This looks like it may be the best Java API for working with Cassandra.

29th August 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Challenging “Challenging Dogma”

29th August 2010 by eamonn No Comments
Challenging Dogma

Challenging Dogma,
originally uploaded by andrewrosspoetry.

I somehow got sucked into a rather exhausting debate on evolution with creationist Andrew Ross in the comment section of one of his photographs on Flickr.

A very good overview and cheat-sheet of the Scrum agile process for software development.

27th August 2010 by eamonn No Comments

First impressions of Gremlin, a Graph-Based Programming Language

23rd August 2010 by eamonn No Comments
  • This is a Java-embeddable language that can perform queries on generalized graphs using a clear and concise XPath-based query language. In addition it adds typical scripting constructs that make it a complete language. However these additions seem weak, and I think a pure query language (like SQL) would have been better.

    One thing I thought was a bit inelegant was the number of special reserved identifiers in the query language, such as "outE", "inE", "outV", and "inV". I understand this was necessary to stay compatible with XPath, but I think it would have been better to move away from XPath and put such special identifiers in the syntax of the language.

    I did like was how easy it is to define computed edges in the graph, sort of like views in SQL. This can be considered a kind of reasoning. I particularly was struck by the clear insight in the presentation that "Graph-based reasoning is the process of making explicit what is implicit in lop co-developer the graph"

    (tags: rdf language java)

My first musical composition

22nd August 2010 by eamonn No Comments

I never tried this before, but here is my first attempt at creating music. The words are from a poem by W.B. Yeats; the music and the performance are by me.

Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites

Nice easy-to-use command-line argument parser with a lot of functionality.

17th August 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Some quite impressive examples of what you can do in HTML5 — easy to copy and adapt. (via @susiewee)

14th August 2010 by eamonn No Comments
  • Some quite impressive examples of what you can do in HTML5 — easy to copy and adapt. (via @susiewee)

The panel schedule for the last SXSW Interactive gives some sense of the breath of this event.

12th August 2010 by eamonn No Comments

This seems to be the itext class to use for line wrapping and determining how many lines of text resulted.

27th July 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Interesting article and comments looking at scalable key-store data stores like Riak, HBase, and Cassandra.

23rd July 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Handy memory optimization in Java image handling

15th July 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Running Hadoop MapReduce With Cassandra NoSQL

12th July 2010 by eamonn No Comments

links for 2010-07-11

11th July 2010 by eamonn No Comments

links for 2010-07-07

7th July 2010 by eamonn No Comments

What my neighborhood looked like in 1972.

28th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

A terse but definitive guide to the Cassandra Thrift API.

19th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Low-level Java API to Cassandra

18th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Example Cassandra client using the Hector library

15th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

A nice framework for implementing REST services in Java.

11th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments
  • A nice framework for implementing REST services in Java. It's use of annotations make the code a lot cleaner than when using the Restlet library. However unlike Restlet it has a lot of dependencies and is more difficult to get setup.

Simple python scripting of different elastic cloud infrastructure systems. Very cool.

7th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Very convenient way to make screencasts.

6th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Announcing 0.5 Release of Nrby Photos, a Palm WebOS App to Display Nearby Photographs

5th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Thanks again to the beta testers who have helped shape the features in this release.

The Beta 0.5 will soon be available for installation from the Palm application web page.

Changes:

  1. Internal changes to how the search radius is adjusted according to the local density of photographs.
  2. Make the refresh button semi-transparent.
  3. Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Please add any questions or comments below.

Update:

There is now a new dedicated web page for the app, as well as a video clip demo:

Comments and ratings of my Palm WebOS app

4th June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Announcing 0.4 Release of Nrby Photos, a Palm WebOS App to Display Nearby Photographs

1st June 2010 by eamonn 1 Comment

Thanks again to the beta testers who have helped shape the features in this release.

The Beta 0.4 is now available for installation from the Palm application web page.

Changes:

  1. Photos do not now automatically refresh when new photos are available, but instead the user controls the refresh explicitly by pressing a button.
  2. Included with the title of a photo is an indication of how far away and in what direction is the photo.
  3. Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Please add any questions or comments below.

Python wrappers around Webkit and Gecko browser engines

1st June 2010 by eamonn No Comments

A nice-looking JavaScript test framework that can be used when building WebOS apps.

30th May 2010 by eamonn No Comments

New Beta 0.3 Release of Nrby Photos, A Palm WebOS App to Display Nearby Photographs

28th May 2010 by eamonn 1 Comment

Thanks to all the beta testers of the 0.2 release for your testing and reviews.

A much improved 0.3 version is now ready for installation from the Palm application web page.

Changes in 0.3:

  1. Display the photo title, which is also a hyperlink to the Flick photo page.
  2. Improve algorithm for selecting photographs to include closeness as well as interestingness, and to automatically adjust the radius of search depending on the density of nearby photos.
  3. Display a status message when communicating with Flickr so when you have a slow network connection you can tell what is happening.
  4. Display some dummy photos in case you have no network connection or if there are no photos within 32 km.
  5. Use photos to which I have copyright (my own) as the example photos and dummy photos.
  6. Fixed some bugs encountered when flicking through photos.
  7. Fixed some bugs accessing Flickr.

Please add any comments or questions below.

(Update: There is now an later release)

Patterns for creating private, privileged, and public members of a JavaScript object.

26th May 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Qt API reference material, including QtWebkit

24th May 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Handy code snippets for calculating distances between two lat/lon points on the Earth.

22nd May 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Nrby Photos — A Palm WebOS App to Display Nearby Photographs

17th May 2010 by eamonn 3 Comments

Displays photographs that people on the Flickr have taken close to your current location. Flick left and right to browse through the photographs. Automatically updates as you move. (All photographs are copyright of their owners.)

You can install the beta release from the Palm application web page.

This is a personal open-source project. The code is on GitHub.

(Update: there is now a new improved release.)

Great examples of Web design

15th May 2010 by eamonn No Comments

links for 2010-05-14

14th May 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Some Web UI Programming Resources

11th May 2010 by eamonn No Comments

A really good overview and demonstration of the new capabilities of HTML5.

29th April 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Yet another concept video for magazine publishing on a iPad/slate device.

18th April 2010 by eamonn No Comments

How to use HTML5 in current browser — even IE

16th April 2010 by eamonn No Comments

A good source of historical maps recommended by Joel Pomerantz of Thinkwalks

10th April 2010 by eamonn No Comments

The scala-specific repository used by default by SBT

9th April 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Java matrix packages with linear system solvers

4th April 2010 by eamonn No Comments

An interesting round-up, with pointed commentary, of how magazine publishers are thinking of adapting to the iPad/slate world.

29th March 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Handy step-by-step tutorial on using new HTML5, with and iPhone specific features

27th March 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Java package for solving systems of linear equations

21st March 2010 by eamonn No Comments

A different view of St Patrick

17th March 2010 by eamonn No Comments

The meme of Christianity was in decline on the Western fringe of Europe as the Germanic tribes of the Angles and Saxons and Franks swept aside the lingering Celtic-Roman society left behind by the Roman Empire. But, some carriers of the meme, personified in legend as St Patrick, made it to Ireland where it proved stronger than the pre-existing polytheistic Druidism, and from its Atlantic fastness it ultimately spread back East and Christianized the invading Germanics. I celebrate this today not so much because of the Christianity but because of the technology of Writing that accompanied it, setting Ireland on a literary course that ultimately lead to Yeats and Joyce and Becket and Heaney. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

A great visualization of the universe of diagram types

14th March 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Understanding Git Conceptually

13th March 2010 by eamonn No Comments
  • The Git source code control system has a lot of advantages compared to the more established Subversion. Many online tutorials emphasize the similarities to Subversion, giving examples of sequences commands that can adapted and used in a rote way. However these tutorials also tend to gloss over the sometimes fundamental conceptual differences between Git and Subversion which can lead you into confusion and trouble. This tutorial by contrast does a good job of explaining the conceptual fundamentals, but in a practical way without getting into too much detail.

This site is really useful for optimizing web page performance.

10th March 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Don’t read this if you plan to listen to the Pimsleur Mandarin audio course!

7th March 2010 by eamonn No Comments

I like the Pimsleur courses a lot. They allow you to get to a very basic speaking level in a language very quickly.

The courses are audio-only — in fact, they expressly discourage you from reading the language while you are listening to the course.

Nevertheless, now that I am finished the first eight lessons I feel
the need to actually see what the written Chinese (both pinyin and
characters) looks like. So here is the vocabulary from Pimseur Quick
and Simple Chinese Mandarin, Lesson 1. I show both the standard
pinyin and in my own phonetic impression of how the words sound.

Words (with translations from Pimsleur)
对不起 dui4 bu5 qi3 dway boo chee excuse me
英文 Ying1 wen2 een wen English (language)
hui4 whey can
shuo1 shwa speak
ni3 nee you
bu4 boo not
ma5 ma ?
请问 qing3 wen4 chin wen please let me ask
wo3 w’awe I/me
普通话 pu3 tong1 hua4 poo tung hwah common language / Mandarin Chinese (PRC)
一点 yi1 dian3 ee dyar some / a little
美国 Mei3 guo2 may gw’awe America
ren2 yren person
shi4 shr am/are/is
Characters (with translations from MDBG)
yi1 ee one; a, an; alone
bu4 boo no, not; un-; negative prefix
ren2 yren man; people; mankind; someone else
hui4 whey assemble, meet together; meeting
ni3 nee you, second person pronoun
ma5 ma (question tag)
guo2 gw’awe nation, country, nation-state
dui4 dway correct, right; facing, opposed
wo3 w’awe our, us, i, me, my, we
wen2 wen literature, culture, writing
shi4 shr indeed, yes, right; to be; demonstrative pronoun, this, that
pu3 poo universal, general, widespread
dian3 dyar dot, speck, spot; point, degree
mei3 may beautiful, pretty; pleasing
ying1 een petal, flower, leaf; brave, a hero; England, English
hua4 hwah speech, talk, language; dialect
shuo1 shwa speak, say, talk; scold, upbraid
qing3 chin ask, request; invite; please
qi3 chee rise, stand up; go up; begin
tong1 tung pass through, common, communicate
wen4 wen ask about, inquire after



Document image segmentation

26th February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

One of my patents just got granted. "Image layout constraint generation"

24th February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Wired and Adobe's concept of what a digital version of Wired would look like on an iPad.

22nd February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Part of the answer of how to remove objects from PDF.

16th February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Reddis and Akka — two interesting technologies for fast, light-weight distributed programming

15th February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Decluttered API documentation for the iText PDF-manipulating Java library

15th February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

The iText library is a great resource for generating and manipulating PDF files. However its API is very complex and there is a notable lack of good online tutorial material. So you often must resort to plowing through the Javadoc-generated API documentation trying to figure out how to use the library.

Doing that, you might be annoyed at the fact that the API available online does not just include the public and protected members, but also includes package-private and private members. While this would be useful to people working on the internals of iText, it is just a lot of useless clutter to most people who are just going to use the API.

So I regenerated the Javadoc from the 5.0.1 source, using the default settings which hides the private stuff. You can access this at:

http://eamonn.org/itextpdf-5.0.1-api/

Debunking Airnergy with some back-of-the-envelope calculations

14th February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

I have seen several reverences to Airnergy device by RCA that claims to recharge a battery by harvesting WiFi signals from the air.

That sounded a bit fishy to me. Let’s look at some numbers. First, how much power does a WiFi hotspot put out? According to moonblinkwifi.com a typical output is 200 mW.

Now say this device is 3 metres (10 feet) away from the hotspot. This 200 mW of power will be spread on the surface of a 3 metre-radius sphere with a surface area of about 110 square metres.

Now, this device looks to be about 10cm X 5cm which is about 1/22000 of the area of the sphere across which the 200 mW is spread. Which means the amount of power hitting the device is about 9.1 μW

Now according to the Wikipedia battery article a small AAA rechargeable battery stores about 6700 J of energy. How long would it take to recharge a AAA battery with our 9.1 μW of power, assuming you could miraculously capture 100% of the power?

The answer: 24 years.

OK, there are some approximations here. The WiFi antenna does not actually broadcast equally in all directions, and you might have the device closer to the antenna, and there might be multiple WiFi signals you could receive. On the other hand, you probably want to recharge a battery that has more capacity than a little AAA battery.

So I call bullshit. A battery charger that takes on the order of a decade to recharge a battery, is a useless device.

The sad thing is how many tech journalist sites reported uncritically on the Airnergy.

50 Most Frequently Used Chinese Characters Presented in an Easy-to-Learn Way

13th February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

I created this list of Chinese characters for my own benefit in trying to learn them. I took Jun Da’s list of most frequently used characters and added a Google image search to provide some mnemonics. I added tone-color and exaggerated tone marks to the pinyin to help remind me of the the tones.

See this on a separate page with links to shorter and longer lists of characters.

(Note, this may look ugly if you are using Internet Explorer. It should look better on Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. I need to do a bit more CSS-hacking to make it work on IE.)




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de di´di`

(possessive particle)/of, really and truly, aim/clear

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yi¯

one/1/single/a(n)

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shi`

is/are/am/yes/to be

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bu`bu´

(negative prefix)/not/no

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le liao˘liao`

(modal particle intensifying preceding clause)/(completed action marker), to know/to understand/to know, clear, look afar from a high place

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zai`

(located) at/in/exist

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ren´

man/person/people

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you˘

to have/there is/there are/to exist/to be

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wo˘

I/me/myself

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ta¯

he/him

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zhe`zhei`

this/these, this/these/(sometimes used before a measure word, especially in Beijing)

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ge`

(a measure word)/individual

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men

(plural marker for pronouns and a few animate nouns)

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zhong¯zhong`

within/among/in/middle/center/while (doing sth)/during/China/Chinese, hit (the mark)

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lai´

to come

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shang`

on/on top/upon/first (of two parts)/previous or last (week, etc.)/upper/higher/above/previous/to climb/to go into/above/to go up

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da`dai`

big/huge/large/major/great/wide/deep/oldest/eldest, doctor

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wei´wei`

act as/take…to be/to be/to do/to serve as/to become, because of/for/to

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he´he`huo´huo`

and/together with/with/peace/harmony/union, cap (a poem)/respond in singing, soft/warm, mix together/to blend

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guo´

country/state/nation

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de di`

(subor. part. adverbial)/-ly, earth/ground/field/place/land

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dao`

to (a place)/until (a time)/up to/to go/to arrive

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yi˘

to use/according to/so as to/in order to/by/with/because/Israel (abbrev.)

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shui`shuo¯

persuade (politically), to speak/to say

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shi´

o’clock/time/when/hour/season/period

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yao¯yao`

demand/ask/request/coerce, important/vital/to want/to be going to/must

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jiu`

at once/then/right away/only/(emphasis)/to approach/to move towards/to undertake

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chu¯

to go out/to come out/to occur/to produce/to go beyond/to rise/to put forth/to occur/to happen/(a measure word for dramas, plays, or operas)

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hui`kuai`

can/be possible/be able to/to assemble/to meet/to gather/to see/union/group/association, to balance an account/accounting

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ke˘

can/may/able to/certain(ly)/to suit/(particle used for emphasis)

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ye˘

also/too

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ni˘

you

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dui`

couple/pair/to be opposite/to oppose/to face/for/to/correct (answer)/to answer/to reply/to direct (towards sth)/right

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sheng¯

to be born/to give birth/life/to grow

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neng´

can/may/capable/energy/able

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er´

and/as well as/but (not)/yet (not)/(shows causal relation)/(shows change of state)/(shows contrast)

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zi˘zi

11 p.m.-1 a.m./1st earthly branch/child/midnight/son/child/seed/egg/small thing, (noun suff.)

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na˘na`nei`

how/which, that/those, that/those/(sometimes used before a measure word, especially in Beijing)

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de´de dei˘

obtain/get/gain/proper/suitable/proud/contented/allow/permit/ready/finished, a sentence particle used after a verb to show effect/degree or possibility, to have to/must/ought to/to need to

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yu´

(surname), in/at/to/from/by/than/out of

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zhao¯zhao´zhe zhu`zhuo´

catch/receive/suffer, part. indicates the successful result of a verb/to touch/to come in contact with/to feel/to be affected by/to catch fire/to fall asleep/to burn, -ing part. (indicates an action in progress)/part. coverb-forming after some verbs, to make known/to show/to prove/to write/book/outstanding, to wear (clothes)/to contact/to use/to apply

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xia`

under/second (of two parts)/next (week, etc.)/lower/below/underneath/down(wards)/to decline/to go down/latter

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zi`

from/self/oneself/since

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zhi¯

(literary equivalent of 的)/(subor. part.)/him/her/it

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nian´

year

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guo`

(experienced action marker)/to cross/to go over/to pass (time)/to celebrate (a holiday)/to live/to get along/(surname)/excessively/too-

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fa¯fa`

to send out/to show (one’s feeling)/to issue/to develop, hair

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hou`

empress/queen/surname, back/behind/rear/afterwards/after/later

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zuo`

to regard as/to take (somebody) for/to do/to make

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li˘

inside/internal/interior, village/within/inside, Chinese mile/neighborhood/li, a Chinese unit of length = one-half kilometer/hometown


Scalate: a lightweight alternative to the Lift Scala web framework

3rd February 2010 by eamonn No Comments
  • So far, Lift has been the only Scala-specific way of creating web applications. Scalate offers a lightweight alternative, though purists will shudder at how functionality and presentation are mixed willy-nilly.
    (tags: programming)

links for 2010-02-01

1st February 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Free BBC Online Chinese Course

30th January 2010 by eamonn No Comments

Handy summary of SBT commands

25th January 2010 by eamonn No Comments