ssong's random thoughts http://songstech.com/blog Purely Truely Random... Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:23:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 What the heck is jexec? http://songstech.com/blog/2009/04/02/what-the-heck-is-jexec/ http://songstech.com/blog/2009/04/02/what-the-heck-is-jexec/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:55:23 +0000 ssong http://songstech.com/blog/?p=19 Recently I installed JDK 6 on my CentOS instance. I noticed a weird service called jexec running on all run levels:

jexec           0:on    1:on    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:on

Googled and found this installation notes from Sun:

A new service script, named jexec, is added to /etc/init.d. This script allows users to directly execute any standalone JAR file that has an execution permission set.

OK, so it’s for executing jar files.. A tiny little bit more convenient than using java -jar, but no thanks, especially on a server.

One less thing to worry about: chkconfig –level 0123456 jexec off :D

]]> http://songstech.com/blog/2009/04/02/what-the-heck-is-jexec/feed/ 1 Choosing a VPS – side by side comparison http://songstech.com/blog/2009/03/27/choosing-a-vps-side-by-side-comparison/ http://songstech.com/blog/2009/03/27/choosing-a-vps-side-by-side-comparison/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:54:38 +0000 ssong http://songstech.com/blog/?p=10 Needed a VPS for one of my websites, so I’ve been doing some research on various hosts and plans. Here is what I found, as a side-by-side comparison matrix. From various sources, the hosting companies listed here generally seem to have good reputation:

  Linode (XEN) RimuHosting (XEN) eApps (Virtuozzo) WiredTree (Virtuozzo, managed) LiquidWeb (Virtuozzo, managed) SliceHost (XEN)
Plan 360 VPS1 VPS2 standard standard plus standard max VPS384 VPS Basic 256 slice
Memory 360MB 160MB 400MB 160MB 288MB 432MB 384MB 384MB 256MB
Disk 12GB 4GB 4GB 2GB 4GB 6GB 40GB 20GB 10GB
Transfer 200GB 30GB 40GB 30GB 60GB 90GB 600GB 200GB 100GB
IP 1 1 2 1 1 1 4 4 1
Price $20 $20 $30 $10 $20 $30 $44 $60 $20

My budget was around $20-$30 month, so I only listed the lower end plans of each host. Hopefully this can be helpful for someone who is looking for an entry-level VPS. Guess what host I chose at the end? :-)

Update: I ended up choosing Linode. I narrowed down to slicehost & linode; both hosts look good and have good reviews at webhostingtalk. Slicehost’s website and management console are more appealing. But slicehost only provides 64 bit environment, which uses more memory than a 32-bit system. Here is a comparison. Also see this thread at slicehost forum: Might I have to say goodbye to Slicehost? (64-bit vs. 32-bit). Linode provides both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Besides, linode provides more resources for the same 20 bucks (especially memory: 360MB vs 256MB); linode has data centers at four different locations to choose from while slicehost has only one. So far I’m a happy customer with Linode.

]]> http://songstech.com/blog/2009/03/27/choosing-a-vps-side-by-side-comparison/feed/ 1 Cross platform GUI application libraries http://songstech.com/blog/2008/09/12/cross-platform-gui-application-libraries/ http://songstech.com/blog/2008/09/12/cross-platform-gui-application-libraries/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:26:48 +0000 ssong http://songstech.com/blog/?p=4 Doing some research on cross platform GUI application libraries. We have a few choices, such as Java, wxWidgets and Qt.

The following applications use wxWidgets, which is a thin wrapper like SWT.

  • Dropbox: the hot new kid in the online storage market
  • filezilla (used to use MFC and Windows only)
  • MadEdit
  • JD-GUI: a Java decompiler
  • Audacity
  • xCHM

According to this post and the official Qt In Use page, these applications use Qt:

  • Opera
  • Google Earth
  • Skype
  • Photoshop Elements
  • KDE, Qtopia, OPIE
  • Mathematica
  • VLC media player

In addition, these applications use Qt as well:

  • Psi
  • calibre

In the Java world, we have two choices: Swing and SWT. Swing is light weight; it does its own painting, so it’s easy to change a Swing application’s look and feel, but it may not look native. While SWT is heavy weight: it’s a thin wrapper around OS widgets, so an SWT application looks native to its underlying OS platform. SWT cannot be used in Java applets because of this, but not many people care about applets anyway.

These applications use Swing:

  • MagicDraw (uses JIDE)
  • DbVisualizer (uses JIDE)
  • IntelliJ IDEA
  • NetBeans IDE
  • FreeMind
  • Yong Zhong Office suite

These applications use SWT:

  • Azureus: the popular BT client

I’ll update the list when new information becomes available. I’m interested in finding out what’s being used in Google (such as Chrome) and Mozilla (Firefox and Thunderbird).

]]> http://songstech.com/blog/2008/09/12/cross-platform-gui-application-libraries/feed/ 8 Favorite books list from various people http://songstech.com/blog/2008/06/03/favorite-books-list-from-various-people/ http://songstech.com/blog/2008/06/03/favorite-books-list-from-various-people/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:29:47 +0000 ssong http://songstech.com/blog/?p=3 Eric Sink: http://www.ericsink.com/articles/books.html

Jeff Atwood: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000020.html

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