1. “They Call Me Coach” by John Wooden
2. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach
3. “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle
4. “Illusions” by Richard Bach
5. “Tao Te Ching” by Lao-Tzu (translated by Jane English and Gia-Fu Feng)
6. “Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman” by Merle Miller
7. “The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Gallwey
8. “The Hobbit” by J. R. R. Tolkien
9. “Walden Two” by B.F. Skinner
10. “Don’t Shoot the Dog!” by Karen Pryor
11. “On Writing” by Stephen King
12. “The Elements of Style” by Strunk & White
13. “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In” by Roger Fisher &  William L. Ury
14. “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” (by guess who?)

 <xs:complexType name="MixedTextAndAnyElementsType" mixed="true">
   <xs:sequence>
     <xs:any namespace="##any" processContents="skip"
         minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
   </xs:sequence>
 </xs:complexType>

In the Tomcat source code, the addHeader() method is empty!  It doesn’t even throw an exception to say it does nothing.  That’s a nasty surprise left for you to discover by the Tomcat developers.  Any way, here’s code for setting a header:

public void invoke(Request req, Response resp)
    throws IOException, ServletException
{
    MessageBytes mb =
        req.getCoyoteRequest().getMimeHeaders().addValue("FOO");
    mb.setString("BAR");
    getNext().invoke(req, resp);
}

If you’re using Maven, you’ll need at least these two dependencies in your valve project:

<dependency>
    <!-- has valve interface -->
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
    <artifactId>catalina</artifactId>
    <version>6.0.26</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <!-- has ...coyote.Request -->
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
    <artifactId>coyote</artifactId>
    <version>6.0.26</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Thanks to Mark Thomas’s response to a related post way back in 2006.  Not being an HTTP protocol wizard, I’d not have connected HTTP headers with MIME types.

One cool new Nano feature is the ability to remap keys.  This means you can make it behave more like a modern GUI program.  For example, instead of Nano’s odd Ctrl-O to save a file, you can remap a key and use Ctrl-S to save files, just like you do in every single other program you use. This feature is only available in Nano versions newer than 2.1.  So you can’t use it in standard Cygwin:-(

Fortunately, you can download Nano’s source code, compile it, and install it into Cygwin.  To prepare for this, I used Cygwin’s setup program to install the gcc C & C++ compilers, autoconf, automake, make, and gnutils-devel, which I thought (hoped) was all I needed.   Then I followed the simple instructions in Nano’s README file.  (There’s a helpful YouTube video showing how to do it.)  But when I followed the instructions the make step failed.  I got lots of strange errors, such as a missing confdefs.h file and many undefined constants.  I searched through the output from configure to find a clue as to what was wrong.

The cause turned out to be that Nano requires the ncurses lib that supports UTF-8.  Cygwin by default installs libncurses-devel, but not the one that handles UTF-8.  For that you need to also install libncursesw-devel via Cygwin’s setup program.  After that  configure, make,and make install all worked fine.

This was actually the first program I ever installed from source code on Cygwin.  It’s a good feeling to accomplish it.  I’m thankful to all the Unix folks who’ve streamlined the process and made a consistent way to install from source.

Before April 8th, the Apple developer agreement section 3.3.1:

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

In the new iPhone OS 4.0 developer agreement, section 3.3.1 was changed to:

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

There is no good reason to force developers to use archaic programming languages that are bug prone and less secure for creating native iPhone OS apps.   The new restrictions have one purpose, lock developers into Apple’s outdated, dead-end programming tools, which benefits only Apple.

As of now, iPhone OS development only makes sense for 100% Apple zealots, who mindlessly follow Apple’s ever-changing dictates.  For most  developers, investing time and money creating iPhone OS applications is foolish.  Apple does not want to work “with you”, they only want to “use you”.   Apple is an unreliable business partner.

Of course, Apple’s bad behavior is sad.  They make great hardware and the iPhone OS does many things right.  It’s fun to create a slick iPhone application (which could be done in almost any programming language).

But Apple won’t change their anti-developer behavior until they realize that it threatens the future of the iPhone OS platform.  Since Apple has been and still could be a force for good, let’s help them realize this sooner.

Boycott Apple.  If Apple disrespects and overly restricts software developers, let’s stop buying and using their products.  And let’s not create applications for Apple hardware.  Lower profits and growth rates are the only things that will burst Apple’s arrogance bubble.

But wait, the mobile space is the cutting edge and future of computing!  Many savvy developers want be in this space.  Luckily, they still can.

After a very short time, newer Android phones are as good as or better than the iPhone.  In terms of number of devices and software market, Android will surpass iPhone in 2010. Use your creativity and skills to make Android devices the ones consumers want most.

Android is open and gives developers choice.  It provides freedom to create great applications, without someone like Steve Jobs telling you, what you can do and how you can do it.  Besides Java, more programming languages are coming to Android, such as C# and ActionScript. Native code (C/C++/D etc.) is an option too.

Make an example of Apple.   Show them (and other big tech companies) that when they act like arrogant dictators towards software developers, their products flounder.   The truth is, Apple needs developers more than developers need Apple.

[As of 10-Sept-2010, I'm calling off my jihad against Apple's anti-developer policies.  Reason: Apple rescinded their ridiculous restrictions against developers choosing their own tools and languages!  The developer backlash against Apple succeeded!  Visit InfoQ for their story about  Apple's revised developer policies. ]

• The Experience Music Project (EMP).  I’ve heard good and not so good reviews about it.  Nevertheless, I’d like to see the inside of it.  (I wish I didn’t have to look at the outside of it;-)
• The Museum of Flight: I’ve only heard good things about this place.
• University of Washington:  I love those gothic buildings around Red Square.  The spring time cherry tree blossoms are definitely worth a walk through.
• Top of Queen Anne: A great views of Seattle.
• Alki Beach:  A nice view of Seattle.  But don’t go to Salty’s.  It’s dreadful and expensive the last couple years:-(
• Seattle Art Museum
• Seattle Asian Art Museum
• Pacific Science Center
• Space Needle: You can visit the top for a quick view and/or have dinner there.  The food is nothing to write home about and it’s pricey.  But because the whole restaurant revolves 360 degrees every hour, it’s a great way to see Seattle in a relaxed way.
• Deception Pass:  A ways north of Seattle, but quite spectacular.
• Chuckanut Drive: If you’re visitors are heading up to Vancouver BC, you might as well go up or come back on the scenic Chuckanut Drive. Also, if you like east coast quality bagels, stop in at the Bagelry in Bellingham, near where a north bound drive on Chuckanut will dump you.
• Olympia Pizza on 15th in Capital Hill:  It’s my favorite pizza place for thicker crust pizza.  BUT, make sure to order “lite” cheese on the pizza, or you may be overwhelmed by the monstrous amount of cheese they usually put on.  If the weather is nice, you can eat outside in front of the restaurant and enjoy the laid back 15th Ave scene.
• Bruce Lee’s Grave:  He and his son are buried in the graveyard at the top of Capital Hill.  You can get to via 15th Ave.  It’s near the Asian Art Museum.  Not for everyone, but some people would enjoy visiting it.  If you’re into famous graves, you could also visit Jimi Hendrix in Renton.
• Safeco Field:  I’m not much into baseball, but a warm summer evening at this baseball park is very enjoyable.   Buy the cheapest tickets you can. Then spend most of your time walking around the stadium and sit in any empty good seat you want.  They kettle corn they sell outside the stadium is pretty darn good too.

What places do you like to take your out of town visitors to?

• A way to get the currently running method name, i.e. Thread.getCurrentThread().getCurrentMethodName().  This would help in unit tests, where I often use the test method name as the basis for usernames, log traces, database values, and directory names etc.  For example, when my test needs to login to some service, I’ll create a username like this “<testMethodName>-username”.  There are ways to get the current method name, but they involve using unsupported Sun methods or extracting it from a stack trace, both of which are non portable.
• Hmmm…what else?

As of 28-May-2009, the GroovyWS website said…

Using proxies

If you are using a proxy for accessing internet, you can use the following environment variables to get rid of it:

• proxyHost
• proxyPort
• proxy.user
• proxy.password

or directly use the following in your proxy.setproxypropertie([:])

I tried to make HTTP proxy configuration work by following their instructions.  Unfortunately, the following three ways didn’t work   I used various property naming conventions I saw in the GroovyWS javadocs and other online examples.

//A
proxy.setProxyProperties( [ "proxyHost":"proxy.foo.org", proxyPort:"8080", "proxy.user":"myUsername", "proxy.password":"myPassword" ] )

//B
proxy.setProxyProperties( [ "http.proxyHost":"proxy.foo.org", "http.proxyPort":"8080", "http.proxy.user":"myUsername", "http.proxy.password":"myPassword" ] )

//C
proxy.setProxyProperties( [ proxyHost:"proxy.foo.org", proxyPort:"8080", "http.proxy.user":"myUsername", "proxy.password":"myPassword" ] )

However, these two ways did work

//D
System.setProperty(“http.proxyHost”, “proxy.foo.org”)
System.setProperty(“http.proxyPort”, “8080″)
System.setProperty(“http.proxy.user”, “myUsername”)
System.setProperty(“http.proxy.password”, “myPassword”)

//E
System.setProperty(“proxyHost”, “proxy.foo.org”)
System.setProperty(“proxyPort”, “8080″)
System.setProperty(“proxy.user”, “myUsername”)
System.setProperty(“proxy.password”, “myPassword”)

My conclusion is that either I called setProxyProperties() incorrectly or that it doesn’t work.  Setting the system properties directly was the only way I got GroovyWS to work through an HTTP proxy.

Here is the final working script:

import groovyx.net.ws.WSClient

System.setProperty("proxyHost",      "proxy.foo.org")
System.setProperty("proxyPort",      "8080")
System.setProperty("proxy.user",     "myUsername")
System.setProperty("proxy.password", "myPassword")

WSClient proxy = new WSClient("http://www.w3schools.com/webservices/tempconvert.asmx?WSDL", this.class.classLoader)
proxy.initialize()
def result = proxy.CelsiusToFahrenheit(0)
println "You are probably freezing at ${result} degrees Farhenheit"

NOTE: I used the GroovyWS uber jar: groovyws-standalone-0.5.0.jar.  Because it was taking too long, I gave up on trying use the GroovyWS minimal jar and then figuring out which CXF dependencies were needed for a simple SOAP client.

To make SVN completely ignore a directory named “log” and all its contents, add log to the global-ignores line in the ~/.subversion/config file.

This is the only way I’ve found to make SVN 1.5.x & 1.6.x to not show the log directory when I run the svn status command.

The steaks Ted cooks to perfection are from Costco.  They have really good prices compared to grocery stores.  Also, they sell so much meat so fast, that you can be sure it’s fresh.

There is nothing fancy about how Ted cooks steak, except how it tastes.  He uses a big cast iron frying pan on a gas stove top, but can do just as well on an electric stove top.  The only fancy thing that Ted needs to cook steak is a powerful exhaust fan because, with exception of Filet Mignon, steak cooked at  high temperatures puts out a lot of greasy smoke.

The Method

1. Buy steaks from Costco:  New York, Filet Mignon, or best of all Rib Eye.  Don’t be shy, buy thick ones.
2. Take the steak out of the fridge and let it sit until it reaches room temperature.
3. Soak the steak in light olive oil, Johnny’s Seasoning, & ground pepper for about 20 minutes.  (I used to not like pepper on steak, but Ted showed me the error of my ways)
4. Heat up your cast iron frying pan until it just starts to smoke.  In other words, it ought to be pretty dang hot.
5. Cook the steak 4 minutes per side.  The goal is to create a black crust that seals in the flavor, but leaves the center rare to medium rare.
6. If you’re concerned that you didn’t cook it enough, you can put it in a 350º-375º oven.  Use an electronic thermometer to watch the temperature.  For rare-ish steak, keep it in until it reaches 115º.  For medium rare to medium, let it reach 135°.
7. After taking it out of the pan or oven, don’t eat it yet!  Let it rest, under a foil tent, for about 5 minutes.  It needs time for the juices to settle down and soak back in.   If you don’t wait, when you cut into it the steak, the juice will flow out onto the plate, where it won’t be able to add flavor to the meat.

When all is said and done, but before the eating begins, you could end up with this.

filet mignon, ricotta, and asparagus

If steak ends up becoming a big part of your diet, then you may be interested in one of these.