Blogging Roller

Local multi-media and social software whiz kid Brian Russell is hanging out his shingle as an consultant. Best of luck, Brian. If you're looking to grow an online community or upgrade your organization to Web 2.0, check out his resume and portfolio.

I was pretty impressed how quickly Google was able to help my brother out when his Gmail account apparently disappeared. That makes me feel a lot better about trusting Google to manage my precious data.

Another reason to trust in Google is that they make good stuff. I decided to try Google Reader for a couple of days. I figured I'd be back to NetNewsWire after a couple of days, but now I'm hooked and I'm not sure I'll ever go back. The only things I miss are hierarchical folders and smart-subscriptions, which I was using to subscribe to a search within my subscriptions, e.g. alert me when any of the feeds I'm reading mention "roller". I'd like to see better blog-search integration in Reader and features like FeedDemon's popular topics.

My brother's popular film blog FilmBabble, hosted on Google's Blogspot site, is now dead in the water and he cannot find any way to get help from Blogspot or Google. He's followed the help links to send support requests to both Google and Blogger.com last week, but Gmail tells him that his email address does not exist!

Could this be another case of <a href= "http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/28/gmail-disaster-reports-of-mass-email-deletions/">mass email deletions at Gmail.com? Personally, I wouldn't trust Google to host my blog or my email; I only use Gmail for mailing lists that are archived elsewhere. Seems like my caution might be well justified.

So please help, Google folks. Please tell us: how do you get help from Google when your email address and therefore your Google identity is apparently deleted?

Update 1: apparently Dan filled out this help request form on Friday. I wonder what kind of turn around time they have for this type of issue. Guess we'll find out.

Update 2: Google responded today and restored Dan's account, after only two business days. I must say, that's pretty damn good for a free service. Still, the "that email address does not exist" message is pretty damn scary. It's pretty nerve wracking to get locked out of your blog.

A replica of the largest of the three ships that brought English settlers to Jamestown in 1607.

As my colleagues Manveen Kaur and <a href= "http://blogs.sun.com/alexismp/entry/glassfish_update_center_what_s">Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine are reporting, Roller is now available via the Glassfish Update Center. Manveen explains how to get started: just download and install <a href= "http://java.sun.com/javaee/downloads/index.jsp">Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 and run $GLASSFISH_HOME/updatecenter/bin/updatetool. Too lazy for all that? Alexis has put together a brief slide-show that shows just how easy the process is.

There are a couple of caveats. First, this is an Early Access (EA) release and is based on a snapshot of the Roller 4.0 code-base from about 1.5 months ago. We put it through a couple of rounds of testing, but it doesn't have all the bug fixes found in the recent <a href= "http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/entry/roller_strong_9">Roller 4.0 RC releases. Second, this release targets only Glassfish (obviously) and JavaDB. Still, it's a great way to try Glassfish, the Update Center and Roller.

What's up with the fishes and the mysterious "Welcome to SocialFish" seen in the slide show? I've already said everything I can say about that

Congrats are also in order for the JSPWiki team. As Janne Jalkanen notes, JSPWiki was accepted into the Apache Incubator yesterday. I'm proud to be one of the four mentors who will guide the project through the incubation process. Janne and the JSPWiki team put together a great proposal and I think it was clear to everybody involved in the vote that these folks know what they're doing. They'll master the Apache way in no time.

Yes this is my obligatory Glassfish V2 post but listen, for me V2 is a pretty big big deal. Like Eclipse, which was the IDE that pulled me away from VIM, Glassfish V2 is the app server that finally pulled me away from Tomcat.

You see, I've been using Tomcat every day for a very long time. I started back in 2000 when I worked at HAHT Software and I was working on the new "Rocketsled" J2EE version of the HAHTsite app server. We were ripping out the old proprietary page engine and plugging in Tomcat. It was a pleasure to work with and I learned a hell of a lot from the code-base. After joining Sun and switching from Eclipse to Netbeans because Sun-on-Sun matters, I still stuck with Tomcat. It's what we were using for blogs.sun.com and Glassfish was just too bulky and slow. I grew to love Netbeans, but I couldn't stomach Glassfish, until now.

Now that Glassfish V2 is out I'm switching from Tomcat to Glassfish for all of my development. It's more than fast enough. With Glassfish on my MacBook Pro, Roller restart time is about 8 seconds compared to 16 with Tomcat. And the quality is high; the admin console, the asadmin command-line utility and the docs are all excellent. The dog food is surprisingly tasty ;-)

Congrats to the Glassfish team!

My blogging has really dropped off in September. I'm working on too many things at once and things that I can't blog about yet, but that doesn't mean I'm neglecting Roller. In fact, the opposite is true and I've got a big new edition of Roller Strong to prove it. So let's get started. [Read More]

I bought a new 3rd generation iPod Nano (4GB) yesterday to replace the armband radio that I wear on my daily runs and to complement my old 3rd generation iPod classic. As you can see, the Nano is tiny so it should work perfectly for me once I get an <a href= "http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wo/StoreReentry.wo?productLearnMore=MB130G/A">armband.

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Here's old and new together.

I was happy to find that the new Nano fits in the old iPod cradle:

So far, I really like the Nano. It's the right size for me, it looks great and the UI works wonderfully. There's just one problem. It's flakey. I've had to reboot the thing four times in the 24 hours that I've owned it. I never had to do that for my old iPod and in fact, I don't even know how. To figure out how to reset my Nano I had to download the Features Guide (PDF). Here's how you do it:

1. Toggle the Hold switch on and off (slide it to HOLD and then back again).
2. Press and hold the Menu and Center buttons for at least 6 seconds, 
   until the Apple logo appears.

If iPod nano won't turn on or respond
   * Make sure the Hold switch isn't set to HOLD.
   * The iPod nano battery might need to be recharged. Connect iPod nano to your
     computer or to an Apple USB Power Adapter and let the battery recharge. Look for
     the lightning bolt icon on the iPod nano screen to verify that iPod nano is
     receiving a charge.

I also bought a Nano as a birthday present for my brother (that's today so Happy Birthday Dan!), so I really hope a software update will fix this irritating problem and soon. I'd hate to have to return these slick little gadgets.

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ApacheCon is coming up fast. I just faxed in my speaker's agreement and I'm starting to update my talk to cover the latest changes in the upcoming Apache Roller 4.0 and 4.1 releases.

I've been four times now and ApacheCon is always a great conference. It's small and cozy enough, but almost all of the Apache projects are represented. So it's easy to find the experts, make new friends and get all of your questions answered. The session line-up looks great this year; here are ones that caught my eye:

• Hacking Atom with Apache Abdera - Garret Rooney
• A little REST and Relaxation - Roy Fielding
• WS-* vs. REST: Facts, Myths and Lies - Sanjiva Weerawarana
• Go Light with Apache Struts 2 and REST - Don Brown
• How to Run a Business Around The ASF - Sanjiva Weerawarana
• Open Source Community Anti-Patterns - Ted Leung
• RIAs using Apache Derby and Comet - Jeanfrancois Arcand & Francois Orsini
• Apache Derby - Saucer Separation - Rick Hillegas
• JCR in Action - Content-based Applications with Apache Jackrabbit - Carsten Ziegeler

Want to go? There's still time to shave a couple of hundred dollars off the conference fees by registering early. Early bird pricing has been extended to Sept. 22, 2007.

And the Weston looks like a pretty nice place for a conference:

ApacheCon US 2007 | Register here
November 12-16, 2007
Westin Peachtree Plaza
Atlanta, Georgia

I was playing around with the new <a href= "http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html">flight simulator in Google Earth and flying over Raleigh when I noticed the extensive and very detailed set of 3D models for the NCSU campus. Here's an overview that shows the brickyard, D.H. Hill library and Harrelson Hall:

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/resource/ncsu-3d-533x338.jpg" alt="Google Earth 3D view of NCSU campus" style="margin: 10px" />

The details are pretty amazing, with signage and steps and hand-rails. Here's an example that shows the stairs on the side of Reynolds the old basketball coliseum:

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/resource/reynolds.jpg" alt="View of stairs of Reynolds Hall" style="margin: 10px" />

The work was done by <a href= "http://delta.ncsu.edu/news/announcements/item.php?id=40">students competing in Google's Build Your Campus in 3D competition. Follow that link for a (tiny) video and you can also find a <a href= "http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?uq=01632339457160731034&start=60">catalog of all the student's work on the Google Earth site.