system.reflecti0n.net

Scene: Adobe Acrobat comes home after a hard day of making side-deals with other companies and binging on smaller applications. Once, Acrobat would have leapt up the stairs to reach his 2nd-floor apartment. Once upon a time this valued member of the community helped countless others read and share documents. But now, after years of bloat, Acrobat reaches his second floor apartment sweating and turning purple in the face. He wipes the sweat from his eyes and unlocks the door to his apartment to find all his friends there...

Acrobat: Wha... what are all you guyes doing here?

Photoshop: Acrobat, first we'd like to say the-- WE LOVE YOU... Everybody in this room loves you... And we're worried... about YOU.

Acrobat: What's going on?

Photshop: Acrobat, you have to stop this.

Acrobat: Stop what? What do you mean "stop"? Stop what?

Photoshop: Here, read this...

Acrobat: Humm... RrrRRrrrrRrr... Humm... Would you mind if I just call the office and make sure there's no updates before I read you this document? No? Ok, but there' could be a security issue.... Hummm... RrRrrRRrr... Hummm...

Foxit: Give me that! [Snatches document from Acrobat's hands] You know what this says, Adobe? It says you've put on weight... AGAIN. No one can remember the last time you were under 10Mb! And at this rate, you'll be pushing 30Mb by the end of the year!

Acrobat: Hey! Today's document rendering world is COMPLEX, I've just be putting on a little extra CODE to get the job done!

Foxit: Oh that is such bullshit Acrobat! I do nearly everything you do, and I'm still under 3Mb!

Photoshop: Acrobat, it's time you admitted you have a problem. For starters, you're going to have to stop haning around with those Google and Yahoo kids, they're TROUBLE.

Foxit: ...and here's some reading material on how to curb your bloat [drops large pile of documents in Acrobat's lap]

Photoshop: Foxit, oh god no! Acrobat hasn't been able to manage documents of that size for years, he's so out-of-shape! What have you done? Call 9-1-1!

End scene

Tags: writing, funny, creativity, adobe, pdf

Is anyone at all bothered by the effort wasted to go download a "tech" podcast, only to find out the hosts spend alot of time talking about how much they like their iPods, cellphones and newest DVD? I mean, if it's a "tech" podcsat, why do they spend so much time talking about shopping?

Examples: DiggNation, GeekSpeakRadio, TechPhile (I think this one's gone into hibernation-- no big loss)... they all spend time talking among themselves about why they would or wouldn't buy stuff, what they bought in the past, and what they expect to buy in the future... It's just coincidence that they are talking about "tech" its still really about being consumers of technology and that's really a BIG disappointment.

Besides, tech isn't just stuff that plugs into the wall or runs on batteries... Technology is any human-made thing that actually has an application. A candlestick is technology, its application is to provide light and the match that lit it is another technology. A big bag of hammers is a big bag of technology.

So please, let's stop with the posing and look at what all these technology podcasts really are, just radio shows for mallrats.

Maybe I should be looking for "Technical" podcasts instead.

Tags: criticism, opinion, podcasting

First the easy part, download the Jakarta Tomcat connector, JK1. Run the installer. Add the isapi_redirect.dll to Web Service Extensions in the IIS manager. Make sure the ISAPI redirector was added to the IIS website you plan to use for hosting your Tomcat redirection.

That's the easy part, you'll find those sorts of instructions on just about any old HOWTO going for JK1. Doing that much will probably get you running your Tomcat web apps at localhost. Here's the parts no one seems to discuss but you'd better know if you want to do more than permanently host your web apps on your DEV box...

1. You don't need a connector running at all on port 8080 or 80 or whatever port you were running Tomcat on before IIS came into the picture. Edit server.xml and comment this out. While you're at it, make sure that the AJP connector XML is not commented out.
2. Further down server.xml is a node for declaring your default web host resist the urge to change this to your new domain name. It is not necessary to move your Tomcat host becuase IIS will be answering calls to your domain name, not Tomcat.
3. The whole point of getting IIS to help process requests for Tomcat is to run alternate websites on a different platform, this means telling IIS which domains point to your Tomcat service and using a different website for your non-Tomcat websites. This is done by adding host header names to your IIS website definitions, try this link http://www.no-ip.com/support/guides/web_servers/virtual_hosting_iis.html for more info.
4. Mysteriously, to run JK1 through root you don't add a /ROOT/*=wlb definition uriworkermap.properties instead you add: /*=wlb which is not what you're in the habit of doing when running Tomcat applications at the root of the website.

In these early days I can also tell you that you need to keep your localhost folder in {TOMCAT_HOME}\conf\Catalina and maintiain all your webapp context files in there, especially if you're using Hibernate, which I simply cannot make understand to look anywhere but localhost for MySQL database connections. That being said, if you want a website that's going to be visible from your domain name hosted in IIS, you'll need to have a new subfolder in {TOMCAT_HOME}\conf\Catalina that matches your new domain name that contains copies of the context files in localhost, otherwise you'll get "BAD REQUEST" errors when attempting to access your Tomcat app through the new domain name.

This is early days so far. Some of this information will likely change as I get more familiar with the platform but with any luck if you stumple upon this blog you'll get enough info from it to fill in the gaps left behind by the dozens of web pages I looked at.

Tags: iis, tomcat, jakarta, apache, java, installation