bob mcwhirter - Software Engineering

Where's Bob's Blog?

bob — 2004-12-09T18:41:40+00:00

So, I haven't been blogging here in quite a while. Now that the cat's been let out of the bag, I've actually been blogging over at OpenXource, a new venture I've started to address the growing needs of corporations releasing opensource and participating in open communities as more than simply users.

MUA and Acts of God

bob — 2004-09-08T06:58:12+00:00

So, the act of God known as Frances has caused me to change MUAs. I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool Pine 3.96 user, but the sysadmin upgraded, and I had to adapt to Pine 4.x. Then, Frances rolled through, and the machine that is the MX for werken.com (where I .forwarded everything) lost power for most of the day. So, I removed my .forward on the codehaus.org box, did an apt-get for Pine, and discovered that it doesn't support DJB's Maildir stuff which we use at the haus. So, I've now fired up and am trying to learn Mutt (meaning that I'm un-learning a decade of Pine keystrokes). This is also a subtle reminder that it's still polite to send plaintext email wrapped at 72 columns.

Also, it's not much fun climbing upon your 80-year-old house in the driving rain to tie a tarp over the roof the previous owners described as having "no leaks". Sure, depending on the definition of "no".

Drools, not dead.

bob — 2004-07-29T07:55:21+00:00

While surfing around to find stuff to put on the publications page of the new and improved Drools website, I kept tripping across comments from folks who thought Drools was dead and who complained about its lack of documentation. So I figured it was time to make some noise again. Drools is decidedly not dead. Rapid progress is being made towards a 2.0-final release, including 100% JSR-94 compliance. Thanks to Alex, Andy, Doug, Mark and others I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention, documentation and examples have all been massively improved. So, if you haven't been by lately, I suggest dropping by the site and checking it out again.

Janino Rocks My Socks

bob — 2004-07-22T05:57:41+00:00

We just replaced BeanShell with Janino in Drools. It's an order of magnitude faster, and simply rocks.

Janino is a compiler that reads a JavaTM expression, block, class body, source file or a set of source files, and generates JavaTM bytecode that is loaded and executed directly. Janino is not intended to be a development tool, but an embedded compiler for run-time compilation purposes, e.g. expression evaluators or "server pages" engines like JSP.

Open Source Code Coverage Tool

bob — 2004-05-26T23:51:34+00:00

EMMA: a free Java code coverage tool

A Coverage Tool for Java Developers, Written By a Java Developer
Code coverage for free: a basic freedom? Until recently, the world of Java development had been plagued by an absurd discrepancy: Java developers had excellent free IDEs, free compilers, free test frameworks but had to rely on code coverage tools that charged an arm and a leg in license fees. As a Java pro, I would like to use the same free coverage tool regardless of whether it is a massive commercial project at work or a small fun project at home. I've created EMMA to be that tool.

RIP: XMLhack

bob — 2004-05-26T23:46:37+00:00

xmlhack has been a useful resource, but it looks like Edd has had his fill and needs a break.

That's all for now

BEA + Codehaus = Controlhaus

bob — 2004-05-26T21:33:47+00:00

A new venture, named Controlhaus, an effort with BEA, was announced

The BEA WebLogic Workshop controls are immediately and freely available for download at http://www.dev2dev.com/controlpack.com. BEA is sponsoring an open source community to foster collaboration and further improvement on service controls. The community will be hosted at controlhaus, a sister site to popular open source community codehaus, at http://www.codehaus.org.

Name Dropping

bob — 2004-05-26T06:54:37+00:00

The eWorld conference seems to be going well-enough. I spent the day at the dev2dev booth handing out the new WeblogicPro magazine, along with toy cars with BEA logos on 'em. You can tell the tech industry is in a slump by the type of schwag everyone gives out.

Had the distinct pleasure of meeting Cameron Purdy and Cliff Schmidt yet again, and Chris Fry, Alex Vasseur and Jonas Boner for the first time.

I'm still in SF until early Friday, so if you're here and I don't know it, look me up.

dom4j 1.5-beta-2

bob — 2004-05-12T15:20:52+00:00

dom4j 1.5-beta-2 has been released. Maybe that'll inspire us to get a new Jaxen release out the door sooner rather than later.

BEA eWorld

bob — 2004-05-07T17:21:43+00:00

I'll be at BEA eWorld 2004. You'll be able to find me at the dev2dev booth.

Service-Oriented Architecture...
It's the buzz in the world of enterprise software development and integration: Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA). And at BEA, we're all over it.

Kicking and Screaming into the 90s

bob — 2004-05-04T16:02:38+00:00

Well, I finally came kicking and screaming into the 1990s by signing up for Yahoo! Messenger. I think I still prefer IRC, but apparently some folks prefer Yahoo and some organizations block port 6667. Strange, but true.

XML is not always the answer...

bob — 2004-04-13T16:42:44+00:00

TeXML: an XML vocabulary for TeX just struck me as horribly wrong.

TeXML is an XML vocabulary for TeX. A processor translates TeXML source into TeX.

Berkeley DB: Java Edition

bob — 2004-04-03T14:39:59+00:00

Berkeley DB has always been useful. More so now that you can use it from Pure Java.

Berkeley DB Java Edition

Action at a distance

bob — 2004-03-28T05:02:25+00:00

Fort Chiswell, Virginia. Not exactly a place that'd make you think "wifi hotspot". No, the Comfort Inn in which we're comfortably staying does not have broadband. Across the highway, and down the road, though, is a Flying J truck plaza. A Wifi-enabled truck plaza. With a pretty strong signal that reaches the comfortable bed in the Comfort Inn. Probably 3/4-mile distance. $4.95 for 24 hours of access. Rock! Flying J is your friend.

eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"flyingj"  Nickname:"HERMES I"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412GHz  Access Point: 00:0B:FD:C8:B0:46  
          Bit Rate:1Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3  
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:31/92  Signal level:-75 dBm  Noise level:-106 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:122
          Tx excessive retries:448  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

gmane for blogs?

bob — 2004-03-13T07:29:12+00:00

nntp//rss is an RSS aggregator that provides an nntp interface. That's cool. Leverage existing technology and applications while allowing the user to experience new things in a familiar interface.

Bridging the worlds of NNTP clients and RSS feeds, nntp//rss is an application that will enable you to use your existing favorite NNTP newsreader to read your information channels.