Rubenerd

Still using the beloved System.out.println() message for debugging, simple messages and so on? Short of creating your own static wrapper method with a simpler name (puts() or print() or printf() or yoDawg(), etc), you can also just do this:

import static java.lang.System.err;
import static java.lang.System.out;
[..]
public void birdIsTheWord() {
  out.println("Yay, that's marginally easier!");
  err.println("SNIDE RETORT: Not THAT much easier");
}

It’s old hat to lots of people, but I get enough “whoa, that’s cool!” responses from others when they see my code to think it’s not as well known as I thought.

Happy.slightly.less.verbose.coding! (^_^)

Of all the experiences I’ve had at UTS, meeting people from industry has probably been the most rewarding. This year alone, I’ve been lucky to have had guest lectures given from Sheng Yeo of OrionVM, Steve Buikhuizen of SalesForce fame, and John Shildt from IBM Australia.

Earlier this year, John gave a presentation about the Internet of Things and IBM’s Smarter Planet during my Cloud Computing and Software as a Service subject, and was kind enough to stay back to answer a bucketload of Clara’s and my questions over pizza afterwards.

Today, he focused on software engineering, some [honest!] discussion about agile methadologies, the challenges facing development teams, and some of the Rational tools we could use, in particular IBM’s academic flavour of JazzHub.

(I smiled during one of the slides mentioning the cross-platform nature of the software, where it listed AIX and z/OS. Tinkering aroung with those in VMs has been a hobby of mine for many years. I’m a wild, wild person you see!)

To put the impact of this into context: over the years, I’ve used several different online tools to collaborate in projects, but all have had their limitations. Those that have been easy to use from the outset end up being limiting. Interoperability is difficult (and more than just an RSS feed). Simple features like threaded comments tied to a particular asset are either non-existant or paunful enough to use that I’ve ended up going back to email or (heaven forfend) Facebook. It’s a recurring pattern.

I’ll admit, I felt a little overwhelmed when first accessing JazzHub. Compared to these other online tools I’ve tried (and largely failed) to use, this is really bringing out the big guns. With that comes a steeper learning curve, but I’m hoping the reward will be an integrated tool I’ll actually be able to use during the whole lifespan of a project. Admittedly, the scope and features of the platform may be overkill for my university project, but the best way to learn something is to use it.

Thank you again to John for taking time out of his schedule to come down and teach us again, I really appreciated it!

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I did something today that I’ve been wanting to do for two months. Something I got pretty good at doing since I was a kid. You ready for it? No, really, are you ready for it?

For the first time since I fell through a utility cover and tore a bunch of ligaments that I’d become rather attached to, today I eschewed (gesundheit) my paediatric cam boot in favour of a regular shoe.

In case you didn’t catch that, I put on a f*cking shoe!

Two months ago, I could barely put a sock on the swollen, purple mess of bruised flesh and bones that I’d previously (and affectionately) referred to as my right foot. I won’t beat around the bush, it was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced; even more so than when I broke it the first time when I was 14.

Today, I was able to put a compression sock on it, then a shoe, and walk out the door. The liberating feel of independence was indescribable; so much so that I’m willing to forgive myself for writing this appalling sentence.

My lateral and inversion motions still have yet to fully return, so I’ll still be ungainly hobbling along the street for at least another month. My podiatrist and physiotherapist both said I injured it severely enough that it will only ever probably be 80-85% as strong as it was before.

Still, I’m taking this as a huge victory ^_^. Thank you to everyone (you know who you are) for your support and well wishes during this whole ordeal. Also, a humbled, extra huge thank you to Clara for basicically giving up her holidays to stay at home with her boyfriend who couldn’t move. I’m such a lucky guy.

As for the photo above, I tried to take the same photo in the same position and the same lame GIMP (get it?) effect I took for my last post. Not sure it really worked, but I was excited to try!

Please disregard this post! Arigato~

Once again, my cloud infrastructure class was fortunate enough to have @ShengYeo of OrionVM show us the ropes. Last week we got an ESXi instance running, and a CentOS VM provisioned via a vSphere client on a Windows XP VM. This week, we dealt with iSCSI:

1. VMware ESXi, Windows XP, Openfiler running in a VMware Fusion VM
2. Logging into Openfiler management console in Firefox on Windows XP
3. Creating a new LVM iSCSI volume in Openfiler
4. Detecting the iSCSI volume in VMware vSphere on Windows XP
5. Creating new CentOS VM on the ESXi VM through vSphere with Openfiler iSCSI

I’ve dealt with iSCSI tinkering around with machines at home, but not through such infrastructure before. It was quite the learning experience.

One of Sheng’s talking points throughout the evening was “at first its complicated, but when you understand it, its really quite simple”. I think the same could be said of any IT endeavour, not least virtualisation. Storage virtualisation continues to be one of my primary areas of interest, so I’ll be researching it further.

Thanks to Sheng for his slides, the labs, and his patient and comprehensive answers to my questions! It was much appreciated. ^_^

Lesson #1 of CentOS system administration: even if you intend to run your CentOS virtual machine with less than 512MiB of memory, initially allocate it much more!

UTS’s problems with a burst public water main (When your university lecture submerges, When your uni is still somewhat flooded) only seem to be getting worse. Emphasis mine:

Unfortunately, Ausgrid’s power problems have the potential to persist for the next few days. I ask, therefore, that all students regularly check the following information sources for the latest updates:
1. UTS Library website (lib.uts.edu.au)
2. The SAU home page (sau.uts.edu.au)
3. Your Faculty’s home page
4. The UTS home page (uts.edu.au) – please note the UTS Home Page will only be used if all other options are unavailable

And it’s not just classes that continue to be affected:

The power outage resulted in the evacuation of [student housing] (for a third consecutive night) as well as the loss of almost all IT systems – including the broadcast email system – making it impossible for the UTS Emergency Team to send a broadcast message to all students.

Ouch.

UTS is applying a great deal of pressure on Ausgrid and Sydney Water (whose mains rupture caused the power failures) to address their various issues.

As I said on the last post, we hope this gets sorted out soon. I’m already thinking we’ll be hearing about this for the rest of the week.

Clara also has a post about the latest updates.

Yesterday, I blogged about a burst water main affecting some buildings at UTS. Turns out our course coordinator had misread which buildings were closed, so Clara and I were still able to go to the Network Security lecture.

According to a university email, those living on campus weren’t quite so lucky:

Staff at UTS have been working non-stop to look after the students lodged in Yura Mudang and protect our critical infrastructure. Staff have also been working closely with Sydney Water and Energy Australia to restore services to Buildings 5 & 6.

I’m pleased to report that Yura Mudang is once again open to students, some of whom spent last night in the Multi-Purpose Sports Hall (it really lives up to its name!).

I’m sure all the students sleeping on mats on the floor appreciated the tone of that message.

Walking back from class, Clara and I got to see the roadworks above what we assumed to be the area above the incident. A truck to the side was offloading some pretty impressive piping; judding from the scale of the operation, the rupture must have been huge.

We’re now being told Building 5 classes on Tuesday and Wednesday will continue to be cancelled, the library remains closed, and that WiFi will continue to be patchy. Here’s hoping this all gets sorted out soon.

Amir Efrati on JessicaLessin.com, commenting about the Moto X:

And Google does hope [Motorola] can stem its operating losses. The unit, which Google snapped up for $12.5 billion last year, has been a drag on its earnings over the past year.

This is hardly surprising. Google’s aquisition of Motorola made absolutely no sense to me then, and it still doesn’t. Even if they purchased them for their patents, $12.5 billion is still a breathtaking amount of money. If I were a Google shareholder, I’d be feeling a bit miffed about the decision.

There’s also the message it sends to Android OEMs. As Microsoft did with their Surface tablets, Google have essentailly entered into competition with them. The good news for Samsung, HTC and the like is that the Droid line of handsets have yet to make a meaningful dent at all. This gets us back to the “why did Google buy them?” question.

When the buyout news first broke, I wondered whether Google would withhold key parts of Android from their partners to give them a competitive edge. It’s entirely possible, they’ve held back the Android source to all but a select few partnets before.

Funnily enough, if I were to buy an Android handset today, it’d be one from Google/Motorola. I don’t want the added telco cruft and OEM user interfaces. It’d be like the Microsoft Signature Experience for Android.

To be honest, I’m surprised the market penetration of the cruft-free iPhone still hasn’t changed people’s attitutes towards crapware. I guess price is still the biggest selling point.

I’ve had lectures cancelled or postponed due to sudden and unforeseen circumstances surround the lecturers, but not the rooms!

As many other UTS students are probably starting to realise, we’ve had some of our lectures cancelled tomorrow. In a Vice Chancellors email (above a very scary disclaimer warning us not to republish the material), we were informed classes in Buildings 5 and 6 may be cancelled tomorrow.

The cause? A Sydney Water main in town burst, causing aqueous material of an otherwise drinkable nature to permeate an Energy Australia electrical substation. If that weren’t bad enough, allegedly much of UTS’s own wiring was also affected. They didn’t say much more than that, though we can use our imaginations and see the scary sparks flying and the ensuing blackout. What a mess.

Of course, I’m only miffed because tomorrow is Network Security, and its my favourite class of this semester. At least the tutorial is still a-go. At least, I hope!