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Ati SUCKS! Windows SUCKS!

Posted on 2006-11-26 By rolfje No Comments on Ati SUCKS! Windows SUCKS!
Just to share some frustration with you guys, I just spent 4 hours trying to update the Ati video drivers for my Mobility Radeon 9200 video card in my laptop from version 6.14 to 6.5. And all this just because Second Life crashes on my laptop every 3 minutes.

The Ati installer just crashes because there is already an old version of the driver on the system. Any normal manufacturer would be able to upgrade the driver, no? No. This is a windows system, and even with the slightest sign of problenms, you end up digging forums where people have found how to edit the registry to get things done. And then it will still not work. Windows is so full of crap, I even found a driver cleaner tool. And no, that also did not work.

I can not wait to replace my shoddy PC laptop with an iBook or macbook pro. Mind you, this is an Acer Ferrari 3000 laptop I’m typing this on, which should be a decent laptop. But the Windows way just screws it all up.

Every 10 hours of PC, I spend 2 to 4 fixing problems or upgrading drivers. Every 10 hours of Mac, I spend 0 hours updating drivers and 0 hours fixing things. I see an easy winner here in the productivity departement….

Microsoft

Stomwijzer

Posted on 2006-11-20 By rolfje No Comments on Stomwijzer

Weet je niet waarop je wilt stemmen? Het is nog niet te laat om even de www.stomwijzer.nl raadplegen. Op eigen risico uiteraard 🙂

Fun

Creating an Ubuntu Postgres server

Posted on 2006-11-10 By rolfje No Comments on Creating an Ubuntu Postgres server
Follow these steps to create an Ubuntu Linux “server” running a Postgres database which allows non-local connections. You will need a machine with at least 10GB HD, bootable from CD-ROM, network card, and preferably more than 200MB RAM. Other than that, it can even be a Mac G4 if you like (just download the correct Ubuntu build).

Read More “Creating an Ubuntu Postgres server” »

Software

Ibatis Nullpointer calling stored procedure

Posted on 2006-11-07 By rolfje 1 Comment on Ibatis Nullpointer calling stored procedure
Today, a collegue of mine had a really strange nullpointer problem trying to call a stored procedure in an Oracle 10 database using iBATIS Java 2.2.0. What she had was a normal JavaBean, like so: 

package com.rolfje.foo
public class BarBean {
    private String barName;
    private Long barId;

    ... setters/getters here ...
}

A straightforward parametermap:

<parameterMap class="com.rolfje.foo.BarBean"
      id="barbeanMap">
   <parameter property="barName" />
   <parameter property="barId" />
</parameterMap>

and a straightforward procedure mapping:

<procedure id="insertBar" parameterMap="barbeanMap">
   {	call store_bar (
      ?,?)
   }
</procedure>

When trying to call the stored procedure, she got the following stacktrace:

org.springframework.jdbc.UncategorizedSQLException: SqlMapClient operation;
uncategorized SQLException for SQL [];
SQL state [null]; error code [0];
--- The error occurred in com/rolfje/foo/sqlmaps/ParameterMap.xml.
--- The error occurred while applying a parameter map.
--- Check the barBeanMap.
--- Check the statement (update procedure failed).
--- Cause: java.lang.NullPointerException; nested exception is

com.ibatis.common.jdbc.exception.NestedSQLException:
--- The error occurred in com/rolfje/foo/sqlmaps/ParameterMap.xml.
--- The error occurred while applying a parameter map.
--- Check the barBeanMap.
--- Check the statement (update procedure failed).
--- Cause: java.lang.NullPointerException
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
Caused by: com.ibatis.common.jdbc.exception.NestedSQLException:
--- The error occurred in com/rolfje/foo/sqlmaps/ParameterMap.xml.
--- The error occurred while applying a parameter map.
--- Check the barBeanMap.
--- Check the statement (update procedure failed).
--- Cause: java.lang.NullPointerException
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
   at ...executeQueryWithCallback(GeneralStatement.java:188)
   at ...executeQueryForObject(GeneralStatement.java:104)
   at ...queryForObject(SqlMapExecutorDelegate.java:565)
...

After hours of staring at the problem, and comparing code with similar constructions from other projects, we decided to switch to the Oracle 9i thin driver to see if that would solve the problem. It didn’t, but there was an interesting development: The Oracle 9i driver actually gave us a decent error about not being able to parse the SQL statement. Which brings us to…

The solution:
We removed all layout from the procedure mapping, which resulted in:

<procedure id="insertBar" parameterMap="barbeanMap">
   {call store_bar (?,?)}
</procedure>

This solved the problem. Then we switched back to the Oracle 10i thin driver, and the problem was still gone. The problem lies in the TAB between the left curly bracket and the word “call”. Oracle can not handle this.To investigate this problem, we then also tried to insert <![CDATA[ ]]> around the procedure call, but as soon as there is a TAB between the { and the word “call” iBATIS will throw a NullPointer. The strange thing is that you can have spaces, newlines and tabs *anywhere* in the procedure mapping, as long as there is no TAB between the left curly and the word “call”.

Software

It ain’t what you do…

Posted on 2006-11-02 By rolfje 1 Comment on It ain’t what you do…
…it’s the way that you do it. Last week I noticed a funny thing in an application I’m involved in as a developer. For logging in to the application, the term “Log On” was used. However, for logging off, “Log Out” was used. This did not feel right, so I searched a bit on the use of these terms. It looks like more people are having trouble choosing one form or the other, and are also mixing on/off and in/out.

Read More “It ain’t what you do…” »

Software

Tangerine BPM Analyzer

Posted on 2006-10-22 By rolfje No Comments on Tangerine BPM Analyzer

Today I discovered Tangerine, a BPM (Beats Per Minute) analyzer for use with iTunes on a mac. I downloaded it, and it works as advertised. It scans your iTunes music library, and analyzes the BPM (and intensity of the pattern) of each track. It does this in the background, and on my Mac mini Core duo I can continue wih my normal programs while Tangerine analyzes the tracks. The BPM values get saved to your iTunes library, so they will also show up in iTunes if you have the BPM column visible there. The “Intensity” will not be visible in your normal iTunes lists.

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Software

Welcome www.rolfje.com readers!

Posted on 2006-10-20 By rolfje No Comments on Welcome www.rolfje.com readers!

Because the update process of my old site was much more hassle than typing a post, I noticed that my blog was better maintained than my site. Therefore I have decided to redirect traffic to my domain (rolfje.com) to my blog. You can still find the original content of www.rolfje.com at http://www.xs4all.nl/~rrolfje/.

Read More “Welcome www.rolfje.com readers!” »

Uncategorized

Monique Pels

Posted on 2006-10-04 By rolfje No Comments on Monique Pels

This morning, Monique Pels passed away after a long period of illnes. Even though I’ve only met Monique a few times, she always left the impression of being a strong, witty, and loving person who enjoyed every minute of life. I can only imagine how big this loss must be for her family, relatives and friends.

My condolences to Bert, Nikita, Indy, Marianne, Ton, Vincent, Annemieke and Jaimey. I wish them all the strength to cope with this loss.

Part of this text was sent to ian king to be placed on the Monique Pels Tribute Page. If you would like to send your own tribute then please E-Mail ian@kingracing.com.

Other places with tributes for Monique:
eurodragster.com
Ian’s Pitlane Gossip
German Drag Racing board

Racing

OSX: USB Fat32 drives trouble samba

Posted on 2006-09-26 By rolfje No Comments on OSX: USB Fat32 drives trouble samba

Okay, I found the answer to my problem. Mounting an USB drive on OSX which is formatted as Fat32, will not behave nicely when being accessed through samba. Trying to start multiple copy processes simultaniously will cause seemingly random “file locked” errors. I just formatted the drive as HFS+, and the problem dissapeared. This is a screenshot you’d expect when copying, but I was very happy to see it just a minute ago:

Multiple file copy jobs

Now that I’ve cleared that problem, I can start working on the backup and virusscanning processes, and writing a nice “how to” so you can do the same with your mac mini!

I should have done this right away like I planned. HFS+ is far better than Fat32 (journalled, auto-defragmenting, case preserving, and better in preserving file integrity).

Apple, Software

Samba shares and USB drives

Posted on 2006-09-25 By rolfje 3 Comments on Samba shares and USB drives

I am very close to migrating the data on my bulky PC to my new Mac Mini fileserver and mounting the IDE drives in the USB drive brackets. Once I’ve done this, I will have the screenshots and data to write a nice “how to” on using the Mac Mini as a file server. There is however one slight problem which could prove to be a showstopper…

Samba test 1: local directories.
I created a directory in the root of the HD in the mac mini, and made it R/W for everybody. Then, I used SharePoints to make it available to all password-less Guest users on the network (which happens to be the default Windows user for connecting to drives without asking for a password). All was well. I could access the share, and could copy as many files from as many machines imultaniously as I wanted.

Samba test 2: USB mounted volumes.
I mounted a HFS+ formatted USB disk to the Mac Mini, and made it available to the network in the same way as in test 1. Everything seemed to be working fine and as expected, but while running some tests I discovered a strange thing: I can only copy files onto the USB drive from 1 machine at a time, 1 file at a time. When starting a new copy while allready in the process of copying an older file, one or both copy jobs crashed with a “file in use” error.

I am now trying to find out what is causing this problem. I have a firewire drive I can use to determine if it is the USB protocol or driver which is causing this problem, or if it is the fact that it is a mounted volume alltogether. If anybody has tips I’m glad to hear them. Meanwhile I’ll be searching the web…

Update
Using a firewire drive does not solve the problem. I did find some articles on fast user switching which state that only 1 user can access pheripherals at a time. This seems to be related to this problem.

Update 2
Creating a symlink to the mounted volume and sharing the link through samba will not change behaviour. I was expecting this, but tried anyway because it only costs 1 minute to test. Maybe a virtual drive would be an option. I can create virtual RAID disks in OSX, but I don’t want my setup to be complex. This will add to the complexity when recovering from a sever crash. Simple, full and fast recovery from hardware problems is my top priority.

Apple, Hardware

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