Tuesday, April 24, 2007

TV, wireless to wired to wireless (again)

Kind of funny that TV was the original wireless transmission, only to become wired with cable, and now locally wireless again with new technology. Tzero provides some cool new features - but it's not on the market as yet. Just tracking it for now, and waiting for the initial product to hit BestBuy later this year.

Who wouldn't love a nicely framed HD set "floating" on the wall... sans wires!!!

Monday, April 23, 2007

Spring and AOP

Interesting "aspect" to Spring... in addition to the overall framework and portability angles, AOP provides some unique elements. An excellent background and subsequent highlights:

AOP

Since 2003 there has been much interest in applying AOP solutions to those enterprise concerns, such as transaction management, which have traditionally been addressed by EJB.

Spring AOP supports method interception. Key AOP concepts supported include:

  • Interception: Custom behaviour can be inserted before or after method invocations against any interface or class. This is similar to "around advice" in AspectJ terminology.
  • Introduction: Specifying that an advice should cause an object to implement additional interfaces. This can amount to mixin inheritance.
  • Static and dynamic pointcuts: Specifying the points in program execution at which interception should take place. Static pointcuts concern method signatures; dynamic pointcuts may also consider method arguments at the point where they are evaluated. Pointcuts are defined separately from interceptors, enabling a standard interceptor to be applied in different applications and code contexts.
  •  powered by clipmarksblog it

    Friday, April 20, 2007

    Ubuntu - "Feisty Fawn" (7.04) is no Bambi

    Run, do not walk, but run to Ubuntu and check it out.



    Download the latest version (7.04 as of this writing, aka "Feisty Fawn"). It's only a 700 Mb file that you extract onto a bootable CD. Test run it straight from there without impacting your existing machine... if you like, then install it permanently using the shortcut provided.

    Quick, easy, and very user-friendly (contrary to any previous Linux stigma). As with any Unix-based system, it runs much more efficiently *and* securely than that disease laden petrie dish of an OS from Redmond.

    If you're not ready to switch over completely, breathe some life into an older PC by installing Ubuntu there. You'll be amazed at how quickly it can perform on older chipsets with even 512 Mb RAM.

    Monday, April 16, 2007

    Things we take for granted: heat, power, and SUMP PUMPS

    Amazing how a natural emergency consistently reminds you of:

    a) the importance of common welfare
    b) the things we take for granted

    We've had a bit of local flooding here in NJ. Our neighbors across the street have it worse - basements with 1 - 2 feet of water (and therefore no heat). Out of sheer luck I had cut wood in my shed from a bunch of trees we cleared last year. Our heat is fortunately still running, so we rationed our wood to anyone who has a fireplace.

    I'm not looking for any praise, this was a no-brainer for me. But it is nice to see people across-the-board come together during any such difficulty.

    What amazes me even more is how reliant I am on things I cannot control... like the power, and the sump pump in our basement. That $100 device is currently all that's left between a miserable, rainy day - and a huge cleanup headache. We've lived in this house for almost 3 years, and until today, I paid it no attention.

    This morning, it's the only thing on my mind. Such a simple tool for such a critical task. One more reminder of the many things we take for granted every day.

    Sunday, April 15, 2007

    Callwave - FREE Visual Voicemail for mobile phones

    Check this service from CallWave. Use it to switch from your mobile phone's default voice mail to one that shoots messages to your email. For us heavy email users (and / or anyone not always wanting the cell phone turned on), this is perfect!

    I made the switch in just a couple of minutes.