gratiartis.org - Home of Stephen Masters http://www.gratiartis.org The odd bit of news about what I'm up to... Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:37:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 The Flashpacking Tibbster is blogging his way around South America http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=64 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=64#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:33:05 +0000 Stevie http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=64 Pete Tibbitts used to work with me when our Halifax Treasury team was very small. I think it was just Pete, Glenn and myself working as developers at the time. Pete was a young-un, so obviously he moved on after a while and took up a career as an IBM consultant. That mostly seemed to involve developing apps for the DVLA in Swansea. Well, he decided that it would be nice to take a break from the rat race, so he blagged himself a career break from IBM and has headed off to spend a year traveling around South America. He’s currently in Columbia, blogging about the people he meets and learning Spanish. I must admit I’m a bit envious!

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=64 0 Wee bro’s self catering apartments in Portugal http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=58 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=58#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:05:59 +0000 Stevie http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=58 My brother (Ant/Antony/Spike) bought himself a few properties in Portugal a year or two back. There are self catering apartments such as the Nina apartment in Sao Martinho do Porto, which is a very nice little seaside town, and Clementine apartment in Nazare nearby, among others. He has also started managing flats for other folks who buy out that way. As the portfolio of his own and managed properties grew, it seemed like a good idea to set up a web site. So I did.

If you’re thinking of heading out in the direction of Portugal (particularly the Silver Coast), please take a look at the web site. Hopefully you can find a nice place to stay. If you’re thinking of buying your own property in the area, why not drop him a note? He knows the area well and is friendly with a few estate agents, so he might be able to provide some useful guidance.

Now I just need to get myself out there and find out for myself whether Sao Martinho do Porto is as nice as everyone says it is!

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=58 0 Micronesia 2009 – Truk Lagoon (Chuuk) http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=42 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=42#comments Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:19:42 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=42 In January 2009 Leanne and I made our way to the South Pacific. Our first stop was just over a week in Chuuk where we were diving the wrecks of Truk Lagoon. This is where the Americans sank about 50 Japanese ships during World War II. Most of these ships are at safe sport diving depths, and now they have become a fascinating tourist attraction for divers from all over the world. The best feature of these wrecks is that somehow they still have most of the artifacts that sank with them. This includes tanks, tools, guns, ammunition, ceramics, bottles and just about anything else you could imagine people needing on a ship. Finding all of these items on the ships gives a real feel of what it might have been like to be on them,  and sometimes the horror of the attack that caused them to sink.

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=42 0 Micronesia 2009 – Palau http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=36 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=36#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:58:36 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=36 In January 2009 Leanne and I headed to the South Pacific for a bit of a diving holiday. After just over a week diving the wrecks of Truk Lagoon we moved on to Palau, where we were able to see all sorts of big life: turtles, sharks, mantas and napoleon wrasse.

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=36 0 Thusha and Katherine’s Wedding http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=34 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=34#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 14:40:25 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=34 On the 12th April 2008, my old school chum Thusha and his girlfriend Katherine got themselves married at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh. I didn’t manage to get any photos of the ceremony, but there are a few snaps taken during the ceilidh in the evening that seem to have come out reasonably well.

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=34 0 Development Tools http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=33 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=33#comments Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:52:56 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=33 When at work, I’m generally in the worlds of Windows and Solaris. But these days I’m doing my home development work on a MacBook Pro. But I’m keen to make sure that I can do everything that I do at work so that I can experiment in my own time. So here’s a list of the software I use to develop on the Mac and where to get it.

Java Development

Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/)

Still my favourite IDE for Java development with a whole host of useful plug-ins.

NetBeans (http://www.netbeans.org/)

A decent IDE for Java development, but not up there with Eclipse yet. Version 6 is good though if you’re happy to pick up the development builds. Once that’s complete t will be a real challenger.

Maven (http://maven.apache.org/)

You want to make sure your builds work no matter what platform you’re on? This is a very good way of making sure that happens.

BEA WebLogic

I’m generally a Java EE developer, and the platform that I target at work is WebLogic. Take a look at my WebLogic on Mac OS X page for more information about how to get the server running on OS X.

TeX Development

I do quite a bit of writing using LaTeX for my typesetting. You’ll find a few examples on this site where I have used it to generate PDFs. In the past I have worked on Windows with TeXnicCenter which made working with a large project easy and I used the MikTeX distribution which contains the useful utilities that allowed me to script generating the work products. But what do I do now that I’m trying to do everything on the Mac? As you might expect with something as well established as LaTeX, there is plenty of software that can be used on all sorts of platforms.

MacTex (http://www.tug.org/mactex/)

MacTeX is a collection of front-ends, documentation and utilities for TeX development. I should warn you that it’s over 700MB, so it will take some time to download!

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=33 0 WebLogic Scripting Tool – Scripts http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=32 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=32#comments Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:28:56 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=32 I mentioned my use of the WebLogic Scripting Tool a little while back. I have noticed since then that a number of folks visiting this site are looking for example scripts. I have obviously written a number myself and I promise I’ll try to get around to posting them here. However until I get myself in gear, I thought I would point you at some useful examples that are already out there. I’ll expand this post as I find more…

First, make sure you sign up on http://dev2dev.bea.com/. That’s the BEA site supporting developers where you will find provides news, tutorials and samples to help you get going with WebLogic.

They have a number of projects and code samples that you will be able to get at. My recommendation for getting started is to go to the CodeShare section and have a look around at all the good stuff that has been provided by generous developers around the world.

There’s a WLST project maintained by the guys who developed it in the first place. This contains a whole load of scripts.

And to give you more of a head start, you can go to the Code Samples area of dev2dev and search for WLST, which will give you a list of samples worth looking at. Currently these include a Server Health Monitor (artifact S198), which will periodically check your runtime heap and execute queues and log the state to file.

Also, if you are looking at WLST for its server monitoring capabilities, you should know that BEA Guardian is now free!

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=32 1 Diving at Sharm El Sheikh 2007 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=30 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=30#comments Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:14:44 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=30 Photos from our holiday in Sharm El Sheikh, November 2007.

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=30 4 WebLogic on Mac OS X http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=27 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=27#comments Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:06:38 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=27 Since I’m now playing around on a MacBook Pro I thought I’d see whether it was possible to get BEA WebLogic running on it. As it turns out it’s quite simple. These instructions seem to apply to anything from 9.0 upwards, but there’s a link to instructions for 8.1 below.

Here are some sites that I have drawn on for these instructions:

Assuming that you’re familiar with WebLogic on other platforms you probaby already know you can get hold of it here:

http://commerce.bea.com/products/weblogicplatform/weblogic_prod_fam.jsp

Select the download page for the version you want. When selecting platform, choose the version for AIX. Others are designed for specific platforms, but this one is their ‘generic’ install that will work on pretty much anything with a JVM.

Start a console and navigate to where the downloaded JAR was saved and run:

java -Dos.name=unix -jar server100_generic.jar

Replace the JAR filename appropriately according to the version you got. The trick here is that it overrides the os.name environment variable so that the installer doesn’t make a mess of things.

And that’s it… the installer runs and WebLogic is installed.

This is as far as I have got, so I will update this as and when I come across any peculiarities.

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=27 0 Les Gets 2007 – Green route from jump park http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=26 http://www.gratiartis.org/?p=26#comments Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:37:35 +0000 Stevie http://gratiartis.org/?p=26 Below the jump park, there’s a fun green run down into the village. It’s a long off-road section through the woods followed by lots of hairpin bends on a stretch of road.

]]> http://www.gratiartis.org/?feed=rss2&p=26 0