RMI File Server

Posted on by eitch

For a project of mine, I have been using Java RMI to separate my client and server. Now RMI is really cool to transport Java objects for communication, but I have been wondering if I can transport file over RMI. Now I know we can start a flame war over RMI as a file transport medium and I know very well that I can use FTP, SCP, SSH, HTTP and you name it, but I wanted to use something easy short and which fits into my application seamlessly.

To solve this problem I decided to find out how I can actually transport a file over RMI. Small files are not really a problem, just load them in as a byte array and then serialize them over RMI, but you don’t really want to transport multi megabyte files in this way. The larger the file gets, the larger the memory needed just for transportation so I just decided I’d build a session and then transport the file in chunks.

While googling for a solution I came across a few other people trying this, so I decided I’d just blog about it and post my code as well. If someone can use it, then that makes me happy =))

Easy to use:

  1. Untar to a folder
  2. run “compile.sh”
  3. run “runserver.sh 192.168.1.1” on the server
  4. edit “config.xml” on the client and set the address and the other options
  5. run “runclient.sh serve.txt” on the client and you will get the test file “serve.txt”

That’s it.

Have fun.

eitch

RMI File Server

Update: fixed link to file

VMWare 6 and Ubuntu Hardy: vmmon compile error

Posted on by eitch

Just a quick post to documentate how I got my VMWare config to work:

Problem: include/asm/bitops_32.h:9:2: error: #error only <linux/bitops.h> can be included directly, and vmmon-only compile failes

Solution: change line 74 in vmmon-only source file to read: #include “linux/bitops.h”

Steps:

  1. cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
  2. cp vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.orig
  3. sudo tar xvf vmmon.tar
  4. cd vmmon-only/include/
  5. sudo vi vcpuset.h
  6. change line 74 from: #include “asm/bitops.h” to: #include “linux/bitops.h”
  7. rm vmmon.tar
  8. sudo tar cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only/
  9. sudo rm -rf vmmon-only/
  10. sudo vmware-config.pl

That’s it, the compile will work now and vmware should be usable as normal
eitch

Planet Terror: The Grindhouse chill

Posted on by eitch

Planet Terror

Oh boy… so I just got from the couch after watching Planet Terror. Before I start about the movie, let me tell you, that I was told, by my best friends, who were real nice to me, and stole, the DVD from my apartment without telling me, that the movie was like the worst shit they ever saw, so now here is my way of seeing it:

No doubt, Rodriguez loves his gore. You definitely get enough of it to see. The movie was made to fit into the Grindhouse style, which Tarantino in a way brought back to life with Death Proof. I find, that Rodriguez sadly failed in that. The movie just doesn’t really have that dirty look on it, the way Death Proof does, but there is no doubt, that the movie is way cool. The story is quite simple, Zombies come, people metamorphose, and of course lots of blood and guts get spilled. In that sense it is a really great movie as Rodriguez does it in such a way, that the movie is actually fun. Even though Rodriguez added this weird character who has to chop off balls, yeah you heard right, testicles of people who fail him, even that part is funny, although I suppose all guys will find their hands covering there groin…

Where Rodriguez definitely failed, ist in trying to give that Grindhouse flair. The movies comes just far too clear over. He did add those lines which are supposed to make the movie look like it’s run on some real old cellulose film, but it just doesn’t really do the trick. It still seams just too clear and too new. At one stage he actually even added a film burn, that looked quite cool and really DID piss off the viewer, but it left the right mark =))

All in all, if you’re looking for a Rodriguez style blood and gore shoot’em up, then you are at the right address with Planet Terror. The music is really fine, gives it the right tone, but we all know Rodriguez does that right, after we have seen From Dask Till Dawn…

All I can say is: Rodriguez, let Tarantino do the Grindhouse, keep to the blood and gore =))

Tables in LaTeX

Posted on by eitch

Ok… I have most definitely gone over the bend, LaTeX tables are a pain, at least till you know how to do them… I have been trying to add neat tables to LaTeX documents, and I have been searching all kinds of places. But I have finally found something that seems to work.

It has one last slight problem: If you have a column with so much text that it should span onto more than one page, then TeX system will sadly just make it overlong.

But otherwise, here is how I did it. First the document begins:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{ltxtable}
\begin{document}
\section{Title}

Now these are the first lines needed and will be in the main document .tex file.
The actual table must be in a different file and will then be added with this command in the main document:

\LTXtable{\textwidth}{table.tex}

Now in the table.tex file as is included in the above line we add the table as follows:

\newcolumntype{Y}{>{\small\raggedright\arraybackslash}X}
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.5}
\noindent \begin{longtable}{|>{\setlength\hsize{.5\hsize}}X|>{\setlength\hsize{1.5\hsize}}X|}
\caption{Some table} \\
\hline
Lorem & Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. sdfsdfsfsdfs dfg dfg\\
Lorem & Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. sdfsdfsfsdfs dfg dfg\\
Lorem & Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. sdfsdfsfsdfs dfg dfg\\
\hline
\end{longtable}

After that is done, our table is included and will automatically span to different pages, as well as have a specified column width.
This column width in this example is made to be the full textwidth of the page, as described in the

\LTXtable{\textwidth}{table.tex}

line.

In the

\begin{longtable}{|>{\setlength\hsize{.5\hsize}}X|>{\setlength\hsize{1.5\hsize}}X|}

line of the table definition/environment we can see that our second column is three times as wide as the first column. It is important, that the some of the columns NEVER be more than number of columns in the text.

In the following links one will find the pdfs to files I found on the net to tables in LaTeX. They helped me quite a bit.

Tables in LaTeX

Typesetting tables with LATEX

My blueberry nights

Posted on by eitch

blueberry

I was in Nürnberg, Germany this past week. My visit was work, with working times between 9pm and 5am. One afternoon knowing that there were cinemas in Nürnberg and the weather was way past nice, I decided to go and watch My blueberry nights. Now sadly in Nürnberg I did not find a single cinema, which had the original language, so I had to watch it in German.

The movie just rocked my world. The way how the director Wong Kar-Wai created the movie with the softness in pictures. The whole time over one is just completely mesmerized through the colours. The story is filled with interesting characters, allowing the watcher to associate oneself with the one or other character. It is always wonderful to see in which new way that Wong Kar-Wai adds life questions in his movies.

The actors are amazing, there is not much to say about Jude Law, Rachel Weisz or Natalie Portman, as they are well known. The real jewel in this movie is no doubtedly Norah Jones. I for one did not really know what to expect, but from her music alone, one feels already such an amazing energy and so I was actually quite sure that she would be wonderful. Even so, how astonished was I when, I saw her on the screen. She has such a charismatic way of being on the screen, that I was blown away.

In the end all I can say is, that if one likes Wong Kar-Wai movies, then you will not at all be disappointed, as this movie touches the viewer in the same way, with the difference, that this movie plays in present day America and not in “future” Hong Kong

Wow!

Posted on by eitch

Look at me… I have finally installed my own blog. Now let’s just hope I use it often… I’ll be trying to write about a lot of stuff, ranging from personal, to technical, over I suppose ranting as well… since everything is personal, I might offend people, but I really couldn’t bother less about that…