The world is back to bartering because everybody gave up on the IMF, exchange rates and money in general when it was discovered that the economy of Zimbabwe, with inflation of 11 million percent, was actually healthier than that of Iceland!
Terrorism does not exist in the new economy because it turns out no terrorist organization had ever created a product or provided a service of any value to anybody. Ditto for pickpockets and people engaged in petty theft. They have all died of starvation.
With the banking system gone, most politicians have very short careers as the corrupt are easily identified. It's not easy to hide 300 cows that suddenly stop in your backyard on the way to a neighboring farm; sending them to Switzerland is not an option.
All research is in the hard sciences as no farmer will feed someone who intends to pay for three square meals a day for two years with "The largest prime number ever"!
Wars are still fought, but only to gain territory or resources. People will not fight to defend an ideology because when it's 'Grow food or Die' the other person's beliefs seem quite acceptable.
Everybody speaks, reads and writes Chinese. Computer programming is taught at literature classes as writing an if-then-else statement in ideograms is closer to haiku than C++.
A significant portion of Hollywood's revenue comes from South Asia. The Oscars now present 'best hero', 'best villain' and 'best comedic character' awards.
'Heroes' season 132 is playing and features new characters that can talk to molluscs and fish, send text messages while driving drunk and write bug free software. All of them are long lost siblings of Peter Petrelli.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
WSO2 ESB Webinar
Daniel will be presenting a webinar on using the WSO2 ESB to put together a real world integration tomorrow, the 28th of October 2008. If you've read this post in time, register now!
Why am I blogging about the ESB now? Well, I got a basic training on using it a few weeks back and am now working on an ESB component for Carbon. Although I still do believe that the WSO2 Mashup Server is more fun to work with, I've decided to spend some time on learning about the WSO2 ESB and Synapse, if only to complete my knowledge of the WSO2 Java Stack.
How's that, you ask? Well, the Mashup Server actually runs WSAS under the covers, which in turn is powered by Axis2. We use our Registry internally as our repository for Mashups and meta data and the OpenID and InfoCard authentication options are from our Identity Solution. Since the Mashup Server actually incorporated Data Services from 1.5 onwards, that just left the ESB and Synapse untouched. Truly a MASHUP Server!
So, though I'll continue to learn the internals of our ESB and Synapse, this webinar's about WHAT it can do in the real world and that's something I can't get from just the code. Daniel will start the webinar half an hour before midnight tomorrow night, Sri Lanka time, but given his credentials, even if you're in a timezone like mine, this one's worth losing a little sleep over!
Why am I blogging about the ESB now? Well, I got a basic training on using it a few weeks back and am now working on an ESB component for Carbon. Although I still do believe that the WSO2 Mashup Server is more fun to work with, I've decided to spend some time on learning about the WSO2 ESB and Synapse, if only to complete my knowledge of the WSO2 Java Stack.
How's that, you ask? Well, the Mashup Server actually runs WSAS under the covers, which in turn is powered by Axis2. We use our Registry internally as our repository for Mashups and meta data and the OpenID and InfoCard authentication options are from our Identity Solution. Since the Mashup Server actually incorporated Data Services from 1.5 onwards, that just left the ESB and Synapse untouched. Truly a MASHUP Server!
So, though I'll continue to learn the internals of our ESB and Synapse, this webinar's about WHAT it can do in the real world and that's something I can't get from just the code. Daniel will start the webinar half an hour before midnight tomorrow night, Sri Lanka time, but given his credentials, even if you're in a timezone like mine, this one's worth losing a little sleep over!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Mashup Screencast 2: The Scraping
This is one sequel you didn't have to wait long for; the second part of the mashup screencast trilogy, Web Scraping, is out. In this episode, Jonathan uses a real world example to teach you the basics of screen scraping.
For the un-initiated, scraping enables you to extract information available in web pages and make it available in a machine consumable form. It's a technique most people want to learn as soon as they start using the WSO2 Mashup Server, because it potentially allows you to use the entire web as your data source.
Spoilers: In the screencast Jonathan teaches you to write a scraper configuration to retrieve the contents of a web page and create a sanitized XML document from it. He then uses 'firebug', a firefox plugin, to view the structure of the web page and help him extract the specific data element he's after from the XML. By the end of the screencast you'll be ready to go out and scrape a few pages yourself!
If you've got good bandwidth, you'll appreciate the hi-res version, but if you don't mind youtube quality, click below.
As before, watch this space for the next installment.
For the un-initiated, scraping enables you to extract information available in web pages and make it available in a machine consumable form. It's a technique most people want to learn as soon as they start using the WSO2 Mashup Server, because it potentially allows you to use the entire web as your data source.
Spoilers: In the screencast Jonathan teaches you to write a scraper configuration to retrieve the contents of a web page and create a sanitized XML document from it. He then uses 'firebug', a firefox plugin, to view the structure of the web page and help him extract the specific data element he's after from the XML. By the end of the screencast you'll be ready to go out and scrape a few pages yourself!
If you've got good bandwidth, you'll appreciate the hi-res version, but if you don't mind youtube quality, click below.
As before, watch this space for the next installment.
Friday, October 24, 2008
RESTful PHP Web Services
Samisa, our Director of Engineering, has just published a book on RESTful PHP Web Services. As the father of Axis2/C and the person who lead the WSF/PHP team, he is certainly an authority on the subject.
You really do need to get this book if you're a PHP developer and agree that an SOA is the way forward, because Samisa says:
"This book targets PHP developers who want to build or make use of RESTful web services, or explore the options available to them in PHP. You will need to know the basics of PHP development, but no knowledge of REST is assumed, nor any knowledge of creating web services generally."
The book goes into:
* Basic concepts of REST architecture
* Consuming public REST-style services from your PHP applications
* Consuming RESTful web services, such as those from leading APIs such as Flickr, and Yahoo Web Search
* Making your own PHP applications accessible to other applications through a RESTful API
* REST support in the popular Zend framework
* Debugging RESTful services and clients
* A case study of designing a RESTful PHP service from the ground up, and designing clients to consume the service
With this, Samisa becomes the 5th person from WSO2 to publish a book! I've blogged about Deepal's book, am halfway through Sanjiva's and am yet to get my hands on the one by Glen and Paul. I've always enjoyed writing almost as much as reading and have long had the dream of actually publishing something myself; very soon peer pressure alone is going to get me started on writing something!
You really do need to get this book if you're a PHP developer and agree that an SOA is the way forward, because Samisa says:
"This book targets PHP developers who want to build or make use of RESTful web services, or explore the options available to them in PHP. You will need to know the basics of PHP development, but no knowledge of REST is assumed, nor any knowledge of creating web services generally."
The book goes into:
* Basic concepts of REST architecture
* Consuming public REST-style services from your PHP applications
* Consuming RESTful web services, such as those from leading APIs such as Flickr, and Yahoo Web Search
* Making your own PHP applications accessible to other applications through a RESTful API
* REST support in the popular Zend framework
* Debugging RESTful services and clients
* A case study of designing a RESTful PHP service from the ground up, and designing clients to consume the service
With this, Samisa becomes the 5th person from WSO2 to publish a book! I've blogged about Deepal's book, am halfway through Sanjiva's and am yet to get my hands on the one by Glen and Paul. I've always enjoyed writing almost as much as reading and have long had the dream of actually publishing something myself; very soon peer pressure alone is going to get me started on writing something!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Two Great Performances
I managed to squeeze two really great events into last Saturday and I decided that day itself that I HAD to write something about each.
First it was Aba, a proper Sri Lankan epic! What the director has managed to create is a great movie that is based on recorded history but deviates enough from what we're taught at school to ensure that it doesn't feel like a documentary and even makes me think again about my own origins.
It's obvious that a lot of time, money and effort was put into making the movie because the cast, script, sets, costumes and music are all pretty good. I think Aba's been a success at the box office and really do hope it does well enough to encourage other directors and producers to invest in quality. It would be a shame if the public that's been complaining about the current state of the Sri Lankan entertainment industry doesn't bother to get up and go to a theater when something worth watching has actually been provided.
Now, for those of you who know what I generally consider to be an 'Epic', I'm not saying this is 'Lord of the Rings'; just that it's probably the closest we've got to making something that is grand, exciting, intelligent and beautiful at the same time, in a long time!
After the movie was Nemesis at TNL On Stage! Their lead guitarist is a friend and I went to On Stage last Saturday because I've heard them play and knew they wouldn't disappoint. They did not!
Their first two songs were a Metallica cover and an original, which were pretty good, but they came on later for an acoustic session where they performed a cover of Audioslave's 'I am the highway' which blew my mind! I can't wait for a video of this performance to get to youtube, but until it does, here's an older recording of them doing Shinedown's 45.
First it was Aba, a proper Sri Lankan epic! What the director has managed to create is a great movie that is based on recorded history but deviates enough from what we're taught at school to ensure that it doesn't feel like a documentary and even makes me think again about my own origins.
It's obvious that a lot of time, money and effort was put into making the movie because the cast, script, sets, costumes and music are all pretty good. I think Aba's been a success at the box office and really do hope it does well enough to encourage other directors and producers to invest in quality. It would be a shame if the public that's been complaining about the current state of the Sri Lankan entertainment industry doesn't bother to get up and go to a theater when something worth watching has actually been provided.
Now, for those of you who know what I generally consider to be an 'Epic', I'm not saying this is 'Lord of the Rings'; just that it's probably the closest we've got to making something that is grand, exciting, intelligent and beautiful at the same time, in a long time!
After the movie was Nemesis at TNL On Stage! Their lead guitarist is a friend and I went to On Stage last Saturday because I've heard them play and knew they wouldn't disappoint. They did not!
Their first two songs were a Metallica cover and an original, which were pretty good, but they came on later for an acoustic session where they performed a cover of Audioslave's 'I am the highway' which blew my mind! I can't wait for a video of this performance to get to youtube, but until it does, here's an older recording of them doing Shinedown's 45.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
How to write Mashups
The Quick Start Guide assumes that the reader just knows he or she wants to create a Mashup and maybe something about JavaScript; nothing much else.
It starts by helping the reader to either download, setup and provision their own WSO2 Mashup Server or self-register on mooshup.com which actually runs one under the covers.
Next, it's click-by-click instructions to create, manage and test their first Mashup.
The final section describes how to bring in data from a web page, an external web service and a feed. The first two scenarios make use of tooling provided by us to make a user's life easier, while the third is probably the simplest use of a host object possible.
Since the idea of the quick start guide is to get someone going without overwhelming them, it ends with these typical first questions answered. Please do let us know if you're a first time user and would like something more included in the quick start.
It starts by helping the reader to either download, setup and provision their own WSO2 Mashup Server or self-register on mooshup.com which actually runs one under the covers.
Next, it's click-by-click instructions to create, manage and test their first Mashup.
The final section describes how to bring in data from a web page, an external web service and a feed. The first two scenarios make use of tooling provided by us to make a user's life easier, while the third is probably the simplest use of a host object possible.
Since the idea of the quick start guide is to get someone going without overwhelming them, it ends with these typical first questions answered. Please do let us know if you're a first time user and would like something more included in the quick start.
Friday, October 17, 2008
WSO2 Mashup Server - The Movie
Well, not exactly, but for those of you who skip the book and wait for the movie, this is as good as it gets! Jonathan has done a trilogy of screencasts, and the first of these, Hello World is on air now!
If you always wanted to get started on the WSO2 Mashup Server, but never got around to reading through our user documentation or articles, this is probably the easiest way to get going.
If you're on a slow line and don't mind low-res, you can watch the you tube version here.
Watch this space for links to the sequels.
If you always wanted to get started on the WSO2 Mashup Server, but never got around to reading through our user documentation or articles, this is probably the easiest way to get going.
If you're on a slow line and don't mind low-res, you can watch the you tube version here.
Watch this space for links to the sequels.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Windows to Linux
First time I tried running Linux at home was around 2002, with Red hat 7.1. I really can't remember what finally convinced us to revert to Windows, but I remember it was a little too alien to my wife, who loved the games that shipped with the distribution, but missed Windows/IE/Office. There was no Firefox back then and Open Office wasn't really hot either, so I don't really blame her for wanting Windows back at the time.
I've been using Linux at office for quite some time now; created a partition for it on day 1 itself and installed 'Gutsy' a few days later, but switched to using it full time only this year. My primary goal at the time was to learn some Linux Administration, but now I only boot Windows when I have to fix and test IE or Windows specific defects in code and switch back to Linux as soon as I'm done because everything just takes so much longer to do! I can't explain why a maven build takes a fraction of the time in Linux as it does in Windows, but that is the easiest to compare because maven actually prints the time taken at the end of a build!
About two months back, the XP on my home system started acting up and instead of reinstalling I decided to switch to Hardy. The switch over was quite smooth, with the partition tool in 'Hardy Heron' doing a great job of moving stuff around to make space for root and swap partitions. I created a separate home partition later and moved my home there, using instructions I found on a blog post. I'm sure I could've lived with everything on root, but separating out the home directory is apparently the way to go as you can quite easily upgrade or replace the OS in it's own partition without actually affecting your data in the home directory.
Since then it's been a journey of discovery so I thought I'd put down my experiences in case someone else is considering the same move.
1) If you're using Firefox and Open Office in Windows right now, you're already halfway there. My wife is affected by the switch because she's been using MS-Office until now and Open Office feels different to her. My daughter is hardly aware that things have changed because Firefox is the same and that's all she uses.
2) Use Ubuntu or some other distribution that's not too 'geeky'. You're used to doing everything via wizards, so starting off with an operating system that needs to be compiled first would not be a good idea! Canonical has the right idea, pop the CD in the drive, reboot and install if you like what starts up.
3) GParted is pretty good at moving and resizing partitions, but be aware that any change you do may make your existing Windows installation unusable! I wanted to have my XP available as a boot option, and I've done previous installations which left Windows intact, but I think I messed things up when I deleted a secondary Windows partition while in Linux. Anyway, my XP hasn't worked since then.
4) Some of your peripherals may not work on day one, but some work surprisingly well with the drivers that ship with Hardy. My camera (a Canon A550) can just be plugged into a USB port and Hardy recognizes it, launches FSpot and prompts me to select and download pictures. My webcam (a GE MiniCamPro) on the other hand pretends to be OK; even the red 'active' light on top turns on at PC startup itself, but that's it, no pictures yet! I've found a Google group of users with cams from the same vendor; let's see if this 'support group' will help me to get the drivers sorted out. I found the GNU/Linux Compatible Hardware List which I will use when buying peripherals in future.
That's about it for advice, really. Hardy works fine out-of-the-box, comes with almost all the software you'll need for home or office use and anything else is just an 'apt-get install' away. The only thing I actually downloaded and installed separately was Skype, and that was accomplished with just a few clicks.
Now a few observations.
a) Why does the ls command have a non-default -h argument to list file sizes in 'human readable format'? If the default setting's for Cylons, it's wasted; they interact with computers by either putting their arms into litte tubs of liquid or sticking wires straight into their forearms!
b) Why is it so difficult to share a directory using samba? It can't be just me because I see a lot of very smart Linux users pulling out USB drives when they want to copy stuff from one PC to another.
Actually, to resolve #4 and b, I need to stop whining and start writing code; I've got two itches so I should start scratching!
I've been using Linux at office for quite some time now; created a partition for it on day 1 itself and installed 'Gutsy' a few days later, but switched to using it full time only this year. My primary goal at the time was to learn some Linux Administration, but now I only boot Windows when I have to fix and test IE or Windows specific defects in code and switch back to Linux as soon as I'm done because everything just takes so much longer to do! I can't explain why a maven build takes a fraction of the time in Linux as it does in Windows, but that is the easiest to compare because maven actually prints the time taken at the end of a build!
About two months back, the XP on my home system started acting up and instead of reinstalling I decided to switch to Hardy. The switch over was quite smooth, with the partition tool in 'Hardy Heron' doing a great job of moving stuff around to make space for root and swap partitions. I created a separate home partition later and moved my home there, using instructions I found on a blog post. I'm sure I could've lived with everything on root, but separating out the home directory is apparently the way to go as you can quite easily upgrade or replace the OS in it's own partition without actually affecting your data in the home directory.
Since then it's been a journey of discovery so I thought I'd put down my experiences in case someone else is considering the same move.
1) If you're using Firefox and Open Office in Windows right now, you're already halfway there. My wife is affected by the switch because she's been using MS-Office until now and Open Office feels different to her. My daughter is hardly aware that things have changed because Firefox is the same and that's all she uses.
2) Use Ubuntu or some other distribution that's not too 'geeky'. You're used to doing everything via wizards, so starting off with an operating system that needs to be compiled first would not be a good idea! Canonical has the right idea, pop the CD in the drive, reboot and install if you like what starts up.
3) GParted is pretty good at moving and resizing partitions, but be aware that any change you do may make your existing Windows installation unusable! I wanted to have my XP available as a boot option, and I've done previous installations which left Windows intact, but I think I messed things up when I deleted a secondary Windows partition while in Linux. Anyway, my XP hasn't worked since then.
4) Some of your peripherals may not work on day one, but some work surprisingly well with the drivers that ship with Hardy. My camera (a Canon A550) can just be plugged into a USB port and Hardy recognizes it, launches FSpot and prompts me to select and download pictures. My webcam (a GE MiniCamPro) on the other hand pretends to be OK; even the red 'active' light on top turns on at PC startup itself, but that's it, no pictures yet! I've found a Google group of users with cams from the same vendor; let's see if this 'support group' will help me to get the drivers sorted out. I found the GNU/Linux Compatible Hardware List which I will use when buying peripherals in future.
That's about it for advice, really. Hardy works fine out-of-the-box, comes with almost all the software you'll need for home or office use and anything else is just an 'apt-get install' away. The only thing I actually downloaded and installed separately was Skype, and that was accomplished with just a few clicks.
Now a few observations.
a) Why does the ls command have a non-default -h argument to list file sizes in 'human readable format'? If the default setting's for Cylons, it's wasted; they interact with computers by either putting their arms into litte tubs of liquid or sticking wires straight into their forearms!
b) Why is it so difficult to share a directory using samba? It can't be just me because I see a lot of very smart Linux users pulling out USB drives when they want to copy stuff from one PC to another.
Actually, to resolve #4 and b, I need to stop whining and start writing code; I've got two itches so I should start scratching!
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