Archive for the ‘General’ Category
My Favorite New Features in Coherence 3.5
Coherence 3.5 is the third major release of Coherence since we joined Oracle back in mid 2007. We’re quite excited about this release as it includes many new features. We especially gave Coherence*Web lots of love by adding:
- Native integration with WebLogic Server/WebLogic Portal 9.2 and 10.2+.
- Fine grained concurrency management for session access
- Improved distributed session expiry algorithm
- Support for Coherence*Extend
It turns out we’re not the only ones giving Coherence lots of love. Check out this report by Gartner covering Data Grid solutions from The Big Three (Oracle, IBM, & Microsoft.)
Those interested in finding out more can watch Cam’s Live Webcast on July 29th.
The next three posts will cover my favorite new Coherence 3.5 features:
- Improved Partition Distribution Algorithm
- Service Guardian (Deadlock Detection)
- POF Extractor/Updater
Stay tuned for more!
Migrating to my new MacBook Pro
I switched to the Mac and OS X soon after joining Tangosol. I’ve been very happy with OS X as it has the best of both worlds: the support of a mainstream OS (for peripherals such as the iPhone) along with the power of the Unix shell, and it looks good to boot. After running on a MacBook Pro for for 2 1/2 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to receive a new 15″ MBP at work. I was happy with the old MBP; the biggest (insurmountable) problem was that I had maxed out on 3GB of ram. Trying to run IDEA, Firefox, Parallels, and a bunch of other apps on 3GB doesn’t work very well.
As is always the case when getting new hardware, I had the daunting task of moving everything over to the new machine and setting it up to my liking. In an attempt to save myself a week of work, I decided to try out restoring my account and apps via Migration Assistant and Time Machine. I was a bit hesitant as I previously did an upgrade to Leopard from Tiger (instead of a fresh install, as I was then also trying to save time) but I figured that I didn’t have much to lose. If it didn’t work, I could just reinstall OS X on the new Mac and start over.
I’ve been running on the new machine for a few days now, and so far things seem to be working well. I did run into a few glitches that I was able to overcome:
- Reinstalls of Parallels and the Cisco VPN client were required, I suspect this was the case because these apps require kernel extensions of some sort.
- Java 6 was nowhere to be found which I thought was strange (doesn’t Java 6 ship OOTB with Leopard?) I installed the Java package from the DVD and also did a software update; this included a Java update which included Java 6.
- The biggest challenge I encountered: when bringing up the screensaver options in the System Preferences app, it would spin up to 100% CPU and require a hard kill from the Activity Monitor. I noticed some messages in the Console about some deprecated API, so my first attempt to fix this issue was to follow the instructions in this thread. This did remove the warnings from the console, but the lockups continued. After reading this thread I decided to try installing iLife Support 9.0.3; this ended up fixing the problem for good.
So far I have to say that the effort has been worth it. Fixing the glitches above took far less time than reinstalling everything, and all of my preferences and settings migrated over with no problem (saved passwords via keychain, OS and network settings, etc.)
Real Men of Genius (TM)
This morning it isn’t just the weather that is rough out here in New England; apparently the weather coverage is even more so. Ouch.
Ode to the 350
O’ 350, highlight of my day
how you bring me unspeakable pain
you arrive early when I’m on time
right on time to watch you pass by
when I’m early you’re 10 minutes late
relying on you is such a cruel fate
you make the hot days hotter
and the cold days colder
this is a burden
that is too much to shoulder
some of your drivers
are certifiably insane
making NY cab drivers blush
when they see your road rage
you make me navigate through
six foot snow banks
then break down on the way
as I watch my day tank
during rush hour
you might pass by twice
while eight 77‘s
clog Mass Ave, how nice
so why do I bother
why do I try
when efforts so futile
make a grown man cry
the answer is simple
simple as can be
you’re a cheap way to get around
$1.25 is quite a low fee
so thus I am destined
to rely on mbta
to get me to work
sometime today
now I don’t mean to cuss
or complain and fuss
but can someone please tell me
where the fuck’s my fucking bus?
Edit: Maria suggested I link the last line to the video that inspired it.
Maria digs our car out
This year’s rendition of Maria getting some fresh winter air and exercise…