Installing X11 and the X11 SDK for Mac

I am in the process of trying to see if I can record VNC sessions on my Mac. Why on Earth would I want to do this? Well, I'm doing a series of interviews with database developers, and I want them to show me how they work, and I want to record this.

So, it turns out you can record a VNC session as a Flash video [1] but it takes some work.

The first step is to install X11 and the X11 SDK on your Mac. This actually was harder than I thought it would be. The Mac pages say it's "on your Tiger DVD". Hm. That's kind of like saying the Indian restaurant you want to go to is "in New York City."

So, after a lot of Googling and poking and false starts, I figured out how to do it without having to reinstall Mac OSX completely (I balked when it said it wanted to reboot my machine and start the install process).

• Put DVD 1 of Mac OSX Tiger into your DVD drive
• The contents of the DVD should pop up in Finder
• Double-click on "Optional Installs.pkg"
• Skip past the Introduction, the license agreement, and select a location. Don't worry, it won't start installing
• You will see the "Installation Type" dialog
• Open the Applications node, and check X11
• Click Install

Whew, OK, that installs X11.

You also need the SDK. That's somewhere else entirely, but on the same DVD

• Open "Xcode tools"
• Double-click on "Packages"
• Double-click "X11SDK.pkg"

This will install the SDK for you.

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[1] I could not get this approach to work for me. The performance was godawful slow. What I have done instead is I got the recommended screen recording tool, Snapz Pro. This seems to be working great, although the movie size is a concern. Once I get this all working, where I can record a telephone conversation combined with a VNC session, I'll let you know how I did it.

Sprint and Clearwire to Build National WiMAX Network - New York Times

Very interesting. But I suspect, at least initially, it's not going to be cheap. In my dreams, I envision grassroots folks building an Internet access web that doesn't rely on the Big Players for the plumbing.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/business-sprint-clearwire.html?ex=1342497600&en=aa660723df5e5922&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

New blog for a special market segment

There is a very small but passionate market segment that is interested, very interested in what's going on with my family. You know who you are.

You now have your own blog. I decided (on the advice of my dear brother) to separate these two audiences so those of you who want to hear about Java, databases, technology, and so on, don't have to sit through my gushing about my kids.

And those of you who want gushing and more gushing, don't have to troll through my dry missives about technology gossip, coding examples, and so on.

IBM buys DataMirror and thusly Pointbase

Just got a note from a friend that IBM has bought DataMirror. Given that DataMirror bought Pointbase a while back, this puts IBM in the awkward position of being invested in two small-footprint, 100% Java databases - Pointbase and Apache Derby.

Given that from what I understand there are a lot of IBM products that rely on Derby/Cloudscape, I don't think this bodes well for the future of Pointbase. I suspect it will hang on in deployments and uses where it is already in place, but I would be surprised if, for instance, IBM start replacing all its uses of Derby with Pointbase. Especially since Derby is a better product (disclaimer: I am highly biased :))

One nice thing is Pointbase owns some fairly good synchronization technology, and maybe IBM will be inspired to incorporate this into Apache Derby. That would be cool.

Trivia note: did you know that the mobile version of Pointbase, Pointbase Micro, was written by Thomas Mueller, the same guy who wrote HSQL and H2. Thomas, you get around! :)

The Father Speaks

I think I finally convinced my pa to start blogging. He is a great writer, fun to read, and he just seems to travel everywhere.

He also has some stinging political commentary, straight from the left, so if he gets worked up about something he's read in the New York Times, you may be in for a treat.

Accidental URLs

My Dad sent these out. Sorry, I know they're silly, but they just made me laugh.

All of these are legitimate websites - go ahead, click on the URL - that didn't spend quite enough time considering how their net names might read at first glance.

• "Who Represents" finds the name of celebrity agents at the aptly named http://www.whorepresents.com/

• Experts Exchange is a knowledge base for programmers at http://www.expertsexchange.com/

• Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at http://www.penisland.net/

• Then there's the Italian Power Generator company at http://www.powergenitalia.com/

• If you're looking for IP software, follow your nose to http://www.ipanywhere.com/

• The First Methodist Church down in Cumming, Georgia, has seen a big upsurge in attendance after opening their website at http://www.cummingfirst.com/

• And finally, the designers at Speed of Art await you with bated breath at their wacky Website, http://www.speedofart.com/

Peer-to-peer database synchronization

Being a technologist, I often think of technological solutions before I think of an actual use case. I know from past experience with both my own ideas and others that this Doesn't Work.

My latest flash is the idea of having a community of peers be able to securely share a relational database, creating an opportunity for collaboration and dialog, without having to put the data on a central server. My motivation for this is that as soon as you put data on a central server, that central server becomes key. It puts a particular location in a situation of greater power, and that changes the entire dynamics of the model: socially, economically, politically.

I would like to see communities created where only the peers in the community are involved, and each is an equal: nobody holds a "lock" on the data and the community and is thus tempted to exercise control in various ways.

Examples of this that are out there already which seem to fit into this architecture are BitTorrent and Mercurial. But BitTorrent works with binary data, and Mercurial works with text files (for the most part). Neither of these work with structured, relational data, and the advantages a relational database provides.

There are technical challenges. If you open yourself up to accepting connections, you open yourself to all sorts of trolls, worms, ogres and various evil creatures of the Dark Internet. So I don't like doing this, and neither should you (as a standard, regular Internet user). But how do you do peer-to-peer without doing this? You need to implement some very strong security, and strong security can easily mean a big, oafish, burdensome user interface to let someone join a community, which generally is a killer.

But that's not the only problem. The other problem is: who cares? Why would we want peer-to-peer database sharing among communities? What value does it provide? What is the "killer app?" Does anyone have any ideas? I'd rather test this idea out by building an actual useful solution rather than just building it because it's a "cool idea." Cool ideas don't amount to much if nobody cares and it doesn't do anything useful.

So, if you have thoughts, tell me, or point me to what others are doing. And if you think this is not useful, tell me why. I want to know.

40 Terabytes More Data For Amazon S3

Phanfar is going to back up all 40TB of their data on Amazon S3. Wow, that's a huge amount of data.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/13/40-terabytes-more-data-for-amazon-s3/

Salesforce.com transitions to platform as a service

Interesting - another big player is making their platform available for end users to build on top of. I wonder if the programmer of the future is one who integrates these platforms into a solution, rather than building in-house applications from scratch.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5672&tag=nl.e622

Google Mashups Editor: The Google Application Server - Mark McLaren's Weblog

Mark McLaren provides some very interesting details on the Google Mashups Editor. This is something to sit up and pay attention to...

http://cse-mjmcl.cse.bris.ac.uk/blog/2007/07/13/1184319308616.html

Micro Musings

My Dad is a great writer, and every now and then I get a great email about his travels or whatever on the family email list. I have encouraged him to blog, no such luck. So heck with him, I started a cut-and-paste blog for him. Cheers, Dad!

http://johnvancouvering.blogspot.com/

Now THAT is a playground!

I don't know why we don't go there more often, but there is this amazing place on the Berkeley Marina for kids 7 and older called the Berkeley Adventure Playground.

I went there on July 4 with Ariel, and it was just stunning.  You have to sign a piece of paper when you come in saying you will never in any way sue Berkeley for what happens in this place, and it's obvious why.  Children can check out a can of paint and a paintbrush, or a hammer and some nails, and go to the structures (all built with wood) and paint to their heart's delight.  You can slide down a 20-foot-long rope on a wheel and smash into a pile of sand.  Here's the video of Ariel doing it if you don't believe me:



You can get into a barrell and roll down a hill.   Here's the video:



You can play in a huge pile of dirt.  You can put an old plastic boat at the top of an incline and "surf" it down the hill. 

There is old netting.  There are bits of old piano lying around ready to be painted.  The place is an insane heaven of chaos and play.  It is like the alter-ego of the nice, brightly colored plastic playgrounds where a slide is just a slide and steps are just steps and you can not in any way hurt yourself if you tried.  I don't know if you've noticed, but newer playgrounds don't have merry-go-rounds or see-saws, staples of my childhood play.  Why?  Because you could hurt yourself.

So some parents are willing to sign the paper, take a little risk, and let their kids have a little fun.  And believe it or not, you can even drop your kids off to play there, and the volunteers will watch over them. Wow.

Here's a full slide show of the pictures I took there.  If you're ever in the neighborhood, you definitely have to come over and see it for yourself.

Ted Neward responds to Gavin about object databases

I've worked with relational databases my entire career, and saw the rise and demise of object databases. But Ted makes a very good point: "since when does one tool solve all problems?"

http://blogs.tedneward.com/2007/06/12/The+Relational+Database+Needs+No+Defense.aspx

Dynamic Data in jMaki Widgets Using JPA

A very nice, quick tutorial on how to bind a database table to an AJAX table component. Even more cool would be to have the database running embedded in the browser (see my comment on the blog).

http://blogs.sun.com/arungupta/entry/dynamic_data_in_jmaki_widgets

PostgreSQL rocks with a SpecJ benchmark

The PostgreSQL team has just published their first official performance benchmark, SpecJAppServer, running on Solaris with Niagara hardware, and it rocks, delivering 780 JOPs!

Josh Berkus of the PostgreSQL core team shares:

This publication shows that a properly tuned PostgreSQL is not only as fast or faster than MySQL, but almost as fast as Oracle (since the hardware platforms are different, it's hard to compare directly). This is something we've been saying for the last 2 years, and now we can prove it.

Max Mortazavi provides some more background on this, and Jignesh Shah and Tom Daly give some details.

If you didn't catch this, this is a free and open source database (with an open community) that has competitive performance with Oracle, and with full enterprise-grade support available from Sun. It's free to use however you like. No restrictions, no dual licensing. That means price / performance = infinity :).

If you haven't been looking at PostgreSQL for your enterprise applications, maybe it's time. And if you think x86/Linux is the best place to run a database, maybe you should think again, and take a serious look at Solaris and Niagara.

Take me out to the ball game

Ariel has been asking me for a while to take her to an A's game. She even has the cutest pink A's baseball cap (see above). So I finally found a good time, and we headed off to the game on BART this Saturday.

She was so excited, and grabbed my hand and smiled as we walked into the stadium. She was stunned at the view.

The first thing she asked me was "can we buy some junk food now?"

I worked at telling her the difference between balls and strikes, foul ball versus home run, what it meant to have bases loaded and why the A's pitcher was really doing a terrible job by walking so many runners and then allowing a home run.

She was very polite and tried to listen, but generally had this vague look of Not Quite Getting It (and not really caring). Mostly she had fun watching the cute elephant mascot do antics, and really really wanted some cotton candy. I checked in with her a couple of times, telling her if she was bored we could go, but she definitely did not want to go.

It really touched my heart. She just loved doing this, and doing it with me. That was all that really counted.

We bought a baseball, and she carries it around with her in the house and won't let Michael touch it.

Later when Linda asked her about the game, what she remembered most was the guy who swung so hard he fell down on his butt, and the guy who broke his bat. That, and the cotton candy, of course.

Whoops!

Michael had cut his foot the day before, so the next morning when he kept favoring one foot and walking in a twisted sort of way and falling down, we were really worried. We finally grabbed him and as he wailed we looked at his feet, trying to find a splinter or a cut or anything. Nothing we could see was wrong.

Then Linda said "I wonder..." and took off his pants. She had put both his legs into the same hole of his diaper wrap. Whoops :)

YouTube - Keith Olbermann - You have stabbed us in the back - RESIGN

Wow. When someone on a large media channel says something like this, that takes passion and dedication and courage. And I have to say... I agree with him. Not that it will ever happen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHySV6cCsbI

A creative use for an iPod

I was thinking, there will be a lot of iPods available on eBay now that the iPhone is out. May be a good chance to score one. Except that I don't want one.

Speaking of iPods, on the bus today I saw that even an iPod is a multi-functional device, not just the iPhone. A teenage girl across the way from me was using the back of her iPod (while listening to music) to see her face while she did her makeup. Now is that cool or what? :)

It's actually a pretty good life

One can always find things to complain about, but this blog is one where I share some things I'm pretty happy about.

I live in a great town, in a great state, in a great country (yes, can you believe I'm saying that?). I just finished reading a wonderful biography of Abraham Lincoln, and the dedication he and the American people had -- that they were willing to fight and give their lives to save the only country whose government was a democracy -- was quite moving and inspiring:

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. -- Gettysburg Address.

As I read about the sacrifices made to preserve the union, I realized how valuable and precious a democracy for all people is; I am thankful for it, and I am all the more committed to preserving it.

I love California and the Bay Area because of the beautiful weather and because it is a place of innovation and creativity.

I love Berkeley because it's not a city, and it's not a suburb, but something comfortably in between. I also love it because people here generally are dedicated to a healthy lifestyle mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. You can't walk a block without bumping into a therapist, a health practitioner, a yoga studio, an organic grocery, restaurants with delicious fresh, organic food, a book store, and so on.

Sun Microsystems is a great company to work for, and one of the things I think they get right is being flexible about where you work. If I had to commute to Silicon Valley every day, I would be miserable. If it was the only way to make money, I'd do it, but I'd be miserable.

But as it is, I am able to work from home, or take a quick bike ride up to one of the many nice coffee houses up on Shattuck that have free wireless. I can drink a latte, listen to some good music, feel a bit connected rather than just sitting in my house, and get some good work done. If I need to run an errand, there is a post office, grocery store, book store, deli, and a great alternative pharmacy all nearby. I recently hurt my back and there is a yoga studio a block from my main coffee house. There is a wide choice of chiropractors and acupuncturists, and generally I can bike from one place to the other without feeling I'm in a war zone.

And because I work at home or a five minute ride from home, I get to see my wife and family, and they get to see me. I am a familiar face. I am woven into my children's life rather than someone who pops in late at night to kiss them goodnight when they're already in bed.

So, there's a lot to be grateful for. I didn't cover the half of it. But this is what is on my mind tonight.