Industry Zero: One man’s thought on software, business and life

The winner is Palm Pre SDK.  Why?  Palm picks a good architecture using javascript, html and css as its core technologies.  There is little learning curve. Unlike iphone which you need to learn Objective-C, xcode, Cocoa, etc.   It also follows convention over configuration (similar to rails).  Using Eclipse as IDE is also a good choice.  Using VirtualBox as the base of the Emulator is a very smart engineering choice.  I like people who don’t reinventing the wheel.  Setting up is esay and so is getting the helloworld app up.   Good job Palm.  I think you will have a good future in competing with Apple.

I am reading Erlang programming by Francesco Cesarini and Simon Thompson.  The book show you how to start up a debugger. by typing debugger:start(). in the erlang shell.  However, that is not enough.  The book implies that you will see the modules automatically.  Not true.  You will have to type ii(YourModule). in the erlang shell to load it up in the debugger window.  After that, you can have call iaa([init]).  Then you can run your module’s function in the erlang shell.  So here is an example:

13> debugger:start().
{ok,<0.140.0>}
14> ii(test2).
{module,test2}
15> iaa([init]).
true
16> test2:fac(3).
6

I am learning scala and erlang the same time to get an idea of FP.  So far, I like Erlang better in term of syntax.  Scala is good but its syntax is just getting too complicated.  It is trying to replace java but the its syntax is no simpler than java.  I think if Scala is not static type, the syntax would be simpler.

I am starting to learn Scala. This will be my first step to Functional programming world (even though Scala is not a pure functional programming language, it supports OO too).  I highly recommended this article for anyone who wants to take the first step: http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/steps.html .

As if the great firewall of China is not enough, they want to put a Dam on its people’s computers to reduce the flood of  porn (so they say). The software is called “Green Dam-Youth Escort”.  However, I really don’t think Chinese Communist/Capitalist government really cares about blocking porn.  They require every new computer to install this software because they want to block other political websites and control the information flow.   China wants to have its cake and eat it too.  It likes to get the benefit of modern technologies and internet but also want to control information flow.   I think they are fighting a losing battle.  Sooner or later, they will lose.

Eclipse is a great tool but like any great tool with long history.  I think Eclipse is getting bloated.  It is so easy to break by just doing a simple upgrade.

Finding nursing homes for your elderly can be difficult.  There are not many good site out there that is easy to find by simply typing in an address.  So I decide to create one using Medicare’s free data.  It is call US Nursing Home Finder .   I think it is the best site to find a nursing  home in US.

I need to find if there are some duplicate class in the a list of jar files.  Here is what I did:

Go to the directory contains the jar files, can run this command:

find . -name “*.jar” -exec jar -tvf {} \; > list.out 2>&1

Then run:

cat list.out | grep Somepattern

I got this error when deploy and redeploy a service: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Endpoints already been registered or something like that.  Google it without much luck.  I will have to go to server/default/work directory and remove the jbossws folder and also the particular web service folder and then restart jboss.  Then the problem will go away.  JBoss sucks!

1. install xcode tools from installation cd
2. install Macports. go to: http://www.macports.org/
3. sudo port selfupdate
4. sudo port install mysql5 +server
5. sudo port install ruby
6. sudo port install rb-rubygems
7. sudo port install rb-termios
8. sudo port install rb-mysql
9. sudo port install subversion +tools
10. sudo port install git-core
11. sudo port install freetds
12. sudo port install rb-dbi +dbd_odbc
13.  sudo port install rb-odbc
14. sudo ln -s /opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock /tmp/mysql.sock
15. sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist
16. sudo mysql_install_db5 –user=mysql
17. sudo gem install -y rake
18. sudo gem install -y rails
19. sudo gem install -y capistrano
20. sudo gem install -y mongrel
21. sudo gem install -y mongrel_cluster
22. install eclipse
23. install Aptana plugin
24. install Aptana Radrails plugin