Hey Stendhal, ...

In a bout of inspiration a new layered shot idea came to me. Having a fresh bottle of Campari the mandatory thought train left the station towards the colorful country of the respective list of cocktails - only the ones I can currently make, of course.

So with a bottle of Mr. Black around the next thing I was: both sweet and with similar ABVs, so can they layer?

As you can see, the answer is: sort of.

Hence, let me present to you:

The Stendhal's Regret

 

 

The recipe is very simple: in a shot glass (preferably cooled upfront) pour the same quantities (0.5 oz here) of the coffee liqueur, and then carefully layer the Campari with a spoon on top of it. Since both liqueurs have densities not too far apart the split can't be too prominent. At least not for long.

In the taste department, the resulting shot has a moderate complexity and the balance is (as expected) towards the sweet side. And that is regarding the fact that as a cold brew coffee liqueur Mr. Black is one of the less sweet ones in the family. The bitterness of the Campari is somewhat mellowed down, and the coffee doesn't add up to it.

Overall a nice shot, and I'd give it another try (or two). If a score is mandatory here I'd give it 3.5/5.

Cheers!

Current silliness

Now for something extremely silly ...

I stumbled upon one of my earliest posts about (old) Linux distros from the beginning of my journey and the alias command. And since the overall the cringe level didn't decrease much for all those years, let's see a tiny glimpse at the current situation:

• Current distribution in use: ... nah! It's not Arch. It's Linux Mint - just everything I need (and much more) out of the box without having to put too much fight with the configuring it. I know it's generally bad  for the Learning but let's say my focus is elsewhere and digging into the OS internals is limited to when-it-is-needed instead of to just-for-fun. I'm curious a bit about Void Linux right now but not sure when I'll have the opportunity to explore it.
  
• The said aliases: when it's not a matter of necessity it becomes a matter of plain silliness. Like they're just a few and mostly don't contribute much to compacting the operations in any way.

Cheers!

 

Промени ... (Растеж???)

Понеже имам два други блога в тази платформа и не бяха докосвани (както и този) от години, дойде време за някои промени. Другите два блога получиха по-целенасочена перспектива за развитие и това по естествен начин налои и да бъдат преименувани. Т.е. 

• NBIde стана PolyStack - блогът вече не е предназначен само за NetBeans IDE-то, но и за програмни езици, инструменти, среди и като цяло за модерните начини за разработка на софтуер.
• WildRaspy стана EmbeddedAngle - блогът вече не е предназначен само за Raspberry Pi, но и за новостите в Embedded и IoT света.

Знам, че в зората на големият бум на AI, когато сме в очакване то да измести значителна част от програмистите хвърлянето в една такава посока звучи като напразно и обречено усилие, но това само бъдещето може да покаже.

Fuzzy Iguana coctail

Because it came from the spur of the moment it will be short.

Fill the collins glass at least half-way with ice.
Add:
2 parts of dark rum (Bacardi Black);
1 part amaretto (Disaronno);
3 parts Lychee juice

Stir well and garnish with a lychee ...

Weird controvercy on the tongue

Take a shot glass. 

Pour half part sambuca (I have Luxardo, I guess it's fine). Now you have a component with strong anise taste and a sweet bite as a whole.

Try to layer on top half part of Campari. For some reason (close densities maybe) they don't form a firm border and intermix kind of beautifully. Here you have a bitter punch.

The final taste is very confusing and the sweet and bitter don't really cancel out each other. The after-taste still haunts me, therefore I named it: Follia Italiana or Italian Madness. The only shooter that has puzzled me more so far was the Cement Mixer.

Cheers!

The Gotham Justice cocktail

Take the Batman cocktail and do it the (alcoholic) justice it deserves. With a little hint to the Atomic Cat cocktail. That is the reason I'm calling it Gotham Justice. If it existed before me, please enlighten me in the comments.

• Fill the Collins glass half-way with ice. 
• Pour one part Cointreau over it. 
• Add three parts orange juice (OJ).
• A dash of blood orange juice is perfectly applicable. Grenadine is even more applicable, but just punch it over, like if Batman punched a villain and a little drop of blood spilled into the drink (evil grin goes here).
• Fill up with tonic. 
• You may float a maraschino cherry or two in it.

Gotham Justice - a free adaptation of Batman and Atomic Cat cocktails
with the righteous addition of the might of Cointreau.

Justice have been served.

Monday Morning shot

A single shot for the early, dreaded Monday ... and it must be involved with coffee. No. It must revolve entirely around coffee. Especially on Monday. Right?

Is it doable? Partially.

• Get a shot glass.
• Put 1/4 part (1/4 liquid ounce or around 7 ml) coffee liqueur in it.
• Layer 1/4 part of triple sec on top.
• Here comes the tricky part - (try to) layer one shot of espresso on top.

Some remarks:

• Any triple sec would do, but Cointreau is the best option for me - makes a consistent layer, and except beauty adds very rich aroma and a little bite to the taste.
• The coffee machines are usually calibrated to produce one and a half liquid ounce (around 45 ml). It might be used all, or it might be reduced to an ounce - a completely personal preference.
• The last step didn't work out for me. And the coffee broke my perfectly fitted layers into a common delicious mix - yet delicious, but still a mix. I blame it to the coffee's higher temperature, but I might be wrong. I'm not sure if it's even possible to add coffee to an alcoholic shot as a distinct layer. May be I'll make another try with espresso tempered at the level of the liqueurs.

No pictures here available, because  I don't feel the visual disappointment have to be depicted. There is a pleasure of course, but it's entirely at the side of the tongue.

One last thing - it cools down pretty fast, so sipping it is not necessary. More over it seems to taste better taken as a shot, than taken sip by sip. And if you prefer to drink your coffee hot, just pour some drops of triple sec to the fresh espresso. In the case of Cointreau, you might want to stick your nose above the cup, and breathe it all.

The Green Pirate

Ever been on the road, but still tried to bring your mixology with you? Well your options might be limited, but still some pleasant surprises are possible. Especially, if you have a bottle of three years old Havana Club Rum handy. This rum is neither purely white rum, nor a golden one, but is closer to the former class.

I don't know if this cocktail exists somewhere else, but for the sake of the vacation spirit we were sipping, what I called it, the Green Pirate. Here's the mix:

Ingredients

1 part	3 Annos Havana Club Rum (or any white one)
1 part	Mint liquor
2 parts	Pineapple juice
	Tonic water
	Ice cubes

Preparation

• Fill half the Collins glass with ice cubes. 
• Add the rum, the mint liquor, and the juice. 
• Fill up with the tonic water. 
• You may garnish with lemon or pineapple slices. In my case I had lemon.

Quite enjoyable. :)

Useful video course for JBoss 7

When it comes to web and enterprise development with Java, mastering at least one of the widely popular application servers is a key. And the more you know of its tweaks, and bells, and whistles, the bigger your professional value is. On the path of becoming an expert of JBoss the PACKT Publishing's video course JBoss EAP Configuration, Deployment, and Administration might come as handy as a very powerful set of cheat-sheets. Glancing at the course's contents is enough to gain an impression on the breadth of the conceptual coverage. That is eight sections of videos ranging from running and configuring the different operation modes of the server (or a cluster of servers), through loading and troubleshooting applications, to optimizing performance and logging behavior.

The target audience of this course is the advancing professional. The beginners would also gain insight on many important points, still they might need to re-watch some sections several times while practicing with their applications. The pace is quite fast, so it needs a seasoned developer to follow the shown steps without the need to pause and rewind for repetition.

Although the contents seem a bit scattered at times, I think the direction of the course is quite clear. The lack of obvious structural cohesion (like with books) is not necessarily a disadvantage. The course feels like filing important gaps, which had emerged in time throughout the work of many developers. That makes for a very useful point of reference when tings become unclear.

The visual design is pretty and very appealing. The navigation is dead simple and fast. One thing that can definitely be improved is the sound quality. Its editing too. There are some jumps in the volume level that might feel a bit unpleasant. Also some smudging of the authors voice at some places could make it harder to follow. But in perspective, compared to the value of the knowledge the course brings, this disadvantage is quite minimal.

As a whole this is one of the most useful sets of hands-on information on JBoss that I've came across.

One interesting hunt for IT books

This post comes a bit late but, but be sure to check this lovely campaign from PACKT Publishing.

There are very up to date books about the current technologies. I personally have reviewed 7-8 of their books and I can say that I have some insight. Need an IT book? Go grab 2 ;)

Access Cinnamon Weather Applet Conafiguartion

Now this is a quick and dirty "fix" for a very annoying bug. It concerns those who live with  The Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint. In the last current version (15, code-named Olivia), when installing the Weather applet on the task-bar, the chance you live in Insbruk is generally small. For those of us who doesn't in order to get or correct local weather readings we need to make some configurations. The trouble is that when trying to activate the configuration window, I'm always getting the error

Execution of 'cinnamon-weather-settings' failed: ...

I tried to google for what it means, but the forum-posts I found were vaguely related and offered too little help for my understanding.

Then one day I just had enough of this and tried to solve thing the only certain and old-fashioned I knew all along.

It involves two steps:

1. In the terminal you're changing to the hidden directory: /home/user/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/weather@mockturtl 
2. In that directory there is a Python script called cinnamon-weather-settings, that you're supposed to execute:

$ pyton cinnamon-weather-settings

In the configuration window you have to inter your local code (WOEID), which is not a problem, because the label itself is a link that leads you to a page, where searching for your code of interest should be easy. I guess that's it :)

Първият ...

До сега са само двама - Георги Иванов и Александър Александров. Дали ще има и други?

GateIn and the book you need about it

Now this post is a short review on another tech book I had my eyes on these days. It's again from the PACKT's nice library, and it is named GateIn Cookbook.

Entirely in unison with the name this is a book comprised of recipes. Now first of all GateIn is a powerful portal technology housed as a JBoss project. Despite the strong affiliation you may find it hard to get your h

ands on a concise documentation about it. And if you go at the project's documentation page, you won't find a link referring the GateIn's version in the book. In such cases finding proper resources might become a struggle - googling through blogs and forums that say some bits but never cover exactly what you need at the moment. It might get dreadful. 

Or you just might get the book. It's all compiled in it. Someone else already did the tiresome job for you and you have all the bits put in proper order. And what's more important - your alternatives are covered. Any version of the portal system comes in several bundles - for any of the most recent production versions of the most popular open source application servers (JBoss, Tomcat, Jetty). And the book covers at least two of them where necessary and where the differences matter. And variety is not all about the background technology. When developing portlets a few alternative supporting technologies are covered (JSF, jQuery and RichFaces).

The recipe style is more of a hands on approach. In general this would break the readability of a book, but in the case of a portal technology this is a positive. The authors know that you need to hack in and configure your implementation as fast and accurate as possible, and there aren't too much distractions. In fact the background information in form of definitions and 'How it works ...' and 'There is more ...' sections is present and is exactly where it belongs, so most of the time you gain understanding on the go.

On the project side you won't get too fancy and beyond the simple 'Financial' portal. Actually this is a book centered around the developers, integrators and administrators, and it has a good technical depth (XML configurations, portlet packaging and implementation, ...). Adding a more colorful layer of business logic could bring a better readability and overall comprehension of the way portal is constructed, but it also could distract and make the target reader loos their ground. 

In short if your project employs a portal technology and your choice is GateIn, this book  could be the reference you need, mostly because it is the best there is.

PACKT * 1000

Check this out. 

The guys form PACKT Publishing: http://www.packtpub.com/ have a celebration these days. They've published their 1000th title in the area of IT literature. So for the next three days (28th to 30th of September) they're giving some eBooks as gifts to their registered users. The nice part is (if you're such one) that you may search for any one of those 1000 books to pick up. Any book! Maybe that's why their site is currently so overloaded ;) I guess I'll have to wait a while to browse the store. 

One thing is for sure - it will be hard to choose with so many interesting titles.

Digging deep into JBoss AS 7

Recently I had the chance to go through the book:

JBoss AS 7 Configuration, Deployment and Administration by Francesco Marchioni. I was about to publish this review on my NetBeans blog. Unfortunately the current state of the technology is such, that the NetBeans IDE (in its latest version 7.1) still doesn't support the 7.x versions of the famous application server. The reasons for this in my opinion are mostly related to business and areas of influence of the major players, but this is quite a different topic.

Despite the fact that the book can't fit in a NetBeans related blog, after reading it I think it deserves a dedicated review, so here we are. And discussing a technical book on a blog-for-everything doesn't necessarily disperse its significance. On the contrary, I think this emphasizes its quality.
The ones who walked this path before know pretty well that you can't simply read such a book. It requires you to gain a whole lot of (sometimes new) experience - set up a development environment, configure run-times and IDEs, gradually develop sample applications.  If afterwards you have gained new knowledge and skills that can aid you in your work, then the book has done its job well.
After my experience with this book I think it will be helpful for many professionals that intend or are required to utilize the 7-th version of JBoss Application Server.
Here are few points why I think so:

• The subject is taken and revealed quite in-depth (at least for the given 380 pages) - whole five chapters in the beginning are dedicated to the major aspects of server installation and configuration. 
• It makes you really see the differences with the former generations (mainly 5.x and 6.x) of the server. The modular approach is emphasized and comparisons are drawn most of the time.
• This is a modern server, ready for the most popular and demanding paradigms on the web - distributed and cloud computing, modern security, etc. And it equally well performs as a standalone web application provider or as a domain platform. This is shown in the book by gradually introducing the technologies according to their complexity. The server readiness in every case is represented by examples.

In a more detailed fashion, the book consists of the following:

• Chapter one traditionally gives the points to installing the development environment - the application server, the environment variables, the appropriate IDE (in this case eclipse is the one that is most prepared), the command line interfaces, etc.
• Chapters two to five are all dedicated to configuring different aspects of the server. If this book is the reader's first encounter with JBoss 7.x these chapters can be crucial to understanding the server's architecture. Especially if they have experience with the previous versions. The directories layout is described to reflect not only the modular structure, but also the two main facets - the traditional standalone server and the backbone of domain distributed applications. Of course every mode is presented with its own configuration file - one big major config file per facet that's capable of preparing many subsystems within a single server instance. Special attention is given to the more popular cases when the system must be configured mainly as a lighter web server or as an enterprise-grade Java application server, which utilizes the APIs of the latest version from Oracle (Java EE 6). Since this is the first version of the application server that introduces the concept of domain, a sole chapter is dedicated to explaining the domain controller, the host controller, process controller, server nodes and the related processes. It is emphasized here that the domain mode aids you not just in distributing an application over numerous server instances - that could be achieved similarly with set of standalone servers. The main reason in having a domain is that you get a single centralized point of management for all the nodes.
• Chapter six and seven are for the people that put the applications to use in production environment - the deployment and management. Putting the different types of Java resources on the standalone and domain instances is described in all possible ways - manual or automatic, through eclipse, by scripts (using the command line interface), etc. - is not the only concern here. In significant part is explained the evolution of the classloader of JBoss - how it was made to fit the modular architecture and still enforce isolation over the used dependencies. On the next level managing the running applications and the server itself is aided by specialized tools that were always a strong side of JBoss. These are the brand new Command Line Interface (CLI) and the  revamped Web admin console.
• While the chapter eight makes a detailed example description of clustering and tells why it should not be mistaken with the concept of domains, but both can be successfully combined for productivity, chapter nine deals with the other advanced aspect in the server administration - the load balancing. Both topics are different sides of the strive for performance that is needed on the web. The presentation is broken down to configuring the components that take responsibility for the task at hand. Special attention is given to mod_cluster - presented as the most advanced solution to date in the field of load balancing, and with it we are being gently prepared for what lies just two chapters ahead - the cloud readiness.
• On the security chapter that follows, hardly can be told anything completely new. After all this is a must-have chapter for any server related book. While not having the ambition to make a complete overlook of the topic, the author builds the chapter around the native Java EE 6 security mechanisms and how they are taken further with built-in security subsystem of JBoss - the PicketBox framework.
• The last chapter is a look at the future. Future that is actually already here, but is not yet that ubiquitous. After a mild introduction into what cloud computing actually is, the OpenShift project is presented with its two variants of cloud services: Express - the quick and free platform, and Flex - the bigger and more sophisticated sibling. In the end, after going step-by-step through the book, you might have taken your infrastructure to the PaaS state in this chapter. Cloud computing itself (like security) is quite a large topic and looking at  RedHat's OpenShift gives only a glimpse, but this chapter is a good stating point.

The book is quite detailed where the topic requires it and clears most of the questions that go with the technology incorporated into the server. Of course you have to dig your own path into a real-world application of JBoss in order to meet the real problems that may surpass the book's ability to give answers. But that'd be a long way to go in most of the cases. And this way longer or shorter would be much lighter with JBoss AS 7 Configuration, Deployment and Administration as a companion. In practice you are free to choose and invent whatever best practices you need to. Maybe the best asset of  this book is that it gives more than enough alternatives (in practices and tools, whether they are built-in in the app server of third party) for finding the best steps to make your perfect set-up.
If I have to point out some deficiencies, I can only think of a flaw that is common to most of the technical books. Covering software which lifespan gets shorter and shorter in the recent years (the pace of software evolution is one of the fastest in all industries), requires the book to be released fast on the market (preferably together with the product). This sometimes leads to lowering the quality of writing - tiny grammar and/or syntactical errors, small errors in the fact, etc. They're not even critical to understanding the content, but are there to just tease your sense of natural flow of the language and at worst to distract you from the topic. In this book such errors can be found at times, but they are so insignificant compared to the whole quality of the book, that I'm almost sorry for mentioning them.
As a conclusion I can say that as long as the 7-th version of JBoss is out there playing the work-horse for the business you're involved in this book will be useful. After that it would still be a good historical comparison reference for the technology of the old.

Умножение на Матрици

Филмите за комиксови супергерои и тези правени по игри вече са почти ежедневие (могъщия "Тор" вече ЧУКа на вратата на киносалона). И това което ги прави още по-натрапващи се, са не толкова новопоявяващите се типажи, колкото понякога неадекватните продължения. Това е само доказателство, че Холивуд е в разгара на тази нова златна треска. Технологичния скок при ефектите след края на 90-те години все още дава плодове и не е съвсем изненадващо, че зрелището в доста случаи печели пред добрия сюжет, когато говорим за бокс-офис.

И ето, че след връчванията на Златните глобуси и още преди да са били обявени номинациите за Оскарите за 2011 година, от Киану Рийвс дойде една интересна новина. Филмът, който беше сред основните виновници за техенологичния скок в развлекателното кино - "Матрицата" - може да се завърне с две продължения. На всичкото отгоре, идеята е да се използват последните нововъведения по нов начин и да гледаме Нео вече в 3D. За сега Уашовски имат само договорености за сценарий и разговор с Джеймс Камерън за тънкостите на 3D технологията му, но дали ще има истинска реализация?

Най-интересно ми е, дали брата и сестрата (Уашовски) са успяли да сътворят сюжет, който да има поне на половина достойнствата на първия, при положение, че разчитат на възкръсването на Нео от мъртвите. Дано са си взели поуките от "Спийд Рейсър".

Цигарена държава

Вчера държавата официално се отказа да забрани на пушачите да вършат любимата си дейност на обществени места. Не това е проблема, аз самият съм против всякакви забрани. Работата е там, че нашите най-висши служители просто се отказаха да решат проблема по какъвто и да е начин. Още по-лошо - оставам с впечатлението, че те просто не искат да разпознаят проблема като такъв. Какво толкова, че подлагат (около) половината от населението на страната на своеобразен геноцид? Важното е, няма да им се налага да правят усилие да вкарат в ред нещата. А и приходите към хазната няма да намаелят от тази толкова процъвтяваща и доходна индустрия. Вярно е, че наистина ще излезе скъпо и безрезултатно да се образоват гражданите за вредите.

Аз не съм против пушачите - нека правят каквото си искат. Но съм много против да дишам всичките тези боклуци. Сякаш целия трафик по улиците не ни е достатъчен. Ще ми се обществената реакция да беше поне толкова гневна колкото към решенията за ГМО, защото според мен тютюнопушенето не е по-малък проблем.

Хайде стига сте чели. Просто идете да си запалите една. Само имайте смелостта да уважавате хората окло вас.

Wicked Hollywood

Нещо странно се случава в света на звездите напоследък. Хапчетата онзи ден взеха новата си жертва - Британи Мърфи. Първо Хийт Леджър, после Майкъл Джексън, сега и тя. Все предписани лекарства и т.н. Странно е. Още колко ли добри роли няма да видим никога?

На път през годините

Всяко пътуване впечатлява с нещо - красиви гледки, добра компания или неочаквани приключения. А за да си заслужи и да бъде описано е необходимо особено съчетаване на всички тези компоненти.  Още повече качествения снимков материал помага много. Остава само да се отдели време за сядане пред компютъра и ... ето какво с получи в три такива случая:

• Трилър над манастира - едно незабравимо приключение в Рила
  
• Единството между Севера и Юга - микроскопично кътче от достолепната Стара планина
  
• Късче история в задния двор - ето как и на село са се случвали велики неща :D
  

Тези пътеписи бяха публикувани от моя приятел от George на неговия отличен тематичен сайт Disagi.com

Tweeeet!

See what happens when too many people twit at the same time:


Very beautiful way of saying "We're sorry that our service sucks right now, but stay tuned!".
Well It could happen virtually to everyone, so thumbs up Twitter.