Escape from boredom

Yesterday I finally decided to take the time to install Linux on my Lenovo T60. Intentionally I planned to have two distros, one which just fires a browser and another one which offers a fullblown OS. But I got tired of trying to find a suitable small distro, also knowing that wireless can be troublesome with some of them, I decided to just go for Ubuntu 9.10. The whole process of downloading and installing was done in less than two hours. I threw out Windows XP completely, no dual boot, planning to use Wine instead to run the few Windows applications I need (or maybe if everything fails, just use a VmWare image).

First I installed using Norwegian locale, but realized that I really does not enjoy Norwegian language on my computer, so I followed this guideline and in just a few minutes and a reboot everything is in English now. Quite fancy I must say, Ubuntu even changed the names of my folders “Skrivebord” –> “Desktop”…fancy I must say!

Connecting to my wireless was the thing I feared the most, but that has also become very easy. The drivers for my T60 is now part of the kernel, and when I just figured out where to click to connect to wireless it was done in just a minute or so.

Want to do more today, but since I’m sick at home I most of all want to sleep 🙂

Developerworks have made an overview of the top 15 DW WebSphere articles of 2009, found this compilation from the Top 100 of 2009: developerWorks articles (and other favorite things) compilation. Lots of interesting stuff if you are in to stuff not only related just to IBM HW/SW, but also pure Java.

I just spent five minutes reading the article written by Tom Alcott The WebSphere Contrarian: Less might be more when tuning WebSphere Application Server

Aggressive tuning doesn’t always equate with improved application performance. This installment of The WebSphere® Contrarian discusses why this is the case and provides some high level performance tuning guidance.

Recommend reading that article, and then really dive into the details with selecting one of the top 15 articles: Case study: Tuning WebSphere Application Server V7 for performance

Currently my Lenovo T60 is reeeeaaaaly slow, my old Windows XP installation is slow due to way to many services running, a huge amount of software which I needed before, but no longer, installed and so on. To get the startup time down from about ten minutes to at least three I must do something drastically. And that includes running Linux and not XP anymore. But I have some challenges, I do have some software that I’m not sure how to run on Linux, this being:

• Polar software for my Polar 725X. Currently no easy option for this, check out http://forum.polar.fi/showthread.php?t=76
• Music Collector, only Windows available. And since the database is a proprietary format it is not easy to export and import the content in a similar software running on Linux. I guess I can use the option of exporting it all to XML and then try to import it, but some valuable information will get lost I’m sure. Anyway, Music Collector should not be that hard to run using Wine compared to Polar, since it does not need any IR.
• Canon software for my Canon FS11. Think this would be the easiest to get around, but still – I do not know how yet.

All other software I’m using on Windows will have competitive Linux-software, so apart from the above mentioned challenges I’m better off with Linux.

But, there is always a but. Tried Ubuntu before, but got into trouble with the wireless card on my T60. Hopefully this is not a problem anymore thanks to the Intel Wireless Wifi Link-project. The driver is supported in mainline kernel so this should be no problem anymore.

If you have any input to me on my issues, plz contact me 🙂

I am now allowed to call myself “IBM Certified System Administrator – WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment V7.0” after completing the test “Test 000-377 – IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment V7.0, Core Administration” Required passing score 58%, my score 100% – I sure know how to prepare myself 🙂

Have spent some time the last week teaching myself the basics of Rational Automation Framework (RAFW) together with WebSphere Application Server 7. The RAFW-version I’m using is just an old beta, so it misses some features and have some bugs which the current release 7.1.1.2 have taken care of.
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WAS 7 have a new feature which enables you to provide a custom name BASE application servers. Not the most important feature, but using a more meaningful name than the default “server1” can be useful. But the beta-version of RAFW did not have this feature, so at first I thought “close, but no sigar” until Scott Bybee at Ascendant encouraged me to try to create a custom action providing this feature. Spent two days figuring this out until I was able to create a custom action providing this feature. It was really all about understanding the ANT-scripts RAFW is using, when that was taken care of it was really just a walk in the park to adjust the action into providing the custom name feature.

This was not a big issue, but the main purpose of doing this was understanding how to create a custom action in RAFW, which might be useful for other more critical features or needs which out-of-the-box RAFW does not provide.

Iphone and the Stockholm syndrome, funny reading in Norwegian http://www.digi.no/830770/%ABiphone-er-som-stockholm-syndromet%BB

– iPhone-brukere elsker og tilber mobilen sin, skriver Strand, og legger til: – iPhone er omkranset av et antall folk, medier og selskaper som gladelig tøyer sannheten for å forsvare produktet de har kjøpt fra Apple.

(Google Translate)

Read the actual report here http://www.strandconsult.dk/sw3896.asp

Up until now I have posted work related stuff on http://blog.workplace.no, but since I’m not working there anymore I’ve created a new category in my own blog. So from now on I will be also be posting work related stuff which I want to shear with the rest of the world.

Today I want to share how you can find “Port number settings in WebSphere Application Server versions“. It lists default ports for WAS from 4.0 to 7.0, also valuable if you have changed the default ports and need to know which xml-file that contains this info. Saved me today…

Long time ago we bought a Canon video camera. To import and edit movies I use Imagemixer 3 SE, which was provided to me along with the camera. I’ve once before blogged about this application describing how I managed to find the solution of a totally stupid error message. Once again I do get a totally stupid error message, but this time I’m not able to find a workaround.

I’ve spent a couple of hours, way to many I now realize, editing a movie and all that was left was just to save it. No problem, the progress bar shows 10%, 20%, 90%, 98%, 99%, it even disappears, but just to let me see a dialog box saying “Could not create the file”. What a bunch of fu#”# crap!!! Stupid, freaking application from hell. But, ok, counting to ten, then do a search on the Internet. Go to http://www.pixela.co.jp and download the latest update…downloading…downloading…7 Mb, reading “This file only works if you have Imagemixer already installed” No problem, I have, so I click on the update.exe-file and get to click “next” once. Then

If you are having trouble understanding Norwegian it says “No previous version of Imagemixer 3 SE found, aborting…” What a bunch of crap!!! It is installed, arrrghh!!! I want to throw it all away, but for now I’m stuck with the shitty application.

@Update: Realized that it is not enough to just search for “Imagemixer 3SE”, but I had to add “Canon”. Then I found by using Google, not by looking at the Pixela homepage, a direct link to the download for ImageMixer 3 SE SD 3.1.2, not 3.1.3 for some other brand which I found first. So, now my app is updated from 3.1.1 to 3.1.2, but still, same freaking error.

Every now and then I get stuck with a Linux or Unix environment with no GUI available. Whatever the intention is, it does not take more than 2 minutes before I have to at least edit a single line in a file, leaving me with the only option to use vi. Like for instance now. Been using vi quite a lot the last week, learning geek-commands such as ZZ, y, p, i, I and A. Off course I knew :q! in advance. Just gotta love the tool I love to hate when using such commands, leave work for a week and try to remember them…impossible, you then need the Cheat Sheet.

You can also visit the VI Lovers page

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Marius, a colleague of mine from Workplace, told me once about this service, which I’ve now tested when configuring my new laptop. Just go to the website, check off the apps you want, download your customized installer and you’re on http://ninite.com/