blog.BrianLawler.org

Archiving this site....

2011-08-11T23:11:00.001-04:00

Will soon archive the site at blog.brianlawler.org. All of that content will be moved to balawler.blogspot.com and future updates will be added at balawler.blogspot.com.

Working on Course Outlines

2011-08-05T17:12:00.003-04:00

Working on outlines for the courses I will be teaching at MITRE Institute this fall. Mostly UML2 stuff but later in the year plan to get into more applied math stuff.

Scary Old Ads with Kids

2011-08-02T21:08:00.001-04:00

Here are some old, and sort of scary, ads with kids. Not sure if these are authentic but, if so, kind of creepy.

Scary Old Ads with Kids

Wallpapers

2011-07-17T08:30:00.001-04:00

A collection of desktop wallpapers...

Wallpapers

Nature Photos

2011-07-16T20:15:00.002-04:00

A collection of nature photos...

Nature Scenes

Funny Photos of Kids

2011-07-16T16:02:00.002-04:00

They do the craziest things, don't they? The little scamps.

Funny Kid Photos

Photos from 2007 D.C. Air Show

2011-07-16T15:55:00.000-04:00

2007 D.C. Air Show

These are my credentials...

2011-07-16T14:49:00.001-04:00

Taken from a famous statement by a U.S. Army officer in WWII (see first picture)....

These are my credentials

Photos from Iraq

2011-07-16T13:44:00.000-04:00

Sent to me by friends.

Photos from Iraq

Motivation Posters [humor]

2011-07-16T11:37:00.001-04:00

When you spend your days blowing stuff up and jumping out of perfectly good aircraft, you end up with a slightly different take on a 'motivation' poster than your average office dweller....

Motivation Posters

Some Classic USMC Photos

2011-07-16T08:21:00.002-04:00

Here are some classic Marine photos

Marine Classics

"Missing" Dog Poster

2011-07-15T18:02:00.003-04:00

Funny poster. Looks like a 'missing dog' poster but be sure to read to the end...

Psuedo-Engineering Speak Translated

2011-05-30T06:30:00.003-04:00

When a pointy-head boss talks about engineering work, it isn't always clear what they mean. Here is a translation of some commonly used phrases...and thanks to my friend Marti for getting most of this.

It is in process - so wrapped in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless
We will look into it - never given it any thought to it and hope that eventually you will forget you asked it
A major program - an effort that can’t be completed by one telephone call or meeting
Expedite - to confound confusion with commotion
Channels - the poor person stuck between two expediters
Consultant - any ordinary guy more than 50 miles from home so you have to pay travel and per diem
To give it some thought - to forward the email to lots of people... mostly randomly
To implement a program - hire more people and expand the office
Under consideration - never heard of it... again
Under active consideration - really, we never heard of it... why do you keep asking
A meeting - a mass mulling by people who may, or may not, know anything about the topic
A conference - a place where there are lots of meetings
To negotiate - to seek a meeting where you are assumed to agree to all of our demands.
Re-orientation - getting used to working again
Reliable source - the guy you just met
Informed source - the guy who told the guy you just met
Unimpeachable source - the guy who started the rumor originally
Request a clarification - to ask questions on so many details that the program will be stalled
We are making a survey - we need more time to think of an answer
Forward for review - let’s spread the responsibility for this
See me (or let’s discuss this) - come down to my office, I’m lonesome
Let’s get together on this - I’m assuming you’re as confused as I am
Give us the benefit of your present thinking - we’ll listen to what you have to say as long as it doesn’t interfere with what we’ve already decided to do.
We will advise you in due course - if we figure it out, we’ll let you know
To give someone the picture - a long, confused and inaccurate statement to a newcomer
Point up the issue - to expand one page to fifteen pages
We are aware of it - we had hoped that the fool who started it would have forgotten by this time
Confidential - mostly we want as few people to know of our mistakes as possible
Tailorable - will be shipped to you unfinished for you to put it together (if you can) yourself . . . glue is optional
Interpretation - your warped opinion pitted against your adversary’s good sense
Statistician - someone I've hired to draw a mathematically precise (but inaccurate) line from unwarranted assumptions to foregone conclusions
Expert - a person who avoids all small errors as he sweeps toward the grand fallacy
Research - pretending to do something new and innovative but really just fishing for new business

USMC Pilots

2011-04-22T17:00:00.006-04:00

Attributed to a conversation a USMC F/A 18 pilot and a foreign air base. May be just a story but it is still a true description of Marine Air.

Foreign Air Base: Unknown aircraft, you are in our airspace. Identify yourself.

F/A 18 Pilot: This is a United States aircraft enforcing the 'no-fly' zone.

Foreign Air Base: You are in our airspace. If you do not depart our airspace, our aircraft will take-off to intercept you.

F/A 18 Pilot: Send 'em up. I'll wait.

Foreign Air Base: (silence)

Outlines for Courses I Teach

2011-04-22T16:23:00.005-04:00

Hear are some outlines for courses I teach or have taught in recent years...

Intro to C++ for the Microsoft .NET Framework, Spring 2004

Intro to Rational Requsite Pro, Spring 2009

Intro to Rational Rose, Spring 2009

Intro to UML, Fall 2009

Battle is decided by...

2011-01-07T22:13:00.000-05:00

Quoted by Bing West in "The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq".

"Battle is decided not by the orders of the commander in chief but by the spirit of the army"

from Tolstory's "War and Peace".

Knowing the Enemy and Public Opinion

2011-01-07T21:59:00.000-05:00

From interview of a Marine Corps officer interviewed by Montgomery McFate a DOD social science researcher. The officer tells McFate his unit lost the battle to influence public opinion (in Falluja) because:

"We were focused on broadcast media and metrics. But this had no impact because Iraqis spread information through rumor. We should have been visiting their coffee shops."

quoted in "Knowing the Enemy" , The New Yorker, December 18, 2006, George Packer

And God Created North Carolina .....

2011-01-07T21:30:00.002-05:00

Sent to me by my sister (who lives in North Carolina) to tease me (who lives in D.C.). - Brian

God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael, the archangel, found him, resting on the seventh day.

He inquired, "Where have you been?"

God smiled deeply and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, "Look, Michael. Look what I've made."

Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, "What is it?"

"It's a planet," replied God, "and I've put life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a place to test Balance."

"Balance?" inquired Michael, "I'm still confused."

God explained, pointing to different parts of Earth. "For example, some places will have wealth and opportunity while others will be poor. Some places will be cold while other places will be hot. Some peoples will have art and music while others will have industry. Balance in all things."
God continued pointing to different countries "This place will be very wet and have lots of rain while this place will be very dry."

The Archangel , impressed by God's work, then pointed to a land area and said, "What's that one?"

"That's North Carolina , the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, and plains. The people from North Carolina are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent, and humorous, and they are going to travel the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, carriers of peace, and producers of good things."

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then asked, "But what about balance, God? You said there would be balance."

God smiled, "Not very far from North Carolina is Washington , DC ."

Adventures in Video Formats

2010-11-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

I spent lots of time this weekend trying to setup my home network to stream video media to various devices:

The devices I was trying to network included an XBox 360, a Samsung Bluray DVD player that has some networking capabilities, and various PCs around the house.
Most of the original content I have is video podcasts, movie trailers or home movies. Most of the original content is in MOV(MPEG-4) or MP4(H.264) formats. None of it is DRM controlled.
I experimented with putting files at the devices using USB keys (XBox 360 and DVD player) or local disk (PCs).
For servers, I also tried using a Linksys Buffalo Network Storage device which publishes files in Windows file system, Apple filesystem, iTunes server or Windows media server formats. I also tried streaming from a PC using either the Windows media player or Zune media player as servers.
I also tried out various re-encode formats. These included various MP4 and WMV profiles.

What I found was:

The XBox and DVD devices both read more formats from local USB storage than they did over any network technique. The PCs could read more formats when using a file system than from using a media server device. Rarely, a device could accept a file as a stream that it couldn't read directly. Using USB keys or local storage means less time doing re-encodes but using a server would be more convenient way to publish files (and do backups).
The DVD player could see files that it couldn't play. That is not good. I considered putting all my files on a server, doing as few re-encodes as possible, and letting each device sort out what it could read (and play). But, on the DVD player, the user sees lots of choices in the menu that don't work... very frustrating.
One thing I didn't anticipate (but should have) is that regardless of file format using the network was a problem for my high-def content (1080p, 25-30fps, very high bit rate). Images and sound would stutter. This wasn't a problem when using local storage - USB keys in the XBox or DVD, local disk on the PCs.
No one format, or set of formats, emerged as a good solution. Every device had its 'quirks' of what it could, or could, not use. For example, I took an original and encoded it twice using both the iPod profile in QuickTime and the iPod profiel in Roxio encoder... but some scenarios of my test could only use one of those files and other scenarios could only use the other file.
WMV file format worked in most of my scenarios (admittedly Microsoft centric) but that is a problem since most of my original content is in MOV or MP4. The prospect of all that time re-encoding was discouraging. Also, if I convert everything to WMV then I'm almost never getting to see and hear the video at the original quality.
Another aspect I didn't anticipate is device noise. The XBox almost always has a fair amount of fan noise - even when not playing a game. One of the PCs had lots of fan noise when playing long videos or several videos - especially high-def. The functionality of the DVD player isn't anything special... but it is quiet. In many situations, for me, this really made a difference.

So, what did I decide? For me, I decided to 'push' videos to my XBox and DVD player using USB storage devices on those players. Since some of my original content already works with those devices, that minimizes the amount of re-encoding time I have to do. Also, by using local storage and minimizing how often I re-encode, that keeps me watching content in the original quality. Finally, when using a USB key (vice a DVD) in the DVD player, there is no background noise and that is nice to take advantage of.

Not the most 'high tech' solution. But there it is. If you want to see some charts on my experirments see my charts at http://goo.gl/0cmZO

While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power...

2010-07-28T23:38:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite quotes from the movie "V for Vendetta":

"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.

And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense.

Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent."

Remember remember the fifth of November...

'Tell him to drop dead!' [joke]

2010-07-28T23:22:00.002-04:00

Six retired Irishmen were playing poker in O'Leary's apartment when Paddy Murphy loses $500 on a single hand, clutches his chest, and drops dead at the table. Showing respect for their fallen brother, the other five continue playing standing up.

Michael O'Connor looks around and asks, 'Oh, me boys, someone got's to tell Paddy's wife. Who will it be?'

They draw straws. Paul Gallagher picks the short one. They tell him to be discreet, be gentle, don't make a bad situation any worse.

'Discreet??? I'm the most discreet Irishmen you'll ever meet. Discretion is me middle name. Leave it to me.'

Gallagher goes over to Murphy's house and knocks on the door. Mrs.. Murphy answers, and asks what he wants.

Gallagher declares, 'Your husband just lost $500, and is afraid to come home.'

'Tell him to drop dead!', says Murphy's wife..

'I'll go tell him.' says Gallagher.

I believe...

2010-07-04T12:06:00.005-04:00

I hold this truth to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed with divine, unalienable, rights and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted by the people, deriving their just powers only from the consent of the governed. That the enumeration of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. That powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the people.

On Free Speech...

2010-06-22T10:31:00.001-04:00

"...because I believe in the First Amendment at all times, not just during those times that are convenient for me and my beliefs..."

- a colleague at MITRE and former Navy officer

"The Next War" by Wilfred Owen

2010-06-12T01:15:00.003-04:00

Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death;
Sat down an eaten with him, cool and bland, -
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath, -
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorused when he sang aloft;
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against his powers.
We laughed, knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death - for lives; not men - for flags.

- Wilfred Owen, KIA, Battle of the Sambre, 4 Nov. 1918

Pain is your friend...

2010-06-07T20:35:00.005-04:00

Here is another great line by Master Chief Urgayle....

Master Chief John Urgayle: Pain is your friend, your ally, it will tell you when you are seriously injured, it will keep you awake and angry, and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain?

Lt. Jordan O'Neil: Don't know!

Master Chief John Urgayle: It lets you know you're not dead yet!

"Self Pity" by D. H. Lawrence and Master Chief John James Urgayle

2010-06-07T20:25:00.008-04:00

Here is a great quote from the movie "G.I. Jane":

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- "Self Pity" by D. H. Lawrence.

Favorite Quote from Book of Lismore

2010-03-11T15:20:00.007-05:00

A favorite quote from my reckless and intemperate youth is from the Book of Lismore:

"And what was it that sustained your life so?", Patrick asked.

Caeilte answered, "Truth was in our hearts, strength in our bodies and what we promised, that we did."

- The Colloquy of the Ancients, from the Book of Lismore.

New words. Old words with new meanings.

2010-02-22T23:13:00.002-05:00

Some new words and new definitions to some old words. Attributed to a Washington Post article.

Intaxication - Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to begin with.

Bozone - The substance surrounding dimwits that stops bright ideas from getting thru.

Giraffiti - Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Sarchasm - The gulf between someone being sarcastic and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte - To take coffee intravenously.

Karmageddon - It's like, when everbody is sending off these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

Decafalon - The grueling event of getting thru the day without any coffee.

Dopeler Effect - When stupid ideas seem smarter as they are coming at you rapidly.

Arachnoleptic Fit - The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked thru a spider web.

Flabbergasted - Appalled at discovering how much weight one has gained.

Abdicate - To give up any remaining hope of having a flat stomach.

Balderdash - A rapidly receding hairline.

My Time Is Up?

2010-02-14T22:43:00.003-05:00

A 54-year-old woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While on the operating table, she had a near-death experience.

Seeing God, she asked, 'Is my time up?'

God said, 'No, you have another 43 years, 2 months and 8 days to live.'

Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a face-lift, liposuction, breast implants and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and change her hair color and brighten her teeth! Since she had so much more time to live, she figured she might as well make the most of it.

After her last operation, she was released from the hospital. While crossing the street on her way home, she was killed by an ambulance.

Arriving in front of God, she demanded, 'I thought you said I had another 43 years? Why didn't you pull me from out of the path of the ambulance?'

God replied: 'I didn't recognize you.'

8 Reasons Horses Are Better Then Men

2010-01-05T22:26:00.002-05:00

This is from my dad. A little Montana humor.

If your horse starts to stray, you can just throw a rope around his neck.
You can see to it that your horse is well groomed.
Once you break a horse, he'll always be obedient.
A horse would understand why you want to buy shoes in sets of four.
Horses are into "stable" relationships.
A horse would rather munch his wild oats than sow them.
You can lead a horse to water. A man will insist on driving and get hopelessly lost in the process.
There are plenty of good horses to go around.

Why Parents Drink

2009-10-27T23:57:00.006-04:00

A father passing by his son's bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to 'Dad.'With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter.

Dear Dad:

It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you.

I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice. But I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older than I am. But it' s not only the passion...Dad she's pregnant.

Stacy said that we will be very happy. She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children.Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone. We'll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy. In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She deserves it..

Don't worry Dad. I'm 15 and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I'm sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know your grandchildren.

Love,

Your Son John

PS. Dad, none of the above is true. I'm over at Tommy's house. I Just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than a Report card That's in my center desk drawer.

I love you. Call me when it's safe to come home.

Taking Dog and The Marines

2009-10-27T23:01:00.009-04:00

A guy was driving around the back woods and he saw a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style house: 'Talking Dog for Sale '. He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.
The guy goes into the back yard and sees a nice looking Beagle sitting there. 'You talk?' he asks.
'Yep,' the Beagle replies.
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says 'So, what's your story?'
The Beagle looks up and says, 'Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA and they had me sworn into the toughest branch of the armed services...the United States Marines You know one of their nicknames is 'The Devil Dogs.'"
"In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders; because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running, but the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger. So, I decided to settle down."
"I retired from the Corps (8 dog years is 56 Corps years) and signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.
"Ten dollars," the guy says.
"Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"
"Because that dog is a fake... He never was in the Corps. He was in the Navy! "

'Wasting' Wave Invites on GMail Users

2009-10-24T19:58:00.003-04:00

I've figured out it is a waste of an invite to Google's Wave service to send the invite to someone who already has GMail but to use their non-GMail email address.

Here is why...

To use Wave, a person is going to need a GMail account. If you send an invite to a person who doesn't have GMail (someone@example.com), they will get asked to sign up for a Google account with GMail, Google Docs, Blogger, etc. That is fine in terms of them getting on Wave and using your invite... though they may not really have wanted to sign up for a Google account.

The problem is when the person has a GMail account but perhaps you didn't know this and used their non-GMail account. When they get the invite they will be invited to join Google/GMail.... but they already have that. They won't want to get another Google/GMail account, they can't sign into Wave using the non-Google address you sent them.... and their existing Google/GMail info won't work since that isn't the email address you sent the invite to.

Which means, if the person you sent the invite to was at all motivated to use Wave, they will ask you to send another invite but to their GMail account.... which uses up a 2nd of your limited 20 Wave invites to get the same person signed up.

So, for future reference, it seems a good use of your Wave invites (if you have any) to only send them to GMail addresses or if you want to get someone on Wave be sure to ask if they already use GMail or not. If they do, use that Gmail address. If they don't, get them to join and then use the GMail address.... or send to the non-GMail address but let them know they'll need to sign-up for GMail.

Great Idea Sarge!

2009-08-05T15:12:00.005-04:00

Here is a photo re-printed in U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings a couple of years ago.
The caption at the bottom of the photo says:

GREAT IDEA SARGE! In Korea in 1952, Technical Sergeant John Boitnott, right, was one persuasive Marine sniper. He convinced Private First Class Henry Friday, left, to help him finger enemy snipers by running back and forth in the trench they shared - like a duck in a shooting gallery - until the bad guys gave themselves away by shooting at his pal. In this way, Boitnott bagged nine snipers with nine shoots from his M-1C, all at distances of about 900 yards. The team worked their deadly magic until the company commander learned about it, went ballistic, and put an end to the scheme.

"Lost Over Laos" and "Farewell to a Hero"

2009-07-09T09:29:00.023-04:00

In 1971, as American forces hastened their withdrawal from Vietnam, a helicopter was hit by enemy fire over Laos and exploded in a fireball, killing four top combat photographers: Larry Burrows of Life magazine, Henri Huet of Associated Press, Kent Potter of United Press International, and Keisaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek. The remoteness of the crash site made a recovery attempt impossible. "Lost Over Laos" provides an inside look into these events against the backdrop of U.S. operations in Laos during the Vietnam War.

Starting around page 166, this book includes the story of how Associated Press correspondent Mike Putzel and Major James Newman made a flight over the crash site. Putzel continued to cover the war in Vietnam and his award-winning career included covering Watergate, the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and the fall of communism. Major Newman was twice nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Major Newman's military awards included Distinguished Service Cross (the nation's second-highest award for combat valor), the Silver Star, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and 23 Air Medals.
In 2009, Maj. Newman died and was buried at Arlington National Cemetary on February 18, 2009. These events were captured in the book "Farewell to a Hero" by Mike Putzel with photographs by noted Washington photographer William K. Geiger. Additional photos of Maj Newman receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross and his funeral at Arlington can be found at mp.smugmug.com.
Putzel and Newman's exploits were also featured in a Vanity Fair article in Dec. 1999. You can read read excerpts and reviews of Lost Over Laos at Amazon.com - see amazon.com/Lost-over-Laos-Tragedy-Friendship/dp/B000C4T1QI. Lost Over Loas is also available using Google Books - see tinyurl.com/LostOverLaos. Farewell to a Hero can be ordered online at ww.photographybooknow.com/bookstore/detail/610045

Old and Creepy Ads

2009-07-03T18:10:00.006-04:00

Here are some images of old advertising. Some are just odd in a "ha ha, isn't that crazy" sort of way. Others are creepy in an I'm-not-sure-this-is-real sort of way... and if it is real, yech!

These aren't even the creepiest ones. If you are curious, see more on Retro Comedy at http://tinyurl.com/lcpqm4.

"...imitate the action of the tiger..." - Henry V

2009-06-28T00:52:00.011-04:00

From Shakespeare's "King Henry V":

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

Act iii. Scene 1.

Marines Video

2009-06-27T23:46:00.006-04:00

Here (tinyurl.com/mvhnvq) is a copy of a great Marines ad that you might have seen on TV. Shows Marines doing closs-order drill in line at various locations across the country. Great ad. What you see here is the extended version of this video at about 1:30. To see more videos like this, visit our.Marines.com.

Love Your Country [humor]

2009-06-20T21:46:00.006-04:00

There is a great line in the movie "Harold and Kumary Escape from Guantanamo Bay".

The President, played by James Adomian, says "You don't have to believe in your government to be a good American. You just have to believe in your country."

Okay, maybe this is just a dumb stoner film... but I still like this quote.

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

2009-06-13T22:30:00.021-04:00

"I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air- I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath- It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous." - Alan Seeger (1888-1916) Seeger died at Belloy-en-Santerre on July 4, 1916 while serving in the French Foreign Legion.

Marine Dictionary: Close Combat Support

2009-06-03T10:49:00.006-04:00

According Marine Corps' standards, the following qualify as 'close combat support':

When TOWs, Dragons, and other rockets are co-located with your position... and there is no 'rear' to point the rocket blast.
When the jets return from the mission with pieces of jungle in their fuselage.
When the air support and your larger ground vehicles are competing for use of the same air space.
When artillary is used as a direct-fire weapon.
When the mortars tubes are co-located with your position and appear to be at vertical.
When the Ship's Captain issues the orders, 'Prepare to repel boarders' to the ship's crew.
When you keep getting knocked down by the air blast from the M1 tank's main gun.
When you have to keep your head down so it doesn't get chopped off by the tail rotor of a Cobra AH-1 helo.
When the ejected rounds from your M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) are getting 'caught' in the treads of the tank next to you.

Camera Reviews

2009-05-18T16:55:00.002-04:00

I've been looking into getting a new digital point and shoot camera. Here are some reviews I've seen. If anyone has any personal experience with these cameras, I'd love to hear about it.

Olympus Stylus 780 reviewed by MaximumPC.
FujiFilm F40fd reviewed by MaximumPC.
Canon PowerShot A1000 IS reviewed by PC Magazine. The Canon PowerShot A590 IS is also reviewed by CNet. The Canon PowerShot A470 is also reviewed by CNet.
Canon PowerShot SD790 IS reviewed by PC Magazine. The Canon PowerShot SD880 IS is also reviewed by CNet.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 reviewed by CNet.
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W120 reviewed by CNet and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W55 reviewed by CNet.

- Brian

List the files in a directory using ASP.Net and C#

2009-05-01T14:18:00.034-04:00

Being able to list the files in a directory is a pretty handy thing to do. Here is an example of how to do this in in ASP.Net using C#.

<script runat="server">
 string output = "";  
 protected void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
 {
   string path = Server.MapPath(".");
   DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo(path);
   FileInfo[] rgFiles = di.GetFiles("*.*");
   foreach (FileInfo fi in rgFiles)
   {
     output = output + "<p>" + fi.Name + "</p>";
   }
 }
 ...
</script>
<body>
 ...
 <% Response.Write(output); %>
 ...
</body>

"Hello World" in C# for ASP.Net

2009-05-01T13:47:00.012-04:00

The most basic of a programs is how to display some text. Here are a few ways to do this in ASP.Net using C#.

The most sparse is to use in-line code. In this example, there is string declared in-line and then another in-line block to write the response back to the browser.


<%@ Page Language="C#" %>
<%
  string output = "Hello World.";
%>
<html>
<body>
  <% Response.Write(output); %>
</body>
</html>

A slightly more elegant approach is to use the Page_Load() function and to attach some text to a label. This looks like this:


<%@ Page Language="C#" %>
<script runat="server">
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
    {
        Label1.Text = "Hello World!";
    }
</script>
<html>
<body>
  <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server"></asp:Label>
</body>
</html>

Things that don't work right in Norton 360

2009-04-15T16:33:00.003-04:00

Norton 360 has gotten plenty of reviews as a comprehensive and easy to use security suite that includes virus scanning, backup, firewall protection, etc. However, there are some things about it that don't work very well that you might want to know before using the product.

It adds files to a backup location but doesn't sync them. As you create, copy and rename files, all of those files get added to the backup location. As you delete or rename files on your PC, those deleted files or copies of those files with the old names remain in the backup location. That can be a good thing when you have accidently deleted a file and enough time has passed that the deleted file is no longer in your Recycle Bin. One not so good effect is that your backup location can be cluttered with lots of old files that you would never want to restore. It also means that your backups may take up much more space than necessary. If you are trying to use the free 2gig of on-line storage included, this means you may be constantly bumping up against that limit... and getting suggestions to upgrade (i.e. "buy") more on-line storage. There is no setting, as is common in other backup applications, to not "copy" but to do a "sync". That can be annoying.

Deleting backup files is tedious. If you want to thin out your backups for all of those old, renamed, or otherwise not needed backups, the only way to do this is to browse thru the backup system and select the files you want to delete. You do have an option to select all (or none) of the files in a folder but there aren't any other options to quickly thin out the backup. For example, you can't thin out (i.e. delete) from the backup location all files before a certain date. If Norton has also captured file types you don't want backed up, there isn't an easy option to stop backing up those file type or to delete those file types from the backup location.

It is fairly easy to put files into the on-line backup that you can't ever delete. This is one that I'm really not comfortable with. Norton 360 backup creates on-line backup sets that are tied to a machine ID and name. If you get rid of a machine, there isn't a way to later delete the backup sets associated with that machine. If you rename a machine (My Computer -> Properties), that machine will start using a new backup set and you can't delete the old one. This has two negative effects. The first is that it puts data onto Symantec servers that you won't be able to get off those servers. The other is all those old, not usable, backup sets eat into your on-line storage allotment. As you use up that allotment, you will be prompted to updgrade/buy more. Contacting tech support, in my case, could not correct this. It took multiple calls over over an hour to explain the problem and even when they claimed to understand the problem they wouldn't delete the old backup sets or said they would but never did.

The inclusion and exclusion of files seems unreliable. By default, Norton 360 has its own scheme for figuring out where your letters, emails, videos, etc. are and what is considered a quick versus complete backup. This does not necessarily do an effective job of backing up your data. You may need to add files in additional folders Norton didn't include. You may not need to backup some files - e.g. music you can easily re-rip from CDs and would waste your limited on-line storage. So, you start using the inclusion and exclusion features. My experience is that this is where the backup system becomes broken. The most alarming example is that you can right-click and select a file to be backed up.... and it never gets backed up... and you wouldn't know it unless you browse the backup manually... and no matter what you do, you can't get the file(s) into the backup set. Yikes!

The only use of Norton 360 backup that makes sense to me is this one. You have a PC and you install the product. You don't try to adjust, customize or otherwise tune the backup settings beyond what it decides to do when installed and broadly selecting the file types and either the quick v. complete backup option. You pick a backup location and don't change your mind later. If you pick the on-line backup, you select very few file types (mail, contacts, music, etc.) to fit into that location or buy more on-line storage (which can get expensive). Finally, and this is REALLY important, you accept that Norton 360 will pickup many but not all of your files... and accept that this is better than doing no backup at all.

If you really want to make effective use of a mix of backup locations (on-line, external USB drive, etc.), I wouldn't use Norton 360. If it is important to be able to do a complete restore of the data on your computer, I wouldn't use Norton 360.

The Strongest Tribe

2009-04-13T11:14:00.011-04:00

[From my dad. - BL]

The following quote appears in Bing West's recent book on Iraq. It is in the discussion of Bush's dismissal of Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Though I was very moved for very personal reasons by this quote when I read it, I thought of you and thought you would also appreciate the meaning and power of the event.

"Several months after Pace, who had been a platoon commander in Vietnam, had left the Pentagon, a visitor at the Vietnam Memorial found four silver stars tucked away under the marble wall, with a note expressing his love and respect. The names above the stars included those of the Marines who had died serving in Pace's platoon".

p. 277, "The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq", Bing West, Random House, 2008

See photos on Leatherneck here.

See CNN video here and transcript here.

Duties That Are Best Shared, Mathew Bagdanos

2009-04-11T21:30:00.003-04:00

From the Washington Post, Sunday, March 1, 2009:

"Send in the Marines" has been uttered by every president since Thomas Jefferson sent a detachment of leathernecks to the shores of Tripoli in 1801. These words are likely to be uttered in the next four years -- of special interest to me as a Marine who has served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Veteran status is no guarantor of a leader's successful use of the military, of course; nor is its absence necessarily a harbinger of misuse. But in the 1970s, 74 percent of Congress had prior military service. Today: 23 percent. Barack Obama, though clearly respectful of the military, has never served in the military and has only two veterans in his Cabinet -- the fewest since Herbert Hoover. By contrast, John Kennedy, decorated for heroism in World War II, had only two Cabinet members who were not veterans.

These figures reflect a disturbing trend. A nation largely founded on the citizen-soldier ideal finds itself, following Vietnam and the expulsion of recruiters from campuses, with the military and civilian worlds warily eyeing each other across a cultural no man's land. As budgets shrink future forces, veterans will be fewer and the chasm wider -- to our peril.

No one wants everyone to think and act alike. Diversity is a major source of our nation's strength. But this diminishing shared experience leaves us ill-prepared against global terrorism. As the British general Sir William Butler warned a century ago, "A nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards."

It was not always so. We praise classical Greece for philosophy, art and democracy. Yet Athenians knew Socrates, the father of philosophy, for his bravery on the battlefield and Xenophon, author of the epic "Anabasis," for his generalship. Aeschylus, antiquity's greatest tragedian, wrote his own epitaph: "This gravestone covers Aeschylus . . . The field of Marathon will speak of his bravery."

In our time, a steady aggrandizement of self at the expense of society has forced the warrior culture and its ideals to the margins as antique refinements, like knowing classical languages. Yet the most cherished ideal -- arête, the classical Greek concept of honor -- is anything but passe. Just as "Semper Fidelis" (always faithful) is not merely the Marine Corps motto but a way of life, so is honor a form of mental conditioning -- a force-multiplier: Decide in advance to act honorably, and you know without hesitation what to do in a crisis. Codes of conduct are society's version of the same conditioning.

The demographics of today's military -- strained as we are -- offer hope. In 2007, 99 percent of recruits were high school graduates (vs. 82 percent of men and women ages 18 to 24 nationally), and 95 percent of officers had bachelor's degrees (vs. 27 percent of men and women ages 22 to 27 nationally). Exploding the myth that enlistees have no other options, 50 percent of recruits came from the wealthiest two-fifths of neighborhoods, but only 29 percent from the poorest two-fifths. We also mirror the country's rich diversity: 34.5 percent of recruits belong to a racial or ethnic minority (vs. 34.2 percent nationally).

For me as a Marine, the physical excitement of combat isn't the attraction. It's the opportunity to make a difference. We don't leave our families for the paycheck, we don't deploy into a combat zone for the living conditions and we don't ensure that there is a round in the chamber because we want to shoot someone. Our motives, like war itself, are complex, layered and visceral.

During the darkest days of World War II, George Orwell allowed that "we sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence to those who would harm us." That is what we do -- but only when we do it right. Service members, like police officers, have clearly defined codes of conduct, the strength of which leads to outrage when they are violated, whether by a police officer abusing suspects or a soldier abusing prisoners. The outrage is particularly acute among those who share the code: No one hates a bad cop more than a good one.

But if we limit the warrior ideal's physical courage to an isolated subculture of military, police and firefighters, focusing them solely on this virtue, we risk cultivating doers less tolerant of different lifestyles or ways of thinking. And if we limit aesthetic appreciation to the world of academics and economic elites, never encouraging them to roll up their own sleeves, we risk fostering gifted thinkers great on nuance but subject to paralysis by analysis.

Or worse. This artificial separation forces us to confront global terrorism with either the compassionate consensus of the whole-food collective or the indiscriminate anger of the lynch mob -- failures both. "War is an ugly thing," British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote about the American Civil War, "but not the ugliest of things: the decayed . . . feeling which thinks nothing worth war is worse." We must, instead, face terrorism's cult of death with hard steel, informed strategies and a rock-solid code of shared societal behavior to defeat those whose defining feature is the absence of honor.

Without greater understanding between the military and civilian worlds or, better, a return to a synthesis of the two, we risk a future without all of us working toward the same ends -- whatever society decides those ends should be. And we risk misusing military force because of misunderstandings about what it can and can't do or, once used, its being prematurely withdrawn because of unrealistic expectations. The solution is an educated citizenry that understands its soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines -- understands that we are you.

Matthew Bogdanos, the author of "Thieves of Baghdad," is a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and an assistant district attorney for New York City.

Rainbow Six (XBox 360): Black and Red Pack Produce False Disk Error Message

2009-03-30T13:03:00.004-04:00

If you have downloaded the free Red or Black packs for Rainbow Six Vegas, you may get a false disc error message. This is false in that the disc may not really be bad. You can fix your system and play the game again by deleting these packs from your Xbox.

Here is my experience: I downloaded both packs to my XBox. When I tried to play the game, the screen that there is an update to the game displays very briefly (under 1 second) and then shows a screen saying the disc is bad. Tried another disc... same problem. Tried another disc... same problem. Only had problem with Rainbow Six - all my other games worked fine. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 also worked fine.

I tried changing the boot settings - e.g. boot from disc or boot to XBox then load disc - and that made no difference.

However, as I was about to give up on playing the game and was about to delete my game information from my system (profile, add-ons, etc.), it occured to me to try deleting some of the game content on my system to see if this would fix the problem. I left my profile (since I'd worked so hard for that progress and those achievements), kept the videos (guessing they would have no impact), but deleted the Red and Black add-on packs. As soon as I did this, tried to play the game and everything worked just fine.

I started playing Rainbow Six Vegas, and probably downloaded these packs, before recent big update to the XBox interface. It is possible that re-installing the packs again may work. I haven't tried that.

If other eyes grow dull...

2008-11-28T11:34:00.010-05:00

If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain in us.

- John A. Logan, Grand Army of the Republic

Mash-up: Cell phone (SMS), Twitter, Yahoo! Pipes, Facebook

2008-10-13T15:32:00.006-04:00

So, my latest mash-up lets me post micro-blog posts from my cell phone to all my team-mates thru Twitter, into my Facebook network and to the homepage of my public website. Here is how.

To get started I setup an account at Twitter.com. In Twitter, under "Settings" and "Devices", I setup things so that I can post to Twitter using text messages from my cell phone. Most of the posts you see on my Twitter page at http://twitter.com/brianlawler were posted in this way. My content is also available as an RSS feed at http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/16665857.rss.

Facebook allows you to import posts from a variety of services such as del.icio.us, Google Reader and YouTube. There isn't a pre-built connector for Twitter, but there is a generic one for importing a blog. However, since I have lots of blogs, I aggregate my Twitter feed with feeds from my other blogs using Yahoo Pipes. This produces the "pipe" of output you see at http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ILFq8d1_3RG8D_qnpgt1Yg This pipe primarily uses the "Fetch Feed" and "Union" syntax of Pipes.

In Pipes, you will also want to use the "Truncate" operator. The reason is that Facebook imposes a block if you post "abusively". Depending upon how many blogs you have and the number of posts in the feeds from those blogs, it is pretty easy to trigger the Facebook block the first time the RSS from your pipe is imported into Facebook. So, use the Truncate and set this down to about 20 posts or so. Over time, after the initial import, you can increase this. This has the effect of putting more of your existing posts into the feed and they will get added to Facebook. Facebook won't say what the magic number is to trigger a block, but I've found that if you aren't importing more than a dozen or so posts a day... should be fine.

Back to my Pipe, we see that this is also availalbe as an RSS feed - see http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=ILFq8d1_3RG8D_qnpgt1Yg&_render=rss. This is the RSS feed you load into Facebook.

The end result ends up on my Facebook page and in the feed seen by my Facebook friends.

Those same Twitter posts also end up on my public website at http://www.brianlawler.org/

The Twitter posts end up on my website thru a different pipe - see http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=da01fc23b3d4a975e6859ad270c73f47. The reason I use a different pipe allows me to mix and match what blog posts end up on Facebook, or on website, or on both. Also, my website doesn't impose blocks for too many posts at one time.

My website at http://www.brianlawler.org/ is powered by SharePoint so I can't run the RSS feed from Pipes straight to the site. Actually, SharePoint has a control that would allow this but my SharePoint hoster (like most public SharePoint hosters) either blocks this control or makes it difficult to use. I get around this by feeding the RSS from Pipes next to Feedburner. Feedburner doesn't do anything to the feed other than expose it thru a snippet of JavaScript. It is this JavaScript that I then put into a regular HTML page on my SharePoint site.

So, there you have it. Use cell phone to send SMS message that ends up on Twitter. Feed Twitter to a couple of Yahoo Pipes. Send one Yahoo pipe to Facebook. Send the other to Feedburner. Take the JavaScript Feedburner builds for me and use it to display my updates on my website.

Recommended Browsers

2008-10-12T23:05:00.001-04:00

This is site is primarily built to be viewed with the Mozilla Firefox browser. This is the browser I use most of the time when working on this blog. You can download this at http://www.mozilla.com.

I also recommend you try the Google Chrome browser. You can download this at http://www.google.com/chrome. Chrome has good web standards compliance and is fast.

This site should also work well with Internet Explorer. I also use this browser when working on this site and (usually) make corrections to adjust for IE's quirks. Download from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/.

You might also try the Safari browser. Download from http://www.apple.com/safari/. I also don't use Safari often myself but have tried it a couple of times and didn't have any problems viewing this blog with that browser.

Using JavaScript to Display E-Mail Addresses

2008-09-08T12:40:00.003-04:00

I like to include email addresses in blog posts so that people can contact me with questions, comments, etc. However, I don't like how posting my email address seems to invite a flood of email spam. Here is how to use JavaScript in blog posts in order to get around this dilemma.

When I use an e-mail address in my blog - e.g. brian@blawler.com (not a real email address by the way)- that is a nice way to make it possible for people to contact me. I've had more than one past friend or colleague come across one of my blog or websites, find my email address on a "contact" page, and send me an e-mail to re-introduce themselves.

What isn't so nice is that spammers do the same thing. They run 'bot software that scans blogs, sites, etc. looking for e-mail addresses to start spamming. Boo. Hiss.

One way people get around this is by trying to publish their email addresses in such a way that the spam 'bots won't pickup the email address but a person will. A common form of this is to replace something like brian@blawler.com with brian(at)blawler(dot)com. That works pretty well but has a couple of problem. First, 'bots seem to be always be getting smarter about picking out that syntax and capturing those email addresses anyway. Second, my less computer literate friends and relatives won't always get how brian(at)blawler(dot)com should be entered into their email programs as brian@blawler.com

If you don't mind working in the HTML that makes your blog posts possible (and your blog system allows this - Blogger does), then you can improve things just a little bit by using JavaScript.

Using JavaScript, I can display something like this...

Home:

by using HTML and JavaScript code that looks like this...

     <p>Home:     
  <span style="color:green;"> 
    <script type="text/javascript"> 
      document.write(brian@blawler.com) 
    </script> 
  </span> 

</p>

Try this and you'll be able to display an email address that are easy to for your friendly blog readers to understand but not so easy for spammers to pickup.

Effective C++

2008-09-03T21:03:00.003-04:00

This is a summary of the items from the books Effective C++ and More Effective C++ by Scott Meyers.

The intended use is for the software architect to select the items to require, emphasize or ignore for their project - and for the programmers to refer to the book for explanations.

Shifting from C to C++

Prefer const and inline to #define
Prefer to
Prefer new and delete to malloc and free
Prefer C++ style comments

Memory Management

Use the same form in corresponding uses of new and delete
Use delete on pointer members and destructors
Be prepared for out-of-memory conditions
Adhere to convention when writing operator new and operator delete
Avoid hiding the “normal” form of new
Write operator delete if you write operator new

Constructors, Destructors and Assignment Operators

Declare a copy constructor and an assignment operator for classes with dynamically allocated memory
Prefer initialization to assignment in constructors
List members in an initialization list in the order in which they are declared
Make destructors virtual in base classes
Have operator= return a reference to *this
Assign all data members in operator=
Check for assignment to self in operator=

Classes and Functions: Design and Declaration

Strive for class interfaces that are complete and minimal
Differentiate among member functions, non-member functions and friend functions
Avoid data members in the public interface
Use const whenever possible
Prefer pass-by-reference to pass-by-value
Don't try to return a reference when you must return an object
Choose carefully between function overloading and parameter defaulting
Avoid overloading on a pointer and a numerical type
Guard against abiguity
Explicitly disallow use of implicitly generated member functions you don't want
Partition the global namespace

Classes and Functions: Implemention

Avoid returning “handles” to internal data
Avoid member functions that return non-const pointer or references to members less accessible than themselves
Never return a reference to a local object or to a de-reference pointer initialized by new within the function
Postpone variable definitions as long as possible
Use in-lining judiciously
Minimize compilation dependencies between files

Inheritance and Object-Oriented Design

Make sure public inheritance models “isa”
Differentiate betwen interitance of interface and inreitance of implementation
Never redefine an inherited nonvirtual function
Never redefine an inherited default parameter value
Avoid casts down the inheritance hierarchy
Model “has” or “is-implemented-in-terms-of” through layering
Differentiate between inheritance and templates
Use private inheritance judiciously
Use multiple inheritance jusdiciously
Say what you mean; understand what you are saying

Misc.

Know what functions C++ silently writes and calls
Prefer compile-time and link-time errors to runtime errors
Ensure that non-local static objects are initialized before they are used
Pay attention to compiler warnings
Familiarize yourself with the standard library
Improve your understanding of C++

Effective Code Comments.

2008-09-03T21:00:00.001-04:00

Below are my Do's and Don'ts on code commenting. - B. Lawler

Don't use comments to track author, revision, and related configuration management information - use your configuration management tools instead. Putting comments like “Author: John Smith” or “Revision: 2.3” as comments in the code is an antiquated method for handling this information - what about files that have multiple authors, how to you track revisions to image files, etc. This is much more appropriately done using configuration management tools.

Don't use comments to define the code - write clearer, more English-like, code instead. In any modern language, using any modern compiler, there is no advantage to using the variable “X” instead of using “AccountHoldersCurrentBalance”. Spend the extra keystrokes on a properly defined variable instead of a comment that says “X is the account holder's current balance”. Any comment of this type longer than a sentence or so indicates either that the code is poorly formed or that you are burying in code information that should be more visible (see next comment).

Don't bury in the code comments any information that needs to be known to people other than programmers - use the system documentation. It is fine to put in the code information that applies only to the software developers - they read code and will find this information when they do. Any information that should be part of the broader understanding of the system (e.g. adherence to security policies, computation of interest, etc.) should be in the public view.

Don't put requirements in the code - use the requirements management tools and trace those requirements to code components. The surest way to a wrecked system is for there to be multiple versions of a requirement - e.g. one in the document the business analysts read and another in the code the programmers are working on. Modern development tools make it pretty painless to capture even detailed requirements in CASE tools and to trace them to code components - this is a much better practice.

Don't put information in code that is better captured in analysis/design model. One of the problems with putting information about a business process in code is that these descriptions usually get chopped up to fit into the code blocks (usually files) supported by a language - explanations of the business logic that spans large code blocks is awkward embedded in code (and needs to be seen by other people). A better solution is to use modeling tools (e.g. UML tools like Rose or Together) that can keep code blocks and diagrams associated together.

Do use comments to explain peculiar syntax of statements. For example, when the current use of a language includes some conflicts in sytax - e.g. Microsoft Visual C++ versus ANSI C++. These style decisions and dependencies must be documented in the system documentation (and diagrams) but in-line comments can help clarify the syntax of key statements.

Do use comments to explain any convoluted algorithms. Anticipate how a maintenance programmer would read your code - the assumptions they might make, dead-ends in ways to solve the problem, etc. If that future programmer is likely to wonder “Why isn't this done like....”, that was something you tried, and there is a legitimate reason it didn't work - this is a good thing to explain.

Some Basic XML "Best Practices"

2008-09-03T20:39:00.002-04:00

Here are some very basic XML "best practices"...

Favor the most strict document definition that is practical. Favor well-formed documents over no validation at all. Favor valid XML over well-formed XML.

Favor expressive validation over nominal validation. Favor schemas over DTDs. However, if you toolkit makes automatic validation of DTD-based documents easier than schema-based, this may make you favor DTDs.

Favor automated testing... but test no matter what. Ant has an task that is convienient for autmated testing of large numbers of XML documents.

Things to watch out for in email...

2008-07-02T10:39:00.003-04:00

Here are a couple of things to watch out for in emails...

Be very suspicious when the email address used in the body of the email, the "from" and the "reply-to" addresses don't match
NEVER click on a link in an email. Enter the address you know to be safe directly into your browser
Be very suspicious of emails from HotMail, Google and Yahoo email accounts when from people you don't know - these are disposable email accounts and popular with scammers
Be wary of email accounts from Netherlands (.nl) and other counties known to have many hackers and little if any law enforcement going after the hackers

Source code testing rules, standards, references, etc. (incl. ParaSoft JTest).

2008-07-02T00:37:00.001-04:00

In conversations with the customers, I frequently see confusion about how "standards" are enforced with automated source code testing tools. Below is my summary of how this works. I mostly use ParaSoft JTest but would apply to other tools as well by CAST Software, Fortify, Borland/Together, etc.

I'm using a certain vocabulary here just to try and make certain points clear. In my observation, it is less important that one enforce this particular vocabulary than that the project participants have clarity about these ideas.... and uses whatever vocabulary works for them.

Rules - Source code analysis tools like JTest come with 100s of discrete, fine-grained, "rules". For example, a JTest rule on JavaBeans [BEAN.JDBC-4] says "Do not use JDBC code in JavaBean classes". One of the optimization rules rules [OPT.PCS-3] says, "Use char() instead of startsWith() for one character comparisons". As you can see, these rules are very specific and technical.

These rules are intended to be turned on or off individually. So, for example, JTest comes with about 493 of these rules. To use these tools successfully, endeavors of some defined scope (a subsystem, project, program, organization, etc.) need to figure out which of the rules they will turn on and which they will turn off. Rules may be included or excluded for a variety of reasons: - The rules may apply to a technology (J2ME, EJBs, etc.) that isn't being used in the code to be examined. - The rules may reflect "best practices" from the past (and applicable to code of that era) but not reflect contemporary practices - The rules may reflect "early adopter" practices appropriate for a cutting-edge project but not appropriate for a more conservative team - A rule may, or may not, reflect fundamental architecture and design decisions about the project

There are rules available in the tools that contradict each other. This is because tools of this type provide a generalized capability to evaluate source code against criteria.... and what criteria should be applied depends upon the situation and the design decisions of the project. So, for example, there may be a rule that says "Always do X" and another rule that says "Never do X" and then it is up to the development team to turn on the rule appropriate to the situation.

More is not better and a common mistake is for teams to turn on all, or almost all, of the rules. This has two severely negative consequences. The first is that turning on rules that don't really apply to the project can generate very many false errors. The other is that in the case of one rule says "Do this" but another rule says "Never do this" then having both turned on will get the code/build/test teams stuck in a loop that uses up lots of time and effort but never makes any progress.

References - All of the tools of this type draw extensively from established references. ParaSoft JTest evaluates Java source code so it will cite Effective Java by Joshua Bloch, Elements of Java Style by Ambler et al, and other well know books or papers on Java programming. ParaSoft C++ Test (or other C++ tools) cite from comparable references on C++ such as Effective C++ by Meyers, Large Scale C++ Design by Lakos, and others.

There is a many-to-many relationship between the rules and the references. So, for example, a rule that says "Do not declare multiple variables in one statement" [JTest, COSTA.MVOX-3] will cite as references both Elements of Java Style by Ambler et al.....and will also cite SUN's Code Conventions for the Java Programming Language (1999) since this recommendation was in both of those books. Going the other way, something from a dominant reference on Java (e.g. Design or document for inheritance or else prohibit it, Item #15, Effective Java by Bloch) might be broken down into several discrete rules in a tool like JTest.

Source code tools generally provide only a partial implementation of the references they cite or the topics they address. These tools provide an automated capability to review software but most reference provide a topical (e.g. security) orientation for reviewing code.... both automated and manual. So, for example, a JTest rule or portability [PORT.ENV-1] says, "Do not use System.getenv()" and cites Flanagan's Java in a Nutshell book as a reference. A good rule to have available but the set of portability rules available are both an incomplete implementation of Flanagan's recommendations and incomplete relative to what is necessary to achieve a significant measure of portability.

Standards - It is easy for the confusion to take over about what the word "standard(s)" means. One of the basic sources of confusion is what is the scale meant by the word "standard". Some people will refer to a small, fine-grained, item (such as a JTest rule) as a "standard" and then accumulate these into the "standards" they want applied to their code. Others will refer to a larger published work saying something like, "I want to enforce this standard on our code".... while pointing to a book (or other reference work) they got from a colleague or book store. One of the reasons why I favor using "rule" and "reference" is that is seems to break this confusion and stakeholders more intuitively (and consistently) recognize the difference in scale here.

Comments on Rational's Data Architect

2008-07-02T00:22:00.005-04:00

Re-post from 2006. BL]Rational Rose is a product IBM got when they bought Rational who had, in turn, aquired the product themselves a few years earlier. IBM decided to "freeze" the Rose product with the 2003 version. While they have issued updates/patches the product remains a v.2003 product with no plans to develop any further. Rational Data Architect comes from a different product line. A defining quality of Rational Rose Enterprise was that in one product you got modeling for lots of languages - C++, Java, XML, SQL, etc. However, it could be easily argued that it didn't work with any of them particularly well. Also, expanding the product wasn't easy. There was a small cottage industry for this in the '90s but even when Rational tried to expose the Rose engine to Visual Basic programmers it never really took off. One of the weakest areas of Rose has always been the SQL, database and information engineering uses. Pretty good for C++ and Java but got trounced by competitors in the data tools markets. IBM decided to develop a set of new products based upon the Eclipse platform. One of these was Rational XDE for Eclipse - Rational Data Architect come from this heritage and not the Rose legacy product line. XDE was targetted to enterprise Java developers. IBM released a similar product, Rational XDE for Visual Studio, for developers working with .Net technology. IBM has continued to dissect its product line into smaller, more tightly focused products (away from the Rose "everything in one product") approach. Also to use Eclipse as the underlying product. They have also continued to expand their push as a business company (see the ads for Global Services). The Data Architect also reflects that push - you will notice the emphasis on business impact, information engineering, etc. as much as the DB2 integration. I've only dabbled in this set of tools - never used it for a commercial project. But I do have a few (not entirely ignorant) comments based on what I've seen and read. * Don't let your imagination get ahead of reality on the integration possible with the Requirements Management tool ReqPro. That integration is possible (so the marketing brochure isn't a lie) but may not be as robust as you hope. For example, I've only been able to setup integration with ReqPro at one level of abstraction (i.e. use cases) and the information shared at that touchpoint isn't very extensive.

* The ability to connect to data sources using JDBC certainly exposes most databases to Data Architect (since JDBC is available for so many products) but the breadth comes at the expense of depth. This is not a mechanism that will expose very detailed proprietary information about a database. To get in depth info from Oracle database you should probably use Oracle tools. But, for enterprise planning, that detail may not matter.

* The ability to change notation forms (IE or UML) is cool - something Rose, System Architect, etc. have always done but sort of handy nonetheless. I don't know if it can be customized.

* This product requires a lot of integration by eyeballs - at least to my mind. It has some really slick browsing capabilities but I don't see where it is that "smart".....at least not $5,000 per seat level of smart. You can color code and make table maps and make lots of charts....about what Visio Enterprise does for 1/5 the cost. Lots of the other features look slick but don't have much computer-assist in them. You even see this in how the product is described "...allowse users to...enables data professionals...enables the user....gives users the power...". Not lots of automation or smarts here but (and this is a huge "BUT") this isn't one of the products I really know very well so. There is a trial available. Last time I used the trial it was 15 day key and a 2nd key wouldn't work on a machine that had already used an older key. Hope any of this helps.

XBox Live Gamer Tags in Your Blog Pages

2008-06-28T20:54:00.007-04:00

If you have an Xbox and use XBox Live, you are probably familiar with gamer tags which display your XBox Live user name, your gamer score and some icons about the games you have recently played. You can see these pages about yourself and other gamers thru XBox Live on you XBox 360 console.

What you may not know is that this information can be embedded in your webpages, blogs, etc. Here is an example:

<iframe src="http://gamercard.xbox.com/XBOX-LIVE-NAME-HERE.card" frameborder="0" width="204" scrolling="no" height="140">

So, for example, my gamer tag is "BrianLawler". The code to show my gamer tag info on my blog would be:

<iframe src="http://gamercard.xbox.com/brianlawler.card" frameborder="0" width="204" scrolling="no" height="140">

Here is what that looks like:

This shows:

my rep is a mid-range 3 1/4 stars since I rarely play multiplayer/on-line
I've earned a pathetic 570 gamer point - hardly the 1000s others have earned
and the games I've been playing lately are Valve's Orange Box (mostly Portal), Bejeweled, Dance Dance Revolution, Command & Conquer 3, and Call of Duty 4.

Getting XHTML Valid Ampersands with the New Blogger Templates

2008-06-21T09:14:00.007-04:00

If you have switched to the new Blogger templates, there are a couple of quirks to building XHTML valid pages. One is how to get your expressions to properly use the ampersand character. This post explains how to do that.

To begin, let's clarify our vocabulary a bit:

"&" is a single ampersand character. This is legacy HTML code that is invalid in modern XHTML.

"&" is an ampersand word. It has 4 characters and the last is a semi-colon. This was supported in HTML but is required in XHTML in place of the ampersand character.

As mentioned in another post, to build pages that are XHTML compliant you need to replace the "&" with "&". When using an HTML/XHTML editor (like DreamWeaver), this is a straightforward substitution. The same goes for using the Blogger "classic" templates - just replace any places you've used with "&" with "&". However, if you are using the new Blogger templates, this isn't has straighforward as you might think.

Consider a snippet from a new Blogger template that is supposed to build a link to be able to edit the current post on the current blog. The example below uses the "expr:href" element in the new Blogger templates that allows you to build an expression that when evaluated the value will be assigned to the "href" element of an HTML link. In this example, we are combining the URL to Blogger's edit feature with a variable for the blog ID and finally adding a variable for the post id of the current page. Blogger figures out the id for the page as it is generated and stored on the web server. Notice the use of the ampersand in that href expression - the code generated will not validate as XHTML.

This...

<a class='edit-link' expr:href='"http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19459839&postID="+data:post.id' title='permanent link'> Edit < /a>

....produces the following invalid result:

<a class='edit-link' href='http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19459839&postID=12345' title='permanent link'> Edit < /a>

You'd think that you could replace the ampersand character with the ampersand word. That approach will work with regular HTML/XHTML pages and will work with the pages generated by Blogger classic templates.... but won't work with the new Blogger templates. The problem is that with the new Blogger templates the valid ampersand word will, when the page is generated by Blogger, get converted back to the invalid single character character.

This...

<a class='edit-link' expr:href='"http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19459839&postID="+data:post.id' title='permanent link'> Edit < /a>

...still produces the same invalid result:

<a class='edit-link' href='http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19459839&postID=12345' title='permanent link'> Edit < /a>

The trick to get what you want is to realize that valid ampersand word is itself actually composed of an ampersand character and then a short character string. So, to get the Blogger processing engine to take your template and generate valid XHTML pages (and knowing that it will convert a valid word into the invalid character) you need to get your template to do two things:

Use the valid XHTML word for ampersand and let it get converted to the single ampersand character
Also include in the template the three "mp;" characters which pass thru Blogger with no changes and will get appended to the single ampersand character in the output to re-form a valid XHTML ampersand word.

In that case, this....

<a class='edit-link' expr:href='"http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19459839&amp;postID="+data:post.id' title='permanent link'> Edit < /a>

.... will produce a valid result in the output:

<a class='edit-link' href='http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19459839&postID=12345' title='permanent link'> Edit < /a>

There you have it! Success!

Writing Valid XHTML links using Ampersands

2008-06-20T16:52:00.015-04:00

URL links on web pages often include the ampersand ("&") but that isn't valid XHTML. It isn't hard to fix though. Here is how.

Ampersands are used in URL strings to send sets of variables along with the URL post to tell the web server more about what it is you are asking for. Consider this example:

<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=19459839">Edit this post</a>

In this example, clicking on this URL says that you want to use the "edit" command on Blogger to edit a post on blog number "19459839" and on that blog the post you want to edit is post number "8950573203392784572". The ampersand is read as "and" - you want to open an edit window for a certain blog and a certain blog post.

All well and good but the page is no longer valid XHTML because of that pesky ampersand. That just isn't valid XHTML.

This is easy enough to fix though. The trick is to use the proper XHTML substitute. In this case it is to replace the "&" with "&". Note that the substitute is 4 characters and that the last character is the semi-colon.

That makes the XHTML code in your page look like this:

<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g&blogID=19459839">Edit this post</a>

The URL still works as before and it is probably rendered by your browser as an "&" symbol - i.e. if you hover your mouse over the link you will still see "&" not "&" but the underlying code (what you would see using "View Source" in your browser) still uses the "&".

Do this and you will have valid XHTML easy enough.

The Insurgent View of Convoy Marines in Iraq

2008-06-06T09:27:00.008-04:00

From a colleague of mine and fellow Marine....

In 2003 when we and the Army 3d Infantry Division had taken down Baghdad and had truck convoys scattered all the way into Kuwait, I was a plans officer at USCENTCOM when our intelligence intercepted an order from the Iraqi insurgency commander. It was a field order to all the insurgent unit commanders and it went something like this:

"Resistance Commanders,

When attacking supply and truck units you must be aware that there are different types of enemy forces:

1. These are the forces of the enemy armies (photos of various soldiers in their uniforms); and...

2. These are our enemies in the US Marine Corps which wears a different uniform like this (photo of a Marine wearing the newly issued USMC digital uniform).

When planning your attacks on supply lines and truck convoys ensure that you do NOT attack a US Marine unit. If you do, these supply-unit Marines will immediately act like Army infantry and they will attack you. They will also pursue you. They are well-trained and well-armed.

The other army truck and supply units will not pursue you. Attack them instead."

Semper Fi,

- Brian

Multiple JVMS, Pros and Cons, The Basics

2008-06-04T10:47:00.002-04:00

Modern enterprise computing systems supporting Java, especially Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), commonly provide mechanisms for supporting multiple Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) to run at the same time. What is this and why would you want (or not want) to do this?

If we begin with a basic understanding of computing hardware (memory, CPU, disk, network cards, etc.) and operating systems (Windows Vista, LINUX, Solaris, etc.) then we have the basics for understanding what multiple JVMs are and why they might be used. With any computing hardware and operating system combination (Intel + Windows XP, Intel + LINUX, Mac + OS X, SPARC + Solaris, Sparc + LINUX, etc.) we expect a basic set of services to be available with which we can run programs, store data, communicate over networks, etc.

One of the key ideas behind Java was to build a layer on top of the established hardware and operating system platforms that provided its own definition of a computing environment with all of those same services (computation, input/output, communication, etc.) we expect of a hardware-OS combination. Why the redundancy? Because the assertion was (and largely proven true) that there would be some value in allowing developers to break free from writing programs for a specific hardware-OS combination but for this new Java layer that could be added on top of a variety of hardware-OS combinations.

Since the Java environment provides so many of the computing services expected from a hardware-OS environment but is actually just a software layer, it was referred to as a "virtual machine".

Mmmm, but if the Java virtual machine is just a piece of software running on top of another hardware-OS stack (say, Intel and Windows Server 2003) and that hardware-OS stack allows lots of pieces of software to run at the same time, then what is to prevent one from running multiple Java virutal machines at the same time? The answer is "nothing" and this is commonly done.

Why might a person run multiple JVMs at the same time?

1.) To isolate errant programs. If you have two applications, run them in the same JVM, and one of them does something to crash the JVM then it will take the other application down with it. Running applications, or sets of applications, in separate JVMs allows one to limit the consequences of errant programs.

2.) To run multiple versions of the JVM at the same time. Java has evolved a lot over the past 5-10 years. There are new features in the basic syntax of the language, new features in the libraries available, etc. The existing set of features in J2EE is huge. Running multiple JVM gives us two benefits in this regard. If you have "older" Java apps written for a Java syntax that has been deprecated or no longer supported and "new" Java apps that will only run onthe latest and greatest version of Java, you can run two differently configured JVMs but keep them on the same hardware - they will for example be able to share disk space. Similarly, when using the current spec. of J2SE/J2EE you might desire to have different environments that include/exclude different sets of the J2SE/J2EE feature sets - e.g. you might want an environment that does support EJBs and one that doesn't.

Why might a person not want to run multiple JVMs at the same time?

1.) Performance is one reason. There is some small overhead associated with the hardware-OS running multiple environments. So multiple JVMs may not be the best choice if you have a small number of applications, not prone to crashing, with no differences in the J2SE/J2EE features but needing as much performance in use of CPU, RAM, etc. For example, if you are using the Singleton or Flyweight pattern to make your applications memory efficient you will only get the benefits within the JVM and not across the JVMs.

2.) Inter-process communication. Related to the comment above about sharing objects, there are interprocess communication options available for applications within the same JVM that won't work (or as well) across JVMs. Doesn't mean apps in separate JVMs can't communicate - they can - but there is an impact here.

There are illustrative examples of the pros and cons - by no means a complete list. For more on this topic I recommend reading The Java Tutorial, The J2EE Tutorial, and Designing Enterprise Applications for the J2EE Platform. These focus on J2EE. This issue applies to non-J2EE uses of Java but I'm mostly familiar with J2EE and that seems to be the area most people have questions about.

Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives

2008-06-03T11:08:00.014-04:00

There is an excellent feature article in the Rocky Mountain News about the Marines charged with the final duties in care of fallen comrades-in-arms and the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. This article won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize and was also developed into a similarly moving and compelling book titled "Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives". The central figure of both the article and book is Maj. Steve Beck (now LtCol. Beck) but both the article and book include moving stories of a number of fallen Marines and their families. You can also hear an interview with the author and LtCol. Beck on-line via podcast from the story on NPR's Fresh Air.

What follows is a mix of extracts from the book and my commentary. All of the links rightfully lead you back to the original article.

One of the duties of the Casualty Officer is to inspect the fallen Marine to help prepare them for the final cermonies. This is an important part of the process in the custody and safe conduct of the deceased from the battlefield to the final resting place. Not every fallen Marine returns to a family, or friends, to mourn their loss. Especially in these cases, the fellow Marines of the burial details ensure that the fallen departs from the company of friends and not strangers.

Warfare often leaves the fallen Marine with a badly deformed, even unrecognizable, body. In many cases it is not possible to actually dress the body - the remains are simply wrapped in a burial shroud with a uniform laid on top of them. Prior inspection of the fallen Marine by the Casualty Officer allows them to advise the family about what they will see should they decide to view the body or have an open casket funeral.

The responsibilities of the Marine detail extend beyond transport of the fallen Marine to the burial site. An Honor Guard is not only charged literally with guarding the body but they they also ensure the needs of the Marine's family are served. At right, Katherine Cathey, wife of 2nd Lt. James Cathey, desired to remain with her husband the night before his burial so the Marines of his Honor Guard made a bed for her tucked beneath the flag drapping his casket. The Honor Guard stands continous watch over the fallen. The Honor Guard for Lt. Cathey stood watch for over 72 hours and included fellow Marines from the nearby University of Colorado.

Using Blogger with ASP, PHP and Other Scripting Languages

2008-05-31T16:44:00.005-04:00

Did you know that you can use Blogger to build sites with scripting languages like ASP and PHP? You can and it isn't really hard to do either.

First off, I've only found this works if you are using the FTP option to publish a site to your own web hosting service. Last time I tried, BlogSpot (Google's free hosting for Blogger blogs) didn't support any scripting languages that I could discover. If anyone finds out differently, please tell me. Also, the web service you are publishing your blog to has to have support for the scripting language.

That out of the way, there are a few setting in your Blogger control panel you need to tweak to get this to work.

First, you need to go under "Settings" and then "Publishing" and then look down that page for an entry titled "Blog Filename". By default, this will be "index.html". Change this to the appropriate entry for the scripting language you are using - default.asp (ASP), index.php (PHP), etc.

This will make sure the main page is generated with a suffix appropriate to the scripting language you are using. Now we need to get all of the other pages to do the same thing.

It isn't obvious that this will actually be controlled by the setting under "Settings" and "Archiving". Look down this page to the entry that says "Archive Filename" and change that to have an appropriate suffix as well. By default, it will say "archive.html" but you should change it to have an appropriate suffix - achive.asp (ASP), archive.php (PHP), etc.

I've used this with ASP and PHP but getting it to work with ASP.Net (e.g. "default.aspx") is a bit tricky.

Changing the archive setting affects the rest of the pages built by blogger. If you have Blogger configured for monthly archiving - then each of those monthly archive pages will follow the template set by the Archive Filename. If you have Enable Post Pages set to "Yes" those individual post pages (where a permalink points to) will also follow that pattern.

That is about it. Changing those two settings will get Blogger to generate filenames with the write suffix to be processed as script files. This means you can now embed script code into your blog posts.

There is one other setting you don't have to use but probably will want to. Under "Settings" and "Formatting" you should probably set "Convert Line Breaks" to "No". If set to "Yes" how Blogger re-formats your posts may interfere with the code sections being properly interpreted by the script processor in your hosting service.

Changing this last setting certainly makes editing the code easier to read. Otherwise, Blogger can re-format you posts to strip out the white space.

The code


<?php
echo 'Hello World!';
?>

ends up as ...


<?php echo 'Hello World!'; ?>

The HTML and code may still work and for small snippets isn't a problem but for larger blocks of code quickly can be near impossible to read.

ASP Snippet to Style an RSS Feed with XSL

2008-05-31T16:32:00.006-04:00

I'm not much into using Active Server Pages (ASP) anymore but I'm all about stylin' RSS/ATOM feeds to generate web content. So, here is a handy little snippet of code in ASP that does just that.


<%
 dim source
 dim style

 set source = Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.DomDocument")
 source.async = false
 source.setProperty "ServerHTTPRequest", true
 source.load CStr("http://www.brianlawler.net/blog/summaries/atom.xml")

 set style = Server.CreateObject("Msxml2.DomDocument")
 style.async = false
 style.setProperty "ServerHTTPRequest", true
 style.load CStr("http://www.brianlawler.net/blog/summaries/atom.xsl")

 source.transformNodeToObject style, Response

 set source = nothing
 set style = nothing
%>

A handy thing to remember about ASP (and why I still use this) is that ASP.Net hosting services almost always support ASP. Why use the ASP? Because those same hosting services don't always help you mix-n-match using ASP.Net with domains mapped to anything but the root folder or to using sub-domains. ASP, though not as slick in features as its ASP.Net kin, is much more forgiving. The script above can be run in any location on a server.

Hide the Headlines by Feedburner Icon from BuzzBoost

2008-05-29T16:59:00.004-04:00

If you use FeedBurner, you might have noticed they have a new service called "BuzzBoost" which can take your RSS or ATOM feed and create a piece of JavaScript that you can cut-paste into a regular HTML page to display the feed.

Very handy. I used this to build a page in my blog that summarizes recent updates.

One thing I don't like though is that while you have some options in the FeedBurner control panel to determine how the JavaScript displays the feed (do or do not display post date, number of words to display in the post summary, etc.) the one thing you can't turn off is the FeedBurner icon that the JavaScript displays.

I want to give credit where credit is due and you'll notice that I have a "powered by" link for FeedBurner on my blog but sometimes that logo just doesn't work for me.

You can't stop the JavaScript from generating the icon but you can use CSS to suggest to the browser that it not display this content.

When the JavaScript sends the HTML to your browser, all the HTML elements will come with class tags that mark it as FeedBurner content. You can use CSS to control the appearance of this content.

That includes using CSS to suggest that the browser not display some of the content generated by the BuzzBoost JavaScript.

The FeedBurner icon will come in a set of HTML tags that look like this:


<div id="creditfooter">
<a href="http://www.feedburner.com" target="_blank">
<img
   src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/buzzboost-pwrd.gif"
   alt="Headlines by FeedBurner" />
</a>
</div>

Here is the piece of CSS code that will suggest to the browser that the HTML snippet above should not be displayed:


div#creditfooter {
display: none;
}

Couple of things to remember. First, remember that CSS only suggests to the browser that the information not be displayed. The JavaScript still sends this content to the browser and the browser may ignore or not correctly apply the CSS instruction. The second is your grandma would be so disappointed to learn that you have been using mash-up tools like FeedBurner but not giving them credit. Make grandma proud of you and give credit where credit is due.

Helping Google Search See More of Your Blogger Blog

2008-05-29T15:03:00.011-04:00

You can help Google search find and keep current with the posts in your blog by using the Google Webmaster tools. Login to the Google Webmaster control panel and then you tell it where there are sitemaps that describe your site (or blog) content. Conveniently enough, RSS and ATOM feeds can be used as sitemaps because they describe where your posts are. Basic use of the Google Webmaster tools is fairly self-explanatory but if you have questions, the on-line help should do the trick.

However, ATOM and RSS feeds for a blog typically only have the latest 10-30 posts listed. If you have a large blog (100s of posts) this provides Google only the most recent updates to your blog. Probably not a problem if you have been using the Google Webmaster tools on your blog from the beginning as then Google will have been reading your site feeds as they are updated. However, if you start using the Google Webmaster tools after your blog already had many posts, you may find the older posts aren't shown in Google searchs.

One way around this is to provide Google with multiple feeds about your site. With many blog tools, feeds are available for posts by topic. Google's own Blogger service supports this and I use this on my own blog.

So, to get Google search to see more of the posts in your blog, all you have to do is load these additional feeds into the Google Webmaster tools.

Ah, but there is a wrinkle and that is that Google Webmaster tools is very picky about where these feeds are located. If the site I register with Google Webmaster tools is www.BrianLawler.org then it allows me to load sitemaps with URLs in www.BrianLawler.org (e.g. www.BrianLawler.org/atom.xml) or a sub-directory of www.BrianLawler.org (e.g. www.BrianLawler.org/blog/atom.xml). If you are using another domain (e.g. ww2.BrianLawler.org or www.BrianLawler.net) to provide those topic or label based feeds of you site/blog content, you won't be able to load those URLs.

How to get around this?

If your site or blog is hosted by a server that supports some kind of scripting (ASP, PHP, etc.) then you can write a little script on your server that facades the content from another server.

Here is an example in ASP.Net using C#


<script runat="server">
protected void Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
  doc.Load("http://www2.blogger.com/feeds/19459839/posts/default/-/UML/");
  Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
  doc.Save(Response.Output);
}
</script>

In this case, my blog might be at www.BrianLawler.com/blog but the label feeds are coming from ww2.blogger.com. Google Webmaster tools wouldn't let me add the feeds from ww2.blogger.com as sitemaps for www.BrianLawler.com/blog but if I store the script above at the URL www.BrianLawler.com/blog/rss-UML.aspx then that URL can be loaded to the Google Webmaster tools and now all of the posts on a topic ("UML" in this example) will also be known to the Google search engine.

This is also easily done in PHP using the fopen function.

Hide Edit Widget Controls in Blogger

2008-05-29T08:29:00.012-04:00

If you use the new Blogger templates, those will by default insert a little widget control in various places of your pages to allow you to edit those page elements. These look like this:

Handy for editing the layout of your page but perhaps you don't need that convenience and find these icons unattractive or distracting.

Using the Blogger menus you can't remove this from your pages. If you don't want to display these icons, you have to edit the HTML template that is used to generate your blog pages.

One way is to look for the code in the HTML template that generates these controls. This code looks like:

<b:include name='quickedit'/>

If you don't want these to be displayed, you can either remove them or use HTML comments to comment them out.

The other way is to use CSS to tell your browser not to display these widgets. When the pages are generated, they are wrapped in HTML spans

<span class='widget-item-control'>...</span>

This can be hidden by adding a CSS element in the form of


span.widget-item-control{
 display:none;
}

How do you decide to who to marry? (written by kids)

2008-04-18T17:05:00.002-04:00

How do you decide who to marry?

You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports,she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming. -- Alan, age 10

No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with. -- Kristen, age 10

What is the right age to get married?

Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then. -- Camille, age 10

How can you tell if two people are married?

You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids. -- Derrick, age 8

What do you think your mom and dad have in common?

Both don't want any more kids. -- Lori, age 8

What do most people do on a date?

Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough. -- Lynnette, age 8

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date. -- Martin, age 10

What would you do on a first date that was turning sour?

I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns. -- Craig, age 9

When is it okay to kiss someone?

When they're rich. -- Pam, age 7

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that. -- Curt, age 7

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do. -- Howard, age 8

Is it better to be single or married?

It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them. -- Anita, age 9

How would the world be different if people didn't get married?

There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there? -- Kelvin, age 8

How would you make a marriage work?

Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck. -- Ricky, age 10

Joke about Military Retirement Bonus [PG]

2008-03-06T13:06:00.008-05:00

This joke has been cleaned up a bit from how I originally heard it... but I still wouldn't repeat it in front of my Grandma. Proceed or not as your own tastes dictate. - BL

Headquarters Marine Corps recently decided that it had too many senior NCOs and implemented an incentive program to encourage early retirement. The most novel aspect of the program is that it promised a bonus of $1,000 for every inch measured in a straight line between any two points in his body. The retiring NCO got to choose what those two points would be.

The first to accept asked that he be measured from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He was measured at six feet and walked out with a bonus of $72,000.

The second who accepted was a little more clever and asked to be measured from the tip of his outstretched hands to his toes. He walked out with $96 ,000.

The third was a grizzled old "Top" who had served in Desert Storm, the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and multiple tours to "denied territory" in between. When asked where he would like to be measured he replied, "From my right thumb to my right butt cheek."

It was suggested by the pension man that he might want to reconsider, explaining about the nice big checks the previous two NCOs had received. But the old "Top" insisted and they decided to go along with him providing the measurement was taken by a medical officer. The medical officer arrived and instructed the "Top" to "drop 'em," which he did. The medical officer placed the tape measure on the tip of the Chief's thumb and began to work back...

"Dear Lord!" he suddenly exclaimed, "Where is your right butt cheek?"

The "Top" calmly replied, "Fallujah."

Selected Papers by Santa Fe Institute CSSS-'07 Faculty

2008-03-05T11:17:00.004-05:00

In 2007, I attended the Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS-'07). The faculty for this program includes professors and researchers from a number of disciplines. Here is a list of collected papers by that faculty that were interesting to me or addressed topics related to my own work. The items shown here include materials they used during the program, from their websites, or found in my searches of their published work.

Back and Schwefel, "An Overview of Evolutionary Algorithms for Parameter Optimization" (PDF) [cited by O'Reilly]

Bednar, Bramson, Jones-Rooy and Page; "Conformity, Consistency and Cultural Heterogeneity", 2006 (PDF)

Bradley, Easley and Stolle; "Reasoning about non-linear system identification"; Artificial Intelligence, 2001 (PDF)

Bradley, "Time Series Analysis", 2002 (PDF)

Bradley, "Numerical Solutions of Differential Equations", teaching supplement, 1998 and 2002 (PDF)

Cherkashin, Farmer and Lloyd; "A simple evolutionary game with feedback between perception and reality", 2007 (PDF)

Clauset, Shalizi and Newman; "Power-law distributions in empirical data"; 2007 (PDF)

Clauset, Young and Gleditsch; "On the Frequencey of Severe Terrorist Events"; 2007 (PDF)

Clauset, Newman and Moore; "Finding community structure in very large networks", 2004 (PDF)

Clauset and Moore, "How do networks become navigable?", 2003 (PDF)

Farmer and Sidorowich, "Predicting chaotic time series", 1987 (PDF)

Farmer and Lux, "Applications of statistical physics in economics and finance", 2007 (PDF)

Foot, Michandani and Rockmore; "Two-dimensional wreath product transforms", 2003 (PDF)

Golman and Page, "Adjustments Dynamics and Equilibrium Selection: Why How Players Learn Matters", 2007 (PDF)

Gillemot, Farmer and Lillo; "There's more to volatility than volume", 2005 (PDF)

Guerin, "Peeking into the black-box: Some art and science to visualizing agent-based systems", 2004 (PDF)

Guerin and Kunkle, "Emergence of constraint in self-organizing systems", 2004 (PDF)

Hong and Page, "Interpreted and Generated Signals", 2006 (PDF)

Joyce, Kennison, Densmore, et al; "My way or the highway: a more naturalistic model of altruism tested in an interative Prisoner's Dilemma"; 2005 (PDF)

Le Baron, "Agent-based computational finance", 2005 (PDF)

Le Baron, "A builders guide to agent-based financial markets", 2001 (PDF)

Le Baron, "Wealth evolution and distorted financial forecasts", 2007 (PDF)

Malen, Orrison and Rockmore; "Computing isotypic projects with the Lanczos iteration", 2004 (PDF)

Moore and Rockmore, "Generic quantum Fourier transforms", SODA, 2004 (PDF)

Newman, "The structure and function of complex networks", 2003 (PDF)

Newman, "Power laws, pareto distributions and Zipf's law", 2006 (PDF)

Rasmussen et al, "Collective Intelligence for Decision Support in Very Large Stakeholder Networks: The Future of US Energy System", 2006 (PDF)

Shubik and Smith, "Building theories of economic process", 2006 (PDF)

Shubik and Smith, "Fiat money and the natural scale of government", 2005 (PDF)

Smith, "Dimensional analysis, scaling and zero-intelligence modeling for financial markets"[slides], 2006 (PDF)

Smith, "Classical thermodynamics and economic general equilibrium theory" [slides], 2007 (PDF)

Smith, "Dimensional analysis, scaling and zero-intelligence modeling for financial markets" [slides], 2007 (PDF)

Strelioff, Crutchfield and Hubler; "Inferring Markov Chains: Bayesian Estimation, Model Comparison, Entropy Rate and Out-of-class Modeling", 2007 (PDF)

White et al, "A generative model for feedback networks", 2005 (PDF)

Zovko and Farmer, Correlations and Clustering in the Trading of Members of the London Stock Exchange, 2007 (PDF)

Using @import statements to manage CSS stylesheets

2008-02-27T14:23:00.001-05:00

I favor using CSS stylesheets to manage all of the presentation and formatting (font, color, spacing, etc.) of my web content. Had that nice separation between content and presentation that works so nicely. I also like to make sure that my CSS stylesheets are W3C compliant.

One of my favorite tricks is to build into my web pages a link that will check the HTML page and the CSS stylesheet using the W3C validators.

However, one problem I find is that the convenient way to check the CSS for a website is to put all of the CSS into one file but the most convenient way to organize by CSS for a large site is to use separate files.

For validating the CSS, you want to put all of the CSS into one file. This makes it easy to create a link that will validate that file using the W3C validator. Putting everything in one file means you only have to have one link to test the CSS for a site and also makes sure that everything gets tested.

Under the "everything in one file" strategy, you end with a single declaration in the <head> region of your page that imports the CSS file

... link href="default.css" type="text/css" ...

However, for a complex site it is more common to have separate CSS files - e.g. a file with the CSS for the default HTML tags, a file with the CSS for the header content, a file with the CSS for menu, etc.

It is easy enough to attach multiple CSS files to your HTML content - you just have to use multiple link statements in the block. For example:

... link href="default.css" type="text/css" ...   
... link href="menu.css" type="text/css" ...   
... link href="footer.css" type="text/css" ...

The problem here is validation. If I want to make sure that all my CSS content is valid, I have to validate each of these .css files separately... or do I?

I've found that the way to get the best of both worlds is to take advantage of the CSS @import statement. Using this approach, I continue to keep my CSS content into separate, manageable sized, files - default.css, menu.css, footer.css, etc. Then I create a master CSS stylesheet that imports each of those separate files.

@import "default.css"
@import "menu.css"
@import "footer.css"

The master CSS file can be attached to the HTML content with a single statement

... link href="master.css" type="text/css"

This master CSS file can also be validated by the W3C validator which is smart enough to process all of the included content - i.e. an error in either footer.css or menu.css would be reported.

What is the catch? The @import statement is a fairly modern CSS construct and it isn't supported by all browsers. It is supported by the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Mozilla.

Blog Topics

2008-02-27T01:22:00.007-05:00

The posts in my blog are organized into several topics. These include...

.Net - Software development using the Microsoft .Net Framework. Mostly ASP.Net and C#.

Blogger - Hints on how using Google's Blogger service.

C++ - Information about programming with C++ and an emphasis on ANSI C++

CSS - Posts about using Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) to style web content.

HTML - Information about using HTML for web content. Also includes using XHTML.

Humor - Things I find funny or amusing... you may or may not agree.

Java - Posts on developing applications with Java. Mostly about Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

Math - Posts on applied math and statistics. Some info on topics like constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) or Analytical Hierarch Process (AHP)

Quotes - Collections of quotes on various topics

Rational - Rational tools and techniques. Mostly Rational Rose or Reqpro. Some about ReqPro and other tools or techniques.

Semper Fi - Opinions, humor, essays, etc. about life with brothers and sisters in arms.

UML - Information about object-oriented analysis and design using the Unified Modeling Language (UML)

Videos - Collected videos. Mostly my YouTube playlists.

Updates to My Blog

2008-01-29T08:19:00.013-05:00

Here is a summary of recent (or relatively recent) updates to my blog.

Note: This list is automatically generated by a piece of JavaScript and while the post is dated 1/29/08 what you are seeing in the list below is updated as I add posts to my blog.

Hints for writing e-mail

2008-01-16T14:47:00.002-05:00

Found these in my inbox. Thought they were pretty good so decided to post them. - BL

Use meaningful subject lines. Using a subject line of "Howdy" (we all do it... but shouldn't) makes it hard for people to browse their e-mail inbox for specific e-mails - e.g. the one that should have been titled "Directions to Jeff and Abby's house".

Break up major topics into separate emails. This relates to the prior point. If an long e-mail about the weather, politics, Aunt Bessie's arthritis, etc. has buried in it some really important medical information....that makes it hard to find that important information amidst the routine. Better to break that into two emails - one called "Family News" and another titled "Important Medical Information". This also prevents people accidently deleting the information that should be saved.

Use email priority settings appropriately. Not every email application supports this but most allow you to flag your outgoing email as "Routine" versus "Important" or something like that. This is handy because when the email lands in someone else's inbox it will have a flag or indicator (e.g. an exclamation mark) that helps them know this is an important email. Don't mark everything as important - people will ignore you after awhile. If your email tool doesn't support setting the priority of outbound email (or it is too hard to use), try indicating this in the subject line - e.g. "Travel Info for Trip to France (Important)" or "Parent-Aide Handbook (Please save)".

Be cautious about putting too many addresses on an email. When you put many (how many?) addresses on an email, many email systems will think it is spam. To get around this, consider sending an email to groups of people separately - i.e. send it first to family but then forward it to selected friends. 5 addresses is fine. 55 is almost always a problem. 25? Depends on the servers that handle that email. That breaks some rules of e-mail etiquette (it is impolite to send things "blind copy" or "behind some's back") but is practically necessary with spam filters working as they do.

Edit emails before you forward them. If you forward an email that has already been forwarded many times, it can also get flagged as spam and may never reach your recipients. To get around this, try editing/pruning the email before you forward to cut out all that extra text shown as it was forwarded before and leave just the text/message/etc. that is important.

Converting Videos for YouTube with Quicktime Pro

2008-01-05T16:39:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to get the hang of working in video and to join the YouTube generation. One of the things I've been trying to figure out is what is the best source format for videos to post.

As a preface, let me say that my home movies are shot in super-short clips on my Kodak point-and-shoot digital camera (or something comparable from a friend or family member) or from my Sony HandCam Digital8 (tape) video camera.

I do most of my conversions using Quicktime Pro because it is easy to use and doesn't cost too much. The comments below are based on using Quicktime Pro. I also sometimes use Adobe Premier but will cover that in a later post.

AVI format - If possible, this seems to be the best source format to use. For my source material, AVI format is the highest fidelity (resolution, frame rate, color depth, etc.) source format available... and so it makes sense that the AVI source format videos I post to YouTube look the best.

AVI format material is a realistic source format.... for me at least. Most of the point-and-shoot cameras I use save (or can be configured to save) their short clips in AVI format. When I read the content off my video camera tapes, they are by default are in AVI format.

The primary downside of AVI is that it takes up lots of space. On some of the point-and-shoot cameras I use, if you use AVI, it eats up the space on the camera really fast. YouTube also has a file-size limit when using the default file uploader and AVI segments from my video camera exceed that limit... so I have to use the alternative YouTube uploader.

QuickTime format (MOV). As you'd expect Quicktime Pro easily converts AVI files to Quicktime (mov) format. There are two default profiles - "Broadband" and "LAN". For a 31mg AVI source file, the LAN file will be about 2mg and the Broadband file will be about 1mg - a huge size reduction. Both produce nice results when uploaded/converted to YouTube . The LAN profile produces a file with modest degradation in video quality (from AVI) and the Broadband profile just a bit more. For me the "sweat spot" in the AVI-to-MOV conversion is the LAN profile. The only downside for these profiles is that Quicktime isn't a universally recognized format. Anyone with Quicktime (or iTunes) can use this but it isn't accessible for most users of Windows Media Player, Zune, etc.

MPEG formats (MP4). Quicktime Pro has two "MPEG" profiles - "LAN" and "BroadBand". Both produce files that look fine when viewed on my computer but look really bad when converted on YouTube. Since the video quality is soooooooo poor, I don't use either of these profiles.

Apple TV, iPod and iPhone MPEG formats (M4V). Quicktime Pro also has profiles intended to convert source content into video file for various Apple devices. For a 31mg source AVI file the Apple TV file is about 3mg, the iPod file is about 2mg and the iPhone file is about 1mg. I originally assumed the larger Apple TV file would result in a higher quality image on YouTube - I was wrong. The image quality is pretty poor - about the same as the MP4 MPEG files. The iPod and iPhone files look pretty good - about the same as the Quicktime files. The big advantage for the iPod/iPhone MPEG files over Quicktime format is that the MPEG files can be read/used by Windows Media Player, Zune, and other media players.

Conclusion. For me, where file sizes permit, I stick to AVI and use this as a source format for my YouTube videos. When I need/want a smaller file size to post or need a file in a format that will also be used by media players (iTunes, Zune, etc.), then I use the iPod MPEG M4V format.

- Brian

Assembler References

2007-12-19T00:49:00.001-05:00

Here is my recommended reading list on assembly language programming. This is mostly from some courses taken at Hopkins (1996-1998) and Regis (1998-2000).

Call of Duty 2 for XBox 360

2007-11-19T09:27:00.001-05:00

I've played CoD for the PC (version 1) and CoD 2 for both my PC and my Xbox 360.

I thought the original CoD was innovative in the use of the three storylines. That you start off the Soviet/Russian storyline with no weapon... some people thought was a gimmick but I thought it was innovative. Each storyline had a different feel to it.... the wide-open battles in Africa versus the scramble from building to building in the Russian campaign. CoD 2 for both PC and XBox 360 introduced a decent use of smoke, sand, etc. to limit visibility and provide concealment at interesting times.

However, I was just telling some friends yesterday that after battling thru those Rainbow 6 missions it has been much easier going (almost too easy) playing CoD2 for my XBox 360 again. In R6 I pretty regularly had to repeat a mission because I got killed....in CoD2 I did a run of 4-5 missions with barely any difficulty at all.

I miss being able to setup single envelopments etc. with teammates as one can do in R6 but it was fun to drive a tank across the desert and try to shoot Panzers in the hindquarters. Sadly, the graphics for this effect are not as good on my XBox 360 (kinda bland actually) as on my PC version of the same game.

I played R6 and CoD2 for XBox 360 at the "easy" settings. It is possible that CoD2 is more fun, more on par with R6 in some ways, at a harder setting.

I also paid $20 for CoD2 for XBox.... bought used at GameStop. It is amusing enough for $20 but I'm glad I didn't pay $45-55 for it. My wife bought me Rainbow 6 (she's a great gal, isn't she?) so that was free to me but even so.... I wouldn't have minded shelling out some retail $$$ for that one.

120gig Drive for XBox is Great!

2007-11-06T09:25:00.000-05:00

Upgrade my 20g drive to 120g and the freebies just keep on coming. I've downloaded enough demo games from XBox Live to keep me busy until well into next year. Also lots of TV shows and movies. Got a copy of a classic Bugs Bunny where Bugs and Elmer do a spoof of the Barber of Seville. Cost about $2 and I can keep it on my XBox forever. Good stuff.

Rainbow 6: Vegas for XBox 360

2007-10-29T09:27:00.001-04:00

So, last time I played Rainbow Six Vegas (2-3 weeks ago), I got stuck in the theater for 5-6 tries - either I got killed or the dude who was supposed to hack the computer got killed. This weekend I pick it up again after a looooooong break and get out of the theater on the first try. Took cover behind one of the roadie boxes and just kept firing and throwing grenades as fast as I could. Go figure. Now I am working thru the missions in the Dam.

Problems HDMI Cables for the XBox 360

2007-10-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

Bought an HDMI cable for my 360......that did not work......ARGHHH! Turns out the composite, s-video, component and VGA cables will all work out of the d-shaped A/V port in the back of the 360. Bought an HDMI cable thinking it worked the same way.....but found out that HDMI cables only work with a 360 that has the separate HDMI port out the back. This is only the Elite, the Halo3 Special Edition, and some of the latest serial numbers of the regular 360. NewEgg does not make this clear on their site....and neither does Microsoft. Was an exchange-only (no refund) purchase at NewEgg so I'm stuck with it unless I sell it on e-Bay or something

Command and Conquer 3 for XBox 360

2007-10-27T09:27:00.000-04:00

Have been playing the C&C 3 Tiberium Wars demo for the 360 lately. I'm surprised how well it works to play an RTS on the 360..... but still don't think I could give up my keyboard for that genre. We'll see.

References on Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP)

2007-10-05T09:22:00.001-04:00

Here are some of my favorite references on USMC martial arts training. Most are about the current (2007) program which is called "Marine Corps Martial Arts Program" (MCMAP).

Make Windows(tm) look more like a Mac or LINUX box

2007-10-02T08:04:00.000-04:00

If you are using a Windows(tm) computer but long for a Macintosh or LINUX, then you might try using some Windows customization tools from Stardock (http://www.stardock.com/). These tools allow you to customize the colors, icons and other user interface elements of your Windows PC to look like another operating system. One of my favorite customizations is to give my Windows PC a a look and feel more like a Macintosh - including a floating "dock" like the Macintosh has: I'm also fond of the support for NeXT, BeOS, and other "classic" UNIX variants: The Stardock tools are available as individual tools for customizing parts of the interface. For example, IconPackager will customize your icons. WindowBlinds will change the colors and fonts of your window titles. However, I recommend the ObjectDesktop bundle. It includes most of the tools available but costs only as much as 2-3 of them individually. - Brian

Why and Why Not to use Rational Rose

2007-09-24T09:31:00.002-04:00

That Rose V7 "only" supports UML 1.4 is, in my opinion, a minor point for several reasons.

UML2 includes almost everything that was in UML 1.4 so there was some new content but hardly a complete overhaul that made the prior work obsolete. Conversely, you can prepare UML 1.4 diagrams and they would easily be understood by someone who had only joined the UML camp with version 2.
Many tools say "supports UML 2" but some of them shameless take advantage of that UML 1.x is a subset - same product, new label. Some support UML 2 selectively and added support for pieces of the new notation. I've found very little comprehensive support for UML 2 so far.
Not using the latest and greatest notation is a very rare source of project failure. Using established notation exceedingly poorly is vastly more common. So is hopping from one "silver bullet" to another.

Some general reasons to stick with Rose V7 include:

Availability of skilled staff. Rose V7 follows the Rose 98/2000 to 2004 product line and many people know those products so it may be easier or cheaper to use them instead of re-tool.
Very good multi-language support. Rose V7 remains a very strong product if you want one model and to connect that to code in multiple languages - e.g. C++, XML, SQL, Java, etc.

More convincing reasons to leave Rose and go to another product would be:

If you are doing development in the J2EE set of technologies, RSA and other tools fit better into the workflow.
If you are doing "real-time" development, Rational Rose real-time and other tools have better support for this type of work.
If you need a lower cost per seat, there isn't really a Rational option but there are very popular alternatives that cost less.

- Brian

Rational Rose is alive and well with Version 7.

2007-09-24T08:29:00.002-04:00

Rational Rose is getting more support from IBM with a new release for June 2007. The new version is called "Rational Rose Version 7". What is really interesting is that Rose XDE has been withdrawn and the migration path for the XDE product is back to Rational Rose (see June 2006 announcement).

The product line follows past versions with a basic modeling version (no code generation or reverse engineering), developer versions for C++ and Java, a data modeling version, and the "Enterprise" version which includes just about everything.

Product support include a version that runs on Linux. There is also a "real-time" version, what some people used to call "red box" Rose, with a version that is now called "Rational Rose Technical Developer". See the product information sheet (PDF) for additional information that compares the products, describes the system requirements, etc.

Trial versions are available for download from the IBM download page.

I've downloaded and had some hands-on time with the Version 7 trial. It preserves the same basic interface, menus, features, etc. as with the 2000-2004 versions. The product is so close to the previous versions that I was still able to use Quatrani's books on the 2002-2003 versions as the lesson guide for students in a recent class.

Rose V7 remains strong as a UML 1.4 product (with some UML 2 notation possible). It also remains strong for modeling independent of code or models that need to connect to code in several languages (C++, Java, XML, SQL, etc.).

Still, Rose V7 may not be the best fit for every project needs. Some projects will be better suited with Rational Software Architect or another product.

With IBM's June 2007 announced acquisition of TeleLogic, it remains to be seen how that product or it's technology will impact the established Rational product line.

- Brian

Software Engineering References

2007-09-19T14:56:00.001-04:00

Here are some of my favorite references on software engineering. This is a mix of books I REALLY like and a few that I don't like but are still influential on the topic.

You might be a big system geek if...

2007-09-17T16:16:00.002-04:00

Got this from a colleague of mine:

Your machine room is naked eye visible from low earth orbit. This is a nod to Mark Seager at Lawrence-Livermore, who wanted a file system visible from space. We have them now, from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
Inside, you need binoculars to see the other end of your machine room.
You think a $2M cluster is a nice, single user development platform.
You order storage systems and analysts issue buy orders for disk stocks.
You measure system network connectivity in hundreds of kilometers of cable/fiber.
You dream about cooling systems and wonder when fluorinert will make a comeback.
You telephone the local nuclear power plant before you boot your system.
You’re already thinking about exaflops.

- Brian

Requirements Management Tools

2007-08-31T09:50:00.001-04:00

A colleague asked:

"I'm looking for information about requirements collection and management tools for one of our project leads. Specifically, is anyone using an easy-to-use requirements management tool on their project?"

I mostly use Requiste Pro which includes a nice tutorial that is located under the "Help" menu. Includes eight lessons that will help you get started. Not too hard to work thru most of these in Friday afternoon. With regard to "ease of use", none of the products in the requirements management space are as easy to use as your typical consumer software but as a computer assisted software engineering (CASE) tools go.... ReqPro is one of the easiest of the lot. I used to be a Rational Partner (1996-2003) and saw first-hand that the Rational strategy was to offer easier to use CASE tools and offer them in bundles or suites (i.e. with Rose for OOAD, with ClearCase for CM, etc.). A strategy which I often thought of as the "Microsoft Strategy" in that Word was never as powerful as FrameMaker for word processing.....but much easier to use and came in a bundle with Excel and PowerPoint. DOORS has a long history and in the old-days used to be more of a niche professional's tool (like FrameMaker) but in the past few years has made huge improvements and become comparable to ReqPro, Project, etc. in ease of use for the general IT worker. Another caution about "ease of use" is that none of these tools do very much "out of the box" and all require a certain amount of setup before you can do much with regard to requirements management.....setup that, in the wrong hands, can do more harm than good. It is comparable to why a friend of mine can't understand why I use Excel to manage my personal finances when they use Quicken. Excel doesn't do anything out-of-the-box for personal finances but I've been able to setup worksheets that meet my needs. Quicken is much easier to get started and guides you straight to the task at hand.... and helps you avoid making any really dumb mistakes. Another aspect of the "ease of use" route is having web access to your requirements management repository. ReqPro supports this as do many of the other big-name tools. In this case "ease of use" might be better put as "ease of access" but it is also true that the web front-ends to these tools contribute to ease of use in that those interfaces are a little simpler. "Ease of use" here means for the day-to-day users of the system - setting up and administrating these web front-ends isn't hard for someone used to those chores but isn't something your average office worker will probably want to take on. For anyone with enough Microsoft Office skill to have moved beyond memos, e-mail and slides...... getting started with a simple Access application is a great way to start as part of your path to using the CASE tools (ReqPro, Caliber, etc.) . You can connect the Access to a local or corporate database. It is easy to setup reports. Finally, and most importantly, it is easy to setup forms so that non-techie participants can use (add, lookup, edit) the requirements database easily and without mistakes. This is also a great way to prototype your requirements management needs as preparation to the setup of one of the major tools. All of the big-name tools have decent importing features so it is easy to keep the requirements you've already entered. For even simpler requirements management tasks, it is probably fine to use Excel and the sort, filter, etc. features that come with that tool. I find the point at which Excel falls apart is when you get more than a couple of requirements types (i.e. traceability is a pain) or when you get the more complicated constraints on requirements attributes. However, I've seen lots of projects flounder because they just had to use a big-name tool.... but did so poorly and when they would have been better off with simpler (Word or Excel) documents managed well. <rant> Throwing Word in as an option isn't a joke. Let's remember that we managed to put a man on the moon before tools like ReqPro were even imagined or before databases as we currently understand them were available. I've often found that many people gravitate to the tools in order to get some instant, unearned, credibility for their projects or their roles on the project - as if buying these high-end tools was a way to buy success in a box for their project or automatically made them smarter about the work to be done. This is a mistake. None of the tools are so easy, so well built, that they are a substitute for competent project management and systems engineering. </rant> See my del.icio.us lists for on links to other requirements management tools or references about equirements management. - Brian

Shopping for a New USB Flash Drive

2007-08-24T17:19:00.000-04:00

I've been recently shopping for a new pocket USB drive to carry around and after much searching around narrowed down to these three choices: The SanDisk Cruzer Titanium (http://www.sandisk.com/Products/) gets high marks from every review I've found for reliability. This would certainly be the choice for me to go with if I were still a "road-warrior" or otherwise more likely than average to damage my USB key. However, I've been carrying around a vanilla PNY drive for a couple of years now and it is still around - so I don't think unusual reliability is too important for my uses. Also, no review I found gave this drive very high marks for read/write speeds and that is important to me. The Kingston DataTraveler drives (http://www.kingston.com/flash/) appealed to me primarily because MaximumPC (www.MaximumPC.com) gave it such high marks for read/write of small documents. One of my primary uses for a this type of device is to carry around lots of my documents so that is important to me. The downside is that the price is much higher than the other options. The Corsair Voyager (http://www.corsair.com/products/) comes in two versions. The "GT" model is designed for higher read/write speeds which puts in on par with the Kingston DataTraveler. User reviews at NewEgg (www.NewEgg.com) also reported it as reliable - which, for my purposes puts in on par with the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium. The difference was that the Voyager, even in the "GT" model, was much less expensive than the Kingston DataTraveler (at this writing about $70 versus $120 for comparable-sized drives). I also looked at encryption as a factor but that turned out differently than expected. Many of the products I looked at were actually using TrueCrypt which is a freeware product (www.TrueCrypt.org). I asked around about this and found several colleagues using this with their existing drives (from various companies) so this didn't seem like much of a differentiator in the device to purchase. For reviews, I checked PCMag (www.PCMag.com), MaximumPC (www.MaximumPC.com), CNet (www.CNet.com) and NewEgg (www.NewEgg.com). In the end, I got a 4GB Corsair Voyager GT. Fast, reliable and good price. - Brian

Reporting on "Lessons Learned"

2007-08-14T11:59:00.001-04:00

The question asked was: "We are looking for a good format to present an executive review of the lessons learned from..." One of the most common mistakes I have observed in "lessons learned" documents is that they should be more properly titled "lessons to be learned". So, one of the most important elements to include in such a report is to go beyond the observation of what happened in the past and into what will/should be done about it in the future. For example, instead of a finding that says only something like "Project XYZ needs to improve configuration management procedures in support of pre-deployment activities..." it is better to add the corrective action that should be taken e.g. "Revise section 2 of the Configuration Management Plan as follows...". A two-column format or some comparable structure works well for this. It is often valuable to structure such a document so that their are clear distinctions between what is fact and what is a matter of analysis or opinion. For example, to distinguish a finding which you want to assert as indisputable from a suggested correction which might be but one of several possible solutions. The major benefit of this approach is that it prevents debate about how to go forward from undermining the fundamental findings or recommendations. The strongest lessons-learned reports I've ever seen were structured so that the report section was actually very small and the bulk of the lessons had been structured as change requests to the fundamental project management artifacts of the affected projects (schedules, designs, requirements, etc.). So, an important quality of these reports is that they were disposable - e.g. you didn't need to look at the report to see the changes suggested to the Project XYZ design by the '02 Q3 Technical Review but could look at the change requests for that project, and their dispositions, to see this information. This was a recurring approach of the most highly effective programs I've seen..... which may explain why it is rarely seen. - Brian

Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

2007-08-07T15:07:00.002-04:00

Analytical Hierachy Process (AHP) is a decision making technique that was developed by Dr. Thomas Saaty at the Wharton School.

This technique has two defining characteristics:

Decision are organized into a hierarchy of criteria and a hierarchy of alternatives to be evaluated by those criteria.
The analysis is performed as a series of relative preferences ("this criteria is more important than that criteria", "that option does better at this criteria than this other option").

In my experience, the logical-comparison basis of the technique (versus some point system) makes this technique particularly suitable for supporting executive-level decision making. It can also be easily tailored to support executive decision making in the form of "this person's input counts more than that person's on this topic".

There are a number of published references available on AHP. In most of the books by Saaty, the math gets fairly complicated in the latter chapters but the introductory material introduces the logic, is easily readable by a general public, and is enough to use the approach.

There are a variety of tools to support using AHP. I've personally used ExpertChoice and it appears to be the dominant product in this market. DecisionLens is based upon the Analytical Network Process (ANP) which builds upon AHP but includes a stronger feedback model on the decision-making process.

- Brian

UML References

2007-07-26T00:03:00.000-04:00

Here are some of my recommended references for the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with and emphasis on UML2.

Santa Fe Institute (SFI) Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS) Wiki pages

2007-07-20T10:59:00.001-04:00

The Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School increasingly makes use of a wiki. They use MediaWiki which is the same wiki engine used to power Wikipedia.

I'd read wikis before (mostly Wikipedia) but never authored on one before. It was great stuff.

The site for my class this summer includes information about the instructors, participants, reading materials and student projects. You can see all of this and more at http://www.santafe.edu/events/workshops/index.php/CSSS_2007_Santa_Fe - Brian

SharePoint Trick - Friendly Folder Names

2007-07-19T09:41:00.001-04:00

Here is a little sharepoint trick that I like a lot.

One of the things I don't like about SharePoint is that is creates a lot of URLs with the "%20" symbol in it for a space. So, for example, if you create a document library called "My Presentations" you get a URL that is called "http://www.somesite.org/My%20Presentations". All those "%20" symbols for the spaces are unsightly and don't always cut-paste into emails, blog posts, links lists, etc. all that well.

One way to get around this is that when you create the document library to use names with no spaces - e.g. "My_Presentations". This will give you a URL more like "http://www.somesite.org/My_Presentations".

Removing the spaces makes for nicer URLs but creates lists in SharePoint that look like "My_Presentations", "Reports-2007", etc. and some people don't like that....which is easy to fix.

Once you have created the document or list without any spaces in the name.... go back and change the name to use spaces. You can do this in Site Settings, Modify Site Content, select a document folder or list, and then change general settings. When you do this, it will display in SharePoint with human-friendly names (using spaces) but keeps the URL path that is more friendly to email, blog posts, links lists, etc.

- Brian

UML Tools

2007-07-18T16:30:00.001-04:00

Here are some of my favorite UML tools... including tools that support UML 1.x and those that support UML 2.x. This draws in data from my del.icio.us site which means that it takes a few seconds to load... please be patient. It also means that the date at the top of this page is just when the page was first created.... the content you see below is updated all the time. If your browser does not have JavaScript enabled, you might not see very much on this page. If so, you can view the same information at http://del.icio.us/brianlawler/Tools+UML

Testing Tools

2007-07-18T16:29:00.001-04:00

Here are some of my favorite testing tools. Mostly automated source code reviews but also profilers, debuggers, etc. This draws in data from my del.icio.us site which means that it takes a few seconds to load... please be patient. It also means that the date at the top of this page is just when the page was first created.... the content you see below is updated all the time. If your browser does not have JavaScript enabled, you might not see very much on this page. If so, you can view the same information at http://del.icio.us/brianlawler/Tools+Testing

Java Tools

2007-07-18T16:28:00.000-04:00

Here are some of my favorite Java tools.... with an emphasis on supporting Jave2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development. This draws in data from my del.icio.us site which means that it takes a few seconds to load... please be patient. It also means that the date at the top of this page is just when the page was first created.... the content you see below is updated all the time. If your browser does not have JavaScript enabled, you might not see very much on this page. If so, you can view the same information at http://del.icio.us/brianlawler/Tools+Java

blog.BrianLawler.org

Archiving this site....

Working on Course Outlines

Scary Old Ads with Kids

Wallpapers

Nature Photos

Funny Photos of Kids

Photos from 2007 D.C. Air Show

These are my credentials...

Photos from Iraq

Motivation Posters [humor]

Some Classic USMC Photos

"Missing" Dog Poster

Psuedo-Engineering Speak Translated

USMC Pilots

Outlines for Courses I Teach

Battle is decided by...

Knowing the Enemy and Public Opinion

And God Created North Carolina .....

Adventures in Video Formats

While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power...

'Tell him to drop dead!' [joke]

I believe...

On Free Speech...

"The Next War" by Wilfred Owen

Pain is your friend...

"Self Pity" by D. H. Lawrence and Master Chief John James Urgayle

Favorite Quote from Book of Lismore

New words. Old words with new meanings.

My Time Is Up?

8 Reasons Horses Are Better Then Men

Why Parents Drink

Taking Dog and The Marines

'Wasting' Wave Invites on GMail Users

Great Idea Sarge!

"Lost Over Laos" and "Farewell to a Hero"

Old and Creepy Ads

"...imitate the action of the tiger..." - Henry V

Marines Video

Love Your Country [humor]

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

Marine Dictionary: Close Combat Support

Camera Reviews

List the files in a directory using ASP.Net and C#

"Hello World" in C# for ASP.Net

Things that don't work right in Norton 360

The Strongest Tribe

Duties That Are Best Shared, Mathew Bagdanos

Rainbow Six (XBox 360): Black and Red Pack Produce False Disk Error Message

If other eyes grow dull...

Mash-up: Cell phone (SMS), Twitter, Yahoo! Pipes, Facebook

Recommended Browsers

Using JavaScript to Display E-Mail Addresses

Recommended Reading on SOA

Effective C++

Effective Code Comments.

Some Basic XML "Best Practices"

Things to watch out for in email...

Source code testing rules, standards, references, etc. (incl. ParaSoft JTest).

Comments on Rational's Data Architect

XBox Live Gamer Tags in Your Blog Pages

Getting XHTML Valid Ampersands with the New Blogger Templates

Writing Valid XHTML links using Ampersands

The Insurgent View of Convoy Marines in Iraq

Multiple JVMS, Pros and Cons, The Basics

Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives

Using Blogger with ASP, PHP and Other Scripting Languages

ASP Snippet to Style an RSS Feed with XSL

Hide the Headlines by Feedburner Icon from BuzzBoost

Helping Google Search See More of Your Blogger Blog

Hide Edit Widget Controls in Blogger

How do you decide to who to marry? (written by kids)

Joke about Military Retirement Bonus [PG]

Selected Papers by Santa Fe Institute CSSS-'07 Faculty

Using @import statements to manage CSS stylesheets

Blog Topics

Updates to My Blog

Hints for writing e-mail

Converting Videos for YouTube with Quicktime Pro

Assembler References