Ubuntu Firefox 3.5 update

I've switched to 3.5 as my main Firefox (using Google Chrome / Chromium Web Browser as well). Just needed to update the symlink in /usr/bin/firefox so that applications using the system default browser were opening the right version of Firefox.

$ sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox
$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-3.5 /usr/bin/firefox

Scripting JMX via JRuby

I'm gradually growing some operations scripts which use JMX to alter application behaviour according to system load / required maintenance, etc. JRuby is a nice easy way to create these scripts.

host = 'some-ip'
port = 'port-number'
serviceUrl = javax.management.remote.JMXServiceURL.new("service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://#{host}:#{port}/jmxrmi")
connector = javax.management.remote.JMXConnectorFactory.connect(serviceUrl)
remote = connector.getMBeanServerConnection()
remoteRuntime = java.lang.management.ManagementFactory.newPlatformMXBeanProxy(remote, 
                     java.lang.management.ManagementFactory::RUNTIME_MXBEAN_NAME, 
                     java.lang.management.RuntimeMXBean.java_class)
p remoteRuntime.getName()
connector.close()

Seriously - another standard plugin for viewing video on the web?

I was trying to view some content via Gilad Bracha but it wasn't easy enough to do and I can't be bothered with it.

FAIL!

Indoctrination

So it begins. Took the boys climbing today, of sorts. I thought Callum was ready for it; Connor less so, but organisational issues being how they are, I had the big two while Al was off with the little one.

The venue was Brant Fell. I'd gone there the previous day and done pretty much everything apart from the traverse and a fingery eliminate at about Font 7b (similar to Perfect Day direct at Gardoms, but smaller holds. Failed with a bad split tip, same as the last time I tried Perfect Day! I think that's related to Callum's steroid cream thinning my finger-tip skin). Callum was pretty happy, romped up 3 short things. Connor, not so happy. He tied on, but then didn't like it so bailed. He then tried to solo stuff instead. That boy!

Java doesNotUnderstand-like behaviour in Eclipse

Kent Beck tweeted this recently. I've been doing this for years, but I guess it's not as widely used as I assumed.

Window | Preferences | Java | Code Style | Code Templates | Code | Method Body


// ${todo} Auto-generated method stub
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Not implemented");


Then add a breakpoint to your Debugger Breakpoint view:

New Java Exception for UnsupportedOperationException that hasn't been caught.

IDEA supports something similar, since I had it set up then as well, but I've not used IDEA for a couple of years.

I tend not to use debuggers; I prefer tests, but sometimes a debugger's the thing.

Java REPL

Obviously, most good dynamic languages for the JVM have this, but still, it's sweet.

$ jirb 
irb(main):001:0> require 'lib/org.restlet.jar'
=> true
irb(main):002:0>  http = Java::OrgRestletData::Protocol::HTTP
=> #<Java::OrgRestletData::Protocol:0x59cbda @java_object=#>
irb(main):003:0> client = Java::OrgRestlet::Client.new http 
=> #<Java::OrgRestlet::Client:0x800aa1 @java_object=#>
irb(main):004:0> r = client.get 'http://www.apache.org/'
01-Feb-2009 22:54:08 org.restlet.engine.http.StreamClientHelper start
INFO: Starting the HTTP client
=> #<Java::OrgRestletData::Response:0x12a416a @java_object=#>

Body Swerve

Cameron making us laugh again. I picked him up from nursery the other day and got home. Al was in the kitchen with open arms looking for a hug. He started off towards her, then dropped his shoulder, sold a beautiful dummy and went straight for the drawer with the pans to get some out and start banging! Not bad considering he's only been walking properly for less than a month.

JAXP pipelines using SAX

XProc looks handy, but is not in a usable state yet. So I had to roll my own pipeline as a one-off recently, and seemed to struggle more than I expected. The requirement was fairly simple

1. Ingest some HTML and convert to well-formed XML for processing;


2. filter that XML to remove unwanted content;


3. convert the XML to a different format.

Step 2 was a new bit - I already had well-tested code for the other two parts. So I wanted to re-use that as much as possible. JAXP pipelines using SAX looked to be (and is!) very nice for this, but examples seemed a bit thin on the ground. I've put a version of it here, in the hope that others may find it useful.

/* Create an InputSource for the pipeline input document. */
InputSource in = new InputSource(new ByteArrayInputStream(StringUtils.getBytes(text, "utf-8")));

/* Step 1. TagSoup parsing to get well-formed XML */
XMLReader reader = new Parser();

try {
    SAXTransformerFactory stf = (SAXTransformerFactory) SAXTransformerFactory.newInstance();

    StringWriter sb = new StringWriter();

    OutputFormat outputFormat = new OutputFormat();
    outputFormat.setOmitXMLDeclaration(true);

    XMLSerializer serializer = new org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer(outputFormat);
    serializer.setOutputCharStream(sb);

    /* Step 2. Remove unwanted markup from the well-formed XML. */
    InputStream stripContent = getResourceAsStream("strip-content.xslt");
    XMLFilter removeUnwanted = stf.newXMLFilter(new StreamSource(stripContent));

    /* Step 3. Convert to preferred markup format. */
    InputStream xsltResourceInputStream = getResourceAsStream("xhtml2dial.xslt");
    XMLFilter xhtml2dial = stf.newXMLFilter(new StreamSource(xsltResourceInputStream));

    removeUnwanted.setParent(reader);
    xhtml2dial.setParent(removeUnwanted);
    xhtml2dial.setContentHandler(serializer.asContentHandler());

    reader.parse(in);

    return sb.toString();
} catch (TransformerException e) {
    throw new ConversionException(e.getMessage(), e);
} catch (IOException e) {
    throw new ConversionException(e.getMessage(), e);
} catch (SAXException e) {
    throw new ConversionException(e.getMessage(), e);
}