Dem Deutschen Volke

The first time I went to Berlin, in 1999, on a university trip, I could not understand the structure (and grammar) of the sentence "Dem Deutschen Volke", which is written near the top of the building. Only once I could make some sense of the german dative, did I understand what it meant.

Berlin at night

films watched

Last evening saw Micheal Douglas's film "Dont say a word" on TV (dubbed in German of course). Found the film pretty okay.
The film ran at 8:15 pm, but we first recorded it, and watched it after our son had gone to sleep. Watching TV with him is not so easy :-)
Saturday night there was Morgan Freeman's "Im Netz der Spinne". I don't know what's the name of the film in English. That film too was okay. Also, since the film ran later, and our son was asleep at that time, so we did not have to record it first:-)

lousy weather means 20D stays idle

However much I might have wanted to fire away the new 20D, the lousy weather in Hamburg has kept me from it. Lousy weather is pretty normal in Hamburg autumns, but these days its been exceptionally lousy. Overcast and rainy.
I'll be going to Berlin on Monday for an overnight trip, and plan to take the 20D with me. Lets see if its any more possible to use the camera outdoors in Berlin than in Hamburg.

dull, but amusing

This may be the dullest blog in the world, but it sure is amusing :-)

WS-* or not

Further to the debate on WS-* stack, two distinct views are visible: that its bloated and unnecessary, e.g. discussed here, and that its complexity is a means to handle complex requirements, e.g. as discussed here.
Well, both make sense, and my point of view is neutral. What I would like to see is, however, some discussion of big vendor politics behind the WS-* stack.

another interesting post on WS-*

I also found this post to be interesting:Are Web Services receding?

Canon 20D shot

Canon 20D pic of myself (some self-projection at work here). The pic has been taken at 1/50s at ISO 800. Auto-levels added in PS.

Gmail misbehaving again

Gmail is misbehaving today again :-(
The page is taking ages to load.
update: according to the blog entry here, gmail's server capacity is being incremented gradually.

This is where I live and work in Hamburg.

applying for a job - part 2

In a previous post, I mentioned that I plan to apply for a job, and am making my CV, which is evolving over time with respect to its content and style. Well, this may be normal, but since I hadn't made a CV in a number of years, for me this was pretty interesting. The CV I have now looks pretty much different (in content) from the CV I made about 3 weeks ago. Over the past few weeks I realized that a few things need to be mentioned, which might make the CV interesting for potential employers. However, one thing I am still not comfortable with, is the amount of information you have to add explicitly. For example, why should I write that I know Windows and Linux, and that I know Word, Powerpoint etc? Well, shouldn't it be obvious that I must have made the CV using some kind of word processor running on some operating system, and if I have listed a presentation I made at some event, it would in high-probability have been made in Powerpoint, or sth similar, which should imply that I am familiar with such application software? I would expect the answer to this be yes, but I guess it might have to do with buzzwords, that tend to be picked up from the CV. So if I mention that I have experience of using BEA WebLogic application server, it might be easily spotted than an implication of knowing about Weblogic application server from a listed presentation at a BEA event whose title relates to some J2EE topic in turn relating to WebLogic application server.
I don't know how the people who read CVs think. Plus they may be getting thousands of CVs, and may have developed some methods of screening them quickly. What would interest me, of course, is to know whether the CVs are read in their entirety. If so, then highlighting buzzwords may not be necessary, and things could work by implication also.

Canon 20D finally there!!

Last evening I picked up the Canon 20D. Well, I have never used a digital SLR before, so I don't know what Canon 10D or 300D might have felt and looked like, but the 20D is fabulous. I have so far just played around a bit with it, and taken a few photos, but the feature I liked most was setting the ISO speed to 1600, and taking photos in normal room lighting using a slow lens like the Canon 28-90 4.5-5.6 .
Today I plan to install the software, and have a look at the photos as to how they look like in real size. On the camera LCD they look pretty fine.
I also realized that there's a lot to learn in digital photography as well. White balance, colour temperature, etc etc.
Though I haven't taken many photos yet, luckily the 20D hasn't locked up on me yet.

Canon 20D almost there!!!

Yesterday I was informed that the Canon 20D which I had pre-ordered has arrived. Today I plan to go pick it up.
Unfortunately the battery grip is still not there. After having used the batter grip on my analog 300V, I like the facility the battery grips provide. However, since Canon Germany haven't told the store when they will deliver the grips, and it may take 3 to 4 weeks, it makes more sense to start using the camera first.
The funny thing is that some problems with the 20D are already being reported on some forums :-)

Amilo M 1420 laptop

In a previous entry, I had blogged about the Amilp M 1420 laptop that I had bought and then returned, because it tended to become a bit too warm.
Yesterday I got a scare when I asked the online shop that its been many days since I returned the laptop, but hadn't heard from them. I was told that to return something one has to inform them first (although no such thing was mentioned in their order confirmation email) to get a number, which is then used by them to track any returned goods. This sounds reasonable, but unfortunately I wasn't aware of it, and had returned the laptop without informing them.
Good stores however have a good customer service as well, and I was told on phone enquiry that I should check with the post office whether the packet was received by them, or whether it was returned, and then they would proceed to solve the issue. Checking with the post office revealved that the packet indeed was received by them (luckily I hadn't thrown away the receipt from the post office), and now today I have been told by the online store that they have indeed found the laptop, and the amount I had paid will be returned to me.
Phew!!

web services specifications continued...

In a previous entry I mentioned the two new WS-* specifications, and said that interesting reactions to these might be coming. Well here is a very interesting entry.

web services article from Microsoft

This is a new article from Microsoft which provides a good overview of the current web services landscape, and explains what role different standards and specifications out there are expected to play. A number of blogs have referenced to this article. One blog entry, from Jim Webber, raised some interesting questions about the intended use of WS-Addressing specification as mentioned in the article.

blog from the past

This post contains a kind-of-blog I started writing before I discovered "proper" blogging. Some links here might not work, since this was a html page hosted on my department's webserver. I have removed it from there since quite some time, but am putting it here for "historical archiving". First I was just putting items on this page, then I started putting the date. Evolution at work:)
Here is the "blog" (btw its from 2001-2002):

A technical article of mine has appeared in a software magazine
sw-development. It's named Erste Erfahrungen mit Message-Driven
Beans und JMS WAP-Anwendungen and is based on work that I did about 3 months
ago. The publishing of this article is a good morale-booster, and now I plan
to try my hand at writing again some time in the near future.

I have recently looked into Java-XML data binding. Put simply, data binding (in
the java context) could be described as converting a DTD or schema into a set of
java classes, which could then be filled with data taken from an XML instance of
the DTD or schema (this process is called unmarshalling). These java classes could be used in the normal way, and then converted back into an XML instance (this
process being called marshalling).

There are a number of different data binding tools. The ones that I have looked
into are Castor and Zeus. I looked more into Zeus, whose beta 2 version is quite usuable, though only for DTDs.

I had initially wanted to contribute adding support for XML schema to Zeus,
but since I did not have much idea about schemas, so I spent some time on going through schemas. I have written two tools, one of which creates a skeleton of an XML instance from a schema. Though limited in capability, it can be useful for circumstances where one just wants to see how an XML instance of a schema might
look like.

I also tried my hand at a data-binding tool, which works only for schemas.
Though not very ably designed, it is quite reasonably useful. In this tool I used
the XML Schema Datatypes

implementation by Kohsuke Kawaguchi. It is part of the Sun Multi-Schema XML
Validator.

I plan to put the previosuly mentioned tools here, once I am back from my
vacation in late October.

Somehow I haven't managed to look at the data-binding tool mentioned previously eversince I returned back from the vacation, though I plan to add a few missing features to it and possibly also think about an improved design.

I also looked briefly at a framework similar to JDOM, called dom4j. There is XML Datatypes integration in this framework, using the
implementation I mentioned previously, though I haven't been able to figure out how dom4j could be used to take advantage of this integration, or better, whether I could use this in the work I am currently thinking about, where I might have to manipulate WSDL documents in java. As I said, I am still thinking about the next steps of my work, and for the case where I may need to manipulate WSDL documents, I'd most probably use dom4j this time instead of JDOM.

I recently needed to send data to a servlet directly from a java class,
rather than through a browser, and after I had looked up the relevant methods in the java API and written a utility class that does this, I stumbled upon a very nice
resource. There are also a number of examples
available, on one of which
the following java class is based. This can be used to send data, e.g. from a file, to be sent to the servlet, as well as to get any data sent by the servlet in response.

Recently got the book "Java Enterprise Design Patterns" by Mark Grand issued from the university library. For the time being I have just been through a portion of one chapter that describes an implementation of a thread pool. This book seems promising, and I plan to go through more of it.

Got a new hard disk (18GB) installed in my machine. In addition, now have Windows 2000 professional on that. However, it was not at all Plug and Play, rather really Plug and Pray, and even praying did not help reduce the two and half days time that was spent to get the things up and running back again. Though not everything works correctly even now, with an important piece of hardware, the sound
card, somehow refusing to be configured :-(

Went to the Online 2002 in Düsseldorf on 31 January. Made a presentation there which went okay. It was after quite a long time that I had made a presentation.

Attended the Borland Enterprise Essentials Conference (EEC) in Mannheim on the 21st of February. More accurately, attended just the second day of the two day conference. The attendance was pretty much high, and the topics of the presentations were hefty as well. However, having attended some similar conferences in the past also, I wonder what purpose do they serve, or, limiting the perspective to myself only, who are they aimed at. I had gone there to hear some concrete, flowing discussion about web services support in Borland's products, to see some dashing demonstration of the products. However, what I heard and saw there was quite feeble, and its the same at such conferences. But then, perhaps, the impression that you get is relative to who you are. I may find some presentation feeble because it may be that I have had some chance to work with the technologies that were the topic of the presentation. But it could be that to some attendee, a floating-on-the-surface presentation makes more sense.

Having said all that, the free flowing (soft)drinks/tee/coffee service at the EEC was really good.

These days I am also working towards getting a German driving license. The whole process is quite long and a bit complicated also, and very expensive as well :-(

A friend of mine found this
page on the internet, which can be very useful for the written exam that is part of getting the license, and which I have yet to take.

Attended the JBoss training in London (March 11-15). I have written a report on that, which is available
here only to internal users.

Sometimes one really gets a surprise. Yesterday (26-03-02) was one such day. The story is this: a little more than 2 years ago, when I was doing a group project for my univ. course, my part in the group being related to working with
Java3D
, I got myself in as a reviewer of a (then)up-coming
book on Java 3D from Manning publications. I read the manuscript, gave my comments, 2 times I guess, though am not really sure, and time passed. Ah yes, I was promised a copy of the book after its publication. So now yesterday, out of the blue, a copy of the book Java 3D Programming arrives
by post. It so happened, it seems, that the book took a very long time getting published. But the nice part is that the publishers kept their promise. And even more nice is the fact that my name is in the book, mentioned as one of the reviewers :-)

Surprise number 2 within a short time!! Today (05-04-02) I received an email from Floyd Marinescu of theServerSide , thanking me for "my help with the
EJB Design Patterns book". Well, as far as I can remember, I had sent him some questions and comments about one particular pattern in his book, while it was being written and reviewed at theServerSide, and it is very generous of him to have included my name in the reviewers list in the book. So, for me, it is pretty nice to be listed as a reviewer in two, and not one, books :-)

I have a few convoluted ideas which I would like to offer as a thesis (normally 6 months duration). If you are a student of the TUHH, and know Java and XML sufficiently well, just send me an email and we can talk further.

Web services is a big buzzword these days. Transactional web services, though not really a buzzword, or at least not yet, are a step forward, or better put, different from the normal ACID transactions, with different requirements.

Recently I played a little bit with the HP Web Services Transactions product, which is currently available as Tech Preview, and which, using the words on the HP
web page , "is the industry's first transactioning product designed for the complex world of Web services...provides the transactional infrastructure needed to support complex, long duration transactions outside the firewall between multiple parties".

I hope to write an article on this topic pretty soon.

Today (23-04-02) I finally passed the written test needed for getting a driving license (after having failed the first time, which not only turned out to be real embarrassing, but also filthy expensive). I have to admit that I was really
sweating before this test, which, theoretically, is supposed to be quite easy. Now the practical test is left.
My professor, who also knew how much I was sweating before the test, gifted me a statue from Uzbekistan.

[25-04-02]: I have decided to add the date before any change I make to this page.

[02-05-02]: I have written an introductory level article about the
Business Transaction Protocol, which I would be putting here soon.
I would like to thank Dr. Jim Webber of the HP Arjuna labs who read the article and suggested a number of improvements.

You may use the article for any non-commercial use, but please provide full reference to the author.

[03-05-02]: Added a new page
where I plan to list ideas for projects which students could take up
for their project work or thesis.

[03-05-02]: I have sold the article that I mentioned previously ( on [02-05-02] ) to webservices.org. This is a good morale booster, and I now really intend to try writing more.

[17-05-02]: The article mentioned in the previous article has appeared at
webservices.org . It's called Transactions over Web Services.

[28-05-02]: I now finally have a driving license that entitles me to drive a car here in Germany. Today I passed the driving test in the first attempt!!!

[14-06-02]: I had heard about weblogs, bloggers, blogging etc, but wasn't really sure what it was all about. So yesterday I googled around the internet a bit, and now have my own weblog. However, there is nothing there at the moment, though hopefully I would be able to use that more frequently. You can find it here.

[20-06-02]: I have started putting some content on my weblog. Hopefully this will pick up.

[25-06-02]: I have been looking at Project JXTA on and off. Recently I also found another open-source project called
JXTA Bridge, which
"is designed to allow SOAP communication over the JXTA P2P network". I also plan to look at a project from IBM, which is now available as an open-source project at Apache (actually as a sub-project of Axis, called the Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF)). Two initial articles about WSIF are available here.

I have some ideas where I might need to use WSIF and JXTA Bridge together. Hopefully I will be able to try these things out pretty soon, and if something good turns out, I'll post it here.

[09-08-02]: I am planning to write an article on WSIF soon. If all goes according to the plan, it should be finished and also published within this month.

[11-09-02]: Unfortunately everything does not always work according to the plan.
I still have to write an article, and I have started one, but then I am going back home (to Pakistan) next week, so don't really know when it will be finished and published. A number of things came up which delayed the writing effort.

I won't be in the office from the 16th of September to the 18th of October.

[23-10-02]: I am back in office now. Trying to get the things flowing again after a one month absence.

[11-11-02]: An update after a long time. Today I read a sample issue of MIT's Technology Insider. It can be downloaded from here.



I have recently started using Windows XP Professional. That too the German version of it!! Even though I have read a lot about the contemptible licensing scheme associated with Windows XP (about which I am quite ambivalent since I get the software from the department, and don't have to pay for it), and that many people have switched to Linux because of that, I have liked XP. One reason for this is that it has some nice features that I have perrsonally liked. One of these is that it is very convenient to view JPEGs from within folders. I like this feature because now I can transfer photos from the digital camera and view them straight away, e.g. as a slide show.

The reason for this change was that I have some new hardware at office now. One of this is a new laptop, a Sony Vaio, a pretty nice machine with a hefty processor and 1GB of RAM. Now that is something!! The other piece of hardware is a new desktop, that too with pretty hefty stuff, and some nice video hardware. The monitor is also a flat panel LCD, or whatever its called, with some 17" screen. This too is nice, and I have dumped the older 19" Nokia monitor that I had had for the last more than 3 years. This old Nokia must have weighed 50 kilos, it's really difficult to move it. There is also a CD with some demo games that came with the new desktop, most probably to demonstrate the 3D fancy stuff, and I have bought a joystick to try these out. It is quite some fun!!

However, I rarely have luck with installing Windows, and usually have to do it more than once. And this process is not
nice at all :-(

what this may mean

The following headline, found through Google-news, means what the detailed story under the headline says:Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Straw Pledge to Kidnap Briton's Family: "Straw Pledge to Kidnap Briton's Family"

However, the headline, as it is written, can also mean that Mr. Straw is pledging to kidnap a briton's family. Which would of course be funny.

I guess it depends on how one creates headlines, but I guess the meaning in the last sentence is legitimately inferrable.

mingling with REST

I wonder how the REST advocates would respond to this: "Web Service Transfer (WS-Transfer)".

Maybe there would be interesting responses to read in the next few days.

funny

Right now, accessing this page at IBM reveals the code of the JSP :-)
The page is about the newly updated WS-Policy specification, btw.

<%@ page import="java.util.*, java.text.*, com.ibm.developerworks.*, DataConnectionBean" %> <% // for performance enhancements as the user explores dW, this JSP stores a DataConnectionBean and a RatingsResultsBean // in the session. This is also done in the servlet, but the majority of users won't make it there (rate an article). DataConnectionBean dataConnectionBean = null; RatingsResultsBean ratingsResultsBean = null; RatingsResultsDataHelper ratingsResultsDataHelper = null; Hashtable ratingsResultsBeanHashtable = null; Long article_id = new Long(-1); String article_id_string = request.getParameter("article_id"); if (article_id_string != null && !(article_id_string.trim().equals(""))) { article_id_string = DataHelper.replaceString(article_id_string, "-", ""); article_id_string = DataHelper.removeFirstString(article_id_string, "0"); article_id = new Long(article_id_string); } // try to get a ratings results bean from the hashtable in the session before going to the DB ratingsResultsBeanHashtable = (Hashtable)session.getValue(RatingsConstants.SESSION_RATINGS_RESULTS_BEAN_HASHTABLE); // try to get the bean from the hashtable, if it's not null. If it is, create a new results bean hashtable if (ratingsResultsBeanHashtable != null && article_id != null) ratingsResultsBean = (RatingsResultsBean)ratingsResultsBeanHashtable.get(article_id); else if (ratingsResultsBeanHashtable == null) ratingsResultsBeanHashtable = new Hashtable(); // no results bean in the session, create one if (ratingsResultsBean == null) { //get an existing data connection bean if there is one dataConnectionBean = (DataConnectionBean)session.getValue(RatingsConstants.SESSION_CONNECTION_BEAN); if (dataConnectionBean == null) { dataConnectionBean = new DataConnectionBean(); //dataConnectionBean.load("/usr/IBMWebAS/properties/dwRatings.properties"); //can/should we use the poll prop file dataConnectionBean.load("/was4/WebSphere/AppServer/installedApps/dWApp.ear/dWApp.war/dwRatings.properties"); //can/should we use the poll prop file if (dataConnectionBean != null) session.putValue(RatingsConstants.SESSION_CONNECTION_BEAN, dataConnectionBean); } ratingsResultsDataHelper = new RatingsResultsDataHelper(dataConnectionBean); ratingsResultsBean = ratingsResultsDataHelper.getRatingsResultsBean(article_id.longValue()); } %> <% if (ratingsResultsBean != null) { // store the ratingsresultsbean in the session, which is also done in the controlling servlet, but they probably won't // make it there if (ratingsResultsBeanHashtable.containsKey(article_id)) //ratings results bean already exists for this page in the session { ratingsResultsBeanHashtable.remove(article_id); ratingsResultsBeanHashtable.put(article_id, ratingsResultsBean); } else { ratingsResultsBeanHashtable.put(article_id, ratingsResultsBean); } session.putValue(RatingsConstants.SESSION_RATINGS_RESULTS_BEAN_HASHTABLE, ratingsResultsBeanHashtable); if (ratingsResultsBean.getNumberOfRatings() >= 10) { %> Average rating: (<%= ratingsResultsBean.getNumberOfRatings() %> ratings) <% } } //else, do nothing - don't try to display a rating if we don't have a bean!! %>

really interesting!!

The UnMuseum - The Baghdad Battery

getting to like gmail

I am starting to like gmail. I haven't used hotmail much, even though I have an account at hotmail since 97, since I always preferred a "proper" email address. Since the last six years I have the university email address, before that I used the address provided by the ISP back home.
One thing I miss with gmail is that the Inbox can't be split into sub-folders, like I can do in Outlook Express. There are filters in gmail, but no option for creating subfolders. Of course, gmail has the concept of conversations, so maybe once I get used to this concept, I won't miss folders that much.

spam generation

According to this map, some spam seems to be generated in India and Pakistan as well; though it seems none in Scandinavian countries!!

excellent resource for information about Canon flashes

A comprehensive source of information about Canon flashes is available here: Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras - Part I. Reading the information here has helped me better use my 420EX, and also helped me not being surprised when a picture is exposed in a way that was not intended.

looking for a job

I am looking for a job these days. The current version of my CV is here. I have found that the CV tends to evolve over time. The version I have put online is pretty much different from the one I made 3 weeks ago. If I can think of something else that needs to be highlighted, or something which I may have forgotten to add, I'll update the CV accordingly.
I have also noticed a few things about writing CVs which are a bit funny. I'll write about these pretty soon, hopefully.
In the meantime, of course, any calls for interview are of course welcome :-)

Timberland shoes

I have two pairs of Timberland shoes. One of them, which I bought a few weeks ago at a discounted price, is this. The other one is not listed anymore, it seems, maybe because it has been phased out. I bought it in August 2002, as far as I can remember.
Timberland shoes are good. They are comfortable to wear, and look good also.

words from the past

While at school, two interesting terms that were used a number of times in our english literature course were:
poetic license
willing suspension of disbelief

another interesting term is plausible deniability. I think I read this first in Bob Woodword's book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987. I read this book during my last year in school. I actually bought it, and still have it back home in Pakistan. At that time it was available at a discount price from a local bookstore.

movie from the past

Last night I saw Basic Instinct, the famously notorious film with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in the lead roles. I do remember seeing this film a very large number of years ago, but I did not remember it, not even the most famously notorious scene with Sharon Stone switching her legs sitting on a stool and wearing no underwear. Therefore watching it again was pretty interesting.
I do admit, though, that the twist in the story, i.e. whether Sharon Stone was the killer, eluded me.

excellent tennis

Yesterday there was some excellent tennis to watch on tv; the semi-final match of the US open tournament. I watched the third set of the match between Capriati and Dementieva, and the games seemed to go on for ever, with both players proverbially fighting for each point. Really nice. Dementieva won in the end on a tie-break.
The final is going to be an all-Russian affair.
Day before yesterday also saw some games of the last set between Agassi and Federer. Agassi lost after five sets, and I wonder for how long he will be playing.

phasing out the webpage

I have started removing information from my department homepage. I also plan to gradually shifting my email to the gmail account, though for that I hope the gmail account remains reliable. A few days ago it was inaccessible for some hours!!
This blog will remain my main point of contact with the online world.

this site's feed

The url for this site's feed is:
http://farhat.blogspot.com/atom.xml

making research papers available online

There are a few researchers who make almost all of their research papers available online. This is really commendable.

a new laptop...and not anymore

Last Saturday I received the new laptop I had ordered, the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M 1420. It has pretty nice specs, and a price lower than comparable Toshibas or Sonys. The IBM Thinkpads are a bit too expensive in any case.
I liked the laptop much, it is solidly built, and works quite fine also. I spent quite some time installing WinXP Prof on it, and all the other applications/software that I generally use. In fact, it took too much time, and I now know that transferring data accumulated over two years on the computer one used previously is not trivial.
Well, today I formatted the new laptop again, installed the WinXP Home edition, to make it like it was in its original condition, so that I could return it. Why? The main reason for this is one: The Amilo tends to get very hot. And I mean hot, not warm. Specially on the place under the keyboard where one places the hands for typing, but also the keyboard itself.
Yesterday I spent some time thinking whether this is a drawback I could live with, given that these specs are possibly not available for this price in other laptops. But then since I intend to be the new laptop my main computer, which I'll be using back home in Pakistan also, where the ambient temperature can be pretty warm as well, having a laptop that tends to get hot by default is not perhaps a very good idea. Also, working with a laptop that has a hot keyboard and an even hotter body is not pleasant either.
So today I plan to send the laptop back to the online shop which I bought it from.

ordered the 20D

I have ordered the Canon 20D. Last year I mused about getting the then newly announced 300D this year, but now that a new camera, with much better specs, and a not-very-high price is available, I have decided to have a go at it. Of course, I would love to get the 1D Mark II, but, well, then...
The photoshop says it should be available in early October. Lets see.
I'll keep my analog 300V in any case. It has served me well.