[@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.

[@200]
TiVO

Marc and Scoble wonder why TiVO hasn't taken off yet.

While I agree with Robert that the technology is too expensive and complex. I think TiVO also suffers from a major case of pathetic marketing.

Ask people who are not technology-savvy about the advantage of TiVO over a plain old VCR. They won't know, and probably won't care. TiVO is marketing itself as a replacement for the VCR, but in fact is nothing more than a companion to it.

“I can't go to my favorite video store and rent a few flixs to play on my TiVO, can I?

You mean I also need a VCR?

How about DVDs? I need a DVD player too?

Sheesh… What is this thing good for?”

You can buy a VCR for around $40 nowadays, versus $200 for a TiVO box. That's another losing proposition.

I've seen a few TiVO units with build-in DVD players, but what about a build-in video player? Last I looked Blockbuster and Hollywood Video still have more VHS offering than DVDs. Everybody has a VCR, yet, TiVo, its wanna-be replacement, is really not compatible.

A few years back, I received a flyer from my old cable company, AT&T Digital Cable, promoting their TiVo-enabled unit. I recall sitting there in my living reading it and wondering what market they were actually trying to target. $10-a-month cable subscribers are not going to spend that kind of money, no matter what.

It's all about technology, but technology is a hard sell. Let me play devil's advocate for a sec…

Commercial Skip — My 4 years old VCR has something called commercial-marking, works like a charm.

Scheduling — Once, again, my 4 years old VCR can easily record a show on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I just have to remember to change the tape when full. With VCR+ I just pickup my TV guide and find the code, not too hard. I think even my wife can do that. Well… maybe not. (Sorry, honey.)

Pausing Live TV — I can't do that. But I can record a show while watching another live, a single-tuner TiVo unit can't.

Instant Live TV Replay — I really can't do that. Don't call me while I watch TV, please.

Digital Recording — Yeah, cool, but so what?

Of course TiVO makes everything a lot easier, but as far a John Doe customer is concerned it is certainly not compelling enough.

TiVO needs a hook, like Apple with the iPod's coolness factor. Relying on movie stars blabbing about how much they like their TiVO on late night talk shows is not going to cut it in the end.

Where did the links go? Visit my new Linkblog.

[@940]
Where did the links go?

The links have moved to my new Linkblog. Update your bookmarks.

Why the move?

Multiple reasons.

Two of them being that it makes it a lot easier for me to manage, and easier for you to search, categorize, etc.

Are there feeds for the Linkblog?

Of course, look at the bottom of the page for the subscription icons. There are both RSS and Atom feeds.

The feeds are category-aware. If you select a specific category, the feed subscription icons will reflect your selection.

Multiple-categories can be selected by simply separating them by commas, for example:

http://erik.thauvin.net/linkblog/xml.jsp?cat=Java,Mobile

The feed entries are grouped by posting. If you prefer to list one entry per link, simply append view=links to the feed's url, for example:

http://erik.thauvin.net/linkblog/xml.jsp?view=links

What will happen to this blog?

I'll use this blog to post about more personal issues, etc.