General

Tomcat 5 on Fedora Core 3

By Jay Lagare on Tuesday, June 21, 2005

There are quite a few ways to go about this but one of the better (though not necessarily the easiest) is to use JPackage. On their website, it says that the JPackage Project has two primary goals:

To provide a coherent set of Java software packages for Linux, satisfying all quality requirements of other applications.
To establish an efficient and robust policy for Java software installation.

Now that is exactly what I’m looking for.

SETUP JPACKAGE
cd ~
wget http://jpackage.org/jpackage.asc
wget http://jpackage.org/jpackage.repo
su
rpm –import jpackage.asc
mv jpackage.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/
exit

SETUP RPM BUILDING
mkdir ~/rpms
cd ~/rpms
mkdir {tmp,build,rpms,sources,specs,srpms}

Put the following into .rpmmacros in your home directory:
%_topdir %(echo /home/jay/rpms)
%_tmppath %{_topdir}/tmp
%_builddir %{_topdir}/build
%_rpmdir %{_topdir}/rpms
%_sourcedir %{_topdir}/sources
%_specdir %{_topdir}/specs
%_srcrpmdir %{_topdir}/srpms

BUILD THE RPMS FOR REQUIRED NON-FREE PACKAGES JDK AND JTA
Get the JDK files from Sun: jdk-1_5_0_03-linux-i586.bin (not jdk-1_5_0_03-linux-i586-rpm.bin!)
cp jdk-1_5_0_03-linux-i586.bin ~/rpms/sources
Get the JDK source rpm from jpackage
rpm -Uvh java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.03-1jpp.nosrc.rpm
cd ~/rpms/specs
rpmbuild -ba java-1.5.0-sun.spec
Get the JTA files from Sun: jta-1_0_1B-classes.zip and jta-1_0_1B-doc.zip
cp jta-1_0_1B-classes.zip jta-1_0_1B-doc.zip ~/rpms/sources
Get the JTA source rpm from jpackage
rpm -Uvh jta-1.0.1-0.b.4jpp.nosrc.rpm
cd ~/rpms/specs
rpmbuild -ba jta.spec

INSTALL SOME DEPENDENCIES FOR JDK*
su
yum install xorg-x11-deprecated-libs
yum install xorg-x11-deprecated-libs-devel
yum install unixODBC
yum install unixODBC-devel
exit
*Theoretically not necessary if you use yum to install JDK

INSTALL JDK AND JTA
cd ~/rpms/rpms/i586
su
rpm -Uvh *
cd ~/rpms/rpms/noarch
rpm -Uvh *
exit

AND FINALLY INSTALL TOMCAT5
su
yum install tomcat5
yum install tomcat5-admin-webapps
yum install tomcat5-webapps
exit

Fedora Core 4 came out today though. Maybe all this hocus pocus is no longer needed.

General

Batman Begins

By Jay Lagare on Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Batman comic books were dark and Batman Begins, although sanitized for a lower rating, is faithfully dark too. As befitting a comic book-based movie, there’s the evil mob boss, the corrupt cops, psychopathic criminals, and, of course, the crafty arch-villains. Against this array of bad guys stand Batman and a few friends: the love interest, the sidekick (Alfred, no yet Robin), the incorruptible cop (played well as usual by Gary Oldman), the gadget maker (Q anyone?), and of course the gadgets. As a prequel, the movie successfully spun the Batman legend into a cohesive beginning. But this is more than just the beginning of Batman, it is the reinventing of Batman back to what he originally was. During the course of the movie, he transforms from a scared young boy to a lost soul, to a knight errant, to a ninjutsu trainee of a shadow society called the League of Shadows, and finally to the Dark Knight of Gotham City. The result is the best Batman movie ever. It helps that Christian Bale fits the role very well. In this movie, he is dark, brooding, and tormented. Typical Christian Bale and fittingly Batman AND Bruce Wayne. I look forward to more and better Batman movies. Batman has begun!

Rating: 5/5

General

Sin City

By Jay Lagare on Sunday, June 5, 2005

I’ve always liked film noir. Their raw and unsweetened portrayal of reality strike me as brutally honest and true. I also used to like (I wonder if I still do) comic books or graphic novels as comic book fans prefer to call them. They provide you with the words as books do and the images as movies do while still leaving something to your own imagination. Put the two together and you get Sin City, a tour into a city that’s about as dark as it can get: Kidnapping, rape, torture, mutilation, murder, cannibalism, corruption… You name it, it’s got it. And it’s not just the bad guys doing those things. Practically everything is over the top: the action, the blood, the gore, the dialog, even the narration, that you can’t help but feel juvenile glee especially when the bad guys get it. It is at various points suspenseful, exhilerating, depressing, amusing, even heart-warming. A twist of Tarantino and heaps of Rodriguez and Miller. It’s great! Go watch it!

Rating: 5/5

General

Garmin Foretrex 101

By Jay Lagare on Tuesday, May 3, 2005

I was able to test the Garmin Foretrex 101, a nifty lightweight wrist-mounted GPS (Global Positioning System) unit, under actual conditions for the first time during the recent Makiling climb. Although it doesn’t have loadable maps, it does have most of the features of bigger GPS units: track recording, waypoint recording, navigating the tracks and waypoints, and trip log. It also has user replaceable AAA batteries. A similar model, the Foretrex 201 has a built-in rechargeable battery which doesn’t really make sense for an outdoors device.

My main complaint is that it loses track of GPS signals when there’s thick forest cover above. But then, that’s typical of most GPS units. Oliver, who was carrying a higher-end Garmin GPS unit during the climb, encountered the same problem. In any case, this didn’t hamper the usefulness of the device all that much.

Rating: 4/5

General

Suunto Observer

By Jay Lagare on Tuesday, May 3, 2005

I’ve had my Suunto Observer for quite a few years now and it’s still ticking albeit with a battery change or two which isn’t really a big deal since you can just buy its CR2032 batteries from photo or battery shops and change it yourself.

So what’s the big deal with this watch? Well, for starters, as Suunto would say: It’s more than just a watch, it’s a wrist computer. Aside from watch features like time, date, day, second timezone, stopwatch, countdown timer, and alarm, it also has an altimeter, a barometer, a thermometer, and a compass. And all these features do work and work well.

And you can be sure they will keep working: The watch is encased within a solid chunk of stainless steel case (there’s also a titanium cased version) and the face is protected by mineral glass. Mineral glass is not as tough as sapphire but it still withstands a lot of abuse. The caseback as well as the bracelet is a polymer so it won’t freeze on your skin. It is water resistant to 100 meters. Good enough for rain and the occasional dunking. It’s not recommended for diving, although I’ve dived with it quite a few times with no adverse effects.

Best of all, it looks as good in the office as it does on the trail.

Rating: 5/5