The following is a summary of the plugins proposed by the article. Of course all of them are opensource/free.

The full IBM article can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ap01117/

• Bad Apples – Their 10 worst inventions
• The 7 sins – Microsoft’s worst inventions ever

The first image shows the view from our house. The second and third images show two lightnings. The third image is quite interesting, because the closest building on that image is around 20 meters away from where I was standing; and the lightning trajectory appears all the way to the bottom of the picture. It’s been ages since I last studied physics, so even if I knew how to explain how this happened, I have now forgotten! My thoughts so far:

• either the lightning struck less than 20 meters away from where I was. It doesn’t seem likely, because I assume I would have felt it striking so close. Moreover the clouds where the lightning started its trip [sic] appear to be far away close to the mountains.
• or the camera was able to capture the trajectory of the lightning behind the trees and buildings!
• or…

Image1

Image2

Image3

…?


Exception in thread "main" java.lang.AbstractMethodError: org.apache.xerces.dom.DocumentImpl.getXmlStandalone()Z
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.DOM2TO.setDocumentInfo(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.DOM2TO.parse(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.DOM2TO.parse(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerImpl.transformIdentity(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerImpl.transform(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerImpl.transform(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.commons.configuration.XMLConfiguration.save(XMLConfiguration.java:880)
at org.apache.commons.configuration.AbstractHierarchicalFileConfiguration$FileConfigurationDelegate.save(AbstractHierarchicalFileConfiguration.java:454)
at org.apache.commons.configuration.AbstractFileConfiguration.save(AbstractFileConfiguration.java:546)
at org.apache.commons.configuration.AbstractFileConfiguration.save(AbstractFileConfiguration.java:513)
at org.apache.commons.configuration.AbstractFileConfiguration.save(AbstractFileConfiguration.java:491)
at org.apache.commons.configuration.AbstractFileConfiguration.save(AbstractFileConfiguration.java:403)
at org.apache.commons.configuration.AbstractHierarchicalFileConfiguration.save(AbstractHierarchicalFileConfiguration.java:199)


After doing some search on google I found that this can be a problem with the xerces XML library (xercesImpl.jar). Checking the 3rd party libraries I am using in my project, I found a library that was using and distributing an earlier version of xercesImpl.jar.

I downloaded the latest version (2.91) of xercesImpl.jar from the Apache xerces project (http://xerces.apache.org/mirrors.cgi#binary) and replaced in the 3rd party library I was using the xercesImpl.jar file with the one I downloaded. Now everything seems to work fine, even in Java 1.6. 

The noise level of the CPU Fan of my Sony Vaio VGN-SZ71E laptop was driving me crazy for the past few days. When the laptop was on, you could hear the fan operating even in the room next door. The fan was also producing vibrations, which I could feel when I had my arms on the keyboard palmrest! It’s needless to say you can’t work properly (i.e. concentrate on your work) under these circumstances.

I tried removing the chassis to see if I can replace the fan, but in order to have access to the CPU fan on this laptop model you need to disassemble pretty much everything! Luckily there is a workaround.

I had installed the Sony VAIO Power Management utilities, which allow me to manage the CPU Fan speed (Control Panel -> Power Options->VAIO Power Managent -> CPU Fan Control ). I set it to level  “1-quiet” and I have to say it is much better now.  Probably this has some impact on the performance, but this comes second to the peace of mind when working

My first experiences (I’ve only been playing with it for 10 minutes):

1) Doesn’t import my huge firefox visited sites history. If during the installation I ask it to import the history it just doesn’t proceed, without any error. The third time I tried to import my firefox settings I unticked the “import history” and it worked.

2) It seems to take longer to initially load up a page (I guess because it spawns a new process each time a new tab is opened and because of the javascript VM).  But once the page is there, it works really well. I tried it on a couple of “heavy” sites (lots of scrolling text, flash player, animated gifs). Firefox would use 100% of the cpu, but chrome seems to work just fine.

3) The feature, which shows the 9 most visited pages when you open up a new tab seems cool initially. However, it raises privacy issues. I don’t want my employer to see that amongst my most visited site is bbc and a betting website  The problem is that so far I couldn’t find an option to change the behaviour of the browser when it opens up a new tab.

4) It does eat up quite a lot of memory (I have 2 instances of chrome running, with 5 tabs of “standard” sites, such as facebook and my blog based on wordpress, on each instance and the browser eats up more than 100MB of RAM). However, when I close a tab the memory it eats up seems to decrease substantially, so it probably doesn’t have any memory leaks. And I really like the “stats for nerds” feature!

5) The tabs are part of the window and there are no big buttons and statusbar. This allows for more website content to be visible at a time and reduces the need to scroll up and down all the time.

One think is for sure. I like it so far! I still need to use it more and see how it behaves, especially from a performance point of view…   It doesn’t have a spell check (yet) or any fancy plugins, but it seems to be what a browser should be… Stable and transparent! I don’t know how secure it is though… guess we’ll have to wait and see…

Update:

• I just came across my first problem… Facebook has a “read more” link, which expands long text in facebook posts. Chrome doesn’t seem to work with it
• Guess my point no. 2 above was not correct. Just tried it on: www.goalnews.gr and the flash player utilises 50% of the CPU, so I guess it was pure luck it had better performance on the other heavy on javascript/flash sites I tried it. In fact firefox’s CPU usuage didn’t peak over 20% on the same site!
• It seems that it doesn’t work well with Kaspersky antivirus. When I disabled it Chrome’s performance was greatly improved.
• Flash perfomance seems to be an issue. I have a youtube (music) video playing on another tab and the current tab becomes momentarily unresponsive from time to time.

“In the 21st century you can’t invade another country, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it”

Yeah… right!

So, the experience of a CS undergraduate in Birmingham=Pub drinking/eating/socialising…whatever… I don’t mind the message the image is trying to put across (even though I should probably mind)! However, I think the moment you visit the website this image strikes you as contradicting the site’s look and feel. What do I mean? In general the page is what you would expect to see in a CS department’s page… nerdy stuff! On the top there is the brain with the monitor to emphasise the strong AI background of the department. The image for the research is full of post-it notes. The image with the undergraduates in the pub… well it just doesn’t fit!

I think it is very clear… childrens (as in chickens i guess) must be ascorted (as in…hmmm… I can’t think of anything)…