Monday August 03, 2009

Building in Surveillance

It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. No matter what the eavesdroppers and censors say, these systems put us all at greater risk. Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in.[Bruce Schneier on Security]

I'm not dead yet.
( Aug 03 2009, 11:50:57 AM ) Technology Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/building_in_surveillance

Saturday July 18, 2009

Echoing Rafe

Why I don't own a Kindle
By Rafe
The Kindle seems neat and all, but I'm not going to pay for books that I don't actually own.

( Jul 18 2009, 10:05:30 AM ) Technology Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/echoing_rafe

Tuesday May 19, 2009

Exploding Soup

Did you know ham can explode? I didn't. I heated a 1/2 can of Campbells Chunky Split Pea w/Ham for 1 minute. I then stuck in my spoon, expecting to stir the soup and heat some more. Instead, the bit of ham I touched exploded in my face (leaning into the microwave in order to stir). A big chunk hit my lower lip and burned a spot, but it isn't visibly damaged. Just glad it didn't hit an eye!

I cleaned up the interior of the microwave, heated another 15 seconds (originally planned for 45) without incident. Phew!
( May 19 2009, 12:42:59 PM ) News Permalink
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Wednesday April 08, 2009

Satellite Sheiks

Satellite Sheik n. A televangelist for Islam. These media-savvy religious leaders broadcast moderate Muslim beliefs on satellite TV and social networks, appealing to Arabs alienated by traditional imams.[Jargon Watch]

Isn't that the opposite of Christian televangelists?
( Apr 08 2009, 03:38:02 PM ) Politics Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/blockquote_p_i_satellite_sheik

The Daily Chuck

It's silly, but I look forward to the Daily Chuck, but not so much as before Chuck got a sister.
( Apr 08 2009, 02:32:36 PM ) Entertainment Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/the_daily_chuck

Groovy Markup Builder

Rather than post this to the Groovy User's mailing list and look like a fool, I thought I'd restrict my foolishes to a smaller audience.

My employer generates a lot of XML, some of which contains an element that looks something like this:
<updatetime day='2' mon='8' date='11' yr='2008' hr='4' hr24='4' tz='GMT' mer='am' min='1' sec='0'>04:01 AM GMT Monday, Aug 11</updatetime>

The perl for this was straightforward (blat out the xml as a string), but when I rewrote it in Java it got complicated, using a SimpleDateFormat to generate a string that I parsed to constituent bits and built a DOM Element. The parsing to bits is irrelevant here, what was "nice" was that in Java for each attribute I just called (in a loop):
updateTimeEl.setAttribute(nameVal[0], nameVal[1]);

Now, for a bit of R&D, I'm rewriting it in Groovy (along with the rest of the class) using the MarkupBuilder and I built a map of attributes. I wanted to do
builder.updatetime( attributes.each{key, value -> key:value}, sdf.format(updateTime) )
but that failed (groovy insists that key/value must be members of my class) and I resorted to:

builder.updatetime(
	// first the attributes
	day:attributes['day'],
	mon:attributes['mon'],
	date:attributes['date'],
	yr:attributes['yr'],
	hr:attributes['hr'],
	hr24:attributes['hr24'],
	tz:attributes['tz'],
	mer:attributes['mer'],
	min:attributes['min'],
	sec:attributes['sec'],
	// now the text value
	sdf.format(updateTime)
)

This works, but is certainly less elegant than I like.
( Apr 08 2009, 02:15:44 PM ) Groovy n Grails Permalink Comments [4]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/groovy_markup_builder

ReadWriteWeb on iPredator

ReadWriteWeb has a great entry today about a new service from The Pirate Bay, iPREDator. In particular, the following quotes really hit the nail on the head:

This is where the copyright witch hunt has brought us: in order to access the content we want, we have to become anonymous and hide our identities. Because people just want to watch a TV show or see a movie, they have to play a ridiculous cat-and-mouse game with the authorities who somehow equate downloading a file with stealing a car.
...
Yet here we are, only a day away from the launch of a tool that is surely going to be used for much more than just torrenting. [iPREDator]

I share the sentiments of Sarah Perez, the article's author.
( Apr 08 2009, 09:14:44 AM ) Politics Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/readwriteweb_on_ipredator

Monday March 30, 2009

Standalone GORM via Java

I spent some time re-jiggering the code, specifically getting Burt's GormHelper to load from the applicationContext.xml. I also pulled the use of domainclasses.txt and listed them directly (I'd rather make the code smarter and have it load anything with the @Entity annotation - but that's beyond the current exercise). Don't forget to change the base-package in the gorm:sessionFactory bean.

    <bean id="gormHelper" class="com.burtbeckwith.gorm.GormHelper">
	  <constructor-arg>
	  	<list>
	  		<value>com.brainopolis.GormAuthor</value>
	  		<value>com.brainopolis.GormBook</value>
	  	</list>
	  </constructor-arg>
	</bean>

I've got a simple GormProxy for a few dynamic GORM methods - save(), findBy() - but you'd probably want to build a proper Interface for the GORM classes to extend. I've built a small demonstration app, complete with new GormHelper, applicationContext.xml, and a couple Test Cases.
( Mar 30 2009, 01:07:25 PM ) Groovy n Grails Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/standalone_gorm_via_java