Nuno Sousa's Corner

So, I'm finally on my vacations. I had to cite law articles to get some vacation time, but I'm finally at home, resting and recharging my batteries. I have some things to do, but things that are fun to do!!! And it was the right time to go on vacations: my mood wasn't all that good, in fact, nobody could hear another one of my comments about how things are all wrong; my car needs to go to the garage (they are able to squeeze it this week); I need to by some clothes; I need to check out some swimming pools and I need to find a new house. Many things to do while I'm on my vacations, but the one that I'm also doing is a Web Site for my family's company. It will be a simple Apache, PHP and MySQL site. What I really wanted was to make a full blow JEE5 Site, all Web 3.0 and so on. Facts are that they don't need all that bloat: they need a simple, clean and fast site. Taking into consideration the hosting costs and everything, PHP seems to be the way to go. I'l...

Today I can't help to blog about something I stumbled upon in the Web. I don't know if you haver heard about the Creative Commons initiative. If you didn't brace yourself for a trip to the world of freedom of expression and though!!! Whenever you have an idea and implement it, the idea is automatically copyrighted. This is specifically true for Music, Pictures, Films, Books and son on. The problem nowadays is that this rights are being enforce to a level that is so extreme that our children are being forced in to pirates. They are being forced into believe that copyright should exist. My humble opinion is that copyright does and should exist. But common sense should guide on what is breaking a copyright. If I'm copying a music without paying for it and redistributing it to the whole world, free of charge or not, I'm breaking a copyright. I don't think I'm breaking a copyright when I use a peace of a music, mix it with video and share it with my friends. Th...

Have you ever needed to make some heavy 2D rendering operation in Swing and you didn't want to block the Swing Thread? Well, I had to, several times and today I made a hack for a colleague that I would like to built upon here. My first attempt to ensure that the Swing Thread wasn't blocked was to conduct all rendering on a background thread. This obviously violated all Swing and Java2D principles. If you don't know, just Google for it, but the fact is that all rendering should be done by the Event Dispatch Thread. So, all Swing activities should also be done in that same thread. What happens if the scene you are rendering is rather complex and you don't want to hog the Even Dispatch Thread? A simple technique can be applied. The idea is to hold the context when the rendering is started. If the rendering has been going for quite some time, place an event in the Event Queue to resume it later. This allows the Event Dispatch Thread to process other events. When the renderi...

Today I finally finished the update on my six year old laptop. I know it sounds crazy, but I bough a laptop back in end of 2001 and I still haven't replaced it. I put linux into it and never looked back Started with Mandrake at the time, I then made the switch to Gentoo. Since then I have always updated my system without any format like you have to do on other operating systems. I was unable to connect it to the internet for a while. This lead to a very outdated operating system. Luckily Gentoo is almost straight forward to update. The only problem is that my desktop environment is eating a little too much memory for my taste. I guess I'll need to tackle it later. On my project list is an idea to make a 3D chart on top of Java 2D. Why? Well, I already made such a chart for the company I work for, but at that time I used Java 3D. Now, there is nothing seriously wrong with Java 3D itself. Let me make it clear that it is very nice API. But to do a chart in Java 3D is an overkill. ...

It has been some time since I blogged. I hope to do this more often. You see, I lost the internet connection in my Linux Laptop. Why? Well, my ISP decided to change its settings and didn't tell no one about it. It worked on Windows, but my laptop hasn't run Windows for over 4 years. I though it was a problem with the modem, or my configuration. I ended up buying a new modem/router. It still didn't work so I called technical support and then they told me the options that you have to use when you're not using their own modems. Why? Well, their modems have their hidden configuration options hardwired... but on to more interesting things. I came across a series of articles about Web Beans. I don't know if you know about JEE (yes, since version 5 it is JEE - Java Enterprise Edition, not J2EE) but I had a training on this subject and I liked the way they used annotations and other techniques to turn a bloated platform into a clean and simple programming model. But their e...

No, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth. At least no yet! What happened was a drastic change in my life that led me to stop blogging about anything. Today I decided to put this small entry just to say that I'm still alive. I'm finally having some time off work to recharge batteries and get my life back together. I also hope this extra time allows me to post more things here. I have a couple of tutorials lined up. The first should be about WebServices in Java: how to call or build your one WebService following a predefined WSDL without using any libraries but the standard ones included in the Java Runtime Environment. So keep reading...

It has been a long time since I last blogged. The reasons are many, but lets just say that things have been a little chaotic. It seems that everything has landed on top of my head: work, thesis, health, you name it... Although it might seem that I'm just ranting for nothing, lets take a look at a few examples. First I had to make a presentation to the President of the Republic. Yes, I live in a republic and we have a president. I was chosen by my former chief and the current chief to make this presentation. A 5 minute presentation that should pass the concept of the product, including a live demo of the software. In other words: you have 5 minutes to either excel at it, or be marked for the rest of your life for the worst reasons. Why do I say this? Well, all the public TV channels were there, including some private. Newspaper reports, radio reports, you name it. I even ended up with my face and my back in the public television!!! My parents were so proud ;-) On that same week I ha...

It is funny how things turn out some times. No matter how many plans you make, destiny will always throw a curve ball at you. You may plan it all out: what to do, when to do it, even how to do it. But the fact is that when you try to actually do it, things will blow up in your face. The last entry I made in this blog was about the building I'm currently working on. Funny thing is that it has been over a month since I blogged and the building is still under constructions. But since someone very important, like the President, is coming for the official opening the work has suddenly switched into Warp 5 Speed. You have painters working side by side with welders; technicians configuring the elevator; technicians testing the air conditioning and more. The end result is that nobody can actually get any work done in the mist of all the noise and smell of paint. On top of that the building still has no full electrical power. We didn't work for a whole morning so the power company could...

Today was my last day at my current working location. It is strange to leave a place where I have worked for 7 years and 15 days exactly. I'm not leaving the company, but the place, the friends from other departments that are staying. I will miss specially the ladies, since in our new location there won't be a single lady in the floor I'll be working: just men. I usually say that if you put too many men engineers in the same place without a single women things fall apart. I say this because the conversation level degrades... A women would make all the men automatically be more self-conscious and avoid having conversations in slang or anything worse. To all those that stay in the old location I wish the best of luck and happiness with their lives. For all those that like me will be pursuing a new adventure I wish also the best luck and happiness. For those that have left or will leave I want to say this: I understand and although I'll miss you, as friend I have to tell y...

This was a different week. The company I work for is moving locations and I considered their offer unacceptable. Well, they made another offer and I decided to accept it. Although I feel like I sold myself, I can't stop and think that I'm still taking a huge risk. Part of what was proposed to me still hasn't been confirmed and three years from know I'll probably be loosing money if I continue in the company. I'm still thinking if I should sign the agreement without having this confirmation. It makes the risk even greater. But with that fact aside and if things go according to the plan I'll start working on the new location next Friday. I honestly believe that things won't go according to the plan because it involves changing 80 persons from 4 different locations to a new building that is from 4 to 250Km where those persons currently work. It involves changing people's machines, bindings, pencils, lab machines that are almost never turned off, the UPS, p...

I already ranted about this the last time I blogged and I don't want to rant any further, but it is affecting my life and I should blog about it. Facts are that I need to make a decision that will change the course of my life. I have to decide if I want to continue with my current employer or if a want to jump into the void and pursue another goal. There are many alternatives. I can simply look for another job, maybe even launch myself as a freelancer. I can even go for a PhD, but I don't want to get Piled Higher and Deeper . Just kidding. Although I love these comic strips, I haven't run against anything similar to it during my Masters. Why do I need to make a decision? Simple, I don't see my current employer step up to its responsibilities and pay for the relocation. Although it is in the Portuguese Law that the employer should pay for all the relocation costs I don't think they will. I'm saying this because they are using an option in the law to enter in agre...

It isn't new, other have already said it, but today I found another demonstration of the Power of the Community. A Community of motivated people created many successful software projects, like the GNU/Linux project. When the idea for a new project appears and a community builds up around it, the project at such a pace that commercial companies would say it is impossible. In fact, when the community that is developing an application that they will use it, magic happens. Today I was browsing through the web when I came across this set of videos on YouTube. It is about the Jokosher project. What is the Jokosher project? Well, I'll quote its home page: Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio. With it you can create and record music, podcasts and more, all from an integrated simple environment. It may not sound that great, but this application was built like every application should. And is moving at a quick pace because of the community that surrounds it. But back,...

Have you ever had to do real work with Dates and Times in Java? Well, I had to and still have to. For Data and Time handling the Java API includes the Date and Calendar classes, but these classes leave a lot to desire. For instance: there is no class that represents a Date without Time information, or a class that represents Time without Date. Even worst, there is no class to support Durations. Until know what I did was to create the classes that I missed. For instance: I created a Duration class that represents Durations. It is weird to have to do these things, but it is a fact of life if you want to use Java Standard APIs. But there is hope for the rest of us that really want a new and better API. JSR-310 Date and Time API is planed for Java 7 and should address these issues. They will finally create a simpler API, with all the missing parts like Durations, Date without Time and Time without Date, and so on... The problem is we are still at least a year away from Java 7 and we ne...

My grandfather has left this earth and went into the great adventure. He will always be in my heart and I'll never forget him. I know he is watching over us and he expects us to continue without his presence. I'll do my best to make him proud...

I've been a little off-line lately due to some personal problems It involves the health and life of someone that is dear to me. This leaves me without any will our power to actually write anything. But at least I'll leave here a link to a series of articles on the story of the ARM processors, the Symbian and Linux use on Mobile Phones. And of course, the latest release from Apple the iPhone. Read on if you want to know a little about history, since my will to write is somewhere else...

I had this subject on my backlog for quite some time. You see, I started my days as a professional Java Developer doing Swing coding. At that time Swing was OK, a little slow, but OK. Today I believe Swing is as fast and any other GUI Toolkit for Java with the advantage of being extremely flexible. But I don't want to get into a GUI Toolkit debate here because I think there is nothing to debate: you weight the factors for the project, choose a toolkit and live with it. In the last couple of days I stumbled upon two very interesting Java Specification Requests (JSR) related to Swing The first and oldest one is the JSR 295 - Beans Binding . The second one is the JSR 296 - Swing Application Framework . I already heard about the first one a year ago and I actually thought it was dead, but there has been some progress. These JSRs fill some of the Gaps I always believed Swing had. I'll give you some details. The Beans Binding JSR finally turns Java Beans into something really useful....

Today I made some progress on my Thesis: I was able to write three more pages in just one hour. At this rate It will take me another sixty hours to finish it. Hmm.... that still seems a huge number... On another note it seems that the number three has been pursuing me all day and will continue to. Let's have a look: I passed by three police Radars on my way to Work; the promise made by the high level management of providing us with full details on a sensitive subject within three weeks saw its deadline today (no, as usual they failed one more promise; why am I so stupid to think otherwise?); I found three major errors in the source code I was changing at work (don't worry, the errors are still there, since there is no time to correct them); I passed another three police radars on my way to the University; I have written three pages of my Thesis;... What will be next? Three Speeding Tickets when I get home?

Have you ever wanted to know the Linux Kernel Internals? Well, today, while browsing the web, I came across this article . It is an interview with Jens Axboe, the hacker that launched the development of the 2.5 branch of the Linux Kernel with his rewrite of the block layer. If you ever wanted to understand a little more about how Linux works, just read the interview. It is well worth the time it takes to read it. In fact, I'm know installing the kernel 2.6.19 on my Laptop and I'm following some of his advices, specially the notes about I/O Schedulers. What do you want? My Laptop is a 6 years old machine: if I can squeeze a little more performance out of it, I will!

Today I was browsing through my usual RSS feeds and I ran into this one . It is a presentation about "How To Herd Cats and Influence People". Jono is right on the money: the community is the key to keep a project alive. In fact he is even righter when he mentions that the process should be defined, not a peace of bureaucracy that no one wants to follow, but a simply defined. I'm saying this because I'm trying to contribute to Rhythmbox and I'm having difficulties on how should I make things. You see, when I involve myself in a project I like to respect the already made decisions. For instance: I don't want to start immediately by questioning the chosen architecture. The problem is that if I don't understand the architecture it will be difficult to contribute. What's there left to do? Well, I'll choose one implementation, the one that is quicker and that doesn't seem to break the application's architecture and move ahead; submit the patch an...

As you already know I'm writing my Thesis. Facts are that I haven't made any progress in it and I believe I should really channel all my energies to it. It is almost the end of January and I want to end it as soon as possible. The problem is that it has been some weeks since I have written anything on the Thesis. It is not that the subject isn't interesting, but since I shot for the impossible for the given time frame I'm writing about what I wanted to achieve. Facts are that I didn't achieve my end goal and that makes me frustrated to a point that I can't write about it. I guess the rage needs to build up before I write a single line in the Thesis...

In my last post I said that it was time to brush up my C programming skills. Well, it turns out that my C programming skills are way OK. The problem is that I don't know GNome's APIs. It's like when you have one of those enlightening moments when someone explains you how to do something without having to do a Marathon before. I'm always saying: "Developer, know thy tools!". It seems this sentence is now haunting me because I don't know GNome's APIs and I'm paying the price: I end up look, searching or even reinventing something that has already been done all over again. I know most of Java SE APIs by hart, their patterns and how they should be used. I know them so well that I can even abuse of them to my benefit. In fact, it is not the first time I go to Java's source code to see how something is done so I know if I can use it in a given way. In fact, the last time I did this was just a couple of days ago when I wanted to see if the Preferences...

It looks like I have been Eating my own Dog Food for too long. I'm saying this because I usually make new code using code that I have already written down. This makes things easy: the principles behind the code are almost the same (if we don't factor in the natural evolution that comes with Age and Experience); the architecture is know; the flow is know and so on. I'm trying to add a new feature to GNome's Rhythmbox application and I'm finding out that I'm a bit lost in their source code. It is a mix o C, with object oriented support built from scratch, and Python. Problems? Well, I don't understand their architecture and I have never written anything serious in Python. End result? I'm lost :-| For me this means that I need to brush up on my C skills and also to learn Python. Maybe this was just the excuse I needed: a worthy challenge that would force me to dig into someone else's code.

My latest assignment at work is to try to make a dedicated storage system that we can use to be the performance of a RDBMS when making statistics. I know it seems strange, but the first tests show that a dedicated storage system can be something like 5 times faster then a RDBMS, even without optimizing the storage. It goes inline with a recent article from the MIT guys that indicates that for specific applications a dedicated storage system can be up to 10 or more times faster then a conventional RDBMS, even if it is a really expensive one. Well, I've known this all along: the RDBMS needs to be sufficiently generic and if you know the nature of the data and the operations that are going to be performed you can always make something faster. The problem with attempting to make something faster is that you will have to solve some of the problems that an RDBMS already did. No, I'm not talking about Transaction Management, but concerning how data is store. You need to structure you...

I think it is about time to start learning a new programming language. I think it has come a time where you should really use the best tool for the job and not just reinvent the wheel just because your language doesn't do a certain thing. There are many languages out there that I wanted to try, like Ruby and Python. But what I'm also pondering to try C#. I have always delayed this because C# first seemed like a clone of Java, it didn't ran on Linux and it wasn't truly multi-platform. Today I believe I should know its special constructs if I ever need to use it, because everything else looks very similar to Java and C++. Is like 15% is new, everything else comes from other languages. As with any new language the main step in the learning path is learning is API. Like Java, C# has many modules that address many things. Knowing at least some of them would be good. This is even more true for someone who has been working in the same place for 7 years and sees a dark future a...

Do you know a tool called Blender ? If you don't maybe it is about time that you do. If you are interested in Graphics, 3D, High Quality Rendering, Physics Engines, Game Engines, Ray Tracing and others of the same kind, then you are a Graphics Geek. Well, at least I think that is what geeks that are interested in Graphics should be called. Am I a Graphics Geek? Well, probably not fully, but I've always found interesting the world of Graphics. It all started at the University when I had to develop a Z-Buffer Implementation, coupled a a 3D Modeling tool. You see, I went the extra mile. For a simple project where you shouldn't spend more then 40 hours I ended up spending something like 60 hours and ended up with a tool that even made objects by Revolution, that is, you draw a polygon and a line and the engine would warp the polygon around the line making quads as it went by. What really amazed me at the time is that this is an area were you could always attempt old techniques ...

Yesterday, while browsing through the World Wide Web, I read a couple of articles. The first one talked about Maven. The second one talked about The Top 12 Productivity Killers in Development Methodologies . I was captivated by Maven and intrigued by the second that I decided to blog about Maven and TestNG . What is Maven? Well, I can quote what is written on its web site : Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project's build, reporting and documentation from a central piece of information. What does this mean? Well, it means that you declare your projects dependencies and Maven will take care of all the work, even if it involves downloading the dependencies from the Web. Although this might seem a simple functionality, if you ever worked with huge projects, specially if they are component oriented projects, you can see the benefit. Imagine that you have a tool that...

I have always been a programmer. I started programming in BASIC with the ZX Spectrum . Incredibly as it might sound I even wrote a game for that computer. Over the years things evolved and know I would like to say that I use the language that serves best the needs at hand, but facts are that I do most things in Java. That is the language that I use at work. At home, for my pet projects, I choose language and it goes from C to Java. Lately I've been looking a Python and Ruby, but I haven't really tried them out. At work I have evolved to what I call a "Word Programmer". What is a "Word Programmer"? Well, it is someone that makes highly detailed specifications that others follow when programming. I call it "Word Programmer" because "Word" is the name of the Text Editor that the company I work for forces me to use. The idea is to develop software from very high-level languages: English and UML (Unified Modeling Language). It is an interesti...

I don't know about you, but I read a lot of RSS Feeds on a daily basis. I use Google Reader for this but recently I found out that it allows me to create a list of shared items. I found the idea interesting so I'll start trying to use it. The idea is simple: if I find a post, news, article or whatever on the web that I find interesting or funny enough I'll add it to my shared items. These will be available in this page (you can also find a permanent link on the right side of the blog, under My Links and it is called " Interesting Links "). This way you can keep track of what I find interesting, but be warned that you will get a "Filtered" version of what I find in the RSS Feeds I read that is interesting. You may not like it, but you won't know until you give it a try!

Writing a Thesis is turning out to be a worthy challenge. It is like writing a book! You have to make it fluent and coherent from start to finish, it has to be well written and an enjoyable reading. On top of all this you have to be talking about things that are complex, new and hard to understand. Its like mixing water with oil: the two don't get along and even if try really hard to mix them they won't stay together for too long. I haven't written a single sentence in my Thesis for a long time. You see, the only things I have to do to finish it are: write the Thesis, deliver it and defend it. It seems simple but I'm finding it hard to focus on the task at hand: writing it! I always wanted to write some articles or even a book, but if I can't write the Thesis it is going to be hard. I also believe that writing articles or books can be a lot easier then writing the Thesis because I'm writing a text that should teach or help someone grasp a concept. In the Thesis...

I 've been looking at existing bugs in GNome's Bugzilla. I was amazed to see that there are several bugs related to showing Album Covers in Rhythmbox . I'm starting to think: "Is it worth to make a patch to show the art embedded in MP3 Files?". A fact is that GStreamer supports it, but the latest version of Rhythmbox from SVN doesn't. It is also a fact that there are already bugs that are addressing the issue and even using a Metadata extension in Rhythmbox to show the Album Cover in the notification message. My efforts might be a little late, that is, if they show it in the tray icon then it is a lot easier to add support for embedded images. My Conclusion: I went over my head in trying to make a patch for something that it seems others are working on, or at least on parts of. There is already a Bug that handles showing the Cover Art in the notification area. The changes proposed in this bug have been committed so I'll check what they have been doing. If ...

Today I started hacking Rhythmbox. Things aren't going so well. I expected to be able to quickly hack the new functionality into it but I ran into problems. You see, although Gentoo (my Linux distribution of choice) has GStreamer 0.10.8 marked as stable, which is the GStreamer version that includes the new GST_TAG_IMAGE that I need to show the pictures embedded within the MP3 files, it has the base plug-ins of GStreamer that still don't provide this tag when the ID3 tag on the MP3 file has an image. I still have to think weather I attempt an upgrade, with all the risks it involves, or weather I simply give up on trying to make a patch for this. It seems to be rather simple after having GStreamer obtaining the image data: I'll use the GDK-Pixbuf library to turn it into something that can be used by the Album Cover plug-in of Rhythmbox to convince it to show the embedded picture. Guess it will take more hacking to get it done, but I don't want to give up just yet.

Have you have contributed to an Open Source project? Well, I have and it was so long ago that I can't remember. Although I have been using GNU/Linux on my laptop since the day I bought it, I have never really used it to contribute anything. The last time I contributed was when I was in the University. I don't think it makes sense to use something that is really free and only give back to the community more "Requests for Improvements". I use the GNOME Desktop . Why? Well, I like the way it looks, the way it feels and its User Interface philosophy. But I don't want to get drawn into one of those Desktop Environment discussions about the advantages or disadvantages of each Desktop Environment. That's not the goal. What's the goal? Well, there is one functionality that I've really been missing in Rhythmbox . What is Rhythmbox? Well, a media player and organizer for the GNOME Desktop, that takes its inspiration from several tools. The functionality that I m...

As I already mentioned, I'm a little overweighted. As part of the New Year's Resolution to live my life to its fullest I have decided to start Swimming. By this I mean to start doing some one hour sessions in a swimming pool. Although during the first sessions... well, probably the first month, I won't be able to swim for an entire our it should be a good way to: burn some calories; discharge some stress and get into shape. Why Swimming? Well, I used to be in the pre-competition in in this area. What does this mean? I used to do something like 200 swimming pools in one hour in all sorts of styles and I would do it three times a week. Since I left it I have never been in shape like back then. At that time I could do whatever for no matter how long and I would feel tired - unless I really pushed to the limit for too long. Now I loose part of my breath one I walk up 5 flights of stairs. I think it is a sign that I need to get into shape. Now I only have to choose a pool and a ...

Today is my first day as someone who has to use glasses to work. In fact, this is my first Computer Session in which I'm using glasses. How do they feel? Strange and distracting. I hope this feeling of something in the corner of my eyes goes ahead really fast. On top of that my sister just scared me with some interesting questions. For instance: do you feel dizzy or with a need to throw up? That scares me. I though the goal of the glasses was to make one see better and thus feel better, not to make one dizzy! It will be an interesting times, specially the getting used to put the glasses before starting to work .

Today I'm posting about technology. This is a problem that I had to solve at work today. We are using JavaHelp for our On-Line help. Like many other have found issues with the Full Text Search so have we. What's the issue? Well, the selection on the help page is of by a few characters and continuously increases until the end of the page. Near the end of the page the selection of the searched word is completely off (see the issue on the Bug Database , a.k.a. Bug Parade). This issue doesn't happen with JavaHelp 2.0.4 (fetch it from this page - here is the direct link ). But for those of you that can't use it just yet, because of the wonderful tool you are using, there is a simple workaround: Unpack the HelpSet in trouble to a new folder. For instance, if the HelpSet is named help.jar extract it to the folder help ); In that folder there will be a XXX_JavaHelpSearch folder that contains the full text search index. Delete that folder. In our example it will be called help_...

This weekend has been out of the ordinary. It must have something to do with the fact that I want to do what my heart tells me to do. I started with a trip to the ophthalmologist (I think that's the work in English for the vision doctor). I had been postponing this trip for a long time and I had been getting some headaches and other symptoms that there was something wrong with my eyesight. Well, it turns out that my left eye is twisted a little relatively to its original position. Reason: too many hours in front of a computer screen. Result: I will start using glasses when working. At least the problem can still be corrected. My Saturday continue with a global closet cleaning. I'm not talking about cleaning the house, I'm total about a global closet cleaning: when of those cleanings in which you take out everything form your closet, choose the close that still fits you or that you still consider wearing and put out everything that you won't wear. It's amazing what y...

You probably noticed that this blog has been dead for quite some time. Too many things are happening at the same time that I'm have a hard time keeping track of them all. I don't want to make a full summary of all the items on my think list , but I'll give you a glimpse. Health First things first: I need to get into shape. I have been postponing this item for way too long. I should I put this... Well, in my youth I was a true sports freak. I was involved in many sports some of which at the exact same time. I did swimming, water polo, tennis, biking and handball. Not to mention all the other smaller things. I even reached the pre-competition series in swimming, that is, the next step would be to train every single day and join competitions. In handball I was federated, that is, I actually participated in the Regional Championship. But I had to give all that up to study. Please don't get me wrong! I don't regret making the decision of giving all that up. I'm happ...