Kids online

Today, I set up a new computer for the kids. I took the new 2.8Ghz Celeron box that had been serving as my Linux file-server and swapped it with the old 450Mhz P3 box that the kids were using. I was a little surprised how easy it was to make the switch. I just took the hard-drive out of the Celeron and put it in the P3 and Linux came right back up.

I set up Windows XP Home on the Celeron box and installed the important software (Warcraft and SimCity 3000) for the kids. I would have preferred something other than Windows, but we have quite an investment in games and educational software for Windows.

I also added a wireless adapter. So now, for the first time, the kids computer is on-line. I didn't setup any parental controls or filtering software and I'm not really sure what to do about "internet safety." The boys are 7 and 8 and I'm pretty sure they aren't going to go looking for trouble quite yet, but I am a little worried that Google will send them to a site of ill-repute or some horrible porn-spam message will land in their inbox. If you've got kids around that age on-line, I'd love to hear what you do to protect them from porn-spam and other internet threats.


del.icio.us links [June 09, 2005]


Dr. G on my iPod

Thanks to the wonders of podcasting, an interesting talk by SAS CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight appeared on my iPod this morning. You don't have to have an iPod to listen to Dr. G explain the secrets of SAS Institute's sucess (it's all about the M&M's by the way, 22 tons per year) at the Software 2005 conference. You can download the talk directly from the IT Conversations site.

Raleigh/Cary Bloggers meetup tonight

Join us tomorrow (Tuesday, June 7th) for the first 
Raleigh/Cary Bloggers meetup of the month.

What:  An open meeting to talk about blogging, 
       podcasting & whatever's on your mind
When:  Tues @ 6:30 p.m.
Where: Cafe Cyclo, in Cameron Village

2020 Cameron St
Raleigh, NC 27605 (map)
(919) 829-3773

Who: Bloggers & people who want to blog (Podcasters welcome!)

Hope to see you there!
via Josh

Weekly status, CC:world

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Atom has better podcasting support than RSS

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del.icio.us links [June 05, 2005]

  • Wiki wiki world
    "Business wikis are being used for project management, mission statements and cross-company collaborations."
  • Two garbage trucks
    "it could well turn out that Sun made the right call by doing the unexpected"
  • Spring honeymoon over
    Rafe: "Spring is too smart for its own good when binding values from an HTTP request to a Java bean"

del.icio.us links [June 04, 2005]

  • Apple goes X86?
    According to CNET. Say it ain't so!
  • SiteMaps = LRSS
    Bob: "The existing degree of almost gratuitous incompatibility is simply not useful"

How Atom Publishing Protocol works

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del.icio.us links [June 03, 2005]


Apache XML-RPC 2.0 is out

FeedPoster (the little blog app that posts my del.icio.us links via MetaWebog API) stopped working, complaining about unknown XML entity #8217. I didn't see any weird characters in my del.icio.us feed and the error was coming from Apache XML-RPC. I dropped in the brand new Apache XML-RPC 2.0 and problem solved! I love it when that happens. I didn't even have to recompile FeedPoster.

del.icio.us links [June 01, 2005]

  • Sco Bro
    Scoble's brother is blogging for ComputerWorld
  • Yahoo blog guidelines
    Yahoo! Employee Blog Guidelines: The official version and my own advice (by Jeremy Zawodny)
  • Participation age
    Van Den Hoohen: "Our cause at Sun will be about eliminating the digital divide"
  • Pint lock
    Keep your Ben and Jerrys pint safe and secure
  • Feedmesh
    eWeek reports on Feedmesh, a "next-generation approach for distributing update notifications to the syndicated feeds"
  • Productive blogger
    Keith: "People often ask me how I’m able to keep my sites moving forward and updated with (hopefully) good content as often as I do."

Status, CC: World

I post my status every Monday on our internal blog server and I'm going to start doing the same thing here. Except for the boring day-to-day operational stuff, most of my status is CC: World.

  • Roller 1.1.2: I fixed serveral bugs in Roller's built-in (Lucene based) search engine last week. I got some tips from Matt Schmidt at Javalobby, who had done the same but in the Roller 1.0 branch. I hope to release 1.1.2 with those fixes this week; probably the last release from the 1.1 banch. David Lindsey helped with testing.
  • Roller 1.2: since integrating Planet Roller and adding some UI unit-testing stuff, I've haven't been contributing much to 1.2, except for testing and deployment. Roller 1.2 is due out in mid-June, but it's already running a couple of sites (incuding this one).
  • Roller 2.0: I've been trying to focus on work in the Roller 2.0 (the group blogging release), but daily fires and 1.X kept getting into the way of progress. Plus, I didn't want to create the 2.0 branch until I had UI unit testing stuff ready in CVS head. Last week, I started working on the database and persistent object changes.
  • Roller@Apache: Apache has the Contributor License Agreements for all Roller commiters and the grant form, now we just need some karma. I hope we'll be moving into Subversion in the next week.
  • RSS and Atom In Action: After completing all chapters, I went back and looked at Chapter 5 How to parse newsfeeds again. It was really bad and I ended up completely rewriting it over the Memorial Day weekend. Now I'm focused on implementing an Atom protocol client and server so I can wrap up Chapter 8.
  • JavaOne 2005: I made travel arrangements for JavaOne. I'll be arriving Sunday before and leaving on Friday after. I'm also planning on being in Menlo Park for a Thursday afternoon blogs.sun.com users group meeting. My talk is at 12 noon, Thursday.

Roller 1.2-dev

This site is now running Roller 1.2-dev (the latest from Roller's CVS HEAD), which includes Allen's cool new configuration system, Anil's new configurable ping feature and Anil's new topic tags plugin which makes it easy to add Technorati tags to any post, for example:

Tags: topic:{technorati}[RollerWeblogger]

Update: I'm not sure why Technorati is not picking up my tag. The tag looks to be properly formatted and I have "pinged" Technorati several times now (included a couple of manual pings).


del.icio.us links [May 27, 2005]

  • aigre-douce
    "Journal personnel pour usagers avertis" - powered by Roller
  • FAR2000 blogs
    Free Architecture Report blogs - powered by Roller
  • Battle for the Blogosphere
    Yahoo360 and MSN Spaces not "open, flexible platforms that tech-savvy users can extend"
  • Geronimo nightlies
    Tom: "If you're ready to start playing with Geronimo, this is the version to download"
  • GNOME with Java
    Developing GNOME Applications with Java and GNU gcc-java
  • Dangerous Music
    Janne: "Is copyright still enabling innovation and creativity?"
  • Bruce on Virtuas
    "I will be focused on Java application servers and databases"
  • Matt on Virtuas
    Matt: "I will focus on my core expertise as the Spring and Web Frameworks Practice Leader"

Feed poster

I combined a couple of examples from the book to create Feed Poster, a program that checks a list of newsfeeds, composes a blog post listing the items from those newsfeeds posted in the last X days. You could use it, for example, to post a summary of your del.icio.us links at the end of each day. I considered using David Czarnecki's Java API for del.icio.us, which looks awesome, but I ended up using a simple newsfeed parser and blog client instead.

del.icio.us links [May 26, 2005]


Under contract!

To continue my little string of personal entries, I've got great news. The house that we bought when I worked for Rogue Wave in Charlotte, couldn't sell when we moved to Raleigh to work for HAHT in 1999 and have been renting-out ever since is finally under-contract (and for a reasonable price).


Sunstone

Sunstone

Leo and I spent the night at my parent's place in Chapel Hill last night and we all went to the Carborro farmer's market this morn in search of berries. I snapped this photo in Mom's garden with my new Treo.

Leo's done surprisingly well this weekend, BTW. He didn't cry at all when we dropped his Mom and brothers off at the airport and he's hardly mentioned them at all since then. He has been very clingy and constantly wants to sit in my lap, so I think he is a little uneasy. On the way home from the airport, we stoppped by the RTPBloggers lunch at Crazy Fire (Leesville Rd.) and the lucky little dude got to meet Rafe Colburn, Scott Parkerson, Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby and Josh Staiger.

Fortunately for me, I was able to work my normal routine on Friday because he was in preschool during the morning and had a nice long nap in the afternoon. But, he and the 70F weather is going to make it difficult to finish the chapter 5 rewrites by Monday.


First flight

My boys Alex(8) and Linus(6) didn't know until this morning, but today they're about to take their first airplane ride. Their mom's taking them down to Orlando to see uncle Chris compete in the Florida Half-Ironman and spend a day at Universal Studios. I'm staying home with Leo(2). I told them the news this morning and Alex's response was classic Alex: "awww, I don't wanna to miss school for two whole days." Linus, who consistently plays Pig Will to Alex's Pig Won't, was ecstatic.

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