BPI inside

Author: admin

  • Next vacation block ahead

    The upcoming two weeks I’ll be on vacation again. Originally I planned to perform some sports but by damaged ankle voided my intentions. Nevertheless, I’ve had a talk with the doctor of my employer and he suggested to start easy not with running but with cycling in about two weeks. So I’ll be preparing my old and dusty bike next week, maybe purchase a helmet, and start off easy in my second week of the vacation.

    Furthermore I was told that in about 2-3 weeks I could also carefully(!) begin with badminton again. Carefully means, that I should only be going for throwing the shuttlecock back, making targetting exercises and so on, but not chasing every hit or jumping around to reach hard to catch hits.

    In these two weeks I’ll also have to work some more on two term papers to finish off this term.

  • Ankle stabilized

    Well, yesterday I had the second appointment in the hospital to check the current shape of my ankle. As I had expected, I could hand back the crutches I got for the past week. Instead of this I got a stiff fixture on my ankle which allows me to move almost normal again but prevents tilting my foot and causing additional ruptures to my damaged tendon.

    Of course I’ve got the expected additional constraints. I have to wear this fixture for six weeks and after that I should stay away some time from indoor sports, which usually are fast sports with high forces on the feet. Instead I should train the muscles to support my foot stability and lower the risk of future weaknesses.

    But I was also told that after some additional resting time from now I can also start with easy sports, like running, to shorten the recovery time a bit. Or at least to make the reentry into sports not that sudden with the end of my ankle-stabilisation phase.

  • Team switch results and sick leave

    On Friday I got feedback from the team where I’ve been assisting for some time. It seems, that I did quite well, the feedback was 100 percent positive and also accompanied by the statement that they would welcome it if I decided to permanently switch to them.

    I have to admit that I already played with that thought a bit, but for now I think I’m not switching (yet). After checking back with my superiors there would be no problem at all, so it’s really completely my own decision. After these results I think it will get more comon to exchange team members for a limited time cross-department. And I think that such exchanges will largely be positive as all concerned parties can learn from the experience.

    In other news, I’m in bed. Yesterday in the very last minutes of playing Badminton I somehow tripped and hurt my ankle. It was quite painful but after about 10 minutes it went away and I could walk normally. Over the course of the afternoon and evening the ankle began to hurt just a bit and became swollen. This morning my ankle had the shape of a tennis ball and hurt much more than yesterday so I decided to give the hospital a visit. The physicals resulted in pulled ligaments and now I’m on sick leave for at least this week. And I guess, the revisit on Friday will result in that I should stay away from such fast-running sports for some time. Damn…

  • How to treat your rechargeable batteries

    Recently I’ve purchased a new battery for my mobile phone. To get the most out of it I wanted to refresh my knowledge, how to treat this new energy pack correctly to keep it alive for as long as possible.

    When looking on the internet I was first presented with lots of technical information, how they work et cetera, but nowhere I found immediately how to handle them for maximum lifetime, at least not in easily understandable terms.

    So I decided to create a small list of handling tips for the different technologies of accumulators.

    NiCd (Nickel-Cadmium), NiMh (Nickel-Metal-Hydrite)

    Preparation
    Nickel-based batteries should be "primed" by applying a ~16h charge after purchasing. If not done, it won’t cause harm but the full capacity will not be available initially (but increase with usage).

    Usage
    It is not necessary to use up the whole charge before recharging every time, but this should be done every 1 – 3 months to prevent memory effect. For NiMh batteries it is even advisable to not use up all the charge as a depletion wears down the battery faster. It is still necessary to counter the memory effect from time to time. Recharging should happen without interruptions and overcharging (by leaving the the pack in the charger after being fully charged) causes harm to the battery.

    Storage
    When the battery is not used for some time manufacturers suggest a 40% charge for storage altough it is possible to store them full or completely discharged. But more important is to store them in a cool place.

    LiIon (Lithium-Ion)

    Preparation
    LiIon batteries do not need to be prepared for usage and can be used instantly out-of-the-box.

    Usage
    These type of batteries is quite forgiveable to common usage. Altough it should be avoided to deplete it completely, it may be necessary to perform a full charge-discharge-cycle if charge-indicators get inaccurate readings. When charging, it is under normal conditions not possible to overcharge, so leaving them in the charger is possible. Best performance can be expected, if the charge is kept in the range of 40%-80%.

    Storage
    LiIon should be stored at 40% and under cool conditions. If storing for a long time, recharge to 40% from time to time. If left until uncharged, internal protection circuits may fail and render the battery unusable (or even unsafe).

  • Is cursive writing dying?

    After reading this Time-article about cursive handwriting I thought a bit about my own handwriting style. And I think I can confirm that. When I learned cursive almost all of the handwritten stuff which was written on notes, papers, signs and elsewhere was a clean cursive style. Nowadays my own handwriting style has changed to a strange mixture of cursive and typed letters. I personally even have problems controlling the casing when I write by hand. I have no problem with casing when I’m typing with a keyboard but when I hold a pen in my hand I begin to mix up uppercase and lowercase from time to time. I don’t know why, but I cannot get rid of this. Furthermore my handwriting is comparable to the handwriting of a doctor. It merely reminds me of what I wanted to write when I wrote it down. But it’s not only me, I also recognized this degraded handwriting on many people, even some younger ones who have not such a long time from their learning phase.

    I already thought of improving my handwriting by practicing from time to time but other from readability for others I found no practical reason to do so and that’s why I didn’t come around to do so until today. But maybe I’ll find some time…

    (via Lifehacker)

  • JBoss Web Service issues with JDK6

    The past two weeks I’ve working on an exercise for the university. The task was to create [Enterprise Java Beans][1] (EJB) and [Web Services][2] (WS) which were then deployed to and run on the [JBoss Application Server][3]. We were using Eclipse Ganymede EE, Java JDK6 and JBoss version 5.0.1 GA for our purposes.

    My colleagues and I had quite some troubles getting it all to work but eventually we managed it because most of the issues are documented and their resolutions are available on several sites somewhere on the net. Only this particular issue seemed to be covered nowhere or if it was, the solutions suggested did not work for us. I’m giving you the solution that worked for us here, maybe it helps somebody who runs into the same issues we’ve experienced.

    Many people seem to succeed with the [Instructions for using JBoss5 on Java6][6] from the JBoss Getting Started Guide, but for whatever reason this did not work for us. If you have the same problem persisting even after copying around the library-files, read on.

    I hope the solution present here can also help you with your problem. If you have anything to add, find a mistake or can give any other feedback, please leave me a comment.

    The issue

    JBoss is up and running without trouble, having webservices deployed and visible on the webservice-endpoint overview at http://localhost:8080/jbossws/services. But upon calling one of the methods provided the JBoss chokes with the exception:

    ERROR [SOAPFaultHelperJAXWS] SOAP request exception
java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: setProperty must be overridden by all subclasses of SOAPMessage
    at javax.xml.soap.SOAPMessage.setProperty(SOAPMessage.java:445)
    at org.jboss.ws.core.soap.SOAPMessageImpl.
    (SOAPMessageImpl.java:82) at org.jboss.ws.core.soap.MessageFactoryImpl.createMessage(MessageFactoryImpl.java:215) … (and some more exceptions with “setProperty must be overriden…” appearing several times) and the webservice call fails with no result. ## Quickly explained solution 1. install JDK5 and add it to Eclipses installed Runtime Environments 2. set JBoss execution environment to use JRE5 3. set JRE in webservice-projects buildpath to JRE5 4. set Project Facet in webservice-project for Java to 5.0 ## Detailed solution 1. [download JDK5][4] from Sun 2. install JDK5 (only JDK needed, no seperate JRE, docs, etc.) 3. add JDK5 to Eclipse as Installed JRE (Window->Preferences->Java->Installed JREs->Search…) 4. change startup configuration of JBoss to JDK5 (doublecklick on JBoss-entry in Servers-tab->General Information->Open launch configuration->JRE->Alternate JRE) 5. change the projects JRE System Library to use JDK5. Either via right-click on the system library entry in the project->Properties or right-click on the project->Build Path->Configure Build Path->select “JRE System Library”->Edit. Then set the Alternate JRE to JDK5 6. change the projects Java facet to JDK5 (right click on project->Properties->Project Facets->Change the setting next to the “Java” entry to “5.0” 7. check, that in %JBOSS_PATH%/server/default/deploy (or your own configured deploy-path in JBoss) there are no .war-files left from your current project 8. if not already suggested by Eclipse itself, rebuild the webservice project (if building automatically just clean the project via Project->Clean…) 9. start JBoss via Eclipse 10. check that somewhere near the beginning of the JBoss console log something like “Java Version: 1.5.xxx Sun Microsystems Inc” or “Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.5.xxx” appears as “INFO [ServerInfo]” log line If you are receiving errors like “java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file” then there is still something connected with JDK6 left in your project. Check the steps again and also your included libraries if there is something suspicious and then rebuild the project. After all these steps you should finally be able to call web service methods on your endpoint without causing those exception anymore. ## Issue background The technical details and origins of this error are explained in [JBWS-2649][5] along with an [initial solution][6]. In short JRE/JDK6 includes a dummy-implementation for this setProperty() method which overrides the required implementation which is supplied with JBoss. The mentioned initial solution solves the problem by copying the supplied libraries to a location in the classpath where it should be loaded before the JRE libraries but as already mentioned this did not work for most of our class. [1]: http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/ “Enterprise JavaBeans Technology” [2]: http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/webservices.jsp “Web Services” [3]: http://www.jboss.org/jbossas/ “JBoss Application Server” [4]: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/5/jdk “java.sun.com – Download SE Development Kit 5.0” [5]: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBWS-2649 “JBWS-2649: SOAPMessage implementation bug” [6]: http://www.jboss.org/file-access/default/members/jbossas/freezone/docs/Installation_And_Getting_Started_Guide/5/html_single/index.html#Java6_Notes “Installation and getting started with JBoss on JDK6”

  • Team switch

    This week, the first week back at work after vacation, had quite an interesting start. Monday was without surprises, just Sprint demos and a bit of administrative work. But on Tuesday the interesting stuff began when I received an invitation for Sprint planning meetings of another team.

    As it turned out, there had been some initial conversation about me helping in another team for a specific task but the discussion had no clear conclusion. In the end and after some negotiation between the teams we agreed that for the upcoming month I’m assigned to the other team. There I’ll assist with their current tasks so that the task I’ve been originally requested for can be finished faster after the ones with higher priority are completed.

    So I’m now completely shifted to a different team (the same I’ve already joined some time ago) for four weeks and after the first few days my impression is that as well the other team can benefit from my knowledge with the Scrum methodology as well as I can benefit from the different tools and experience how they solve their problems. A clear win-win situation.

    Of course everything has been discussed with my other team and it posed no problem to them in the upcoming time.

    Just one drawback is that the next vacation block in two weeks had to be canceled because of these changes. But since I’ve got plenty of vacation left for this year, this is fine with me.

  • First week into vacation

    As anounced some time ago I’m now in the first week of my vacation. I managed to come to a conclusion with my managers so that for now the plan is to be present for two weeks at work followed by two weeks of vacation. This cycle is for now set up to repeat the rest of this year.

    And what could be better than extreme rainfalls as start of my vacation. It’s now raining since Saturday and the forecasts say it will continue for the upcoming days.

    At least I’ve got some time now to finish some exercises for the University.

  • Upcoming open source project

    For one of my lectures at the university we had to process a project. I chose a software project with a topic I suggested myself and possibly could also later use at work.

    Meanwhile my project has grown to a not-so-bad framework and I’m really thinking of opening it to the public after it has been completed at the university.

    I already checked it with the university I just have to talk to some people at work on that issue.

    So expect a new java project on SourceForge.net in the next weeks.

  • Weekend workout

    Whheeeeee, the hard weekend is over and I think it has been quite successful. All exams have been held, all presentations are performed including one surprise-presentation which was scheduled just the day before.

    Since the stressful time was over, I set up a bit of sports activity. Namely playing Badminton with a studying colleague today morning.

    This was my first intensive physical exercise since quite some time (think of years), nevertheless I think I did quite well. I could keep up with the condition of the others and my reactions were fast enough I think. I just had some problems with targetting and concentration on the rules how to switch positions after each move which I think are the main reasons why I’ve always been on the team which lost each match 🙂 But I became better over time and the last match was already very close on the edge of victory.

    I hope, that this was not only a one-time event and that I continue with some sports in the future.