Saturday June 28, 2008 A Beautiful Java Book - Something For Your Lunch Break
I missed somehow this book. It is my first IT-book (almost) without technical content. Instead of learning new stuff, I just enjoyed it and remembered the old JDK 1.0 days. It is a "special edition" book for the Ten Year Celebration Of Java: Hello World(s)!: From Code to Culture, a Ten Year Celebration of Java Technology
Wednesday June 11, 2008 The Ultimate Interview Question For (not only) Java Developers
Last week I spent 2 days in a workshop Java EE, SE and "cool stuff" in Germany. The team was great and experienced. Although it was a midsize company, both CEOs were still CODERS - and had deep programming experience. It's a Mac / OpenSolaris / Linux shop. They are hiring Java developers now - and a really interested in good programmers. So we chatted a little bit about the interview questions. Actually it was only one: "Tell me, how you started with computing / programming, what was your first machine?". The CEO wanted to hear the story - and filter out the motivations and interests. Although this question is simple and not Java related - it emphasizes the only thing, which matters - the passion. Experience just doesn't matter - the passion and motivation really counts in long term (actually already in few weeks) :-). So stop learning JSR-numbers, and be passionated!
Saturday May 17, 2008 What Is Blogging? (The Shortest And Most Precise Answer I Ever Heard)
Blogging is: "Writing emails to unknown recipients". This is my wife's description. However you could define "spam" in the same way :-). Gesendet von admin [Fun] ( May 17, 2008 04:27 PM ) Permalink | Kommentare [0]
Wednesday May 14, 2008 Sun xVM Virtual Box - the Killer Virtualization Tool? The Smoke Test.
I got an OpenSolaris CD during the CommunityOne conference and became curious about the content. Instead of trying it out with VMWare,I decided to evaluate VirtualBox for that purpose and downloaded it during a not so exciting JavaONE's AMD General Session :-).
I was surprised by the size - there are only about 22 MB. The last VMWare upgrade to 6.0.3 was exactly 330 MB.
VirtualBox is very similar to VMWare. It allows you to create an image from a CD, or start an existing one. You can manage and create the virtual drives.
The installation of OpenSolaris was smooth and without problems.
VirtualBox is opensource, and seems to be free. The opensource model could become really important in the future for VM-tools, because of the properietary image format. Right now you have to trust your virtualization vendor - the images are not standardized and not compatible.
I'm not sure about the performance, but OpenSolaris (the CommunityOne edition :-)) runs fast under VirtualBox. So what are the caveats/drawbacks? :-) Gesendet von admin [Fun] ( May 14, 2008 01:31 PM ) Permalink | Kommentare [3]
Friday January 11, 2008 Bernd Oestereich the german UML-Guru, asked me a question during the interview about my opinion of Second Life. I actually tried to avoid Second Life so far (because my Real Life is already too exciting), however I became curious, so I downloaded the software, chosen the name and first possible avatar and logged in. The journey started on a welcome island - after 2 minutes it became boring and I started to search for Java - and landed at Sun Microsystems Pavillions and the Java Dome (use the teleport for this purpose). I picked a JavaONE Bag, a Java Cup, T-Shirt and women's (!) leather jacked and try to wear. It seems like the jacket wasn't typesafe, so I could actually wear it. However I met a cat in the Sun's Sandbox (a place, where you can build things, but they have to be smaller than 70m...), which typed something. I asked her/him:
"Are you programming?"
the cat answered: "No. I do not programming, just scripting".
After a chat, it turned out, that the cat wasn't a cat but actually a werewolf. I asked why, the answer was: "why not".
What is interesting as well - the Sandbox is maintained by guards - and they assists you, in case you have some questions. It seems like they are Sun Employees (a virtual job?).
I went to the server building and tried to get into a BlackBox. For this purpose, you have to push a button. I did it and my Vista system immediately crashed and my notebook turned off. It was the fastest shutdown I ever saw (you have to push the button on my notebook for several seconds to achieve a similar effect. I will use these feature to shutdown my notebook, in case I'm in hurry in future:-). However it seems like only Vista has this feature, with XP there were no problems. After a restart, I went (actually flew) to the microsoft pavilions (with the t-shirt and my women's java leather jacket) but they were empty...
Second Life is an amazing software system with surely interesting backend architecture and high scaleability demands (there were 35k logged in users this time...) - if you are a Java-Developer you should visit the Java Dome - it takes about 0.5h and is fun. The idea of a self-creating world is really exciting - actually Web 3.0...
Wednesday January 02, 2008 Searching And Finding Java in Blu Ray Player
I installed the PowerDVD Software (Cyberlink) with Blu Ray support. Blue Ray uses Java (the BD-J) for the rendering of menues and movie control. I was just curious and searched for Java in the installation folder. You will find the Jars and Zip-File in the [installation]\CyberLink\PowerDVD\NavFilter folder. Blu Ray comes with public API and SDK - so it should be possible to build a application as well. Some programming resources are already available - at the last JavaONE was available in the booth. So if you are a Java programmer and have to decide between Blu Ray and HD-DVD, it should be obvious what to choose. If you are not a Java programmer - just choose Blu Ray :-). You can find release dates for movies here. However some concerts e.g.: Pink Floyd / David Gilmour
Monday December 31, 2007 100% pure Java, Co2 neutral :-) Fireworks for tonight
A nice (sound & vision) Java Applet for tonight. Happy New Year! Gesendet von admin [Fun] ( December 31, 2007 01:25 PM ) Permalink | Kommentare [0]
Wednesday November 14, 2007 The most asked question about Netbeans at W-JAX
At the W-JAX conference in Munich I shown some source code during a Java EE 5 workshop and explained EJB 3 using Netbeans 6b2 and Glassfish. I had to anwer some funny questions during the presentation:
- is Netbeans free?
- is Netbeans opensource?
- what plugins are installed (I used just the UML Plugin and the Java EE edition)
- is the UML-Plugin free?
- How new is the matisse GUI Builder ("matisse")?
- Comes netbeans really with the profiler?
- Runs the JSF code only on Glassfish?
Sunday October 14, 2007 Starting Java SE on (almost) raw iron - the Java OS
The opensource project jnode.org is an attempt to build a Java based operating system with a very small native micro kernel. JNode comes with a ISO-image, which can be booted on a PC. You will be asked by the GRUB-loader for serveral options - choose the second (all plugins). After few seconds the output will be familiar - it looks like a list of fully qualifed Java classes. It seems like even the firewire drivers are implemented (probably native-wrappers) in Java. After the boot phase (about 10 seconds) just type GC. A bash-like console appears. With the command "startawt" the GUI mode can be started. It is hard to say how fast it is - I ran it with wmware, without any optimizations - the performance on my laptop was o.k.
However the JNode.org project seems to be really far. My mouse, graphic device, firewire etc (of my ThinkPad) were recognized without any problems. JNode useds openJDK - which is remarkable as well. The UI is interesting, but the server mode could become even more important. The BEA application server is capable to run on the vmware ESX, and so almost on "bare metal". jnode.org could become a really interesting opensource alternative for Glassfish or JBoss. Then appservers could ran on "bare metal" without OS overhead.
Saturday October 06, 2007 Eclipse vs. Netbeans or JFace (SWT) vs. Swing - the art test and experiment
I was just curious and opened Eclipse Europa 3.3 as well as Netbeans 6b1 and asked people without IT-background the following question: "Which application looks nicer?" I got several interesting answers. However instead publishing the answer now, please repeat the experiment and publish the results in the comment of my (or your) blog (using the keyword: Netbeans or Eclipse). However do not ask Java developers - they are too biazed :-). Gesendet von admin [Fun] ( October 06, 2007 01:34 PM ) Permalink | Kommentare [2]
