HDR Saint Patrick's Church, NYC

Saint Patrick's Church, New York City, taken from the 70th floor of the Rockefeller building

Camera: Canon Rebel T1i
Lens: Cannon EF-S55-250mm
ISO: Auto
f-Stop: 4.5
Exposure Bracketing: single shot

HDR Porsche GT3 @Willow Springs

This is World Challenge Porsche GT3 winter testing at Willow Springs, California in December, 2011

Camera: Canon Rebel T1i
Lens: Sigma DG f/2.8-4.0
ISO: 1600
f-Stop: 5.6
Exposure Bracketing: single shot

Is your Linux 64-bit?

Two easy ways to check it:

[root@swdartifact01 ~]# uname -m
x86_64

and

[root@swdartifact01 ~]# file /usr/bin/file
/usr/bin/file: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, stripped

First one, is the name of the kernel. Second one is binary file on the system, which tells that the system is most likely 64-bit system.

Solving /safehaus/jug/jug/2.0.0-osgi Maven build error

Couple days ago I was working on upgrading MuleESB and Maven to versions 3.2 and 3 (respectively). When I swapped Maven 2.2 fro new version and tried to build one of my Mule project, I got the following error:

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 9.070s
[INFO] Finished at: Wed Aug 29 11:13:16 CDT 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 7M/121M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project mobileproxyrouter: Could not resolve dependencies for proj ect com.abcfinancial.mule:mobileproxyrouter:mule:1.0.1-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect dependencies for [com.sun.jersey:jersey-server:jar:1.3 (provided), com.sun.jersey:jersey-json:jar:1.3 (provided), com .sun.jersey:jersey-client:jar:1.3 (compile), com.sun.jersey:jersey-core:jar:1.3 (provided), org.mule .modules:mule-module-cxf:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.mule.transports:mule-transport-vm:jar:3.1.0 (compi le), org.mule.transports:mule-transport-http:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.mule.modules:mule-module-xml:j ar:3.1.0 (compile), javax.xml.bind:jaxb-api:jar:2.1 (compile), com.sun.xml.ws:webservices-rt:jar:1.2 (compile), com.abcfinancial.rest.api:MobileInterface:jar:1.1.0-SNAPSHOT (compile), com.abcfinancial .rest.api:InternalInterface:jar:1.8.0-SNAPSHOT (compile), net.sf.flexjson:flexjson:jar:2.0 (compile) , com.abcfinancial.ws.common:CommonWsObjects:jar:1.0.1-SNAPSHOT (compile), com.abc.utilities:abc_uti lities:jar:1.0 (compile), org.mule.tests:mule-tests-functional:jar:3.1.0 (test), org.mule.modules:mu le-module-client:jar:3.1.0 (test), org.mule.modules:mule-module-scripting:jar:3.1.0 (test), org.mule .tools:maven-mule-plugin:jar:1.4 (compile)]: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.safehaus.jug :jug:jar:asl:2.0.0-osgi: Could not transfer artifact org.safehaus.jug:jug:pom:2.0.0-osgi from/to jbo ss (http://repository.jboss.com/maven2): Access denied to: http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/org/sa fehaus/jug/jug/2.0.0-osgi/jug-2.0.0-osgi.pom, ReasonPhrase:Forbidden. -> [Help 1]

So I started digging Internet to see how I can solve it. The solution turned out to be quite simple. The mirror to the public repository should be added to you local .m2 settings.xml file. Add the following lines, and run the project. No errors...

<mirror>
        <id>jboss-public</id>
        <name>JBoss Public Nexus Repository</name>
        <url>https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
        <mirrorof>jboss</mirrorof>
</mirror>

iPhone SDK and phone number formatter

For all the wonderful things that iPhone SDK does for us beautifully, I finally found one feature that is not supported: phone number formatting. I was hopeful that after using NSNumberFormatterCurrencyStyle, I will be able to find something similar to format my phone numbers. I was no able to find any such a formatter. So I decided to use NSNumberFormatter with custom coding around it to get the job done:

  NSNumberFormatter *formatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init];

    [formatter setNumberStyle:NSNumberFormatterNoStyle];

    [formatter setPositiveFormat:@"(###) ###-####"];

    [formatter setLenient:YES];

    

    homePhoneValue.text = [formatter stringFromNumber:[NSNumber numberWithDouble:[homeNumberAsString doubleValue]]];

    mobilePhoneValue.text = [formatter stringFromNumber:[NSNumber numberWithDouble:[mobileNumberAsString doubleValue]]];

Unfortunately, that did not work either. As it turns out, iPhone SDK formatter does not support spaces, dashes and brackets. If the above code is ran, it fails silently, and the text is displayed in its "pre-formatted" form. I think I read somewhere that there is a bug opened with iPhone Developers to fix this issue. Until then... 

I think I will write my own formatter...

VMWorkstation 8 and Internet troubles

As I installed VMWorkstation 8 to test the site in IE 8 (I am running IE 9 on my box). After installation, I noticed that my virtual machine has no connection to the Internet. After searching the web for the possible solution, I finally got it. By default, when you install VMWorkstation (or VMPlayer for that matter), Network Adapter is set into 'NAT' mode - used to share the host's IP address. Correct setting for my scenario is to switch it to 'BRIDGED' - done, and I have internet access.

Сложный русский язык (Difficult Russian language)

Перед нами стол. На столе стакан и вилка. Что они делают? Стакан стоит, а вилка лежит. Если мы воткнем вилку в столешницу, вилка будет стоять. То есть стоят вертикальные предметы, а лежат горизонтальные? Добавляем на стол тарелку и сковороду. Они вроде горизонтальные, но на столе стоят. Теперь положим тарелку в сковородку. Там она лежит, а ведь на столе стояла. Может быть, стоят предметы готовые к использованию? Нет, вилка–то готова была, когда лежала.

Теперь на стол залезает кошка. Она может стоять, сидеть и лежать. Если в плане стояния и лежания она как–то лезет в логику "вертикальный–горизонтальный", то сидение — это новое свойство. Сидит она на попе. Теперь на стол села птичка. Она на столе сидит, но сидит на ногах, а не на попе. Хотя вроде бы должна стоять. Но стоять она не может вовсе. Но если мы убьём бедную птичку и сделаем чучело, оно будет на столе стоять. Может показаться, что сидение — атрибут живого, но сапог на ноге тоже сидит, хотя он не живой и не имеет попы. Так что, поди ж пойми, что стоит, что лежит, а что сидит.

А мы ещё удивляемся, что иностранцы считают наш язык сложным и сравнивают с китайским. 

(c) не знаю