All posts by Martin MC Brown

a.k.a.: Martin MC Brown a.k.a.: Martin Brown a.k.a.: mcslp a.k.a.: Martin C Brown a.k.a.: MC
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Building Perl applications with Eclipse

A new tutorial, based around one of the presentations I made at EclipseWorld 2005 has been published at IBM developerWorks.

The tutorial is based on the presentation I made on building Perl applications using Eclipse and the EPIC plug-in.

Here’s the summary info from the tutorial so you can get a better idea of the content:

For many Perl programmers, the typical development environment is probably an
editor like Emacs coupled with a command-line environment. The problem is you
tend to spend most of your day switching between Emacs and the command line,
and it gets worse if you are doing Web development, as you have to switch between
Emacs, your command line, and your Web browser as you write, execute, and check
logs for information. Surprisingly, there are few IDEs that have really captured the
Perl programmer’s imagination over the years, which is why EPIC and Eclipse fills
such a void.

EPIC is a complete plug-in suite that supports a new “nature” within Eclipse. The
EPIC plug-in incorporates extensions to the editor so that it understands Perl
structure and layout. The plug-in also adds additional views and interfaces to your
code, and related information enables you to view documentation, execute your Perl
applications, and debug them.

About this tutorial
This tutorial will look at the basics of the EPIC plug-in before moving on to an
examination of the EPIC system using a real-world example, developing a small
module and script entirely within Eclipse that supports RSS parsing. You’ll use this
as an opportunity to examine other areas, such as the integration with Perldoc, code
folding and refactoring — all of which can make the application development process
run more smoothly. By the end, you will have a good understanding of how the EPIC
plug-in can be used to develop your Perl applications within Eclipse.

You can read the full tutorial.

Look out for a forthcoming follow-up piece on debugging Perl applications within Eclipse.

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Mac users complacent about security?

Bill Thompson at the BBC took a lot of stick for an article he wrote about Mac users and complacency on security. He's responded to that piece here.

He raises (and indeed raised) a number of good points both in his original article and in the response article linked above. While in some respects he's on the back foot here, I think some of his points are perfectly valid.

The fact that there aren't any viruses, trojan horses or other nasties available for Mac OS X now does not mean that there won't be in the future. One of the nice things about computing is that it is constantly changing, but that applies in equal measures to potential threats as well as potential opportunities.

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Understanding the correlation between RAM and performance

On one of my recent visits to my parents, I had to do some IT administration - as I often do as the person who supplied them with their IT equipment.

My key task this time was to install some additional RAM. The machine had just 128MB, which although technically OK for Windows XP is not quite as useful as it could be, especially once you get one or two applications open.

I doubled the RAM up to 256MB and the results and improvement in performance were dramatic, especially considering the cost of the upgrade was fairly modest.

The relationship between RAM and performance is understandable once you know how your computer uses it's memory and hardware. Nearly all OS make use of the hard drive as a secondary memory store (swap space) to make better use of the faster physical RAM. But the problem is that the use of the hard disk is slow enough to cause slow responses in your machine. The more physical RAM you have, the better the response.

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Finding a use for your old XBox

With the launch of the XBox 360 there are going to be a lot of original XBoxen lying around that nobody wants. I'm a keen re-user of hardware - some of my machines are 5-10 years old and at least second (and possibly third or fourth) hand. If it still works, why dump it?

There are lots of things you could do with them, none of which I can think of right now, but how about using it as a Linux box. There's an Intel CPU, 64MB of RAM and a 8-10GB hard drive in each machine - perfect for running, or even just trying out, Linux. With a little stack you could even create a small grid or cluster.

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Building a grid with web services, Part 2

The second part of a new series of tutorials on building a grid application based on standardized web services like WSRM (Reliable Messaging) and WS-Security is now available.

This second part looks at the development of a security model using the WS-Security standard. In this tutorial we introduce the basics of WS-Security, how to create and share a token and how to use the token to verify transactions between the grid manager and individual grid nodes.

Once again, the tutorial has made top picks on the IBM developerWorks Grid computing page!

As mentioned for Part 1, this is a joint venture between myself and Tyler Anderson. Tyler has provided the code, based on my design guidelines and thoughts for the grid. Tyler has done a stunning job on the code - it gets even better as we start to approach some of the more interesting stuff like WSRM and resource properties. The final grid solution - which I’m just writing up now, is fantastic.

Unfortunately, you’ll need to wait a few more weeks before you get to see the final code!

You can read the first part of the tutorial through this link.

Then you can read Building a grid with web services, Part 2: Adding security.

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Using awk

Awk (and Gawk, the GNU alternative) are as old as the hills (well, as old as Unix) and remain as one of the original programmable elements of the Unix operating system, along with the various shells (Bourne shell, Korn shell and C shell, in the original Unix editions).

read more

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Using awk

Awk (and Gawk, the GNU alternative) are as old as the hills (well, as old as Unix) and remain as one of the original programmable elements of the Unix operating system, along with the various shells (Bourne shell, Korn shell and C shell, in the original Unix editions).

I'm a tester of Gawk, responsible for checking the compatibility of new releases on different platforms, a job I first started when working on the BeOS and which I now do for Mac OS X, various Linux alternatives, Solaris SPARC and Intel and any other environment I happen to have available.

Awk is actually an incredible powerful programming language, although it is better known for many text processing tasks as an alternative to using the cut and paste tools or similar shell-level commands. The problem is many people don't know it exists, even though vast quantities of the Unix/Linux scripts and other tools use awk/gawk for a variety of different tasks.

There's a good introduction to using awk/gawk for text processing at Linux.com: Learning to talk awk.

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Free Software Magazine Issue 10 is out (Free Browsers on OS X)

The latest issue (number 10) of Free Software Magazine is out. You can go straight to Issue 10 through this link.

You can download the entire issue if you are already registered, or download individual articles through the link above. For example, you can download my article, looking at Free browsers for Mac OS X.

To quote Tony Mobily (editor and creator of FSM):

In Free Software Magazine’s 10th issue Eddy Macnaghten helps to make X a little less unknown and “MC” Brown browses the browsers for Mac OS X. On a more political note: David Sugar talks about how free software is freeing Venezuela and Tom Chance reveals how the internet is beginning to aid in political campaigning. And more…

We even managed to get on to the digg front page.