2009-12-08

App Catalog visible again

Now App Catalog show applications again. Since 1.3.1 it has only reported App Catalog unavailable. So registered with a SIM not 'supported' by palm, yet, I get 5 applications. And guess what two of them are texas holdem applications. Gambling and porn are quick to get global access.

2009-11-23

1.3.1 out for the GSM Palm pre

This morning, Swedish time, the WebOS 1.3.1 update for GSM Palm Pre was made available. There is a lot of updates. But maybe not really the updates that many people wants. I just hope more is coming and that fast.

Some said before that 1.3.1 was supposed to be faster, but maybe the most speed gains was in 1.2.1 already. I can not say I really feel that it is a lot faster. OK, the calendar feels faster. Before it kind of froze while it reading from google.

The appstore is not working. I do not know if it is temporary or if it is because they blocking out unknown networks.

Another thing, in 1.3.1 you can manually edit the APN settings. But it does not accept the values I enter. And it is only a limited set of values you can enter. So it might not be enough even if the values I enter was accepted.

Patch 8 for AR System 7.1 released

I had almost forgotten that I was waiting for this patch. Expected it to be released at the same time as patch 3 for 7.5, but it was released now instead.

So again there is an update for all parts. Server wins with about 60 fixes in this release. And, no surprise, there were memory leak fixes again. But there was nothing there that really applied to the current customer I work with. But the errors regarding workflow does not feel good they were there earlier.

I do not think I will rush to upgrade. OK, it looks like there are some important things in this patch. But ITSM is working OK at the moment. So I think 'why fixed something that is not broken' is a good thought at the moment.

2009-11-05

Palm Pre

Last week I bought a Palm Pre. In Sweden they are not selling it yet. So I gambled and bought the unlocked one from Germany and hoped it would work with my Swedish operator. And sure it works. But not really out of the box, and not without pain.

But now when it is working it is a really nice telephone. OK, I do not have that much to compare with since this is my first touch screen smartphone. So the basic is great. And the phone has potential. And when you read the forums you will see that many people is working on getting most out of the fact that it is based on linux.

But the applications mostly look like they are early beta or alpha versions. Missing a lot of settings and functions for being really use full. OK, I only have version 1.1.3, since it is the latest supported for the GSM compared to 1.2.1 in ths US.

And also, the battery is not really strong enough for last the whole day, if you are staying connected with WiFi and 3G all day. I read somewhere that there was a new better battery available. But I have not checked that options more.

The real problem I have hade with the phone is the fact that the phone have a database over all operators in the world and there settings for 3G internet, MMS, etc. And of curse a database like that can never be complete. And that mean that the Swedish operators are not correct. So first thing that happened was that the phone think you roaming on 3G. And then it will not let you activate the phone. And since you can not activate the phone you can not choose any other settings. The way I got it working was to step out of 3G into where only have 2G coverage. There are other options to solve the problem. For instance use Meta-Doctor to write an updated/modified version of WebOS to the phone. Actually, for updating the operator database you only need to use WebOS Quick Install to change the database files after you update them outside the phone.

So if you need help or want to read more about the Palm Pre you can visit precentral.net or everythingpre. Another insight to WebOS and the internals is WebOS Internals.

I hope I soon have time to write some nice apps for the Palm Pre. I know one that I have not found yet, unless you run the emulator for palmos.

I recommend this phone, even with all the problems with it being a new OS/platform and all.

Note: WebOS 1.3.1 is soon out in US. Is it about speed. Or what else is new. I hope it will be released here in Europe directly too.

2009-10-07

Patch 3 for AR System 7.5 released

Now BMC has release patch 3 for AR System 7.5. I contains many fixes. And some of the fixes make you think if 7.5 has functioned at all before patch 3. And also that there still are some serious bugs that will give some real problems.
  • AR System suite installer
  • AR System server
  • BMC Remedy Approval Server
  • BMC Remedy Assignment Engine
  • BMC Remedy Data Import
  • BMC Remedy Development Studio
  • BMC Remedy Email Engine
  • BMC Remedy Flashboard
  • BMC Remedy Mid Tier
  • BMC Remedy User
All these components are updated in the patch. I have not tested any thing yet. Actually, my installation of 7.5p2 has not been used at all. One thing I noticed that I did not know was that web service plugin has moved from the C version of the plugin server and now in the Java plugin server. I guess it is a good move. But then when you see fixes related to web services plugin you know it never going to end up in 7.1. Which is really annoying.

Web services by the way, the infra structure should really by upgraded. AXIS 1.4, it is really old and not containing all the new stuff that will make web services scale. If using AXIS2 or maybe Sun Metro you could use things lite MTOM and XOP to reduce package size and better serialization and encoding/decoding to increase performance. This is really needed. And also I am really annoyed the remove something that worked in 6.3 when they released 7.0. I am referring to sequences in sequences. You can at least in 7.1 work around that since it still stores all the data. But you have to build your own workflow to maintain the references. You even can use the fact that now Request ID is available in phase 3, which is when push happens.

So now I am only waiting for patch 8 of 7.1. And hoping it really contains some good stuff.

2009-09-13

Total Commander 7.50 is in the open

One of the tools I have used the longest on the windows platforms are Total Commander, previously known as Windows Commander. The license I have is from 1996. That I get for helping with beta testing. Before that I used it at work where they had a license. It was back in the windows 3.11 days, and I had been a big user of Norton commander in DOS.

So what is new in 7.50. I guess full UNICODE support is the big one. But now also I think Ghisler has let go of the idea of the install have to fit into a floppy. OK, I do not know if or when it got to large. But I guess whit the new help file there is no return. So now the response, it will not fit within the size limit.

Also, Ghisler is now maintaining sftpplug. The problem is that he still can not export the whole package since the laws in his country. So you have to download some files separately. Two DLLs from libcurl.

2009-08-09

EGC and USGC 2009

Both European Go Congress and US Go Congress over for this time. I do not know so much what happened this year. Only that it was very few Swedish this year, maybe from Sweden arrange the tournament last year. The other thing I get feeling of from EGC is that the pairing and by that the SOS count might not have been fair. But I can not judge that. In USCG an 18 year old amateur player beat 3 professionals to win the ING tournament. Very good.

I do not know why, but there was no computer go tournament in either EGC or USGC. I have no clue why. I have not look to hard either. At Computer Go Info you could find, up to yesterday, that those tournament were canceled. Now they are not to be seen at all in the planned or played tournament lists. If you look through the mail list archive you can probably find why.

361points.com write this about EGC/USGC 2009.

2009-08-04

Totally missed EGC 2009

I have totally forgotten about European Go Congress 2009. And after a quick look at the starting field, so have all the Swedish players. I guess everybody in Sweden put to much into arranging the event last year, so they stay home this year. Or maybe they got stuck in the coffee shops. After a closer look at the standings there are only 3 Swedish players. You can find the current standings here. And as of today 7 out of 10 games have been played.

Also I see that there is no computer go tournament this year. If there had been one I would have noticed on GNU Go mailing list that they where looking for someone to operate the program.

2009-07-31

BMC UserWorld 2009?

I guess now it is for sure, there will be no BMC UserWorld 2009. At least I can find no information about this. Which would be a major marketing blunder if the information is not there.

So where to go instead. I guess there are lots of local events, even arranged by BMC. And the topics may be more specific to one product or branch.

ARSlist have there own WWRUG 2009. It is in November. And it is in Las Vegas. Maybe should give that a shoot. Doug Mueller is booked as the keynote speaker.

2009-07-22

New web and new release for php-arapi

Finally some activity on php-arapi. The web has been rewritten. More information about how to compile, and how to use. But it is still quite thin. Hope more will come soon.

Code update include better support to compile for arapi 6.3/7.0/7.1. But RTL, which is used to access arapi, still miss some features wanted in 7.1. It does not handle the new selection field in 7.1. By not handle I mean it can not translate between value in database and the text seen by the user in the application.

I've supplied some patch to RTL, but the project seem dead. No activity. And there is more code needed in RTL to handle arapi 7.1 and 7.5. I guess the feature for php-arapi is to rewrite without use of RTL.

The new binaries you can download is for arapi 7.1 and php 5.2.x, at least up to 5.2.10. php 5.3.x is not supported at the moment. It might very well compile and work fine. But there are some changes in 5.3.x related to extensions. And I guess I should look into what need/should be changed in php-arapi before I say php-arapi support php 5.3.x.

2009-07-16

Patch 2 for AR System 7.5 released

I know, late again. It has been available for a few weeks already. Both server and mid-tier had quite a lot of fixes. I wonder how many bugs still there. Many of the fixes on the server were about memory leaks.

So today I finally installed a test server with 7.5 patch 2. It is Windows 2003 server with MS-SQL 2005 and IIS. I installed server, mid-tier, development and user on the server for testing. There was no problem with the installation. And I actually like the new java based installation. I just hope it can run in console mode on linux so you do not need to install X. Patch 007 for ITSM 7.0.003 did not want to run in console mode.

A quick check that everything was working showed that everything installed just fine. And I was surprised that import tool was change to something based on eclipse. That is nice, I hope. The old tool really sucked.

So now I just have to work with the thing to see what is new. I already know what is new in ARAPI. One thing is added parameters for error handling in active links, even if it is not there yet. And then also the dynamic joins query. I have to try that one.

2009-06-14

Stockholm Open 2009, day 2

OK, now it is over. Weiying wins. Congratulations. The results can be found here at the moment. I guess that they will move into the more traditional spot at Svenska Goförbundet in the coming week.

Another fun thing is that now the European Go Database ranking is updated daily. So as soon as the result from the tournament is sent there it should be updated in 24 hours. Nice.

This week been to busy. I just remember I have not played my games on dragongo. And I have some games with really short timings, for a dragongo game. Just not to get stuck in a game where the opponent sleeps for 3 months. May rating have kind of stabilized at 9k after some advancement. I have not really done anything to better my play. It has just come. But I guess it comes from little bit more thought then just throwing the stones.

So how did boywing do in the tournament? 3 wins out of 5. Not so bad.

2009-06-13

Stockholm Open 2009, day 1

I am talking about the go tournament Stockholm Open that is being played this weekend. And of curse I could not play. It is mainly because I am in a project that is releasing a new system on Monday morning. Which mean I have been working my butt of this week. And is kind of stand by over the weekend if the other guys screw up. So it did not really feel like a good thing to play.

You can find information about the tournament here. My friend boywing is playing in the tournament. One annoying thing is that even if the knowledge in the Swedish go community about internet is OK, feedback from tournaments and other events is slow. No results from the first day. And I guess that part of the problem in tournaments is that everyone is using this program for running the tournament. It is not very friendly. Someday, maybe before 2050, I will release one of my own. Mobile internet connection should not be a problem to get faster feedback. Maybe I should volonteer for that next time I play. Hopefully not later then Jusandan 2010.

2009-06-01

Patch 7 for AR System 7.1 released

OK, not today, but 3 weeks ago. The list of fixes is quite long. But after a little longer look it was not so many for the kind of systems I normally encounter. Most notably was a fix that is supposed to speed up the start of the server when you have big applications, like ITSM. And though still not fast on startup it is faster then the pre patch 7 systems.

In admin tool there is also a performance fix. And I think I have noticed the better performance. But still, when you have 21000+ active links on a server, admin tool just suck, even if I do not have details on. When I use ARGetListActiveLinks() in my own programs I get 21000+ active link names in like under a tenth of a second. It is hard to see exactly how long it take just from output from a console program without real timing, but still alot faster then admin tool. So what does admin tool really do if you only want to list the names that makes it so slow.

Migrator is actually slower then admin tool to handle the list of objects. Try ctrl-a on 21000+ active link and take a coffee brake for 10+ minutes. Actually, making the diff on 21000+ active links goes faster. And still migrator does not always handle the number of fields in a table correctly. So expect to still get currupted tables. I guess it only happens if you only migrate selected fields, not full form. But I do not feel safe in how migrator do things. And the table problem is not corrected by just migrating the form again. You have to force a 'recreate' of the table. Or hack the database.

User tool have lots of fixes that makes you wonder, does user tool really work? And in 7.1 I have seen to many problems to be surprised when I find new once. It is hard to develop anything when the intended client does not follow the rules of the application system.

Mid-Tier is not so much better then user tool. But for some reason I have lately found the web function better then user tool. Even if things like shortcut keys work in the web version of the client.

So far I have not investigated what really make my patch 6 installation make e-mail engine use 100% CPU. Is it the not so update 1.6.0_02 JRE or something else. But on my patch 7 system e-mail engine is running nice with JRE 1.6.0_13. It is just sitting in the background when it should. Have to see what happens when you put some load on the system.

OK, so there you have some sign of life from me. A totally non-scientific observation of the latest patch for AR System 7.1. Hope I have something more interesting to write soon. Some hard facts.

One little thing about ITSM, is it OK for an action to take 8 seconds on a modern application server. OK, it is not a super fast database, but only searching for the active links when opening Incident Manger Console takes 8 seconds if you do not have it cached. Which mean on a development cache server it always takes forever to use the ITSM applications.

2009-04-17

Deceptive calm

I have stayed away to comment on the events in Thailand during the last week. But I feel I should say something.

I am disappointed over the fact that the red could not stay away from violence. And after everybody gone home for Songkran some stupid persons do this. It does not help the democracy. I hope the near future will help the process of a more democratic country. Remove the corruption and give the people their right to their country.

Now Songkran is over. And I hope the calm will stay.

2009-03-19

Patch 1 for AR System 7.5 released

I only tested 7.5 little bit in beta. And I currently have no 7.5 server up and running. But I guess now it is time to start using the 7.5 version.

In this first patch there seem to be very many bug fixes. So first release of 7.5 maybe was not so great. I hope now that has changed. I have not look at any specific bugs. I have to come back and write more about 7.5 when I have set up a server and done some testing.

2009-03-05

Low on mental energy

I have been very away from this blog for a month or so. OK, in some respect travel have been taking away my time for writing. But it is more like a low on mental energy. Have no energy to have any thoughts about anything. It feels really annoying.

So, to show I am not dead I just going to tell you that my result in Jusandan 2009 did make my ranking in the European Go Database go up. And also, at the moment my ranking at Dragon Go Server is up too. So my go skills seem to grow, somehow.

I just which all the programming and stuff would go as well. But there has been no time. And all the time I have had I spend on some stupid compiler setting. And it is still not working. And the stupid thing is that I have the solution at home but do not want to wait until I get home. I should do something productive instead and solve the compiler issue when I get home. I was just planning to get a new version of php-arapi out on this trip, since I was getting some time to program.

2009-01-22

AR System 7.5 is out in the open

I guess you already know that 7.5 of BMC Remedy AR System has been released. I have nothing really to report about 7.5 yet. I had the beta installed to do some testing. But I never really got the time. Boywing have written some info about 7.5 in his blog.

Now I need to spend time to see what is changed in the API. Have to update all software I develop to handle 7.5. I guess the first thing, and probably the thing needing the least update, will be php-arapi. It is basicly only data which most of the time never change in the upgrade. php-arapi also need some cleaning of the project to make it build out of the box on as many systems as possible. And also the web/documentation of php-arapi need to be updated.

I can also mention that my previous blog about the difference of two W2K3 installations makeing AR System behave different actually turned to be some extra software installed by the customer that I was not aware of. So anoying. It has cost me a lot of time.

2009-01-18

Whats the difference between this W2K3 and that W2K3?

I have not really had time to do any tests on AR System 7.1 patch 6 yet. But I did an installation on a Windows 2003 server system. And what I noted was that it installed AR System Portmapper. On the systems I have at a customer where there is a problem at boot up AR System Portmapper is not installed. I wonder what on those systems choose not to install AR System Portmapper but it is done on my test system. I have to get some time to install patch 6 at the customer. And look at the installation logs.

What else, I have seen problems both in e-mail engine and consuming web services regarding UTF-8 encoding. The data from the database is unicode and everything should be configured and handled as UTF-8. But when I use HTML or XML templates in e-mail engine or when I send data in a web service the data is encoded two times. I still have not verified this on any other setup then at the customer. I need time to write something to prove it to BMC.

2009-01-13

Jusandan 2009

This years Jusandan tournament was little bit different. Only 5 games in 2 days compared to what I am used to, 6 games in 3 days. But it was OK. Same time for the games and everything. It was 2 years since I last played in a tournament. And actually like 2 years since I played in real life. Jusandan results can be found here.

I am still ranked to low. So I always end up in the strange low end pairing. So even if I win 3 out of 5 games it will probably not change my ranking at European Go Database since 2 of the wins was against to 'easy' players.

But anyway it felt nice to get to play for real again. To really concentrate and think about the game. I did not record any of the games. I guess now I have to get one or two games at KGS in the next couple of months to keep the feeling up.

2009-01-09

Reimbursement update

Before Christmas I received the money for the travel. No problem. Only annoying thing was I had to pay the fee for the transfer. So I lost some money.

But still no money for the conference. I have seen a copy of the transfer where the account number was wrong. And they say they will transfer again and I should have the money around new year. But, no, no money, yet. :)

But actually maybe there is something good about the delay. Have to ask my auditor if the credit will be put in the book keeping for 2008 or 2009. I would be better with 2009. The money is needed this year, not last year.

2009-01-06

Patch 6 for AR System 7.1 released

It include patches for Admin tool, User tool, Server, Mid-Tier, E-mail engine, Migrator, etc. So many fixes it looks like.

Many issues 'solved' on the server. First one on the list is supposed to be the remote DB problems we have at one customer. Have to test the coming week.

Also some fixes for web services. I might have a problem with web services since moving to 7.1 from 6.3. Having more then two levels of sequence does not seem to work. I have not 100% confirmed that yet. Need to recreated it from scratch in 7.1 to see if it still is a problem. All records get created in all the sequences, but there is no relation created but for the first level. If I can confirm it, have to have sure prof latest tomorrow, I will report it to BMC. Little bit to late for the project.

The user tool patch does not seem to have any fix for the problem reported about selection fields. That is really bad. Have to ask the one who report it what feed back he have gotten.