Older blog entries for idcmp (starting at number 50)

Nine Handy Tips for Taking the Summer Off

Six weeks ago I quit my job; six weeks later I've never been happier. I had grown jaded about technology and worn down about my work. This post isn't about how to quit your job, how to budget for the summer or how to get your next job; it's what I've learned in the brief oasis between those points in my life. The Beginning 1. Do Not Look For Your Next Job: You know internally if you're at the

Syndicated 2008-07-15 18:10:00 (Updated 2008-07-15 19:24:20) from Idcmp

Google's Conference on Scalability

This is the second year I've attended Google's conference on scalability, the talks were more academic this time around. One organizer indicated that this was indeed the goal of this year's conference. I enjoyed last year how much of the information was really hands on, but there's some value in seeing what's coming down the research pipe. The conference is an example of what googlers do with

Syndicated 2008-06-17 03:02:00 (Updated 2008-06-17 03:02:05) from Idcmp

Four Days of Spring: Spring Core Training

The other week I was fortunate enough to grab an extra freebie spot on Spring Source's "Spring Core" course. It's a marathon. Four days jam-packed with just about everything you could imagine Spring-related. I thought I'd post a bit about my impressions... First the good side; the course material is exhaustive and the instructor knew his stuff cold. While I was the only one in the course with

Syndicated 2008-05-03 21:02:00 (Updated 2008-05-06 03:22:34) from Idcmp

Six PDFs You May Find Interesting

1. Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population [ PDF ] A popular Google paper from 14 months ago, but a good read if it's something you may have to deal with. Fairly readable language too. Summary: Really burn your drives in for the first few months. Few metrics are good indicators of failure. 2. Pinpoint: Problem Determination in Large, Dynamic Internet Services [ PDF ] Tracing requests

Syndicated 2008-04-04 01:35:00 (Updated 2008-04-17 21:09:16) from Idcmp

Logging Performance Exceptions (Part 1)

You've probably wished you could find out why a certain block of code was occasionally slow in production. Wouldn't it be nice to turn on extra logging only when things were acting up? You can! With a bit of logging in your code, you can get an output like this: [135ms] request share purchase [5ms] validate purchase request [40ms] check account balances [39ms] synchronous balance

Syndicated 2008-03-16 00:22:00 (Updated 2008-03-16 00:37:54) from Idcmp

Java Developer Performance Reviews

Despite years of promises to the contrary, I've found myself in the unfortunate situation of having to write performance reviews for my developers. For those other poor souls in this situation, I've collected my thoughts and present them here. This post is split into two parts. The first part I vent a bit, the second part has the useful content. Before You Get Here Warning: If you find

Syndicated 2008-03-06 03:29:00 (Updated 2008-03-06 06:24:41) from Idcmp

Testing Network Effects on Your Code

Testing is a big deal. Very often though, we spend days writing unit tests only to forget that our code must play well with others. In the real world, how responsive will a new AJAX interface or RMI Swing application be? In our load testing environment, we've introduced a network nightmare bridge. This handy little box sits between us and our server (or between any two networked devices). We

Syndicated 2008-02-16 21:59:00 (Updated 2008-02-16 23:02:06) from Idcmp

Using SQL on Java Collections

On the project I work on, we have an in memory model of some particularly useful data (a POJO model as it were). A situation that regularly occurs with this useful data is that various groups want the data sliced and diced in various manners. Each time a request comes in we have to write a new method that iterates through our collection, sometimes making a new comparator and then return a

Syndicated 2007-12-09 05:11:00 (Updated 2007-12-09 22:53:44) from Idcmp

Security Anti-Pattern #1: The Very Secure Password

Our security department decided to change passwords of some "common accounts" (anti-pattern #2) we have at work on our load testing network. They started this process without letting anyone know and set the new password to "G2xi]$7jB;". This leads to security anti-pattern #1: The Very Secure Password. A good password has to meet four criteria: 1) It must be easy for you to remember.

Syndicated 2007-11-22 04:45:00 (Updated 2007-12-09 22:54:27) from Idcmp

Breaking Continuous Integration Servers (Part 2)

I wrote a few posts ago about how easily continuous integration servers break. This post got quite a bit of response! Jon from Atlassian felt bad for the ordeal and sent over a couple of "I'M WELL BUILT" t-shirts. Thanks Jon! Owen over at Unreasonable Entertainment ran an initial version of the "hell build" maven plugin idea from my post against Hudson with less than stellar results. Damn!

Syndicated 2007-11-19 03:02:00 (Updated 2007-12-09 22:55:13) from Idcmp

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