29 May 2002
Wed, 29 May 2002
Pro with blog: Dave Copeland of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
In the spirit of Dave Winer's pros with blogs postings, I came across a local pro with blog today, Dave Copeland, who writes for the Tribune-Review here in Pittsburgh. He's got some interesting thoughts on the intersection of newspapers and the web.
Posted at: 23:30 | permalink
Inexplicable sights and smells
When my wife and I returned home tonight, there was a pungent odor in the air outside that smelled like burning wood. The sky lit up every few seconds with an inexplicable bright flash. I couldn't figure out whether it was heat lightning, a light from the airport near our house, or a thermonuclear blast. Weird.
Posted at: 23:28 | permalink
Presenting The Canadian West
As I was driving to work this morning, I came upon a construction zone and had to stop for the flagman. I gazed out across the pasture to my left and saw several horses frolicking in the sun, grazing on the tall grass. I had started Copland's Billy the Kid playing when I left the house. The scene set by the tone of the music combined with the imagery of the horses in the pasture was surreal. The closest thing that I have to approximating the feeling is probably my images of The Canadian West.
Posted at: 23:25 | permalink
Online banking draws customers
Online Banking Finally Takes Off. With relatively reliable and easy-to-use online systems now available, millions of Americans are doing at least part of their banking on the Internet. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. [New York Times: Technology]
Posted at: 22:53 | permalink
Two climbers succumb to weather on Mount Rainier
I often worried about this when I lived in Redmond and frequented the park. Sigh.
Two climbers perish on Washington's Mount Rainier - Nando Times 05-29-2002.
Two Climbers Dead On Mount Rainier - Guardian, UK
Two Climbers Dead on Mt. Rainier in Wash. State - Reuters [Google US News]
Posted at: 22:48 | permalink
Chris Wenham on solving the virus plague
While studying hacker techniques, security firms have set up machines called “honeypots” that are designed to draw attacks to a place where they can be studied. With only a slight change in their purpose, and a bit of craftyness, these honeypots can be turned into “wild goose chase” machines intended to frustrate hackers. It's just one in a fat bag of psychological tricks that's getting fatter. Unfortunately, wild goose chase machines and other disincentives are beyond the scope of this essay and are the subject of another article to come. So upgrade your anti-virus, don't open that email attachment, ask for proof before you give out your password, and stay tuned.[disenchanted.com]
I too, have seen the myriad warnings regarding klez. Warnings that are from somebody who thinks that I have the klez virus but doesn't realize that klez randomizes the sender from the host's address book. I'm on the verge of taking the advice of my friend Larry Rogers, who works at CERT; building a virtualized system in which the bottom layer is linux, windows runs on VMWare for the stuff that won't work anywhere else, and mail is delivered via Evolution. I've even got my wife ready to make the switch!
Posted at: 22:34 | permalink
Apache Axis looks promising, but not quite ready for prime time
I finally got a chance today to begin playing with Apache Axis today. I used the version that is included in the JBoss 3.0 RC3 distribution. I was able to create a simple test.jws web service and deploy it by dropping it in the axis directory. I was able to hit the web service with an HTTP GET from the browser and axis gave it's default message. However, the instructions for getting WSDL generated, specifically adding ?wsdl or ?WSDL to the end of the URL doesn't work. It returns a standard error, something like resource not found. I guess I could use java2wsdl but it'd be cool if I could get the on-the-fly generation to work as well as GLUE. I'm looking forward to working with this more as it matures. I'd like to convert the stuff that I have implemented here to it and do some more SOAP development using it but it does not appear to be far enough along to compete with GLUE. I also would like to see axis do for the client side of SOAP what they did for the server side with the jws auto-deployment. An automatic client boilerplate generation something along the lines of what GLUE does in it's console:
Java Interface
// generated by GLUE/wsdl2java on Wed May 29 23:58:39 EDT 2002
public interface IRcsProxy
{
String getRanking();
String getReferers( String site, String group );
String getReferersBySite( String site, String group, int width );
String getReferersByPage( String site, String group, String url, int width );
}
Helper Class
// generated by GLUE/wsdl2java on Wed May 29 23:58:39 EDT 2002
import electric.registry.Registry;
import electric.registry.RegistryException;
public class RcsProxyHelper
{
public static IRcsProxy bind() throws RegistryException
{
return bind( "http://www.watsondesign.com/soap/urn:rcsproxy.wsdl" );
}
public static IRcsProxy bind( String url ) throws RegistryException
{
return (IRcsProxy) Registry.bind( url, IRcsProxy.class );
}
}
Posted at: 22:22 | permalink
Metalsite releases new assets auction site
Tonight, my company released it's new assets auction site. Check it out.
Posted at: 22:03 | permalink
Pittsburgh's wireless network marches onward
North Side groups get wireless Internet access. Pittsburgh Business Journal May 29 2002 3:52PM ET [Moreover - Pittsburgh news]
Posted at: 21:34 | permalink
Radio Community Server rankings viewed graphically
Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. There are probably a lot of people looking at the data from the Radio Community Server that can picture this in their heads without much thought. For the rest of us, there's Excel.
What I'd really like to do is take my trusty java compiler and JBoss and write a web app that gets the data and chunks out the chart whenever the RCS server updates. That way, you could just hit a page on my site and see the chart up to the minute instead of this ugly Excel hack. Hmm...
Posted at: 18:31 | permalink
Microcontent News analysis of blogs and traditional media
Blogosphere: the emerging Media Ecosystem [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 07:20 | permalink
Norah Jones - The next big thing
If you haven't heard this girl, check her out. Most notable? She's the daughter of Ravi Shankar. Norah Jones Tops The Charts [eJazzNews.com : Daily Jazz News, Reviews, CD Releases, Jazz Events]
Posted at: 07:13 | permalink
Movable type 2.11 is up and running
Check it out here. Mostly a smooth process, though the usual hiccups with cgi config. Everything's working now except the HTML help throws a 500 internal server error. Other than that, I'm able to post and it looks clean and it loads a lot faster than my Radio blog. That may change once the content gets broader and deeper. Cool!
Posted at: 00:22 | permalink
