martinmurphy.com - Martin Murphy » Work

Future looks bright for video ads

Martin Murphy — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:53:27 +0000

Continuing in the online video theme, The Register has a story about video ads:
Future looks bright for video ads
The article talks about ad-funded online video, and video ads in web pages. Both of these are relevant to me at work.

Flash Lite: Graphics for Mobile Devices

Martin Murphy — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:15:17 +0000

This is an interesting introduction to Flash Lite – including getting data from the network – in the current issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal. Well it’s probably only interesting if, like me, the only thing you already know about Flash Lite, is that some people can make nice looking demos with it
Dr. Dobbs | Flash Lite: Graphics for Mobile Devices | June 8, 2007

“lsof” command

Martin Murphy — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:31:58 +0000

Just found out about this command today.

“lsof” displays information about open files by processes on *nix systems (including network “files” – TCP/UDP). I don’t know how I managed to miss such a useful command over the years.

As an example, listing network ports (which I would previously have done with netstat):

# lsof +c0 -n | grep IP 

java             1022    martinm   28u     IPv6
          467902                 TCP 192.168.2.104:51769->192.168.10.1:xmpp-client (ESTABLISHED)
java             2961    martinm    6u     IPv6
          322274                 TCP *:8083 (LISTEN)
evolution        6408    martinm   59u     IPv6
          472527                 TCP [fffe:111:11:2:111:72ff:fe10:2bd]:51943->[fffe:111:11:1::11]:imaps (ESTABLISHED)
mysql           18407    martinm    3u     IPv4
          489375                 TCP 192.168.2.104:49021->192.168.2.146:mysql (ESTABLISHED)
firefox-bin     24396    martinm   52u     IPv4
          490170                 TCP 192.168.2.104:52906->192.168.0.1:webcache (ESTABLISHED)

I added linebreaks to make it more readable
As usual, further information is available with man lsof.
Now I’ll just need to find out a way of setting the command to be the Java Start Class to identify which java program has the port open.

Update: the number after the command is the PID so a ps -fpXXXX will show the comamnd line.

Working in a Fridge?

Martin Murphy — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:39:31 +0000

The heating system at work seems to break down a lot. I just found this link mentioning a minimum of 63°F within 1 hour (in the Irish Statute Book Database.) I must remember to bring a thermometer with me tomorrow morning. I suppose I should also check if that has been superceded.

Tip for a forgetful software developer

Martin Murphy — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:16:04 +0000

Lately, when writing JUnit tests I’ve been doing things like:

... String result = some.method(); assertTrue("Expected " + expected + " but was " + result, result.equals(expected)); ...

However, a similar result can be achieved with the semantically more accurate

... assertEquals(expected, result); ...

This is even easier to type

I did know this, honest!

Installing Ruby on Ubuntu

Martin Murphy — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 11:03:10 +0000

These are my experiences of installing Ruby on Ubuntu. I didn’t install the Ubuntu package but went with the source on the Ruby On Rails website. Everything worked fine out of the box, just downloaded the files and followed their instructions (basically the following, in this order.)

Download ruby-1.8.4.tar.gz and rubygems-0.9.0.tgz from the links on http://www.rubyonrails.org/down

Ruby

tar xzf ruby-1.8.4.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.4
./configure
make
make test
sudo make install

RubyGems

tar xvf rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
cd rubygems
sudo ruby setup.rb

Rails

sudo gem install rails –include-dependencies

Test installation

rails railstest/
cd railstest/
ruby script/server

Point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3000

Blogging and the work–life balance

Martin Murphy — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 22:40:22 +0000

There is a new “blogging initiative” at work (well I think it’s new, I’m not there long myself). The company line seems to be that blogging is good for both the employer and the employee. The company has offered to setup blog hosting on their servers. It seems like a reasonable idea, but, I’m not convinced that the company website needs to be associated with the latest news at the local dog show, cinema, or companies alluding to the discovery perpetual motion machines. I’m equally unconvinced that local movie-goers, dog-lovers, or mad scientists are interested in advances in the state-of-the-art in telecommunications software and systems.

So I would suggest that personal blogs are good for subjects that the blogger is interested in, and that work blogs are useful for dissemenating project related info on a per project basis. In addition, seperate work CV pages can be used for “these are our incredibly smart employees” and “why you should put money into our project” pages. And because of hypertext links (which are fundanemtal to “the web”) all of these can be associated, while keeping their individual identies.
I’m interested in what other people think about this.