organic thoughts

You know that feeling you have after you run (if you run) a long distance that you have been trying to break for the longest.  Well, I have that same feeling of hard-work-pays-off with the publishing of my first book "JavaFX 1.2 Application Development Cookbook."  As of yesterday, 8/25/10, I received a note from Packt Publishing that the book is going to the printer and I will have my copies soon.

Despite all the delays and the inevitable curve balls life throws at you (I had quite a few last and this year), the book is done.  Like anything worth doing its a gratifying feeling.  Now, let's see if Oracle will come out with some extraordinarily good news for JavaFX  (at JavaOne 2010) to give wind to my JavaFX wings.

Go to http://www.javafxcookbook.com/ for how-to's and tutorials and (if you don't mind) pick up a copy of the book.  Thanks!

Couple weeks ago I updated my phone to the new iOS4.  I was excited to be able to play Pandora in the background while texting (or doing whatever else to enjoy multitasking).  After I download the new version of Pandora multitasking, I was able to run Pandora and do something else on the phone without Pandora stopping.

Besides multitasking there are some other nice features in 4.0 that I like:

• GUI Speed - that is the first thing you notice, things are snappier
• Folders - group application into folders
• App Tray - double click the home button and you get a list of currently running/paused apps that you can quickly switch from
• Camera - got nice update, simulated shutter speed is improved, digital zoom added
• Bluetooth - voice command works via bluetooth now

However, my excitement started to wear thin as I notice some annoyances that keep reoccurring:

• Phone Crash - the most annoying is the phone crashing.  Prior to 4.0, I never had to do a restart on my phone.  With 4.0 I had to do that 3 times already.  Sometimes in the middle of a conversation phone becomes unresponsive and must be restarted
• More frequent drop calls 
• Bluetooth transition slow - now, phone will ring first before it switch to my car

Conclusion: iOS4 is great, but wait for iOS 4.1 if you own the 3GS.  Hopefully that will address some of the issues I mentioned (actually the iPhone4 has its own set of bugs that 4.1 will also address, so just wait).

When Google purchased YouTube back in 2006, the Flash video (FLV) format got an astronomical boots almost overnight. The media format became even more popular, the Flash/Flex pair gained notoriety as a viable platform, Adobe fortified its arsenals in the battle for media dominance. This single act shadowed other players such as Real, Microsoft, and to a certain extent Apple's QuickTime (when was the last time you embedded a Microsoft Media Player on your website).

Today (in TechChruch), it was announced that Google is purchasing On2, the media compression technology company behind many of the most popular media codecs including FLV. This has the potential to change the course of online video technologies once again. One can only imagine some of the implications this purchase will have

• It moves Google higher in the media compression food chain and gives it complete control of the most popular codecs used on the web.
• Google may open source the current proprietary VP6 (on which Flash video is based) & VP7 codec formats that On2 licenses to companies. They may decide to provide needed support for the Ogg Theora format and make it first class citizen in the compression stack.
• With Google's push of HTML5 which includes the notion of built-in video/audio support, one can rightly guess that we will see On2 technologies in Chrome Browser, Chrome OS, and Android and anywhere else Google control (which is wide and far).
• As Ogg (Vorbis and Theora) becomes the open source format of choice for media delivery, Google will wield its influence on the format and direction of media deliver on the web.

Why am I rambling about On2, Ogg, and video codec formats? Well, it all has to do with JavaFX. One of the selling point of JavaFX is portable playback of Video/Audio basedon VP6 (consequently FLV). With the purchase of On2, Google will have a direct control of the destiny of media codec supported by JavaFX. Depending on how Google proceeds, we, in the Java community, may see positive developments for JavaFX and this is how:

• Google open sources the On2 codec stack: big win for JavaFX (to a certain extent Adobe). This will imply that JavaFX applications can take part in the online media revolution with lowered entry points.We probably will see Java bindings to the codec's API's which means building both encoders and players in Java/JavaFX.
• If the stack is open source, this may also mean eventual support on JavaFX mobile platforms.
• Google may make On2 encoding tools available for free: another win for JavaFX! More videos being created with the supported On2 formats means more opportunities for JavaFX developers to create players.

Or, Google may decide to just sit on the technologies use them to further their ambitions in Mobile, desktop OS, and web markets. Only time will tell.

I just updated my netbeans to 6.7.x on the Mac and the difference is vivid.
Even faster start time
Snappier GUI
On the Mac, the new look makes it look native
Plus all the other goodies (Groovy, JavaFX, etc)

For past month, I have been working (on/off) on JmxLogger, a logging API which lets you monitor your Java Logging or Log4J application log events in real-time using JMX. I have had the idea for a while, but decided to finally capture it as project. So, here it is.

http://code.google.com/p/jmx-logger/

JmxLogger
JmxLogger makes it easy to broadcast your Java Logging or your Log4J log events as JMX notifications. As such, you can easily monitor your application's activity logs in real-time. Using familiar logging API and configuration mechanism (i.e. log4j.xml or Java Logging properties file), developers can quickly integrate realtime application log monitoring into their existing deployed code. All it takes is a logging configuration change.

The JmxLogger API provides a Java Logging Handler and a Log4J Appender which can be used to integrate between your favorite logging framework and JMX. JmxLogger hides the complexity of dealing with JMX. You simply configure your logging framework as you normally do, and that's it. You are ready to broadcast your logging events as JMX notification events.

Features

• Support for Java Util Logging API
• Support for the Log4J logging API
• Easy integration with your favorite logging framework
• No coding required, simply configure your logging framework to get started.
• Specify and control the level of event to broadcast
• Monitor event through a console or listener scripts
  
• Realtime monitoring of your application activity logging via JMX.
  

Getting Started

• Download the jar (generic or with log4j support)
• Add jar to your classpath (in case of Log4J, you will need log4j.jar on your classpath)
  
• Configure your favorite logging framework
• Use JMX console (JConsole or VisualVM) to monitor your log actvities.

JmxLogger Events

When you log your application events using either Java Logging or Log4J (see project site for more detail), your log events will get routed to the JmxLogger Java Logging Handler or Log4J Appender defined in your application's logging configuration file.

Below you can see a configuration that sends log messages to the Console and a JmxLogger Logging Handler.

Using a command-line Console you can see your log message messages as they are logged in your application.

The same log events are also emitted as JMX notifications. Using JConsole, you can see these events as they are logged in your application in real-time.

That's it! You have seen how JmxLogger can effortlessly integrate JMX and the two standard logging API's available (Java Logging and Log4J).