Category: Uncategorized

Ctrl+Shift+T is a popular shortcut in Eclipse.

Ctrl+T is a popular shortcut in Firefox - opens an empty tab.

Once by mistake I pressed the former by mistake and found out that Ctrl+Shift+T makes an undo for the last closed window (tab). And not only for the last tab.

Cool

There are a lot of tests for some EJBs.

Starting an J2EE server is slow. I wanted to test the business logic faster.

Most of the beans reference only each other and a persistence context.

So what should the mock worry about - transaction demarcation and dependency injection. And... exception wrapping and unwrapping.

1. First just add some setters or change the access level modifiers (from private to protected for example).
2. Know your transaction authority.
3. Count started transactions. If 0, begin. If 0, commit. Rollback when necessary.
4. Listen for all the exceptions and wrap and unwrap them.
5. Reuse as much as possible of the code.

If I have some spare time left, I'll write some code.

I'll try to simplify it.
There's an object model. In it there are cyclic references (one object references a second one, the second one - a third one, the third one - the first one).
Some of the cyclic references are through aggregations - one object has a map of other objects.
Some of the objects have a meaningful hashCode() and equals() overridden. These two depend on some properties in the object itself.

Some of the objects get serizalized/deserialized (travel through a stream).

Now here comes the problem - the deserialization first sees the cyclic reference, makes instances of all the objects, initializes all the primitive fileds, does not initialize the other fields, then links the objects.

Here comes the problem, linking two objects (one of which has a map of the other) requires hashCode(). This requires some specific properties in that object that are not initialized - this causes NullPointerException (or in my case an AssertionError).

If the hashCode returns a default value if the properties are not there - another serious problem si caused - there are objects in the map in the wrong buckets - they entered the map with the default hash, but when they got completely initialized - they now have a different hash. I think that is really bad - the map has to be rehashed.

Here's a bug detail:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4957674

Here's what some of the guys say on the subject:

And:

But, not all my object have a rewritten equals (of course I can check with reflection which ones do and which ones don't, but...). This would also mean that I'm using a customized collection.

There's another proposition - to hash the hashcode.

The hashcode is a primitive type, so it would get initialized first and the problem would be solved. This would mean to have an hashCode() and equals() which check which one is available - the cached hash or the properties - isn't that UGLY.

I'll investigate more.

This is 73 meters from the ground. It is scary and physically intensive. I did this route twice, the first time without the special gloves. My fingers still hurt.

On the top the second time (on the verge of not making it).

It's over, let's have something to eat.

More pictures when I get them.

How an iterator works:

Well, I want to move the red line in the loop init, so it would not mingle with the loop body where only business logic would reside.

Unfortunately that cannot happen. A for loop first inits the data, then checks the condition. With an iterator one has to first check if there are elements, then to get them.

And why would someone give you an iterator instead of a collection, my mind cannot understand. (org.hibernate.Interceptor#postFlush(java.util.Iterator))

It's not very easy, this is the first phone that is sophisticated enough to support the editing page and easy enough to be usable for that purpose. Uploading does not work. Rich editing does not work. But typing is fast enough and easy enough.

First, what's my goal

I want to do an audit log. I read the http://www.hibernate.org/318.html and there two different approaches were mentioned.

The first is using a Listener.

The second is using the new eventing model in Hibernate3.

The author said that he couldn't make the eventing approach work for an unknown reason.

I'm using Hibernate via JPA. I'm using it in an EJB. So the problem
with the first approach is that it is difficult (if possilbe) to supply
the same transaction to the interceptor so that it can write an entry
in the audit log. There is a solution with a static field holding a
session or an EM, but that seems ugly.

So I chose the second approach. I created a class, inherited few
eventhandlers (PreInsertEventListener, PostUpdateEventListener ) and
tried to add the class as a listener.

Using the API, it worked (the callback methods in the listeners were called):

Using properties (as if using persistence.xml) failed(the callback methods in the listeners were NOT called):

Ideas why?

I have to keep it alive for 24 hours. It's gonna be hard

Update: It's done - I successfully returned the dog alive, unharmed and in good condition.

Today I passed the exam for category A (motorcycles above 50cc). Very happy.

There is a certain group of people (counting me too) that are used to working with strongly typed languages. It's really hard for that group of people to understand how technologies like php, html, javascript (..., rss, perl, ...) become so popular.

The answer is (in my humble opinion) the ease of use and rapidness. Everybody can learn to use them. Sacrificing the good style and the heavy approach (that comes from the heavy books) comes out be (in most cases) an acceptable loss.

Patents pending - don't steal my intellectual (he he) property.

Have you ever seen a screen that supports that big a resolution? This is (...calculating...) ~4.29 GigaPixels. Quite a lot, huh?

Check out how many options it gave for color depth.

P.S. This happened on a friend's machine after two years of no support and windows update.

A custom res:

Although it's short and incomplete it's really a cornerstone read. Every single Bulgarian must be forced to read it and memorize it:
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/lang_mistakes_bg.php

In a few days this adventure (having a blog) is going to have its first birthday. I remember the birthday because it is embedded in the admin password (yea, try me ;).

Today I was reading a few articles about having a blog (here and here) and the impression I got left with was that starting a blog is not always a good idea and to do that you have to have something to share and to follow some rules and most importantly have a goal.

F**k that. (Update: I don't know why I put asterisks, maybe I'm afraid of the moderators ?!)

I don't know if I have something to share. I don't know if I have a goal set for my blog. I didn't know about the rules until today. But I don't care.

What made me start the blog was an article from Joel (I can't find it right now) that simply said that a blog can help you express yourself better, can help you perfect the language you present your blog in, can help you understand yourself better. And one other thing - get more feedback for yourself - and that one is particularly precious for me.

So, do I follow the rules - no. Do I care - I guess not. (yea, sometimes I check the logs to see how 'famous' am I and the good results and some comments boost my ego, but that's pretty much it). Overall, I find it a good experience and the time spent on the blog wasn't completely waisted.

What am I going to do from now on - I guess pretty much the same thing.

P.S. Thank you my one reader for the continuing support and the few comments you left from different IPs (appreciate the effort). I would gladly buy you a beer.

'I'm shocked' is what Charlie Sheen playing Charlie from 'Two men and a half' always says with a beer in his hand when his brother does something stupid.
(Comment to me: I have a problem: cannot produce short sentences.)

Here I am playing the dumb thing Vasko and I gave as a present to one crazy dude:

Update: it's fu*king unpleasant.

Last night I fell into depression, and called "the telephone of
confidence".
My call is redirected to Pakistan.
I said that I'm
going to suicide.
They rejoiced and asked me if I can drive heavy trucks
...

What's missing is a hot girl bringing me stuff. The chair is awesome.

Seeing these posts first may help get the context of the talk:
What not to do when you're a bank
What to do when most e-banking interfaces suck?
First Investment Bank, the sequel
SG Expressbank

Being stuck with SG Expressbank made electronic transfers impossible, because they didn't work with epay.bg (prohibited) nor did they work with the e-banking software (every recepient has to be registered offline on-site (bank office), and for the ones that are registered the software does not work 🙂 ).

Almost by accident I tested a card I had in epay.bg for the balance (most banks have stopped this service, because of too many requests). And... I got it. It was working. Strange.

I remebered that I had registered the e-banking for that bank and had left the user/pass somewhere.

After a few days of searching I found it.  Keep in mind that getting the user/pass from the bank was quite an adventure and took more than 20 days and quite a few trips to the local office.

The login screen is right on the main page of the bank. I was amazed to see how easy the generation of the certificate was. While doing it I saw that they support smart cars (e-signatures). Well done.

The interface is really user friendly. Supports almost everything or at least it seems so. I haven't tried it yet, because the bankaccount is nearly emtpy.

From the interface notifications can be defined: SMS notifications, email notifications. Now I'm waiting to see whether it works.

A minor drawback was that I can't tranfer money to another bank account via epay.bg - I guess only FIB cards can (FIB is connected to epay).

And because I'm lazy to do it the old-fashion way - now I'm using the only possible way to transfer money electronically from SG Expressbank card to the new card I have - the epay's microbill (микросметка) - another thing I have to learn how to use. It was quite straight forward to start up and use, but it takes a few days (in my case 2 full days) to tranfer the money and the commissions are not going to be small.

If you have

and suppose you forgot to put Serializable to MyPictureClass, then guess what: there's no exception. You have to check the data in the DB.

Surprise no2:
Suppose MyPictureClassis a base abstract class and it is not Serializable. Suppose every inheriting class is Serializable. Then what happens? Well one thing's for sure: there wouldn't be an exception, but there wouldn't be any data in the DB (you'll get null). The runtime checks (in Hibernate) check the signature of the defining class I suppose, not the supplied class at runtime - and I would assume the opposite, because serialization works the opposite way. Maybe it's because Hibernate does some runtime bytecode modifications.

The JPA spec supports primitive types as @Columns. What they don't say (assuming Hibernate is the implementation (maybe TopLink does that too)) is that this column becomes nullable = false and the default value is the default for the primitive type. And that is so, even though the @Column(nullable by default is true.

So

actually means

So watch out.

The new firefox 3.0 (not final yet - rc1 for now) is awesome. Most plug-ins don't work yet, but that changes very rapidly.
The engine itself is unbelievably fast and looks pretty stable - for a few days it crashed only once - trying to start the updater.

Try it, definitely try it. Link.

Update: the RC2 is out. The link points to it.

Hudson is a continuous integration tool similar to CruiseControl. It has a very good web GUI for defining tasks unlike CruiseControl.
Inside it I have configured a call to an ant task.

Strangely enough in on of the projects that had to be build I got:

Strange.

I double checked the script in eclipse. It worked.
Manual call to ant on the eclipse machine also worked.

Then I went to the Hudson machine (a test environment). I ran the script manually. The same freaking error.
I copied the whole dir to another place on the test environment: no problem.

Maybe it's the credentials: added read/write to all. Still the same error.

Then I ran the script with: ant -verbose and see what I got:

Cannot create a process?!
That's weird.

So tired enough I did something desperate:

From

I went to

and it worked ..... 🙁

Keep in mind that in the same build project I was calling a few other build.xml doing <javac fork="true"
several times before this one.
But this one was the only one having a reference to junit.jar (somewhere on the net I saw an article saying something about junit but don't remember what).

So I left it like this.

... I don't know what will:

And because nowadays it's modern not to steal intelectual property, here's the source of the picture.

I was unhappy with my bank (What not to do when you're a bank).

Recently, the rumors about it going bankrupt became stronger and stronger so I cashed out my accounts and went for another bank.
The rumors came out to be fake and I felt like a dumb ass, becase I followed unchecked information.

But overall I don't regret my decision. The bank now has a new software which sucks big time. I was on a few occasions unable to access my money (ATM, online, bank office), so I don't think this is a bank that I could trust.

First Investment Bank, you were one of the best, now you're one of the worst.

In a previous post (here) I spoke about having trouble with e-banking software of my bank.

There is a pretty simple solution - the online payment operator - epay.bg. It also can do bank transfers, so it's perfect for the task.

Epay can work with almost all bank cards, it's cheap, it's user-friendly, it's reliable. It's the perfect solution.
One minor drawback - it can't check balance, because for sometime now most banks don't support that feature for epay 🙁

Still I'm going to use it. I can check my balance using the e-banking app.

My primary bank is First Investment Bank.
I chose a quite a while ago because it had the reputation of a bank that was the first in everything.

It's e-banking was uncomparable with the competitition - outrageously ugly, but accepted smartcards and did all I wanted it to do.

Now it's getting different - they changed their system with a new one. Something called FlexCube. Weirdly enough owned by Oracle.

From internal sources I know that the new system sucks and they failed to deploy it for more than a year. And when they finally made it last week during the weekend - my bank card was not working, meaning me without access to my money just before I went to Serbia. I had to take a loan to be able to go - not a pleasant thing to do.

So about the new e-banking interface - it sucks, all my preferences and beneficients are gone. It's ugly and hard to learn.

So I'm looking for a new bank with a decent e-banking services.

I have experience with SG Expressbank and Postbank - they suck too.

Update: the comments following that post reminded me of a story:
I was in the Netherlands. Once talking to one of the guys we discussed how much cash does each of us carry. I did carry a lot, he counted on the cards he had. My case: bank cards don't work on the road, on the street, they can fail, cash cannot fail.

Later that week:
There was this friend with which we drank quite a few drinks and on the way back to the hotel (I was in an apartment, the friend in a hotel) they said the employer forgot to pay the room, so it couldn't be used. We tried all the credit/debit cards we had - no luck - none of them worked. He had to sleep at my place. Cash is bulletproof !

I spent a couple of days in Serbia. Pictures here.

Overall I was surprised by what I saw - although they are not a rich country, its visible that they are situated closer than us to the more developed countries.
They don't speed on the road, it's clean and nice and green and ordered, people are really polite, roads are so much better than the Bulgarian ones.
Overall they are more advanced than we are.

In this piece of code the task is to override system exceptions (JPA, JTA exceptions) with application exceptions:

The rewriting of PersistenceException (PE) is straightforward.
It could come from the business method (bm()) and from commit().
When it comes from commit() it is wrapped in RollbackException. Thus the if.

Unfortunately if PE is raised from the bm(), it is also raised from the commit().

So if I throw an exception at (1), it gets overridden in (2). As simple as that. Because of the finally's ability to override results (OOP got messy here).

So what should be fixed?
First, at (2) I shouldn't throw any exception.

Second, I'm thinking of checking the result of bm() - if an exception, don't call commit(), but rollback().
Sounds right.

I've never seen this SQL syntax:

Have you?

Here's the design:
EJBs for business logic, JPA @Enitities for object (domain) model, Web services for a public interface.

The model is quite complex.

Even in the presentation (web services) I use the entities model.

The problem comes from that in the presentation a call is made to an EJB. The EJB returns an entity which after the call is ended gets disconnected. So all collections (@OneToMany) cannot be loaded.

EAGER fetching was the solution but then half of the database was loaded on a single method call. And eventually I got to a really ugly MySQL limitation (A query with more than 61 joins (inner selects + cases + at least 40 left outer joins) and a length of 436 lines.

Now before returing the entity in the EJB method via Reflection I initialize all the collections I need. Ugly.

What I need and would perfectly fit me would be an eager fetching only until some level of deepness is reached, then switch to lazy. Then a level of 2 or 3 would be perfect.

Currently I don't of something like that existing.

If someone has an idea, please let me know.

As simple as that:

Internationalization can be thought of as the design and information technology practices that enable localization to take place. It adapts products for potential use all over the world, whereas
Localization allows products to be suitable for a specific place, or “locale.”

So before thinking about localization, product and software designers must conceive the product in a way that will allow it to be later localized to many different cultures.

I got an A today in corporate finances - there was no exam, just an A for participating in classes and being memorable enough 🙂
Not everyone who attended all the classes was remembered - finally a reward for speaking in classes and asking dumb questions.

Today after an additional X-Ray I got a shot in between the bones and expect to have more
... and got this thing:

I gotta be with it for 10 days.

The good news is that the new X-Ray photos show no dislocated bones and fracture.

The old one was pretty scary:

Look what I got some time ago:

Explanation:
Obviously this could happen when Ant sees files that are modified after the script is started. Which is what I did. This could also happen if sources are copied from a different machine with different system time.

Still the warning is kinda weird.

source: here

On a recent project I had after some thoughts I decided to unify some coding styles.
Eclipse rules in that matter. It was cumbersome, but easy enough. Until I reached a point.

Refactoring some coding style differences is a piece of cake.
Refactoring some design issues you want to fix is mission impossible.

The best way to proceed - scrap it and start from scratch. By scrap it I mean make a clean project and copy only relevant stuff.

Now this project has 2 times less classes 🙂

И сега къде ще си простра прането:
(коментарът е на БГ, щото ми е трудно да преведа "простра прането" на английски)

Only a restart can fix this
(happened after a beamer was unplugged, vista rulez)

no comment:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mihail.stoynov/ATripToBrusselsDenHague

I ran 10 kilometers today. But only if the track was 400 m long, if it was 300, I ran only 7.5, which is still a good result for me.

If there's an enum
(this is all java 5)
  

you can't do entityManager.merge( Type.TYPE_1 ), because merge returns a persisted copy of that object and requires a default constructor.
Even if you add

it would fail.

The only way to add the possible values is with persist:

Unfortunately I don't know of a shortcut for that operation - it seems logical all enum values to be in the DB, but are not there by default.

So what happens if there's an object

and one wants to persist an object like that: 

So the conclusion is:
It's relatively easy to use enums as @Entities as long as on DB init all the enum values are preloaded in the DB (step1).

UPDATE:
What I wrote so far is true, BUT:

Even if one can persist enum, one cannot get them back, because of the aforementioned problem with the default constructor.

I was thinking of the doing the type-safe enum design pattern myself (as it was done pre- java 5): useless supplying a default .ctor prevents having a small number of instances - so again no good. Maybe if the .equals() and .hashcode() are rewritten this could work (but with a larger number of instances and a small number of different hashcodes) - just thought of it, may or may not work. One has to think about @Enumerated (JPA) or about Enum.name() and enum.ordinal() - still it does not look achievable.

There is an ugly solution of which I shall speak tomorrow because I want to go home !!!.

UPDATE: The solution: (be warned it's really ugly).

There should be an @Entity with an int (or whatever actually) @Id.
Then there should be the enum with a private property, whose type should be the @Id of the previous class. There should be a getter of that property
The getter() and setter() of the @Entity should be with the enum's type and in the getter and the setter the wrapping between the enum and it's int (or whatever actually) should occur.

Examples when I get back from lunch.

UPDATE: Example

Yes, I know - it's ugly, but this is the best I know.

Open browser, go to the messenger part, log in, as simple as that.

First impressions:

• no ICQ groups - that sucks - I used to use it a lot
• aliases of people are retained ('MG Zas' for example) - which is a backup for groups ('group MG -> user Zas' becomes 'MG Zas').
• Cyrillic characters work fine (if it was working with my other client - Pidgin/Gaim)

Concerning the standalone client - Google Talk - I have no idea if it works there - Google have a pretty wierd update policy - they update silently and only some clients - it sucks.

After all  - it's usable

How can this blog be the first in this search
email program fails needs ttl start first

What's wrong with you google?!

Update: Now I'm sixth.

The event: http://itboxing.devbg.org/

I have a friend who once called and asked whether I could loan him 100 000 bucks just as easily as if he has said 'let's go have a cup of coffee'.

So for his birthday he got:

The last two days I went skiing (well, actually snowboarding) with a friend with which I haven't before and learned some new tricks. Now 180° turns aren't a problem. First the training started with doing (trying to do) turns without jumps (this is really exhausting because a jump alleviates the whole thing - rises you in the air), then little by little I started testing steep jumps with low speed (rises you high without being fast) and it worked.

Some of the turns (when riding on the back edge of the board) can be done in an easier manner when part of it is touching the snow while turning - it looks like doing half a circle. This way if there's some unevenness it can be used to help lift the board.

The whole thing took a lot more energy than usual, because of all the jumping and falling down. Now I have muscle aches all over my body, but it was worth it.

There are no pictures because it's hard to take some with two pairs of gloves and wrist-protectors in the middle.

There's a second Psycho coming soon.

Guess who's on the picture there (1st row, 1st guy from right to left).
    Yes, you're right, that's me on the first Psycho.

Here's one more picture from it (I'm the guy looking right):