cutting edge theatre or art, but I did see Yesterday this past weekend…)

I hope that Jason manages to keep the love flowing - managing his community of supporters. There’s so much competing for my attention. How do independent developers stay on our radar? I’m OK with an occasional update via e-mail, in case I’ve lost his site in the long list of rss feeds to which I subscribe. Some sort of community like Linked In would be fine as well. Perhaps something like plazes, which features a geographically-dispersed community? It will be interesting to see how Jason maintains his network of supporters.

I wish Jason all the best!

A new acronym came into my vocabulary: Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. Ajax describes the technology behind many of Googles’ web apps, in which data on the web page is updated without having to submit/refresh the whole page. From the article, Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications, by Jesse James Garrett:

Ajax incorporates:

• standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
• dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
• data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
• asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
• and JavaScript binding everything together.

I’m currently implementing Ajax functionality in my projects, thanks to dwr (direct web remoting). dwr is pretty easy to implement - kudos to the fellas working on it. Right now I’m simply using dwr to help check if the user has entered an id that already exists the the database; however, I’m planning to use dwr to make long, complex forms alot easier (and fault-tolerant). This is a really nice item to add to a web developer’s toolkit!

Update: The XForms site now includes much better support - thanks folks!

After seeing the announcement of XForms beta in Firefox, I decided to test it out. First I picked up a zip for the latest firefox nightly, unzipped it in my Program Files dir, and launched firefox.exe.Then I installed the XForms extension, , xforms.xpi. Unfortunately, there are not many pointers to samples or working examples, so here is my current list:

• XForms 1.0 Test Suite - Not very useful - the Firefox implementation may not be up to the spec yet.
• XForms - The Next Generation of Web Forms - alotta links to form demos and XForms-related news, courtesy of the W3C.
• XForms calculator demo - Works!
• XForms tax form example - Works!
• XForms Samples - these require formsPlayer; however, I bet they can be modified to work w/ Firefox. Some useful javascript examples.

What’s the next step for the Democratic Party? Dan Savage has an interesting proposal:

We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban issues, and promote our shared urban values. We can create a new identity politics, one that transcends class, race, sexual orientation, and religion, one that unites people living in cities with each other and with other urbanites in other cities. The Republicans have the federal government–for now. But we’ve got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country. We’re everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We’ll take Manhattan.

I saw a story about this Lancet report on Iraqi civilian casualties on BBC World on Friday, and was shocked at the number - 100,000! This should be a core issue of the US Presidential campaign - not dithering over how many munitions have been lost. Also, here’s a similar article from the Guardian.. Why isn’t this front-page news yet?

Update: 11/14/2004 - The Economist has an article that digs a little deeper into the statistical analysis behind the Lancet study.

People Projects and Patterns features links to very useful patterns, plus interesting discussions on the Business Object.

Yet another test of blogging tool - this time, ecto. Pretty sweet - it allows mulitple categories per posting, and has wysiwyg editing. Also can add images to a post. $17.95.

Jon Stewart sheds a very interesting light on what he believes is wrong with political news coverage during his appearance on CNN’s Crossfire. Kudos to Dave Winer for the links to torrent files. And here’s the transcript. It was pretty cool to watch him call these guys to task, saying, “You are hurting America. The media is hurting America.” Stewart blew off a question from an audience member about the mysterious bulge on Bush’s back captured on camera during the last debate, because he probably sees that issue as yet another thing that continues this theater-pretending-to-be-news charade going and keeps our eyes off the ball. (By the way, I’m using burst as my torrent client - pretty seamless.)

Operation Truth is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization whose goal is simple and straightforward: to support our troops and spread the truth about what conditions are like in Afghanistan and Iraq. I followed Dave’s pointer to their ad, Not There, and was touched by the simple imagery and repetition of the words “Not There.”

• WMD’s: “Not There”
• Connection between Iraq and 911: “Not There”
• Words to describe how his arm was blown off by an Iraqi grenade, “Not There”

The O’Franken Factor: I stumbled upon the O’Franken Factor website today and listened to about 30 min.s of liberal talk radio via Air America, that new liberal talk radio station. O’Franken Factor was not on, but I did catch “Morning Sedition.” Strange - these guys were about as annoying as regular talk radio, and it was sorta preaching to the choir. What’s the point? At least I learn a few new things when listening to NPR. So I listened to mp3’s instead…

It’s been a while since I’ve looked at Content Management System user interfaces. This morning I was really impressed by the progress of Mozile, an in-place web page editor. No textarea boxes - just edit within the portion of the page identified for editing. They still need to implement a few things (such as cut and paste) but still, it’s really impressive!

Vassil Karloukovski has a website on ancient Bulgarian history and culture which is quite a prodigious work! Especially interesting is his transcription of Robert Lee Wolff’s The ‘Second Bulgarian Empire.’ Its Origin and History to 1204, which provides an enlightening description of the relationship between Bulgaria and the churches in Rome and Constantinople.

Over lunch, Lachko and I watched part of a movie called Papa Luna, which is a very charming movie set in middle-80’s (still Soviet) Uzbekistan. Lachko got a kick seeing some of the Soviet culture that he remembered as a kid in Bulgaria, such as the Militzia (police) and the compulsary Russian language. Noting the reference to Samarquand in the subtitles, I decided to do a little web research on the area. Samarquand was once the “pearl of the Eastern Moslem world,” the Land of Scientists, and is the second largest city of Uzbekistan. Next I took a detour and checked out the Circassians who once occupied a large territory mainly between the Black and the Caspian Seas at the foot of the Caucasus but were subject to a long-term genocide. Apparently some Christians (of the Crazy-American variety) posit that the Antichrist will spring from their genetic code, which does seem to engender pretty amazing fighting abilities. Speaking of the Jesus, there may be a connection between the family of Joseph of Arimathea (featuring the first guards of the Holy Grain) and the Kazars, a Turkic tribe that settled in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.

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