[@837]
java.not

Russ and I started a project on java.net a week ago. We're still waiting for approval. How long does it take? It's not like they are swarming with activity over there.

Diego was telling me how he dislikes java.net because most of the projects are dead or undocumented. I'm starting to understand why that is.

Another bright example of Sun's commitment to the Java community, start strong, land flat.

RBL

I'm starting to experiment with Realtime Blackhole Lists to try to deal with the deluge of spam processed by my mail server on a daily basis. Here's my current sendmail 8.x RBL configuration:

FEATURE(`delay_checks', `friend')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `sbl.spamhaus.org')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `list.dsbl.org')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `bl.spamcop.net')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl',`dun.dnsrbl.net')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl',`spam.dnsrbl.net')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `relays.visi.com')dnl
FEATURE(`dnsbl', `dnsbl.njabl.org')dnl

I got some of the hosts from my friend John, as well as from Jeff Makey's Fighting Spam.

Mein Google TagLib

The Google TagLib is going to be included with this book. Matthew will be getting copies of the book when released. My German is too rusty.

[@822]
No Man's Land I just walked in living room while the telly was on. No Man's Land is playing on SHO. It just hit me. The Fast and The Furious was nothing more than an modern copycat. Cute, blond, undercover cop tries to infiltrate car ring run by a charismatic leader and falls in love with the sister. Cool cars too. [@694]
Sun != Java Rick pointed out to me that IBM's Bob Stutor was quoted as saying: “So, fundamentally, it is a mistake thinking that Sun equals Java, Java equals Sun”. Where have I heard this before? Don't Close this Window! I can't stop myself. I tried, but not matter what, I always close opened windows/tabs. It really doesn't help that I am also a shortcut freak. I don't even think about it, I just do it. Maybe it comes from years of using Macs, pre-OS X. Having multiple applications opened at once wasn't such a good idea at the time. It is really unproductive.

[@884]
Happy St. Patty's Day! Vegan for a day? I think I'll stick to my low-carb diet for now. If I was drinking I would seriously consider having a few of these. I have to get a life. Play

[@657]
OSCache I've implemented a caching scheme for my blogs using OSCache. I elected to use the tags for the blog. I wrapped all the relevant pages with <os:cache time="-1">…</os:cache>, and <os:flush/> is called whenever the content is updated. Works like a charm. The linkblog was little bit more work, as it only uses one single JSP page. I had to write a CacheFilter which disables caching whenever certain request parameters are specified. Overall it took longer to test everything than writing the code. The speed and memory consumption improvements are well worth the effort. Rock It Till You Drop It Where did the links go? Visit my new Linkblog.

[@821]

Phone Threat

Russ needs help with a phone threat made against his son.

[Update] Overreaction.

[@812]
Madrid

Some interesting views on the bombings in Madrid:

• Diego: how long must we sing this song?
• Russ: Madrid Bombings and Ignorant Journalists

As usual the US media coverage is utterly self-centered. I doubt anybody in America truly understand what Europeans have had to deal with when it comes to terrorism.

[Update] More heartfelt comments:

• Frank: How long must we sing this song
• Matthew : Solidarity
• Rafe: Today's terrorism

[@547]
Pulsating

What do I do at 4:00 am on Thursdays? I compile Erik's Pulse. As of last week I've changed the publication day to Thursdays. There's a few things coming down the pipeline too, stay tuned.

[@492]
Scratchpad

I've re-implemented my scratchpad for the new linkblog. Feel free to check it regularly to see what I'm working on.

Where did the links go? Visit my new Linkblog.

[@611]
RSS vs. Atom Matthew no longer cares. Nor do I. I stopped caring during the RSS 0.94/2.0 debacle. I contributed, got chastised for it. Forget that. One thing that does strike me as being overlooked though, is simplicity. I recall the first time I looked at RSS, I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it was to deal with. I can't say the same thing of Atom. I do believe that a syndication format should be accessible to everyone. If someone wants to syndicate their site using some rudimentary Javascript, they should be able to. I don't subscribe to the argument that the API complexity is irrelevant since the tools, libraries, etc. are made (or will be) available to all. XML may not have been intended to be a manually manageable format, it is used that way everyday. Deal with it. [@562]
1.4.2_04 I installed JDK 1.4.2_04 on the server. Not quite sure what the changes are since the release notes haven't been updated, yet. So far it seems to be using a lot less memory.

[Update] The release notes have been updated. Lots of fixes.

[@510]
JL I wrote a guest column for the JavaLobby Newsletter. It was a bit more work than I originally anticipated, but quite fun. Thanks Rick for the opportunity. Where did the links go? Visit my new Linkblog.

[@121]
To 12.42.232.132:

If you think I'm dumb enough to allow javascript in my guestbook, you got another thing coming.

[@109]
Reliability issues…

I'm having some major reliability issues with this site. Spam is the problem. I'm using SpamAssassin's spamd/spamc which have a nasty tendancy to spike up the load.

If the load stays too high for too long, everything else starts dying. Changing the priority on the spamd deamon has had very little effect so far.

I emailed Matt over the weekend and asked him what he was using to monitor/restart Tomcat. He sent me some nifty scripts his ISP wrote for him. They gave me a pretty good idea as to what to look for.

I'm using monit, to monitor and restart services. Here's what I have for Tomcat 5 in my /etc/monitrc:

check process tomcat-apache with pidfile /var/run/tomcat5.pid
  start program = "/etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat5 start"
  stop program = "/etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat5 stop"
  if failed host www.thauvin.net port 80
    send "GET /blog/monit.jsp HTTP/1.0"
    expect "HTTP/[0-9.]{3} 200 .*"
    with timeout 15 seconds
  then restart
  every 3 cycles
  alert erik@localhost
  depends on tomcat
  group web

check process tomcat with pidfile /var/run/tomcat5.pid
  start program = "/etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat5 start"
  stop program = "/etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat5 stop"
  if failed port 8009 then restart
  if cpu > 80% for 8 cycles then restart
  if loadavg(15min) > 10 for 8 cycles then restart
  if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout
  alert erik@localhost
  group web


So far it has been working like a charm.

Of course it isn't a permanent solution. I need to address the real problem. In the next few days I'll be installing RBLs directly into sendmail which I'm hoping will deal with it once and for all.

Where did the links go? Visit my new Linkblog.