abstractplain

launching javaw properly from dos bat file, and other simple tips. aha, at the bottom of this page on (java) invocation in windows OS there are some tips on launching with and without windows, and how to keep a console around after exit.
I often had a useless console window sticking around after launching a java gui (say logfactor5) from a bat file, or worse, after launching a long-running process (if the console allows you to type into it, you pause the process’s output). I got the javaw bit no problem, but of course my old bat file was waiting to close, because i was invoking javaw directly in the launch bat.

examples: “start cmd /K java” to launch and have the window stay around on exit, to help you debug a fatal error, “start javaw” to let the launching bat file finish, leaving zero windows - for apps that don’t need them.

my logfactor5 startup bat now looks like this - you can roll over the component pieces of the following command to see a description of each as a tooltip: start javaw -cp %cp% \ org.apache.log4j.lf5.StartLogFactor5 %1

Very much the sort of idiot-slow discovery I shouldn’t post, but I’ll bury my pride just in case there are other idiots out there.

Of course, you can also start long running java processes as services. wrapper.sourceforge.net looks interesting for this and more, but more work than some of the other java as windows service tools i’ve today stopped being able to find with google.

google search terms were: javaw no “command window”

japanese smileys, via b3ta

with thauvin-like brevity i remember jwebunit - automated testing of web-interfaced components martin fowler interviews with bill venners at artima.com.

ah good, i don’t have to write up a daredevil review.

bubb rubb silliness. The original news story (which is pretty funny all alone, especially his driving) and then so many pics and remixes. exercise for the reader, but here’s one and a (swf) soundboard. me-fi coverage (starts slowly).

is nice food: slightly toasted white bread, no butter/marg. one slice wafter thin smoked ham (or better), a couple of chopped black olives, a dollop of old el paso chunky salsa, spread a wee bit thinly as it’s quite strong, some leaves from a bag of herb salad, quite a few actually, cos this is otherwise salty, cover with another slice of smoked ham, and a layer of cheddar. melt the cheese, dust w obligatory black pepper, eat. Still working on this one - slightly too salty. Going to try with a really pretty thin slice of pear in there, if only we had a decent greengrocers near, or sainsburys stocked quality fruit (or um if it was good-pear season i guess…).

Egg-fried cheese-sarnie version coming soon (was “cheese dreams”).

headphones at the ready for via-Stegan, rathergood.com’s punk kittens (the strokes), (lightsabe) (explicit lyrics). and in flat caps: (independent woman). silly, good. it’d be brill to do one of yer pals “singing” their favourite song.

moon song is good too, but doesn’t feature kittens.

my listening on audioscrobbler, a neat final year project from a southampton uni student which records (via your mp3 player) what music you’re listening to, and attempts to draw recommendations or whatever from it. The “winamp 2″ plugin seems to work just fine for winamp 3, two songs in…

now to be able to point amazon and say kazaa at this listening list, and have the latter use my copious free bandwidth to pull down songs it predicts i’ll like.

via overstated.net

see also: gnod.net/music

Bruce Eckel - “does java need checked exceptions?” via Steve Conover’s blog, via Erik’s blog. Java Best Practices on Exception Wrapping. Starting to work with the suggested (programmatic) framework in Chuck Cavaness’s Programming Jakarta Struts - can’t find this on-line anywhere yet. Looking back to what I took as gospel to start with…. (in addition to Eckel’s great book), Bill Venner’s “Designing with exceptions” has as a simple guideline: “If you are throwing an exception for an abnormal condition that you feel client programmers should consciously decide how to handle, throw a checked exception.”

Java servers feel the open-source heat - a cnet article on whether and how Tomcat and JBoss are getting market share from WebLogic, Websphere.

How Amazon does its collaborative filtering, An IEEE distributed systems online article, via kottke.org

Rogue States article by Noam Chomsky, hosted on zmag. It’s about hypocritical US and UK law-breaking and simple contempt for UN. An easy, funny read, so long as your eyes don’t bug out w frustration.