Life Sucks - Part 7

When last we heard from our heroes, life sucked. And so it goes...

So Michel has now passed her three month anniversary of not being able to work. The doctors still don't want her going back, even for light duty. She had to drop her class because she couldn't do the work in the doctor's office. Too bad. I think she really liked working there.

Mikey's dental work is next week. He will be spending the night in the hospital because all the doctors are paranoid about his airway. His ENT wants to bronch him as long as he is there. Why not? The more the merrier.

I always thought maybe God had a bit of sadistic streak in him but now I'm convinced that he enjoys suffering...

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours
but I think that God's got a sick sense of humour
and when I die I expect to find him laughing.
--- Depeche Mode

Review - InstallAnywhere Tutorial and Reference

InstallAnywhere Tutorial and Reference
by Zero G Team

This book is an excellent guide to using InstallAnywhere no matter which platform you are running or how much experience you have with the product. This is the kind of documentation that you wish that the company would provide especially when you consider the price of the software. According to the introduction, the book was produced from the handouts that Zero G had produced for their three day InstallAnywhere course.

The book starts with a quick introduction and some screen shots showing what running an installer would look like from a customer's point of view. The authors next show a simple example of building an installer. Unfortunately, and this remains true for the rest of the book, no screen shots are included. This means that you must be running the software to take full advantage of the book. No reading this book in the bathtub. The book works well as both a tutorial and reference guide. The authors take you step by step through an exercise explaining each of the options even if they aren't used in this exercise. The instructions for each exercise are very clear. The use of the product is clearly explained while you are using it, which makes the learning "stick".

The book covers everything from the most basic installer all the way up to writing your own custom plug-ins. If you are interested in taking full advantage of the InstallAnywhere software and don't want to spend the money for three days of training, then this book is for you.

This earned 4 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Addison-Wesley.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

Review - Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs

Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs
by John Arthorne, Chris Laffra

The name of this book is a little deceptive as this is really the official FAQs for Eclipse plug-in developers. The book is broken up into chapters with each chapter covering about 20 questions. The first three chapters seem a bit unnecessary as they cover a general overview of Eclipse. Most plug-in developers probably don't need the answers to those questions and most developers not trying their hand at plug-ins won’t need the answers to the remaining 300 questions.

Starting with chapter 4, the book covers many of the questions that plug-in developers will have. The main sections are broken up into a look at the basics of the Rich Client platform including JFace and SWT and specifics on the Eclipse IDE platform. Workbench, editors, perspectives, and views are covered in the general part. The next part goes into more specific details of the Workspace and Resources API and the Java Development Tool API, among other topics. The questions are arranged well so rather than a random collection of questions, each chapter is very readable. Supporting screen shots and source code are provided as needed. The questions selected cover many of the more confusing areas of plug-in development. The answers are well written and easy to follow.

The book includes a CD that can be installed as an Eclipse plug-in so that the answers will always be nearby even when a co-worker borrows your copy of the book. Overall, this book is a valuable aid to have nearby while doing plug-in development.

This earned 4 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Addison-Wesley.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

Review - A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification

A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification: A Comprehesive Primer, Second Edition
by Khalid Mughal, Rolf Rasmussen

If you are studying to become a Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform 1.4 this book will help you to receive not just a passing grade but an excellent understanding of the intricacies of the Java programming language. Mughal and Rasmussen aren't satisfied with simply giving you a minimal understanding of Java so that you can pass a test. They are interested in helping you to understand the language at a deeper level. After all, it is much easier to pass the certification exam when you actually understand the material rather than when you have simply memorized a lot of details.

I'll give you an example of the level of detail that the book covers. Section 5.2 of the book covers Selection statements. The section starts with a description of the if statement followed by an activity diagram which explains the flow of the statement. The authors then show a simple example followed by a clear explanation of the if statement. Then they do the same with if-else, this time using several examples. The same level of detail follows for the switch statement, again providing clear text, with a simple activity diagram, followed by several well explained examples. Finally, the section ends with several review questions. What this means is that this book can serve you well even after you have passed the certification exam. You will be hard pressed to find a better written reference.

The book covers all the information you need to pass the certification exam and covers the material needed to connect all the pieces together. The included CD has several mock exams with questions that will help you understand the type of questions that you will face on the actual exam. If you do well on the mock exams you will do well on the real thing. Overall, this is an excellent book for studying for the Java certification. But it is such a good reference that you will want to keep it nearby even after you have passed the certification.

This earned 5 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Addison-Wesley.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

Review - J2EE 1.4: The Big Picture

J2EE 1.4: The Big Picture
by Solveig Haugland, et al

This is a book that could have been a lot better. The main goal of the book, and one at which it generally succeeds, is to give you an overall view of what J2EE is and how it fits into an overall IT strategy. The advantages and disadvantages of each piece of J2EE are discussed. There is very little code in the book (and what is in there could have easily been left out without any loss of clarity) so if you are looking for a book to show you how to write programs then this is not the book for you.

The book has some serious drawbacks. First, the authors of this book are trying desperately to reach some level of geek coolness with mentions of The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Pulp Fiction, and with the use of deliberate (at least I think it is deliberate) poor grammar and spelling. But after awhile it just gets annoying. The book is probably twice as long as it needed to be because of the authors' desire to try to make the book fun. But unlike the Head First books, the "fun" here just gets tedious and turns short discussions into long and confusing discussions. (Why is a J2EE server like a dolphin? Does it like fish?) The book is also repetitive. For example, the discussion of session beans on page 48 is repeated almost verbatim (including the same picture) on page 139. The book does not cover JavaServer Faces and makes only a minimal mention of Struts. None of the other open source frameworks are discussed at all.

Overall, the information in the book is accurate and there is really no other book on the market that covers the material at this level (which is why it is getting 4 stars and not 3). The authors apparently know their stuff but the book could have been a lot better.

This earned 4 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Prentice Hall.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

Edward J. Paul

Today is my father's birthday. If he was alive, he would be 90 today. He was born just after the outbreak of World War I, a time that seems like ancient history today. According to the VA, there are only 623 living veterans from that war. His parents were of Czech ancestry, his mother having come to the US in 1901 when she was only 13 years old. My father survived the great influenza outbreak of 1918 that killed more people than World War I. He grew up during prohibition. He told me that when he was little his father used to send him to the speakeasy to get a growler of beer ("growler" was a slang term for a pail of beer). He reached adulthood during the Great Depression which must have been a very difficult time.

He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and was sent to training school in California. He was never sent overseas, partly because of a medical condition and partly because of his age (at 28 he was an old man when he joined up). The closest he came was during the "Battle of the Bulge" when reinforcements were needed. He spent the war in various bases in the west including Tonapah and Walla Walla, Washington.

After the war, he went home, got a job in sheet metal, and married my mom, Helen. They raised three kids, Edward Jr., Barbara, and me. By the time I came along my father was already in his mid-40's so my memories of him are as an older man. I could relate to how Ray Kinsella describes his father in the movie Field of Dreams, a movie that is very personal to me.

By the time I was old enough to relate to my father as an adult, he started suffering the affects of Alzheimer's Disease. He died of the disease in 1996 but by that time he was long gone. I still miss him and I miss mostly that I never got to know him as an adult and so many of my memories of him are tainted by that horrible disease. Happy Birthday, Dad. I know that you are in a better place.

Philippe Maquet

Phillipe Maquet was a moderator at JavaRanch. Philippe died suddenly, apparently from an aneurysm.

Sometimes, we get to know people or even make friends with people on the internet without ever actually meeting them face to face. Sometimes we even get to know people on the internet better than we know our own neighbors. Philippe was a person who I was glad to have had the opportunity to know, even if we only met through the internet. He was the kind of person who had only good things to say about everyone. I can honestly say that I can't recall ever having a single negative thought about Philippe. He was an enthusiastic supporter of JavaRanch and worked hard to make JavaRanch a better place. I am glad that I got to know Philippe even if it was for only a brief moment. My heart goes out to his family and loved ones.

There is a wonderful tribute to Phil on Javaranch.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. Amen.

Get Out Of London

My basement had become the place where everything (and I mean everything) ended up being stored. There had been a lot of stuff in the attic, but when we dormered the house it all ended up in the basement. Anyway, over the last few months I have been slowly cleaning out the basement, throwing away or reorganizing everything that was down there. At least some of the inspiration for all this clearing out comes from this.

Anyway, Friday, I had cleared out enough of the basement that I could take the challenge and set up the old stereo equipment that hadn't been used since we moved into the house, 14 years ago. It had all been down in the basement collecting dust along with our collection of vinyl records. So I took out the receiver and the speakers and hooked them up. Fortunately, I had saved all the old speaker wire so this was easy enough. Then I plugged in the receiver, fully expecting smoke and flames to come shooting out of it but all was quiet. I turned on the receiver and the appropriate lights came on and all looked good but there was no sound. Played with the FM tuner, the volume, and the speaker select button but still nothing. Just as panic started to set in, I noticed that I had hooked up the speakers to the surround sound inputs. Moved them to the correct spot and suddenly the sound of static filled the air.

I couldn't remember how to tune to a radio station (and I didn't have the FM antenna hooked up anyway) so I went and got my turntable and hooked it up to the receiver. Amazingly, the turntable was still balanced correctly and the speed was still synched. The EP, Love Cats by The Cure was still on the turntable so that must have been the last thing I listened to 15 years ago. I took that off, and put on Get Out Of London by Interferon which is a song I hadn't heard since my club days in the mid-80's. I think this was the only song Interferon ever released. Anyway, the song played perfectly without a pop or hiss even after having been stored in the basement for 15 years. (Note for the youngsters: pops and hisses are the noises that LP's used to make when playing if you didn't treat them as if they were made of the finest Ming china.)

So now if you drop by and I'm down in the basement you can expect to find me listening to The Alarm or Heaven 17 or The Suburbs or any of the other great groups that I haven't heard in years. Sometimes, life is good.

I should add that I found the manuals for all the stereo equipment and the remote control for the receiver which still works perfectly. Too cool!

Review - Pro Jakarta Commons

Pro Jakarta Commons
by Harshad Oak

Jakarta Commons is a collection of generally unrelated but useful classes that can be incorporated into any Java project. In general, the documentation available is limited at best and in some cases is limited to little more than the Javadoc from the API. This lack of good documentation has helped to prevent the widespread acceptance of the Commons classes. This book will help to address that major shortcoming of the Jakarta Commons.

This book is an introduction to the most commonly used classes found in Jakarta Commons. Not all the components are covered. For example, Betwixt, Jelly, Jexl, and Codec are barely mentioned. However, the components that the author discusses are the most useful and are generally well covered. The book starts off slowly with an introduction to Jakarta Commons and then a brief and incomplete look at the Lang component. This chapter will give you no more than a flavor of what is available. The Logging component is well covered although I would probably never use it and the coverage of the Validator component should have concentrated solely on implementation outside of Struts and left Struts explanations to books on Struts. The remaining chapters cover the more useful components including Digester, Pooling, BeanUtils, and FileUpload and do a great job of explaining the components and providing realistic examples of usage.

Anyone who is writing Java code should be interested in the Jakarta Commons and anyone who is interested in Jakarta Commons should have a copy of this book. It will serve both as a good introduction to Commons components and a reference to using those components.

This earned 4 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Apress.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

Review - Prime Obsession

Prime Obsession
by John Derbyshire

In 1859, Bernhard Riemann, one of the greatest mathematicians of his day, wrote a paper about the distribution of prime numbers. In that paper as an incidental remark he wrote, "All non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one-half." Riemann had no proof that this was true but he suspected that it was true based on his intuition and his understanding of prime numbers. For nearly 150 years, mathematicians have been trying to either prove or disprove Riemann's hypothesis.

Writing a book about something as obscure as the zeta function for the non-mathematician is a daunting proposition but John Derbyshire is up to the challenge. In a book on a topic like this, you expect the author to not be afraid to discuss complicated mathematics. By starting off slowly and holding our hands as he moves through the math, Derbyshire makes complex mathematical functions understandable even to someone who hasn't looked at calculus in more than twenty years. So even if non-trivial zeros, natural logs, and prime number distribution theories sound over your head, Derbyshire will explain it in a way that will make it clear and interesting. Derbyshire breaks the book up so that the odd-numbered chapters cover mathematical details and the even-numbered chapters cover historical background of the story. So even if you do get lost in the math, you still can still follow the story which is fascinating in itself.

At the time of writing this review, a possible solution proving the Riemann hypothesis to be true has been produced by Louis de Branges of Purdue University. That makes "Prime Obsession" both fascinating and timely.

This earned 5 stars on Amazon. The book is published by Joseph Henry Press.

The review can be seen on Amazon on My Amazon Reviews page.

Life Sucks - Part 6

Michel went to the doctor last week and the result was that he doesn't want her going back to work until October. She is still in a lot of pain. And the worker's comp people are giving Michel a hard time because they claim that Michel should be able to do other, lighter work. If they think it's a good idea for a nurse to load up on pain killers and then do charts or discharge planning then they aren't very bright. Michel is supposed to start school next week. She is studying to be a Nurse Practicioner. We still aren't sure if she is going to be able to do the work with this injury.

Anyway, just to add to the fun, we found out that Mikey needs a load of dental work. And by "load" I mean several thousand dollars worth. He will have to be put under anesthesia for the dentist to do the work and that is always a bit scary.

And so it goes.

Being a Parent

Map wrote a very tender blog entry dealing with her parents in which she mentions part of a post I wrote on JavaRanch. The specific line from my post that she said almost made her cry was:

100 pounds was about what my daughter weighed when I stopped carrying her upstairs to bed when she fell asleep in the living room.

These are the kinds of things parents do for their kids. I remember when Beth was little and would wake up frightened in the middle of the night, I would let her sleep with Michel and I would go sleep in her little bed. Struggling up the stairs carrying your little girl to bed is just what you do as a parent. It comes from love and a desire to make life a joy for your child. I don't think it is easy to describe to someone who isn't a parent but I never met a parent who didn't understand it immediately.