They don't make 'em like they used to
This year almost every one of my electronic devices has burnt out on me. I was very lucky that each one was still under the manufacturers warranty, because I never buy the extended warranties at Best Buy or Circuit City. It's nice that the devices were covered under the manufacturers warranties, but it's upsetting that all of these electronics are failing so quickly. I think it speaks volumes about the standards these companies are willing to commit to. Continue Reading
Extracting Images from a Word Document
Have you ever tried to extract images from a Word Document? It just doesn't seem to work. After searching the internet, I found plenty of articles which claim that it can't be done. I started playing around with a few techniques, and I've found a failsafe way to extract images from a Word Document.
Continue ReadingRecent Move to Minneapolis
As I mentioned earlier, I recently moved to Minneapolis. I rented a Uhaul, and asked three of my friends to help me move. I had reserved the largest Uhaul (a beastly 26 footer) available, and I was convinced we wouldn't need a truck that large. To my dismay, we actually own enough stuff to fill the entire truck, and we still weren't able to fit everything into the truck.
We were exhausted after spending nine hours moving furniture and boxes to the third floor. I was pushing myself to the limit, spending every last ounce of energy getting all of my things moved into the apartment. I saved my favorite item for last - my 50" Samsung Plasma TV. My best friend and cousin went downstairs to get my TV for me while I was getting some final items up to my apartment. They took an unusually long amount of time, and I became concerned. I went to see what was going on, and found them walking towards me a short distance down the hall from my door. They both stopped smiling once they saw me, and immediately said "we have good news, and bad news". I looked down and noticed the only thing they had on the moving cart was my prized television set. My stomach turned and my heart dropped. A humongous crack ran rampant throughout the screen.
The GIMP
A lot people are under the impression that Photoshop is the only available tool for designing digital art and graphics. I'll admit that I'm not a professional designer whatsoever, but I like to try to create designs and graphics on my own. I really didn't want to fork out the cash for a Photoshop license, especially since I'm only doing this as a hobby. A little known tool (to most) that is free, and in my opinion just as powerful as Photoshop, is the Gimp. The great thing about the Gimp (besides the fact that it's free) is that you can download some (if not most) components for Photoshop and install them for use seamlessly. I was able to download gradients and brushes which were created for Photoshop and use them within Gimp with no problem.
Continue ReadingMoving to Minneapolis
My fiancee and I have spent all weekend packing our place in preparation for our move to downtown Minneapolis. We spent all day today taking down dozens of pictures and other wall decorations, packing boxes, and moving stuff to our storage unit. We still have a lot more to pack, but we're looking forward to the move, regardless.
The tradeoffs are between our current apartment - a two bedroom, with a two car attached garage and a back porch with a bit of a private back yard - and our new apartment in downtown Minneapolis, without a private garage, back yard, or back porch. But, it beats sitting in traffic for hours a day, since we both work in downtown Minneapolis and commute into the city.
An email from Ireland to their brethren in the States
A point to ponder despite your political affiliation:
We, in Ireland, can't figure out why people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States...
On one side, you have a pants-wearing lawyer, married to a lawyer who can't keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer who goes to the wrong church who is married to yet another lawyer who doesn't even like the country her husband wants to run in.
Upgrades
Like most service professionals, I find myself putting off my personal projects for way too long. So, at long last, I'm pleased to announce that I've released a new version of my site. I designed and developed my site using open source technologies, including the Gimp, Nifty Corners, DWR, and jQuery.
Enter the Stratosphere
I've recently began developing my own J2EE web content management system which I've named Stratosphere. As of now, Stratosphere is powering my website. I've built the system using Hibernate, Spring, Acegi Security, and many other open source technologies. The application requires Java 5.0+, and so far I've only tested it on Tomcat 5.5.20 and 5.5.23. I will be maintaing my source code using Subversion, and developing on the recent Eclipse Europa distro. I am using MySQL as the backend DBMS. Continue Reading
Wrong Email Address
A lesson to be learned from typing the wrong E-mail address: A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years before. Because of their hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minneapolis and flew to Florida on Friday, and his wife was flying down the following day. The husband checked into the hotel, and unlike years ago, there was a computer in his room , and he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her E-mail address, and without noticing his error, sent the email to the wrong address. Meanwhile ... somewhere in Houston ... a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He was a minister who was called home to glory after suffering a heart attack. Continue Reading
Bug: WebLogic 8.1 SP3 + Spring 2
I'm currently working on a project for a client who is using WebLogic 8.1 as their application server. Specifically, they are using WebLogic 8.1 SP 3 (version 8.1.3, I believe). There is a bug specific to WebLogic 8.1 below SP 5 where Spring cannot be included in any applications deployed on the server. The error I received when deploying the application was not straightforward - a StringIndexOutOfBoundsException. Not only that, but the stack trace in the server logs did not include any classes from my application - only WebLogic classes. After reading many forums, and finally diving into the WebLogic support site, I discovered that a known bug does exist with WebLogic 8.1 specific to the Spring framework, and you can contact WebLogic support to obtain a patch to fix the issue. Continue Reading
Joffrey's Java Beta Test
Joffrey's is sending people free coffee as a part of a beta test. Not only that, but your blog can gain some visibility; if you're selected for the beta test, a link to your blog will appear on their website. Sign up using the link below.
http://beta.joffreys.com/
Configuration: Spring + Hibernate + OpenSessionInViewFilter
I fought with this configuration for a long time. I learned how to use Hibernate first, and I had followed a posting on the Hibernate forums when I created my own OpenSessionInViewFilter. When I switched over to Spring, I heard they had their own implementation of the OpenSessionInView pattern, and attempted to follow it. When I couldn't get it to work, I read over the Spring documentation like a madman. I even dove into the Spring source code to gain a better understanding of how each component in the Spring framework integrates with Hibernate sessions, and how transactions and sessions are looked up, opened, and closed. Continue Reading
Bug: DWR 2 + WebLogic 8.1 SP 5
Apparently, there is a bug with DWR 2 when running in WebLogic 8.1. This bug may appear in all server environments running versions of Java less than 1.5, since it appears to be related to version checking built into DWR which doesn't work. The stack trace leads up to a NullPointerException from the java.util.Hashtable class (which doesn't really help you solve the real problem): Continue Reading
