rebelutionary and Java Geek. via John Robb.
I gotta post a new picture of myself!
Author Archives: Karl
Monitor your JDBC traffic
P6Spy is an open source framework to do just that. I gotta give it a try.
Tetris meets the JavaBean
This developerWorks article gives you a great overview of developing a simple Tetris like game in Java.
A little about Cofax and what I do for a living
I’m one of the lead developers (one of three architects) of Knight Ridder Digital’s Cofax content management system.
Cofax, from it’s humble origins in Philadelphia, became one of the major toolsets Knight Ridder used for content management, spreading in usage to over twenty newspapers by March of 2001.
Due to a lack of resources in both finances and personnel, we employed an open source methodology to assist in it’s development. We had zero budget, and and just five developers when we started way back in 1999 and right from the start open source seemed the way to go.
This was done so very successfully, with the current version in CVS being a stable, satisfactory (award winning even) tool for those that used it. Newspapers were excited with the power it gave them to cover the news, designers were happy with the freedom it gave them, and administrators were happy with it’s ease of maintenance and deployment. In fact, there is a consulting company that is actually making money deploying Cofax sites in France. You can too. It’s open source.
In February of this year Knight Ridder Digital migrated to a new system called the SDP. It uses Cofax in it’s core, but also incorporates a number of proprietary technologies developed to meet specific needs.
So in a sense, you can say that Knight Ridder is still using Cofax, but in another sense, it’s using something much more extensive and powerful. Developed to meet a bigger set of requirements and built by a much larger tech team in which I was a member, but unlike Cofax, am not an architect.
I’d love to discuss the SDP with you but my feeling is I should refrain from doing so since it is internal company business. I have kept from talking about it in the past and will continue doing the same. Just understand that it is Cofax deep in it’s core, but utilizing a huge array of new technologies to meet new business needs. It’s implementation is vastly different from Cofax’s as well. Keep that in mind.
I am still the lead maintainer of Cofax and now, finally, have permission to talk about it and discuss it here at my home page and am happy to do so. It’s story is one I think you will find interesting and it incorporates technologies which you will find familiar, but it’s in the combination of those technologies that makes it unique.
I’m hoping along the way to recruit some help with maintaining the project. Within the core Cofax product lies an outstanding CMS if I say so myself.
Gotta say I’m happy to see Chris Matthews blogging
His weblog is sure to be interesting. Now he needs some perma-links and an browsable archive.
Update – They’ve added permalinks! Now we need those archives….
Is there going to be a U-turn in Bush’s environmental stance?
DrudgeReport – BUSH ADMIN OUTLINES ‘GLOBAL WARMING’ EFFECTS ON AMERICA; ACKNOWLEDGES DAMAGE
We can only hope. Here’s hoping for tomorrow’s news.
Update: NYTimes – Climate Changing, U.S. Says in Report Looks like there is some reading to do. I have visions of Pilot, while recognizing something is afoot, washing his hands of the responsibility.
Reading both sides of the debate
Too much ‘us vs. them’ Too many people claiming the left or the right has all the power and influence. Too many people feeling supressed when obviously they are not since they can post whatever the feel like it out here.
Lots and lots of hypocracy.
Read both sides of the debate.
The Far Left
The Democratic Left
The American Prospect
Democrats.com
The New Democrats
New Democrats Online (my bias stands here)
The New Republicans
The New Republic (doesn’t quite fit – where does this one go? Is this a magazine at the absolute center?)
Bull Moose Republicans (sometimes my bias stands here too)
The Republican Right
The National Review Online
The Weekly Standard
The Far Right
Now most of the blogs I visit fall into one of these categories. A wide mix. Most link to like blogs not even recognizing the existance of the other side except as the enemy.
A real blog service would be someone covering the news from both sides of the story. But I don’t have the time.
Where do you fall in this spectrum? Be honest.
Hunter James would have been one year old this Friday
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Hunter James, my brother’s son who passed away from SIDS last Sept. 15th, would have been one year old this past Friday.
Please say a prayer for a friend
Garret’s grandmother is in the hospital.
Please say a prayer for her and his family.
New Philly Skyline?
This CityPaper article makes a point of the two new skyscrapers under consideration for Philly and their viability.
A decade ago, the Philadelphia Orchestra was still playing in the Academy of Music, erected in 1857. That was when the powers that be decided the city had crossed the line from charming to pathetic and resolved to build a new state-of-the-art performing arts center. Last December, the Rafael Vi?oly-designed Kimmel Center, with its Y2K-vaulted glass roof, opened to rave reviews. The French newspaper Le Monde gushed, ?Philadelphia opens a concert hall that Paris can only dream about.?
The cause of putting Philadelphia on the contemporary architecture map keeps picking up steam. As of this month, two Center City high-rise office buildings have been announced to open in 2004 and 2005 respectively, each designed by a brand-name architect: Robert A.M. Stern and Cesar Pelli.