dz>0

wake the mac

andrewk — Wed, 12 May 2010 01:42:50 +0000

Nice and free:

http://download.cnet.com/WakeOnLan/3000-7240_4-52177.html?tag=vtredir

launchd for svn

andrewk — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:42:23 +0000

The plist should go in /Library/LanchDaemons

see: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Articles/LaunchOnDemandDaemons.html

Turns out I might as well use svn+ssh which will just launch svnserve when needed via ssh.

Open Sourcing REPTON for iPhone

andrewk — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:02:52 +0000

Why not? Next question, what license? Since I have copyright on the whole thing, I can license as I like. Which means, might as well go with the GPL. But, it looks like there are some concern, so.

Re-Read the Developers Agreement
Re-Read the GPL v3 and v2
Remember, I own the copyright on the whole of the source code
If nothing else, I would expect the BSD license would be fine
Is the BSD considered an open license?

ActiveMQ

andrewk — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:34:32 +0000

I am using ActiveMQ 5.x on my current project. Initial integration was quite easy. Getting a broker running and some messages going around between a few clients took several days, much of which had to do with groking Spring configuration rules. I have to say Spring is pretty nice. But the initial ease with which I had request/reply messages being dispatched to Competing Consumers belied the rapidly increasing complexity of the system. Since it was so easy to get three clients and two services running, we loosened our design and now have nine different services and five clients. Six queues have become something like 22. It is still invigorating to have the system work, but of course when it doesn’t work diagnoses is rather more challenging.

Initially global setting were enough for timeouts and prefetch and queue memory size, but no more. Now the work is in getting regression tests running. I should look at the test suite in ActiveMQ itself for ideas on setting up multiple machines for inter node tests.

Prefetch is one configuration item that needs to be per channel. CompetingConsumers need a prefetch of 1 to work. Most of the other channels should be between 10 an 1000 I would think.

Timeouts is another one to think about. You don’t want to long a timout, if the request is going to fail then better to get it over with so appropriate action can then be taken.

Today I am having trouble understanding the behavior of a topic with producer flow control. One producer is getting block due to a slow consumer, but killing the consumer does not seem to end the block and I don’t know if it is a bug or correct behavior, or if there is yet another configuration option to consider.

DG after 6 months

andrewk — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:05:53 +0000

I have been working on a DARPA project for the last 6 months, and am really enjoying the work. We have a very cool client application that takes speech and sketch input and does semantic recognition. The client enables real-time collaborative editing.

Netperf on OS X

andrewk — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:47:49 +0000

[drew@g5]$ ./configure --prefix=/Users/drew/sandbox/netperf/install --enable-histogram --enable-unixdomain

[drew@g5]$ make

[drew@g5]$ make install

[drew@g5]$ ./netserver -p 9999 -4 -v 1

[drew@g5]$ ./netperf -p 9999 -L localhost,inet

[drew@g5]$ ./configure --prefix=/Users/drew/sandbox/netperf/install  --enable-unixdomain=yes

[drew@g5]$ ./netperf -f G -p 12865  -t STREAM_STREAM -d -- -s 100000 -S 100000

Repton in the New York Times 1982

andrewk — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:56:14 +0000

Search this page for Repton: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9E0CE1D91F39F937A25751C1A964948260

I made the NYT in ‘82 and did not even know it. Thanks Google!

Using OpenMP at work

andrewk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:15:11 +0000

One of the developers in another group saw my OpenMP presentation and decided it would fit into the design of his current project. They are using an eight core machine to do spectral analysis and need to run a dozen or so models against the data. With much less work than it would take to multi-thread by hand, in fact it may only take a day or two including testing, we expect to get at least a factor of five improved run time performance. The hardest part may be convincing the client that using of OpenMP is not too esoteric.

Windows Remote Desktop

andrewk — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:12:13 +0000

I need to set up my XP computer so I can just run it remotely from my Mac. Windows Remote Desktop. I’ve enabled it on the PC. Now what can I use as a client on my Mac? Microsoft has a free client.

Hello Cow : my first iPhone App

andrewk — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:21:32 +0000

I was lucky enough to get in on the iPhone early SDK list and I’ve written my first simple application; HelloCow! Similar in concept and complexity to Hello World, the application consists of a picture of a cow. When you touch the cow, she moos. My little boy loves cows and he loves my iPhone, so I’m hoping this keeps him entertained without letting him dial 911 accidentally. The permanent page is Hello Cow.

The image of the cow is graciously provided by Jordan McClements who has many beautiful images at jmcwd.com.