Mika Heinonen's Blog

Wishmap

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 02:11:49 +0200

Quickr 8.2.0.9 + Domino 8.5.1FP1 = Stable!

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:18:49 +0200

Finally I got the newest Quickr version to work together with the newest Domino version. Before the last version update, I was running Quickr 8.2.0.0 and Domino 8.5.1 and it crashed almost daily. Domino left a 0 byte NSD file behind each time it crashed. Now it hasn't crashed once yet. All SNAPPS apps are also installed and working fine.

Easy

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:22:13 +0200

I invented a new programming language called Easy. It's faster than C++ (theoretically), since it inlines everything. I see no point programming in C++ without Easy anymore, since the same and better results can be achieved using this new language. It saves also a lot of time and costs when programming, and it should work also with other languages than C++, if they support variadic macros. Here's the Easy home page:
http://www.siipi.com/easy Easy is still in version 0.0.3.0 0.0.7.0, but it will grow fast, as every new program I make will be written in Easy.

Multithreading can be cores times slower or cores times faster than single threading

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:13:10 +0200

I added multithreading capability to the Siipi speedtest tool, and it showed surprising results: Looping got almost number of cores times faster, but allocating memory got almost number of cores times slower! Here's the test with the first part using 4 cores, and 2nd part using 1 core (as before): Speedtest 1.1 (c) 2009 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points using 4 cores... thread 1 begin=25000.000000 thread 2 begin=50000.000000 Main loop begin=0.000000 thread 3 begin=75000.000000 thread 3 loop ended at 100000.000003. thread 2 loop ended at 75000.000003. thread 1 loop ended at 50000.000007. Main loop Done. i=2500000050, n=25000.000009, time=4.390000s. Creating and deleting 100 million class objects using 1 cores... Main loop Done. i=100000000, time=13.313000s. Total time=17.703000s. Now the same test with both parts using 4 cores: Speedtest 1.1 (c) 2009 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points using 4 cores... thread 1 begin=25000.000000 thread 2 begin=50000.000000 Main loop begin=0.000000 thread 3 begin=75000.000000 thread 3 loop ended at 100000.000003. thread 1 loop ended at 50000.000007. thread 2 loop ended at 75000.000003. Main loop Done. i=2500000050, n=25000.000009, time=6.312000s. Creating and deleting 100 million class objects using 4 cores... thread 1 begin=25000000 thread 2 begin=50000000 thread 3 begin=75000000 Main loop Done. i=25000000, time=66.188000s. Total time=72.500000s. As reference the original test, using no multithreading: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=15.078000s. Creating and deleting 100 million class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=12.890000s. Total time=27.968000s. I found also an interesting article where the author claims that multithreading does not speed things up (which is not always true), but rather stops the system from getting blocked (which is always true, as I've experience with the Lucid engine also): http://www.anomaly.org/wade/blog/2005/08/unintuitive_multithreading_spe.html

Layers and Outlines

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:44:06 +0200

I've recently started to use Layers for web apps, and Outlines for Notes apps. And they give a better development speed. However, Layers have also some problems: 1) They don't scale with the web browser window like tables do 2) When replying with history to an Notes e-mail, layers get all screwed up, so you can only use tables in Notes, but for web apps Layers are still quite good Outlines for Notes apps totally rock though: 1) They expand vertically when you expand their entries (like with subviews). Navigators can't do that 2) You can add a nice company logo and lots of other stuff, which you can't do with basic Notes Views 3) You can also add lots of other links than just Views to an Outline 4) You can sort the Outline entries how you want, and don't need to add some "1. ", "2. " numbering to the view names, and you can also decide which Views you want to show at all So far I've been under the impression that only Agents, Views, Forms and Documents should be used in Notes for Notes and Web apps, but these 2 elements seem to qualify for further use too (Outlines need of course also Framesets and Pages, but that's OK as they serve a good purpose). Some Notes performance extremists like Chris Toohey go even as far as saying that you need only Documents and Agents (for web apps only), but I see still some benefits with Views and Forms. I guess I'm just a man in the middle, between the Notes 8.5.1 enthusiasts, and the Notes-Fastest enthusiasts. Actually I'm more of a Notes-Stablest enthusiast, so on Windows servers I use Domino 7.0.4 only. On Linux, Domino 8.0.1 seems damn stable (never crashed yet class). On AIX, well Domino is more stable than the OS, so better install Debian on your IBM PowerPC servers.

Debian 5.0 GNU C++ makes the fastest code

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:52:44 +0200

MinGW 3.4.5 C++ vs. Visual Studio 2008 C++ vs. GNU C++ make quite different quality in speed of executable code. Currently MinGW is 1.902 times slower than VC++, and VC++ is 1.315 times slower than GNU: MinGW default: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=41.594000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=16.937000s. Total time=58.531000s. VC default: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=41.609000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=15.469000s. Total time=57.078000s. VC -O3: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=41.593000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=15.453000s. Total time=57.046000s. MinGW -O3 -mtune=i686: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=37.437000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=15.766000s. Total time=53.203000s. VC IDE default: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=15.078000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=12.953000s. Total time=28.031000s. VC IDE -O3: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=15.078000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=12.890000s. Total time=27.968000s. openSUSE 11.2 GNU -O3 -mtune=i686: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410065408, n=100000.000009, time=16.060000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=5.310000s. Total time=21.370000s. Debian 5.0 GNU -O3 -mtune=i686: Speedtest 1.0 � 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410065408, n=100000.000009, time=16.650000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=4.620000s. Total time=21.270000s.

Goodbye Firefox!

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:50:36 +0200

You served us well for many years, beating all competition, and it shows in your old age and scars of development. To bring back the freshness and speed of the old days, with a modern and powerfully multitalented browser, we say: Welcome SeaMonkey 2.0! Why? Here are some reasons why SeaMonkey is better than Firefox: 1) Uses only 56MB on google.com, while Firefox uses 82MB 2) Faster than Firefox 3.5.5. Firefox 2.0 was always faster, and SeaMonkey is based on that. 3) Firefox 3 introduced frequent crashing, especially when you close and reopen it quickly, but also randomly when you open it. 4) Firefox 3 hangs up quite often, taking all CPU load, even on simple web pages with only one instance running. 5) SeaMonkey has also e-mail, graphical HTML editor, and IRC built-in. Still it uses less memory than Firefox. 6) Firefox takes sometimes 10-20 seconds to open certain Ajax based chats on forums. 7) SeaMonkey runs on Windows, Mac, Linux (just like Firefox). 8) It has less security holes, and is less attacked (since most attackers focus on IE and Firefox). 9) Firefox takes over 30 seconds on first time to open when I start my PC. SeaMonkey takes 7 seconds. 10) It has collapsible toolbars, like Netscape had. It has collapsible and resizable sidebars, just like Notes 8 has! 11) It has profile switching! This is very useful for web developers, as they don't need to use different browsers for each user, or close all browser windows to switch a user. 12) It has theme switching. 13) It has a site navigation bar. 14) It scores 93/100 on Acid3 test (same as Firefox 3.5.5, but IE8 gets only 20/100, and IE9 gets 32/100): http://acid3.acidtests.org 15) It has no home button (yes, that's a benefit, read on...). I was at first confused and thought, that cannot be, it's a useful button! But then I thought about it more, what is it actually? It's just a clickable item in the browser. So I figured, I can just as well put my new home button as first link in my bookmarks sidebar (F9, not Ctrl-B like in Firefox). Then I have all clickable sites in the same place, and don't need to move far distances with the mouse to the home button. Play it in your mind, how you navigate to the links and to a home button near the navigation buttons. It suddenly feels very unpleasant to have to use links in different locations. It feels like I have to switch to a different thinking routine, and that's stressing. 16) It has probably a lot more benefits over Firefox, but I just started using it an hour ago :) 17) Pressing Ctrl-U gives you a adhoc-realtime source display of a web page. You can update the source by refreshing the window. You can't do that with any other browser. It's not so far fetched for (ex-)Firefox lovers, as Mozilla features them side by side, although you might notice that they say that the all-in-one Mozilla suite is no more, so what to choose? (the choices are alphabetically sorted, to avoid any bias): http://www.mozilla.org/projects/browsers.html

The death of openSUSE

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:10:28 +0200

With the last version update to 11.2, openSUSE became useless for many companies and enthusiasts. It no longer supports PowerPC systems, which are in the long term the best solution for servers (and consoles). Also the remaining Intel version of openSUSE 11.2 seems to bring no benefit over the previous 11.1 release. ��It looks much uglier, it has more bugs in KDE, and it is bloated and slow like hell. After starting the OS, it rattles the harddisk for several minutes, which openSUSE 11.1 didn't do. I looked in top, and it seems to do some useless things with mandb and find. ��Is the involvement of Microsoft in openSUSE reason for this? Did they force the PowerPC support to end, as PowerPC is made by IBM, and recently Microsoft also got rid of PowerPC from their XBOX consoles (for the XBOX720). ��The openSUSE developers say PowerPC was "only" used by 0.3%. I bet they didn't take into consideration that one PowerPC system can consolidate about 600 Intel systems (according to a New York Times article by IBM) . And what they didn't think about at all, is that many people who use Intel openSUSE, actually are planning to migrate their servers to IBM PowerPC, it's just not something which happens at today, or which even shows signs anywhere, as it requires lots of planning and decision making. But when it happens, a lot of Intel platforms will be consolidated. I was forced to look for new alternatives, since openSUSE does not work on my hardware anymore (I have openSUSE 11.1 on my Sony PlayStation 3 and IBM System p), so I tried FreeBSD and Debian. I've been running Ubuntu and Mint in parallel to openSUSE (on my Intel desktop) for years, and openSUSE was always the better OS. But now things have changed. FreeBSD is really nice, as it is a completely own OS, not based on Unix, Linux or anything else. Linux is basically just a kernel, but FreeBSD is a whole OS with seamless integration of kernel and UI, kinda like AmigaOS. It needs a lot of finetuning to get everything to work, which is quite fun, and reminds me of the old days with the first Slackware Linux distros (from which openSUSE is also derived), when Linux was still in version 0.9x. The ports system is really cool, as you can compile any new software with one command ("make install clean"), and it compiles and installs just fine. The performance of Windows apps is good, but it doesn't run everything out-of-the-box, as it needs some deeper tuning to get things to work. Debian 5.0 is simply amazing. First of all, it's much faster and smaller than Ubuntu and Mint, while Ubuntu is a derivate of Debian, and Mint is a derivate of Ubuntu. I don't quite understand why someone even made Ubuntu and Mint, as they only have more bugs, are slower, are more bloated, and don't support the hardware which Debian supports. For beginners, Debian is much easier to setup than Ubuntu and Mint, but of course for professional people also. ��The most amazing thing about Debian however is, that it runs Windows apps faster than Windows XP. No other OS, no other Linux wine has done that before. I tested a Leadwerks Engine 2.3 (it's a AAA OpenGL engine, with fully dynamic realtime shadows and lights, more advanced than CryENGINE 2) app which ran at 303 FPS under Debian, and 301 FPS under XP. Windows XP again runs Windows apps faster than Vista and also faster than Windows 7. I will keep an eye on NetBSD and FreeBSD 8.0, but so far Debian just rocks in every aspect an OS can rock.

Functional and financial thoughts about IT systems

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:04:18 +0200

If you were an IT manager for a company, you would have to decide what IT systems to use so that everything works, so you might come to think about the following things: 1) Choosing an OS for desktop PCs Windows XP is currently probably the most functional OS, since it can run most of the available applications needed for most kinds of businesses. It works perfectly in the 32-bit version, but the 64-bit version has problems with support and drivers. In future, applications will need more than those 2GB of RAM which 32-bit XP can handle (+2GB in PAE mode with limitations for code and data). Vista has much better 64-bit support than XP, but it wasn't accepted by businesses due to its high hardware requirements. Windows 7 fixes mostly the hardware upgrade needs, but it brings a new problem: many Windows programs won't run on Windows 7, as they did on XP, and that would require businesses to redesign their software. That again might turn impossible, since in many cases there is no possibility to upgrade the software (developers have left, source code is missing, etc...), and it would easily be much more expensive than upgrading hardware. The XP mode of Windows 7 is not much tested, and requires a seperate XP license also. From experiences with VM solutions, most people will agree that VM will have problems with some programs, which ran fine on the real XP. Windows 7 might look much better with SP2, since from experience SP2 was the key factor which made XP and Vista usable, but since Windows 8 is probably coming out before Windows 7 reaches SP2, it might be a too long wait for most people. Ubuntu seems to be the most downloaded Linux distro (IBM builds also their 2nd attempt of Linux on that), but that number comes also from the fact that it aims at total open source software. Businesses can't work with open source software only, as some key applications are commercial. Also the fact that Ubuntu's WINE can't handle many Windows applications, makes it useless for many people. openSUSE is sponsored by Novell and Microsoft, and uses a hybrid open source/non-open source model, which allows it to enable access to much more software than Ubuntu. Not so surprisingly, many Windows applications run on openSUSE's WINE, which won't run on Ubuntu's WINE. I think Microsoft's support has brought some benefits to that, but it might be also just the fact that openSUSE handles hardware better than Ubuntu. Generally speaking, WINE runs about 13000 Windows apps, that's far more than Windows 7 runs. Interestingly, WINE runs also high end 3D applications faster than Vista and Windows 7, but only slightly slower than XP. Conclusion: I would say, use XP as long as it works, and then upgrade to openSUSE. 2) Choosing the coorporate database engine Businesses need to store data, a lot of data, and have instant access to all of them. Notes/Domino provides an easy and functional solution for most businesses. It provides coorporate mail (database) functions, collaborational file and rich text storage systems, and also business sales systems. For businesses with more than 1000 employees the price is around 20k per server, but you don't really need many servers. Domino lacks of SQL queries, but provides LotusScript to create superrelational queries. Generally superrelational queries are slower than bare SQL queries, but they have also no limits regarding what fields or data can be joined, so in the end they actually have prooven to be much faster than conventional SQL joins. Oracle focusses mostly on business sales systems, and the price is accordingly high. You'd have to pay easily over 300k per database server. And you don't get rich text clients to work with, it's mostly just a bare SQL server, with some possibility to use OracleScript to make development faster and easier. Trying to make web based apps with Oracle makes no sense, as every other database engine can do it better, faster and cheaper. Besides, Oracle database is in no way designed to support web apps, and if you want unicode support, you have to code it from scratch. In Domino it's a built-in feature, and you don't have to do anything. MySQL is an excellent industry standard web app capable database engine, similar to Notes/Domino. Like Domino, it can serve also as a native database server, but it truly comes to power with web based apps, just like Domino. It's not quite as intuitive and easy to use as the Notes/Domino combo, but it has its own benefits. One benefit is of course that it's free and open source. Conclusion: Use Notes/Domino as base system, and Apache/MySQL for situations where it suits better. You can also use both database systems on the same server, using Apache as frontend, and letting Domino web apps pass through Apache's rewrite engine. 3) Choosing the server OS and hardware Windows Server 2003 R2 64-bit works fine today, and supports also more than 4GB of memory, which is essential for any kind of database server hardware. However, just like XP, it's getting soon old, and faces its end of support. Windows Server 2008 has just like Vista and Windows 7, problems with existing Windows applications. For example Remote Desktop Connection to a Windows 2008 server will result in over 5 sec delays for each mouse click. Maybe it's fixed in SP2, but it's not confirmed. Ubuntu Server has similar problems like Ubuntu Desktop with all kinds of harddrives or their SCSI, SATA interfaces. I tried to install it on 2 fully intact new server hardware, and it just didn't manage to put the physical harddrives in the RAID 10 array. It usually wanted to put cross-cable drives mixed up together, but it was rather a random behaviour. Ubuntu has no official PowerPC support, only community support. openSUSE doesn't need a seperate version for Desktop, GUIs (like kubuntu, xubuntu, etc...), Servers (Intel, PowerPC), or even consoles (PlayStation 3). It doesn't need either any derivates which improve it, like Ubuntu needs Mint. It's just the one and only OS you need. openSUSE is known as the OS with the fastest I/O in the world. IBM tried to challenge its I/O speed once with their IBM AIX 6.1 OS, but they didn't come up to the same speeds. Also IBM AIX 6.1 for IBM's own PowerPC servers is not as good as running openSUSE 11.2 on those machines. Conclusion: openSUSE 11.2 is the perfect server OS. It has the fastest I/O (imagine how it will be with SSD), incredible hardware support, and the most modern Linux kernel. There's really no other alternative for any hardware, may it be Intel or PowerPC (pSeries, iSeries, PlayStation 3, Apple). SUN hardware is way different than Intel and PowerPC, as it is designed for multithreading, and needs its own OS and apps to support it. In that case, use Solaris (and Java). As for the decision whether to use Intel or PowerPC servers, it's mostly a long-term decision. Intels will look cheaper on short-term, but in the long-term PowerPC will be about 5 times cheaper, if you can sustain the system for 10 years.

Oracle tries to kill SUN

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:36:57 +0200

In the ongoing process, where Oracle attempts to buy the whole SUN company, the EU commission gave today free hands to Oracle to deal with the SUN MySQL ownership. Oracle must deliver proof to the EU that Oracle owning MySQL does not harm the free competition. The CEO of MySQL, Jonathan Schwartz, said he is fine with that Oracle owns MySQL, but that makes it difficult for Oracle to proove that Oracle owning both Oracle database and MySQL database will not harm the competition. There has been suggestions that Oracle could make the MySQL unit of SUN an independant opensource wing, but to deliver undisputable proof to the EU, it would be easier if Oracle would let MySQL go. Oracle wants to keep MySQL though, as the Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said earlier that Oracle database is used for legacy applications, while MySQL is used for modern Web database applications. SUN had to fire 3000 employees yesterday, since waiting for EU's acceptance and their demand of proof from Oracle costs them 100 million USD per month. MySQL is a free opensource database engine, which beats Oracle database in speed, features and especially costs. It can be used also seamlessly with IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft SharePoint to improve database technology in both systems. All huge global businesses use MySQL, including eBay, Amazon, so there is really no need for any other database engine in the world. However, for small standalone apps, like games, SQLite is also an essential tool (free, opensource). It beats even MySQL in some speed aspects, and doesn't need any installation and dependancies. Also Firefox uses SQLite.

Domino Designer 8.5.1 is now Freeware!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:15:37 +0200

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ls/dominodesigner/learn.html However, you can only make local apps with it. This might not be a restriction though, since the developers can still send their apps via e-mail or upload them to a Quickr site where the Operation Manager picks up the new app and deploys it into the development or test server. In addition, the Freeware version enables also new people to get involved with Domino designing, including training purposes.

Diving Mask with built-in HD Video Camera

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:42:05 +0200

Divers know how difficult and expensive it can be to get a video camera working underwater. This diving mask makes things easy and affordable: http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/08/19/eod.divemask.camera.cnn

The coolest video IBM has ever made

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:34:24 +0200

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4

#LotusKnows that it is now also available on PLANET LOTUS

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:09:35 +0200

#LotusKnows is on PLANET LOTUS: http://planetlotus.org/twitter/lotusknows And also on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23LotusKnows And on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=111069148742&ref=nf And of course on its founder's blog: http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/lotus-knows?opendocument&comments

Lucid Compatibility Test 0.00

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:14:58 +0200

Multithreading is working
- Multiple Multicore CPUs are supported
- Disk I/O runs in own thread
0% CPU usage for 3D graphics rendering, all is done on GPU
Compatibility Test program soon available
- Minimum hardware test, level 0
- Minimal hardware test, level 1
See also Lucid blog

3D Engines Comparison

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:34:33 +0200

Rank Name OpenGL Support Basic Dynamic Shadows Full Dynamic Shadows 256+ Dynamic Lights Realtime GI OGG Sounds C/C++ Support Realtime Scripting Source Code Included Entity Based System Low End Support High End Support Physics OpenGL Commands Realtime Editor Cross-Platform Networking Price under $1000 Total Score Importance 15 10 16 14 12 1 13 3 2 4 7 11 17 5 6 8 0 9 1 Leadwerks Engine Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes 200 14 2 Max3D Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes No 0 13 3 CryENGINE 3 No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No 12 4 Unity Pro Yes Yes No No No Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 1499 11 5 Xors3D No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No 100 11 6 Chrome 4 No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No 11 7 Torque Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes 1000 11 8 Esenthel Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes 7000 11 9 Ogre3D Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No 0 10 10 Irrlicht Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes 0 10 11 Flow3D Yes Yes No No No Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No 50 9 12 C4 Std Yes Yes No No No No Yes No Yes No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes 350 9 13 3D Game Studio A7 No Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes 199/899 9 14 MiniB3D Yes No No No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes 80 9 15 Ninfa3D Yes Yes No No No Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No No 0 8 16 Truevision3D No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes No No No No 150 8 17 Nuclear Fusion No No No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No No No Yes 59 7 18 Blitz3D SDK No No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No No No No Yes 100 6 19 Blitz3D No No No No No Yes No No No Yes Yes No No No No No Yes 100 5 More rows and columns still coming... You can suggest what other engines you want on the list, but please provide the column infos, as I own/know only these engines. I'm more interested in higher rank engines though, as there are tons of lower ranks engines on the market, but I will still add low rank engines too, if I got all info for them. Explanation of the columns and their relevance: OpenGL Support: This feature is important for people who want to make cross-platform 3D development. Basic Dynamic Shadows: Basic or incompletely implemented Dynamic Shadows. Some engines don't have point light shadows, some have only stencil shadows. Full Dynamic Shadows: This means that all lights cast realtime shadows on all 3D objects, including self-shadowing, which means that a 3D object casts also shadows on it's own surfaces, and not only on other surrounding 3D objects. Also PoM shadows (=shadows from 3D textures) are needed to qualify as a Full Dynamic Shadows engine. 256+ Dynamic Lights: This is only possibe with deferred rendering capable engines. The alternative to deferred rendering is forward rendering, which allows only around 128 dynamic lights (using a 128 buffers hack) due to color overburn and too low performance if you go above that. However, in most cases only 4 or 8 dynamic lights are used in forward rendering engines. Realtime GI: Realtime Global Illumination means light bounces, color bleeding and specular effects in realtime. OGG Sounds: The Vorbis OGG audio compression format allows high quality sounds at low file sizes and streaming. Also licensing issues are important for 3D application development, where the OGG format provides a GPL free license. C/C++ Support: The C and C++ programming languages have been the de facto standard for industrial computer software engineering since 1972 (C) and 1978 (C++). The support for external standard libraries is huge, and thus saves companies a lot of time and money when developing computer software. They create also the fastest applications. Realtime Scripting: The engine can be controlled using a script language, and scripts can be changed on the fly. Source Code Included: The engine comes with its source code. Many engines have also a seperate Source Code license, which can be very expensive. Entity Based System: This means that everything in the 3D world is a 3D Entity (sounds, cameras, models, pivots, lights, emitters, etc...), which can be controlled with the same commands like MoveEntity, ScaleEntity, TurnEntity, HideEntity, ShowEntity, etc... Entity Based Systems provide an easy learning curve, and powerful operations with simple commands, since no academic 3D matrix math is needed to be learned by the user. Alternatives to an Entity Based System is a Node Based System or a Tree Based System. Low End Support: This means basically that the engine can run with any existing graphics card. High End Support: This means that the engine supports modern AAA 3D technologies, and requires a SM3/SM4 capable graphics card. Physics: The engine has physics built-in and integrated. OpenGL Commands: The user can freely program in OpenGL language on top of the engine's 3D rendering. This is normally needed only for special purposes, like for example drawing 3D lines in the 3D space. Usually the engine renders 3D graphics much faster due to its internal optimizations. Realtime Editor: The engine has a native or 3rd party with plug-ins 3D Editor which shows the results of editing in realtime. Cross-Platform: The engine runs natively at least under MacOSX or Linux. Price under $1000: A point is given if the engine costs $1000 or less.

LotusLive

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:42:28 +0200

Today I registered and tried out LotusLive: apps.lotuslive.com. LotusLive is a web browser based global conference tool, which works very similar to a SameTime conference. The benefit over SameTime is that you don't have to install any software (only browser plugins, and a bunch of SSL certificates), and that the meeting is available on the internet, globally. The people who are invited to a meeting (anyone can be invited who has internet access) can use Firefox or IE, but the host needs both browsers to create a meeting. The meeting must be created with IE8 (since sharing apps doesn't work in Firefox, it just hangs), and then the invitation must be sent with Firefox using a different LotusLive account, since the sending of an invitation doesn't work in IE8. Alternatively, Firefox can be skipped, if the invitation is sent via normal mail (there's a link for that on the main page of the meeting hosting). You can also use SMS or instant messaging to send the link directly to your invitees using a URL pattern like this: https://apps.lotuslive.com/meetings/join?id=123-456, where the 123-456 is the meeting ID. I tested to share single application, and also to give control to a colleague, and it worked fine. It was a bit slow, using Notepad++ as shared application, or a OpenGL 3D engine application, but it worked. LotusLive meetings have also a live video stream, which I didn't try yet, but I think they could be used to give better realtime application performance, and also live audio and video. If the bandwidth could be improved, it could really replace coorporate SameTime conferences, and adding the feature that also external vendors and customers can be invited to the meeting. This could potentially eliminate a lot of travelling costs around the whole world. I read in the news that Obama is putting 825 billion dollar to raise the bandwidth in USA, so this will be positive for LotusLive also, as well as for creating 2.5 million new jobs and getting the broadband to schoolkids and hospitals.

Domino 7.0.3 is still the most stable release

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:34:13 +0200

After a year of testing Domino 8, it still has bugs which prevent it from being used in production.

Agent Manager crashes Domino
HTTP agents which open a view and user closes the web page before the agent finishes, causes the agent never to end
- I suspect this agent orphanization happens also under other circumstances, but it does never happen in 7.0.3
Domino 8.0.1 on openSUSE 11.0 has been very stable though, so I suspect that it is mostly Windows Domino 8 related

The recently released 8.0.2FP1 caused a server to shutdown unexpectedly today.

I'm still monitoring this behavior, and if it repeats, I need to upgrade to 8.5
- Now it shutdown the server 2 times, and I upgraded to 8.5
  - It has been stable after upgrading to 8.5

Domino 8.5 has crashed several times on our AIX server, and only once it has even left a nsd file to diagnose.

However, on other servers (Windows 2003 32-bit), it has worked fine so far
Also all other Domino versions crashed on the AIX server
Quite often even AIX itself crashes, and needs an IPL to recover
I got AIX 6.1 CDs now, so I will try if upgrading the AIX5L 5.3 version will cause less often crashes
Domino 8.5 has also a bug which causes the compact command to increase the file size, instead of reducing it
- It could be that Domino 8.5 is unable to use design and document compression, this would explain the size increase, which can be fixed again by downgrading to Domino 8.0.2 and compacting there

Domino 7.0.3FP1 has crashed exactly at the same time every night.

This is a known issue due that Domino+Tivoli+TSM+Remote Desktop doesn't work together, and the workaround is to run Remote Desktop with the /console option
- I'm monitoring now if this workaround causes less crashes, if not, then I will need to downgrade to 7.0.3
  - This workaround, suggested by Alise Latvia, seems to have fixed the problem

Domino 7.0.3 crashes sometimes, but it leaves a nsd behind, so the causes for the crashes have been fixed or workarounded.

Most crashes were caused by other causes, like FTI corruption, harddisk failures, etc... Only a few cases remain where the cause of the crash was left unknown.
Monthy average uptime of 99.5% is easily possible with Domino 7.0.3

Notes and Domino 8.0.1 have too many fatal bugs

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:14:27 +0200

Some things I have experienced: Domino 8.0.1 fatal bugs: - Domino 8.0.1 on an AIX5L 5.3 server keeps crashing several times per day - Domino 8.0.1 on one Windows32 server has crashed 4 times total - Domino 8.0.1 on another Windows32 server crashed today for the first time - Domino 8.0.1 x32 on Windows x64 makes Notes C API Terminate() call to hang for several minutes. Notes 8.0.1 fatal bugs: - Notes 8.0.1 has caused the harddisk's Master File Table to get corrupted multiple times on 2 different PCs, obviously because I am replicating my mail file to Local every 1 minute, and it has also FTI (on the Local replica only). The symptoms that Notes 8.0.1 has damaged your harddisk's MFT are like this: - Many error dialog windows in Windows saying: "The file or directory C:\$Mft is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility." - The local replica will be 0 bytes in size after you have restarted Windows XP32, and it has fixed the MFT and corrupted file links - No other files on the harddisk are corrupted or set to 0 byte size The next time a Domino 8.0.1 crashes, I will downgrade it to Domino 8.0. The next time a Notes 8.0.1 damages my harddisk's Master File Table, I will downgrade it to Notes 8.0. The good news is that Notes and Domino 8.0 also support document and design compression, although you can't set or see them in the database properties. But they can still read and write the databases using compression.

Bruce Elgort keeps deleting my comments!

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:09:30 +0200

I think he must be mad at me because I didn't deliver the next generation Domino Search engine to him yet (for IdeaJam). Well, it's not 100% ready for production, and needs lots of manual setup to make it work for custom applications. I'm planning to make an easy frontend interface so that it can be used like the normal Domino Search engine. The interface will including things like include/exclude lists of field names, update frequency, etc... But deleting my comments... I think it's the biggest sin of mankind to delete any Notes documents - I've personally not deleted any mails since I got Notes in 1995. I've seen also similar things happen in discussion boards, but there the reason was that the phpBB/SMF update was not able to convert old formats to the new format. So, if you post to Bruce Elgort's blog, please make sure you have a backup of your post, else your valuable time and idea might be lost forever! Same goes for all non-Domino based discussion boards on the web of course.

The cheapest NAS of the world

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:35:00 +0200

If you want the cheapest network area storage with the biggest harddisk space on the planet, then there is only one choice for you. Siipi Roc features up to 11 harddisk slots: 6 internal 3.5" slots, 4 external 5.25" slots, 1 external 3.5" slot, equipped with 750GB Western Digital drives in the Antec P182 black case, running at Raid 0,1,5,6,10 with the Asus P5K-E motherboard, an Intel Quad Core CPU, 4GB Kingston RAM, and even a GeForce 7 series 3D card on openSUSE 10.3 64-bit. For an amazing low price as 1800� you can get a fully Raid 5 backed up NAS storage with 6TB and more free harddisk space.

Lotus Notes All Client 8.0.1 on Linux

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:30:33 +0200

It just works: I tried Notes 8.0 earlier on Ubuntu, and it was a bit crashy. But with 8.0.1 on openSUSE it seems more stable, when you learn to avoid certain things :) I'll try to work with this setup a few weeks and see if I need Windows XP anymore. On my work Laptop, the ThinkPad T61p, I have also PCLinuxOS 2008 minime, it will be a good challenger against my home openSUSE. Also kubuntu 7.10 x32 is still in the run, when one of those fails. My server has been already running for a long time Domino 8.0.1 on openSUSE, and it has been running very smooth, without any reboots or crashes, and it hasn't even used the swap disk yet.

AIX - change size of file system

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:18:26 +0200

AIX has a command to change the size of a partition on the fly. Lets make the root directory 4GB bigger: bash-3.00# chfs -a size=+4G / Filesystem size changed to 60555264 Lets look how the filesystem looks: bash-3.00# df -g Filesystem GB blocks Free %Used Iused %Iused Mounted on /dev/hd4 28.88 24.75 15% 5471 1% / /dev/hd2 4.62 3.23 31% 33600 5% /usr /dev/hd9var 0.12 0.11 11% 433 2% /var /dev/hd3 0.12 0.11 11% 66 1% /tmp /dev/fwdump 0.12 0.12 1% 4 1% /var/adm/ras/platform /dev/hd1 0.12 0.12 6% 378 2% /home /proc - - - - - /proc /dev/hd10opt 32.62 31.39 4% 30128 1% /opt Lets try to make it another 4GB bigger: bash-3.00# chfs -a size=+4G / 0516-404 allocp: This system cannot fulfill the allocation request. There are not enough free partitions or not enough physical volumes to keep strictness and satisfy allocation requests. The command should be retried with different allocation characteristics. Oh, there was not enough free space on the disk partition. No problem, lets get more free disk space from another partition (from the partition which is mounted as /opt): bash-3.00# chfs -a size=-4G /opt Filesystem size changed to 60030976 Now lets try to make the root directory 4GB bigger again: bash-3.00# chfs -a size=+4G / Filesystem size changed to 68943872 Lets look how the file system looks now: bash-3.00# df -g Filesystem GB blocks Free %Used Iused %Iused Mounted on /dev/hd4 32.88 28.75 13% 5471 1% / /dev/hd2 4.62 3.23 31% 33600 5% /usr /dev/hd9var 0.12 0.11 11% 433 2% /var /dev/hd3 0.12 0.11 11% 66 1% /tmp /dev/fwdump 0.12 0.12 1% 4 1% /var/adm/ras/platform /dev/hd1 0.12 0.12 6% 378 2% /home /proc - - - - - /proc /dev/hd10opt 28.62 27.39 5% 30128 1% /opt bash-3.00# You can't do that in Windows, Linux or Mac!

No collaboration without integration

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:25:33 +0200

First we had e-mails. Our paper mails, artistic handwriting and other personalized communication was gone. Then we had websites. Our e-mails were reliefed and we could share information with everyone. Then we had blogs. Our websites were updated less frequently and all structured information was gone. Then we had rss feeds. Our custom look and style of blogs was gone and only raw information was left. Then we had technorati. Actually I forgot about it completely. Then we had ideajam. This was the first time we had a common place to share our ideas. Then we had planetlotus. Our rss feeds were gone and we got back our blogs, but this time all of them together. Then we had bleedyellow. Our blogs were still there, but we had also duplicate blogs, but we got also new ways of collaboration. Then we had twitter. Our collaboration tools screamed for integration into one single global place, as we have now to update information in 4 or more different places seperately. Planetlotus strikes again, and tries to keep all the places together. But it can do only so much, and it can't fix the source of the problem. I'd like to see one single place for global collaboration. I'd like to see it to running on Domino 8.0.1 on SUSE or AIX. I'd like it to have everything what all the above systems provide plus be easily expandable for future ideas. I'd like that the collaboration starts on the system level, and not only on the end user level. And actually I think it should be in IBM's own interest also to host a global server, as they have the iron. I'm sure they can hack some Blue Gene/P to run like an AIX, and I'm sure many companies and individuals would love to join for monthly fees to host their own virtual server, when they know their site is running on the best hardware in the world. And hey, collaboration could help also on the virtual server level, since not everyone needs their own virtual server, but they could be joined into communities, running on a common Domino server. Also those who prefer an own virtual server, could collaborate and share their idle time, then others, and themselves would have huge benefits from eachothers' idle times using IBM System p hypervisor technology.

Why I love the Police

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:31:19 +0200

Look at their URL: I wonder if they are running on AIX also...

ODS48 Speed Test

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:58:20 +0200

At least in the core functions the new ODS48 (Notes/Domino 8 database format) is not remarkably faster than ODS43 (Notes/Domino 6/7 database format). I made a few tests with new blank databases (one for ODS43 and one for ODS48): First I created an agent which creates 100000 documents (no fields). The first test was to run the agent from the Notes 8 Basic Client: notes: ods43: 90.914s ods48: 90.547s The remaining tests were done using Mozilla Firefox using the Preview function in the Notes 8 Basic Client (ods48nc means ODS48 format with no design and document compression enabled): http: create 100k docs: ods43:�� Timer: 00108.78906s. ods48:�� Timer: 00089.81250s. ods48nc: Timer: 00086.27002s. change 100k docs (using documentcollection): ods43:�� Timer: 00024.68001s, 00024.50000s, 00023.56000s. ods48:�� Timer: 00025.16000s, 00025.02002s, 00024.13000s. ods48nc: Timer: 00024.96997s, 00024.80005s, 00024.02002s. change 100k docs (using view and getnextdocument): ods43:�� Timer: 00037.73999s, 00037.33008s, 00037.97998s. ods48:�� Timer: 00038.25000s, 00037.83997s, 00038.50000s. change 100k docs (using view and getnthdocument): ods43:�� Timer: 00038.94995s. ods48:�� Timer: 00039.75000s. read 100k docs: ods43:�� Timer: 00005.71997s, 00005.69995s, 00005.72003s. ods48:�� Timer: 00005.71002s, 00005.71997s, 00005.70001s. ods48nc: Timer: 00005.72998s, 00005.72998s, 00005.75000s. The speed advantage of ODS48 was better visible on a slower system. There I got times like: create 100k docs: ods43: 207s. ods48: 194s. read 100k docs: ods43: 14s. ods48: 11s. As a further observation, I noticed that ODS48 with design and document compression enabled can be much slower when opening documents with the Notes Client. This might be especially noticable on servers with lower CPU power and documents with big RichText fields. The fastest database option in general might thus be: Domino 8.0.1 with ODS48 and no compression.

Welcome a new SPCLP Lotus blogger!

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:30:05 +0200

Today I met him again, and he told me that he has just started his own blog a few days ago. Please welcome Vladislavs Tatarincevs (or short: Vlad) from Latvia! He is often referred by my colleagues as my "Master" (because I often learn new things from him), but I tend to say that it's a fruitful cooperation between me and him (since I also can teach him some things). Call it 50/60 if you want, but not 0/100 :) My last LotusSphere was in 2005, so he is a tad ahead of me, since he has probably now PCLP 8.0 Designer (=CAAD) (and probably also Admin), but as I also never go home without the newest PCLP certification, I'd like to call the almost 100% PCLP scorers SPCLP (Superior Principal Certified Lotus Professional). His blog can be found at: Latvia Lotus User Group, and I told him already to ask Yancy Lent to put him up in the planetlotus.org member list.

LotusScript: over 780% faster checking for empty strings

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:44:34 +0200

I read on planetlotus.org about Bob Balaban's test of the speed difference between s="" vs len(s)=0 checking ( http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/bpmpblog.nsf/dx/performance-testing-technique ). My test agent looks like this:

Sub Initialize Dim n As Long, ni As Long n=10 ' number of test repeats Dim t1 As Double, t2 As Double, tn As Double, tt As Double Dim i As Integer, j As Integer, k As Long Const x=10000 Const s="xxxxxxxxxx" For ni=1 To n t1=Timer For i=1 To x For j=1 To x k=Len(s)=0 Next Next t2=Timer tn=t2-t1 tt=tt+tn Print ni & ": " & Format(tn,"00000.00000") & "s." Next Print "Average: " & tt / n & "s." End Sub

The line with k=Len(s)=0 varied and gave the following average timings over 10 tests:

Const s=""	k=Len(s)=0	7.532s
Const s=""	k=s<>""	58.938s
Const s="xxxxxxxxxx"	k=Len(s)=0	7.688s
Const s="xxxxxxxxxx"	k=s<>""	63.089s
Const s="xxxxxxxxxx"	k=s=""	65.770s

That means, even with small loops like 1 billion iterations, you get almost a minute faster results! Anyway, the number of iterations is not so important and you can't really judge on that, as someone might need even bigger iterations, but the fact that it's over 780% faster to use len(s) is important. I don't think it's concidence that several people started to blog about LotusScript performance practices, just after I started to think about revising the LotusSphere 2007 LotusScript speed presentation, even before I posted anything on my blog. I think there is somekind of shared mind, which we can't explain scientifically yet.

Deployment Status: 8x Domino 8.0.1, 5x Notes 8.0.1, more to come...

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:20:59 +0200

I have deployed Domino 8.0.1 for x32, x64, AIX, Linux so far (Experimental, Research, Production (Linux) servers), and Notes 8.0.1 for x32 (Production Clients). No problems have occured except the problems which were caused by "officially not supported by IBM" configurations: - Domino 64-bit + DB2 - Domino 8.0.1 + Quickr 8.0.0.3 - DWA/Lite + Nokia (Symbian) The next deployments will continue on Development, then Test, followed by Stage, and finally Production servers after a meeting with our consultant next week.

Things what IBM Lotus should really focus on

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:29:33 +0200

After evaluating the Notes/Domino 8.0.1 release, I found a few things which should be really fixed and done before doing anything else: - Domino 8.0.1 64-bit support for NSFDB2. Currently it destroys DB/2 databases and permanently destroys the DB/2 interface too, so it has to be reinstalled for Domino 8.0.1 32-bit. - Symbian support for Notes Traveller. Nobody really uses Windows Mobile devices (vanishing 12%), the vast majority on earth uses Symbian devices (65% market share). - Symbian support for Domino Web Access Lite (or even Domino Web Access Full). Currenty neither works with any business phone: Nokia Communicator 9210, 9300, 9500, E90. - Native Basic All Client for Linux: Lotus Notes, Domino Designer, Domino Administrator. Currently only Notes Standard Client works on Linux, and even there the implementation of Eclipse is horribly slow. IBM has a clear business case here: Basic All Client for Linux reduces the Total Cost of Ownership even 3 times: 1) Basic Clients vs Standard Clients hardware needs 2) Linux and it's applications hardware needs 3) License fees for Windows (and also the cost for solving problems caused by Windows).

8.0.1 incoming at 980KB/s

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:56:10 +0200

And another 5 minutes later: Domino 8.0.1 64-bit with DB/2 9.1.3 64-bit running on Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise 64-bit on IBM System x3650 with Dual Quad Core (=8 cores). Oh, that reminds me I need to upgrade to DB/2 9.5 Viper next.

Notes/Domino 8.0.1 went to Step 5: Gold Build

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:52:00 +0200

Finally some progress again, after it was stuck for long time in Step 4, it went today to Step 5: Gold Build: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/r5fixlist.nsf/(Progress)/801 Maybe 8.0.1 is released even this week, or latest next week.

kubuntu 8.04 + KDE 4.0.1 + Firefox 3.0b3

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:21:32 +0200

I could say it's the most beautiful and effective desktop so far, technically and visually: See Picture What's missing from the picture? You guessed it right: Lotus Notes 8.0.1 for Linux! But that will come very soon...

openSUSE 10.3 + Domino 8.0

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:10:01 +0200

Finally I made the switch from Windows to Linux. I decided to go for openSUSE 10.3, as it has the fastest I/O of all operating systems in the world. This site, http://www.siipi.com is now running on openSUSE 10.3. The installation was just as easy as installing Ubuntu (which is actually easier than installing Windows), but openSUSE gives you more freedom to make choices. It was literally just like inserting the CD and turning the power on, I didn't need to install any 3rd party drivers or anything else, everything was done by the openSUSE CD. Of course I needed to convert the harddrives from NTFS to ext3 (I used a new harddisk for the "C:" drive), but that's just normal partitioning, formatting and moving files from one harddisk to another. openSUSE can read and write NTFS drives, but for production use only ext3 drives should be used (much better performance). I think I will use this combo also on our IBM System p570 servers, then we have a unified environment between Intel and PowerPC servers. Oh wait, I can't! There's no Domino for Linux on PowerPC, ok AIX is actually better since it has JFS2.

The best SAN of the world

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:21:17 +0200

If you want a HUGE disk storage, for example for daily backups of multiple servers, then this baby - the IBM DS4200 Express - is the only choice for you: for an amazing price of 4600� and 512� per 750GB additional disk, one 3U rack supports 16x 750GB = 12TB, and with optional expansion units (3U, 16x disks each) this single SAN supports even up to 112x 750GB = 84TB! Similar systems with just 20x disks cost up to 20000� from other manufacturers, and consume even more rack U space due to horizontal placement of the disks. And with up to 4x 4GB/s Fibre Channels the IBM SAN performs an effective transfer rate of 1550MB/s for applications (with Domino 8.0.1's database compression even more MB/s), which makes it even faster than some internal hard disks of servers. As we are getting more non-production Domino servers (stage, testing, development, research), there is a need to backup their data also on a daily interval. Once again IBM has proven their leadership and competence in server hardware.

Collaboration Riddle

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:12:56 +0200

The guard riddle in the movie Labyrinth (with David Bowie) reminds me of the everlasting battle between IBM and Microsoft, which was brought up once again during the last LotusSphere 2008. Solve the riddle, and you will know the absolute truth between the claims of IBM and Microsoft. SPOILER WARNING! Don't watch the video before you have solved the riddle yourself. Here goes the riddle dialog: There are 2 doors. Sarah needs to find out which door leads to the castle at the center of the labyrinth, as the other one leads to certain death. Guard: "You can't ask us. You can only ask one of us." Guard: "It's in the rules, and I should warn you that one of us always tells the truth, and one of us always lies. That's a rule too." Gesturing to the Guard, "He always lies!" Guard: "I do not! I tell the truth!" Guard: "Oh, what a lie!" Sarah: "Alright," to the Guard, "answer yes or no: would he (Guard) tell me that this door leads to the castle?" Guard: "Uhhh...yyyes?" Sarah: "Then, the other door leads to the castle, and this door leads to certain death." Guards: "oooOOoooh." Guard: "How do you know? He could be telling the truth!" Sarah: "But then he wouldn't be. So if you told me that he said 'yes', I know the answer is 'no'." Guard: "But I could be telling the truth!" Sarah: "But then he would be lying. So if you told me that he said 'yes', then I know the answer would still be 'no'" Guard: "Wait a minute," to the Guard, " is that right?" Guard: "I don't know � I've never understood it!" Is Sarah right? Spoiler Video: Labyrinth Riddle Please note that there are also other hidden truths in the video...

New Testament source code released

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:45:05 +0200

I already knew for many years how the Old Testament was compiled (using the Babylonian Enuma Elish and it's original source from the Sumerians), but Jesus and the New Testament remained a mystery to me, until today. Here is the full source code of Jesus and the New Testament, and it's all Open Source and Free: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com It seems religion has been now completely disassembled and there is no mystery anymore. Way to go science!

Domino 8.0 on AIX 5L 5.3

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:56:21 +0200

Today I installed Domino 8.0 on our POWER5 AIX 5L 5.3 test server, and it doesn't want to accept our existing server id files. I saw on a IBM SPR that a similar issue has been reported, but I don't know yet - until it's fixed in 8.0.1 - if that fixes also this issue. When I force it to eat the id file (by ftp:ing the id file to the server and using vi to edit the server's notes.ini file to use that id file), it runs fine for a few minutes, although still complaining that the public certificate does not match, but after a few minutes it brings up another error message related to the id file ("The subject's public key found in the certificate is not the one stored in the ID file for that entity."), and you can't connect to the server anymore. Now I have 3 options: 1) Wait until Domino 8.0.1 comes out. 2) Try Domino 7.0.3 on AIX 5.3. 3) Try Domino 8.0 on SUSE 10.3. Let's see: 1) I want to continue the migration testing, waiting must wait, so this is no option for me. 2) This will probably work, and it's what I will do on the AIX machine next. 3) This might work, but I don't want to trash the AIX installation just yet, since so far AIX has worked well. I will try this on a Windows 2003 server though. VNC server works great on AIX, it's very smooth and fast to use, much faster than Windows Remote Desktop on a Windows 2003 server. And it supports even multiple simultaneous users (multiple mouse cursors), while the VNC for Windows supports only 1 mouse cursor for simultaneous users. Windows Remote Desktop doesn't even support simultaneous users at all, which is a waste of valuable work time. The funny thing is that the AIX server (IBM System p) doesn't even have a graphics card, but well what is a graphics card anyway, just an additional CPU to focus on graphics operations, a POWER5 CPU can do that with almost idling:

The Final Blow

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:53:55 +0200

I'm quite objective and tolerant when it comes to operating systems, applications and hardware. I just want the best for money, and temporarily can even accept functionality over the value for money factor. Indeed, I'm still looking for the best hardware/software combo. One thing I've learned is that Linux has been predicted to take the throne of Windows too many times, it never did yet, but now something has happened which finally might give it the final blow. Even I made the mistake, and predicted it way too early: http://siipi.com/public/mika.nsf/blogs/D3F28A19C60356C5C2257361006FDA6A Microsoft had many good products, like Visual Studio 2005 C++, but now that has been beaten by Linux GNU C++ too (see Speedtest article: http://siipi.com/public/mika.nsf/blogs/E2A4779723C2F147C22573C600673696). Was THAT the final blow? For me it's a very important issue, as I want CPUs to do their job: compute a lot and very fast, at the lowest cost. If a CPU cannot do that, then I look for a better one. Of course speed is not everything, but it is more important than anything else. You might compare it to a truck which drives at 50km/h and carries 20 tons of load with a moped which drives also at 50km/h but can carry only 100kg of load. However, in most cases it's not enough to drive at 50km/h with whatever load, but the need is for speed, like 320km/h, and at those speeds everyone carries about the same load, except for airplanes... But then the price goes up to the sky accordingly.

if(thisblog.isshown()){planetlotus=rocks};

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:43:09 +0200

lotus notes designer domino linux ibm aix windows Just testing if it really works :) If it works, then I agree with Andy Donaldson: http://blog.macian.net/2008/01/youve-got-to-love-planetlotusorg.html I had kinda the same idea also for the Lucid project, which is still under development (the 3D desktop replacement for all OS), but well, good ideas are always invented by someone at some point of time, and not only once. It seems planetlotus.org is not able to auto-pick lotus related blogs, so I sent a mail to the admin.

Surprising CPU Benchmark Results

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:49:19 +0200

I would never have guessed that my laptop would beat them all. Does this mean that Linux x32 is the fastest OS in the world, and that 32-bit is faster than 64-bit, and that clockspeed means everything, and dual cores are better than quad and single cores? I want to find out what is the fastest linear and parallel processing system on the market, and I really hope M5 will be it. System ID M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 System Name IBM System p5 505 IBM System x 3650 Lenovo ThinkPad T61p Siipi Blackhawk IBM System p 570 IBM System x 346 Siipi Falcon Siipi Osprey System Specifications POWER5 1.9GHz 2x Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.66GHz Intel Dual Core 2.66GHz Intel Quad Core 2.4GHz 4x POWER6 4.7GHz 2x Intel Xeon 2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Intel Dual Core 1.8GHz Operating System AIX 5L 5.3 Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 x64 Windows XP SP2 x32 Windows XP SP2 x32 / Linux Ubuntu 7.10 x32 AIX 6.1 Windows 2003 Enterprise x32 Windows 2003 Enterprise x32 Windows XP SP2 x32 Speedtest 1.0 32-bit - 25.125s 26.640s (14.312s+12.328s) 27.781s (Windows) 48.010s (Linux, default) 21.590s (Linux, optimized 16.660s+4.930s) - 58.406s 45.312s 38.296s Speedtest 1.0 64-bit 199.391s (default) 51.450s (optimized) 122.937s - - coming in 2008-03 - - - Maybe I should explain a bit further why these systems were used in the test: M1: the cheapest System p you can get, we wanted to have a test server for evaluating the production server (possibly JS22 or 570) M2: our currently fastest System x server M3: my office laptop M4: my home gaming PC M5: an vision how our first production System p could look M6: our old production server M7: a low cost server (high GHz single HyperThreading core (=semi-dual core)) M8: a low cost gaming PC (low GHz dual core) Speedtest 1.0 source code (all-bit, all platforms) is here:

#include "stdio.h" #include "time.h" class testclass { public: int x; testclass(void) { x=1; } ~testclass(void) { x=0; } }; int main(int argc, char **argv) { double n=0; long i=0; long t1=0; long t2=0; long t1t=0; long t2t=0; t1t=clock(); printf("Speedtest 1.0 (c) 2008 Siipi\n"); printf("Counting 10 billion floating points...\n"); t1=clock(); while(n<100000.0) { n+=0.00001; i++; } t2=clock(); printf("Done. i=%ld, n=%f, time=%fs.\n",i,n, (double)(t2-t1)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC); printf("Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects...\n"); t1=clock(); i=0; while(i<100000000) { testclass *a=new testclass(); delete(a); i++; } t2=clock(); printf("Done. i=%ld, time=%fs.\n",i, (double)(t2-t1)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC); t2t=clock(); printf("Total time=%fs.\n",(double)(t2t-t1t)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC); return(0); }

To compile and run Speedtest 1.0 under AIX/Linux/MacOSX/Sun/Cray/IRIX/AmigaOS, enter the following commands: g++ st.cpp time ./a.out To compile and run Speedtest 1.0 under Windows, enter the following commands: (Launch Visual Studio 2005 C++, select: File/New/Project From Existing Code/Console Application) (Select Release instead of Debug) (Choose Build/Build Solution) \programs\rktools\ntimer release\st.exe (ntimer.exe comes with the Windows 2003 Resource Kit Tools) You don't necessarily need to run Speedtest 1.0 with time/ntimer, I just used it to double-check that my time measurement was working fine. The program output will look like this: Speedtest 1.0 (c) 2008 Siipi Counting 10 billion floating points... Done. i=1410063201, n=100000.000003, time=15.078000s. Creating and deleting 1 billion class objects... Done. i=100000000, time=12.703000s. Total time=27.781000s. Unfortunately I don't have all systems which exist, but here are some precompiled binaries: Windows 32-bit Windows 64-bit AIX 64-bit Linux 32-bit ftp://ftp.siipi.com/st.exe ftp://ftp.siipi.com/st64.exe ftp://ftp.siipi.com/st64 ftp://ftp.siipi.com/st The source code can be also downloaded, to make it a bit easier on systems which have no web browser installed: ftp://ftp.siipi.com/st.cpp. I would be glad to know if someone's server/workstation can run this under 21s. I managed to get the POWER5 code twice faster with the following compiler options: g++ -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fstrict-aliasing -mcpu=power5 st.cpp The Linux code went also more than twice faster with these options: g++ -O3 -mtune=pentium4 st.cpp Furthermore, the AIX programs might also run faster when compiled with IBM VisualAge AIX 6.0 C++ (especially with the XL C/C++ addon) or Intel C++, although Linux GNU C++ beats Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 C++ in optimized machine code speed, which also surprised me, let's say vastly.

My First SuperComputer

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:20:39 +0200

For the first time in my life I got to see how a SuperComputer is. Well, it's just the smallest IBM System p server on the market, but it still beats the IBM DeepBlue '97 (the one which played chess against Kasparov, and was 2 racks in size) by miles. I'll test soon how it compares to our fastest IBM System x servers (they have 2x Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.66GHz), and I think it will beat them all too, maybe even all together in performance. The server was even easier to install than my previous x3650, well it was preinstalled. It seems IBM takes better care of their own babies than their Intel servers, which is of course understandable. The CPU is from IBM (btw, XBOX 360 CPUs were also done by IBM, it's a 3-core PowerPC CPU), and of course the rest of the hardware too. Harddrives and RAM might be from other suppliers, I haven't checked yet. The first thing which baffled me with this machine was that it was missing a video card! A quick call to the reseller solved this little "problem", as they explained that I have to use a serial cable to connect to the server with a terminal program. Alright, I checked on Google for more details about this setup, and found out that it is running on 19200,N,8,1,Hardware protocol parameters (IBM should really put this info in the AIX 5L manual, as it's kinda essential to get started). Fortunately the manufacturing machines service guys had one such cable to borrow, so I was able to make a first contact with this SuperComputer. Interestingly, the server is alive at the serial interface even when it's powered off (just the power cable connected to the power supply). And turning the power on is not just like pushing the power button, well it works too if you wait long enough, but internally it's still running a boot up sequence before the actual server with harddisks and stuff starts. After the first contact via serial terminal, I managed to setup the IP address and connect to it via telnet. Once I downloaded the VNC Server, I was even able to connect with the graphical VNC Viewer from my Windows XP workstation. So far so good, but another problem arised when I tried to install the GNU C++ compiler: the /opt mount was too small. However a quick Google brought the solution again: chfs -a size=+4 /opt and at once the size of the /opt mount was large enough for the g++ installation. Now I'm still missing some bos.adt.libm (that's IBM AIX slang, so mind me :) stuff to compile my C++ programs, but that came on a CD too, so I will continue my journey tomorrow.

Advertising thread

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:12:33 +0200

This thread is for everyone who wants to advertise some stuff. I think it's better to have all advertisements in one place, since they are often unrelated to other blog entries.

ideajam.net

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:39:02 +0200

Bruce Elgort had a fantastic idea to make a web site where all people can post their ideas how to improve the IBM Lotus products, and also get feedback from other people and see how their idea succeeds by the "Promote and Denote" votes. Lots of IBM'ers are also aware of this site, including the Notes lead designer Mary Beth Raven. I'm hoping that this site succeeds and gets great popularity, then IBM might even consider of giving some official feedback if a particular idea is going to be implemented, at least registered IBM users could get a special "role" (it's a Notes database!) to be able to click the "Accepted or Rejected" button. This "Accepted or Rejected" indicator could be just below of the "Promote and Demote" indicator.

Innovations in people productivity

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:48:01 +0200

IBM is doing an interesting event, coming up in Oct/Nov 2007. I had a quick look at the presentations of the agenda, and it looks like this event is a MUST to see for all CEO/CFO/CIO/CTO/etc... decision makers in all companies, and why not for everone else too. The style of the presentations comes down to a level which everyone understands, while still providing interesting technical details. Finally IBM has a good presentation and shows directly why Notes/Domino/Quickr is indeed better than Microsoft's attempt with Outlook/Exchange/Sharepoint/Office 2007. I liked especially the question from the CIO type guy who asked if they could use Sharepoint, and the IBM Sales rep answered: "Lotus Quickr is better. Let me explain why...". But see it for yourself, the agenda with the presentations can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/offers/techbriefings/details/lotus.html

SuperDomino 8

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:15:52 +0200

Today I started to install the hardware for the upcoming Domino 8 & DB/2 9.1 server. The IBM x3650 (rack version) was amazingly quick and easy to install. All parts are easily snapped in with no need for any tools except your hands. The configuration consisted of the following parts:

IBM x3650 with 1 Intel Quad Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz 8MB cache and 2x 1GB self-correcting RAM

a second Intel Quad Core Xeon E5335 2.0GHz 8MB cache

a second power supply with 5 more fans

2x 1GB self-correcting RAM

2x 2GB self-correcting RAM

2x 73GB SAS harddisks for drive C: with RAID 1

4x 146GB SAS harddisks for drive D: with RAID 5

IBM ServeRaid 8k card with battery backup (if both power supplies go down, it still keeps the harddisks up to perform a clean shutdown in order to avoid file system corruption) So the complete server looks like this:

2 Intel Quad Core Xeons E5335 2.0GHz 8MB cache

8GB self-correcting RAM

73GB Drive C: RAID 1

438GB Drive D: RAID 5

2 Power Supplies

10 fans (+2 fans for the Power Supplies) I booted up the ServeRaid Support CD, which started Linux with X-Windows and created the raid arrays: RAID 1 for drive C: so one disk can go down and data is still available on the other, and RAID 5 (with 256K stripe-unit size, I guess that's the optimal for this purpose and hardware) for drive D: because I need 250GB free space, and RAID 6 is really only recommended for raid arrays with 12 or more harddisks. I'm still not sure if I should allocate a 4GB RAM disk for the Transaction Log, or put it in the C:\LOGDIR directory (C: drive has basically no activity if you make the Windows pagefile min=max=windows recommended size (which is about 1.5 times RAM)). Making a seperate partition for it wouldn't help much, since it's using the same physical harddisks. Tomorrow I will install Windows 2003 64-bit Enterprise Server, Domino 8 (unfortunately only 32-bit, since the 64-bit Domino 8.0.1 is not out yet), and get an IBM guy to install DB/2 9.1 64-bit on it via Remote Desktop. Next week I'll have a workshop with IBM so we can test Domino 8 using DB/2 9.1 thoroughly, and see how it performs on huge databases with lots of transactional traffic.

Collaboration for everyone

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:38:43 +0200

I need to collaborate with people, using text chat, voice (and video) chat, application sharing and file sharing, self-made discussion and workflow web applications, and e-mail. I can't ask people to pay for commercial software like IBM Lotus Sametime, since Microsoft Window Live Messenger is free. I think IBM has missed the train here, as it's quite impossible to demand that other people have Notes or Sametime in the public world. At best they have only a web browser, and of course Windows, Linux or Mac. That's the greatest common divisor, and that only counts. IBM advertises to have a decent collaboration software suite, but it lacks the most essential requirements, like being free software which is available for everyone, and of course to work on a public sametime server. A clear win for Microsoft, as Windows Live Messenger works also with also Linux and Symbian clients which are also for free, so people can do Instant Messaging from basically any electronic device. I wish IBM would notice this and offer a Sametime lite version, no, a Sametime Live version, which would be free for all to use, and focussed on the end-end-users, while Sametime Enterprise could still have all the enterprise related stuff like Quickr integration, Notes integration, and so on. MSN is actually also a risk for IBM to lose existing Sametime users, since they could as well use MSN instead, and expand their reach and availability to public users and customers. You can contact me as mika.heinonen@siipi.com on Windows Live Messenger (=MSN) network. Now, how easy was it to say that, and how would it be as easy to achieve on the IBM Sametime network?

ASUS G2S

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:46:21 +0200

I decided to buy an ASUS G2S, since my Lenovo ThinkPad T61p was getting a bit old. Nah, just kidding :) The ASUS is for my hobbies and home use. There's only a few notebooks in the world which have a GeForce 8 series chip, as you can see on NVidia's page, and the G2S is one of them. The GeForce 8 series is about 32 times faster than any other NVidia series. Similar to the ThinkPad T61p, this also has a T7500 Core 2 Duo CPU and widescreen LCD, however 17". It comes with Windows Vista Ultimate x32 preinstalled, and has also seperate playback control buttons for Windows Media Center, which is part of Vista Ultimate. So you can play all kind of media without actually having to use the Windows UI at all. Interestingly the 160GB hard disk is divided into two partitions (C: and D:), which kinda hints to install Fedora 8 x64 on a ext3 filesystem in the second partition on side with Vista Ultimate, and having it install the boot manager also. The machine has also an integrated 1.3MPix web cam with mic, and lots of accessories including remote control, infrared tower, a LotuSphere style ASUS backpack with a well isolated and secured slot for the notebook (actually 2 of those slots), a DTV+FM antenna, and a optical mouse with very useful additional buttons, like back/forward windows/web control and even a Vista Aero 3D program switch button! It has also a very cool looking OLED (Organic LED) display which can be programmed to show scrolling texts and icons, caller ID (it actually shows also a Windows Live Messenger caller automatically on it, which I found pretty amazing), or a clock (that's good when Windows is busy and not able to show the desktop clock).

IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 9

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:39:29 +0200

Finally IBM Lotus has focussed more on the Web Application Development side in Domino 9. First of all, everything you do in Notes, will basically work as-is on the Web. I think this is the greatest improvement ever. Starting with Domino 9, also Web 2.0 will be introduced, as well as the quite powerful and modern interoperability between Web Browsers and Domino Designer. We've seen this before in Workplace Designer, but it was then drawn back, probably because IBM was still confident that these powerful features could be held back until 2009, as Domino 8 was going to be still way better than competing Web Application servers and Web Development tools. Notes 9 will have a 3D OpenGL based workspace, where all Application icons are organized and navigated in a 3D environment, each workspace tab represents a seperate space, which can be linked seamlessly together with other workspace tabs, appearing as clearly seperated clusters in the global 3D workspace. In addition each 3D workspace tab also allows the creation of folders (as well as unlimited subfolders inside each folder), like people are used from operating system file systems. Applications can be grouped and labeled using those folders. Actually even the workspace tabs are folders, so we are talking about 2 base elements here only. The Notes workspace also allows links to any kind of files, including Lotus Quickr based files. So it's basically a good alternative to current operating system file managements itself, which are far from being real 3D environments (Vista Aero and Linux Beryl). With the introduction of the Notes OpenGL graphics engine, also all slowness of the Notes 8 Standard client are now history. OpenGL draws so much faster 2D and 3D graphics, that a hardware upgrade is not needed anymore. Notes/Domino 9 Beta will start around Q4/2008, and the gold release is expected in Q2/2009. This article is pure fiction, but I hope that at least some of these points will come true :)

Lenovo ThinkPad T61p

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:43:22 +0200

Today I got my new office laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p. As it has a Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU, I decided to install only 64-bit operating systems on it. Since the harddisk was 93.2 GB, I divided it into two partitions, 46.6 GB NTFS for Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit Enterprise, and the other 46.6 GB for ext3 Linux Fedora 8 64-bit. However, since Fedora 8 is not ready yet, I'll have to test Vista for a few weeks first. The Vista installation went absolutely smooth without any problems, and it was quite fast to install too, just about 30 minutes. Once installed, everything worked fine, but I needed to download NVidia drivers from Lenovo's site, since Vista didn't have the suitable drivers built-in. After the 3D graphics card drivers were installed, I could even enable the Windows Aero theme. This was the first time I've installed Vista and experienced it. It runs pretty well with all funky stuff enabled, and file transfers seemed even faster than in Windows XP 32-bit. I also installed Notes 8.0 x32 Standard (=Eclipse Java), as I wanted to go full funky mode :) Notes 8 looks damn cool with all the blurred transparent edges on Vista Aero. In addition to 64-bit programs, I'm also trying to get around with OpenSource/Freeware software only. The first 3rd party software needed was of course an Anti-Virus program. AVG worked OK, and it installed itself also with 64-bit drivers, but unfortunately it could connect over proxy only with a custom port over 3000. So I had to uninstall it, and use avast! Anti-Virus instead, it installs itself also with 64-bit drivers, and it was also able to connect via the proxy using Internet Explorer's proxy settings to the update server. The T61p has quite decent hardware for an occasional-multimedia business notebook:

Intel Core 2 Duo T7500

which means you can install a 32-bit or 64-bit OS, since all Core 2 Duo's are 64-bit CPUs

NVidia GeForce FX 570M

this is an awesome choice from Lenovo, since most notebooks still have ATI cards

however, GeForce 8 Series would be much better like in ASUS G2S notebooks, but the FX Series will have to do for a business where multimedia is not the main area

15.4" WUXGA (Widescreen Ultra XGA) at 1920x1200

very good native resolution, however it would work better on a 17" widescreen, but on the other hand, it makes the T61p slightly smaller and easier to carry around. I used 1680x1050 resolution which looked like it would be the native resolution too, since no pixel blurs occured. In comparison to the T40p or T60p, the T61p is not bigger in depth, but only a few inch wider, no big deal, it's still a very portable notebook. I really like the widescreen trend, and I was quite against the previous highscreen trend, where everyone wanted to make 5:4 ratio LCD's with native resolution of 1280x1024. I'm glad that this stupidity is now over, and manufacturers have started to make more natural displays, the widescreens.

Next things to install and test:

Notes 8.0.1 64-bit for Windows and Linux (Windows 64-bit version will come out with 8.0.1, the Linux 64-bit version will come out in 8.0.2)
OpenOffice 2.3 for Windows and Linux
TeamSpeak 2 for Windows and Linux (Ventrilo doesn't support Linux)
ext3 driver for Vista 64-bit and NTFS driver for Linux 64-bit

To be continued...

The power of improvement vs. the illusion of the impossibility to change

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:28:59 +0200

Ed Brill had a quite fun topic (=fun in an intellectual sense) about "subject level submissions" of a specific area of LotuSphere sessions. I thought immediately that something was wrong about that idea, something was wrong if it was not differentiated and specified further. While a majority of people seemed to accept that it's OK to have IBM arrange LotuSphere sessions solely by the speaker's opinions, I agree only partly on that. In my opinion the voice of the customers should count more than anything else, and only if the customers' opinions are not available, or differing too much to form an majority decision, then the experienced speakers and teachers should be allowed to choose the session content, but even then only based on the major groups of customers' suggestions. Ed has now closed the discussion, which I can accept, since the discussion was not going effectively forward (too many people were just fighting against something they didn't understand or believe in): 200 submissions A good example of the illusion of the impossibility to change was said by Ed himself: "IBM's privacy policy prevents us from posting session abstract proposals publicly. In fact, access to the submissions is very strictly controlled, because we do not ask any permissions around external publication of submissions (accepted sessions is a different story)." IBM's policy. Is that the law, is that something which can not be improved or negotiated? I don't think so. I think it was just an easy solution which was decided so by some manager or CEO level of person, who perhaps thought it was a sufficient solution to restricting it that way. All that was needed would have been to have a simple radio button on a Form which let the users choose whether they wanted to have their suggestions public or secret. The most powerful and correct solutions are often the most simple ones, like in nature. On his last response Ed mentioned the announcement of new NDnext releases. Ok, those things which come straight from the dev labs should be of course always announced and as detailed as possible (including the possibilities for change from people's suggestions), as obviously people can only guess or dream about them.

IBM resellers provide real customer service

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:30:39 +0200

Today I had fight to the whole day on the phone to buy an IBM xSeries or pSeries server (I just got the previous xSeries 3650 max spec machine to production last weekend, after struggling for 6 months with delivery delays). Logically my first contact was IBM itself, but alas IBM refused to sell anything. Fine, so I asked the next instance, their brokers, but same answer: we don't want customers, we don't sell anything, and I even applied as a reseller myself to be able to buy an IBM server. But since my mission was time critical I finally went to an IBM reseller, which is the 3rd money gatherer in the chain, and I was very positively surprised, here the I finally found the love for customers. The customer service was very professional and outstandingly friendly. We had a nice chat and he told me he had sold today already 4 xSeries 3650, so I made his day by buying the 5th. He was also quite enthusiastic when I told him that I will buy a 16 CPU POWER6 6GHz pSystem server next year (if IBM gets it ready by then, else I have to go with some slower model). I think we are talking about an price level of 300k�-500k�, but I have no idea since there were no prices on IBM's web site. In addition to that, IBM resellers rock, literally! Recently they even offered a Black Metal (you know, it's a cool paradigm: IBM servers are black and made of metal) concert in a well known music arena in Helsinki, including first prizes like Harley Davidson Motorbikes, and Stratocaster Guitars :)

Recap: Why Notes 8 Standard sucks

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:21:12 +0200

I feel like I'm fighting against a windmill again. Everyone talks about Notes 8 Standard, and tries to use it with great frustration and complaints. Although I'm a fanatic Java hater (because I don't understand why coders are too lazy to do decent C++ code), it does not justify alone to make Notes 8 Standard bad. I've tried to use it many, many times, but there's always something which kicks me back and tells me this sucks. Today I was running Notes 8 Standard without any bad thoughts, but then I started to develop an LotuScript agent in Designer and everytime I switched to Notes the whole damn Action menu was empty. So I had to keep closing the Application and opening it all over again to get the Action menu contents back. Moreover, there's many other things which make Notes 8 Standard earn the "it sucks" label:

It's too slow, and it gets jammed for several seconds from time to time, especially when changing settings in Preferences

The integrated Java Sametime sucks too, it's also too slow and sluggish, and it also crashes from time to time, and it lacks of context-sentive smiley interpretation: 8) is not always a smiley with sunglasses!

Windows focus goes nuts and you have to click and click to get the previous focus back

The selection bar is missing completely (does IBM really think people want to do keyboard acrobatics using Ctrl, Shift just to mark documents? Do they think it's more convenient than the old selection bar? And how on earth should people with accessibility restrictions come clear with that, have you thought about that too? Actually the old selection bar functionality should be even developed further so that you could save and load the selection to disk (=to a notes database))

There's no documentation about the .jar files and how to fix and customize the Notes 8 UI, the keywords and tags found in the .xml code can not be found on Google either

You can't just move Notes 8 Standard installation to another PC, but you have to reinstall the whole crap (using the Windows registry should be forbidden! You can do the same thing much more user friendly with .ini files)

It's Beta 4, or Beta 5 at best. IBM's quality control on Notes 8 has slacked horribly, it was released abrubtly in the middle of the most bugs in Beta 3

Scrolling up and down in the mail file using Ctrl-End and Ctrl-Home loses the selection focus also

The production tools are a joke, why would someone use an buggy and obsolete OpenOffice version? As long as "Edit Attachment" works with OpenOffice 2.3 and saves the changes back to the Notes document, there's no need for an integrated obsolete OpenOffice in Notes. As if Notes 8 Standard isn't big enough, I was shocked how long it took to copy the files to a 4GB USB stick, also lots and lots of small files, look at Quake2, they had everything in one single .pak file.

The running apps tab doesn't have "Open in Designer" anymore, also the "Open in New Window" is missing. This is also something many customers have complained about.

I just opened Notes 8 Standard while writing this line. What the hell is it doing? The busy flash blinks, the Windows cursor is an hourglass, and I can't do anything for 1 minute (the same time it took me to install the whole OpenOffice 2.3 suite earlier this evening). Also the -nosplash switch which worked fine in Beta3 is now removed or bugged, and I have to watch the spash screen for several seconds, I can't even click it away like in McAfee Enterprise. Notes 8 Basic opens instantly at any given time, and there's never any unknown delays or business. All those things work fine in Notes 8 Basic.

The time has come

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:21:56 +0200

After deploying our last Intel/Windows based server, it was already clear that IBM can not keep up with Intel based CPU server performance for the coming years. While the x3650 (x3950 didn't even support Quad Core, and everyone knows that 2 Quad Cores is more than 4 Dual Cores) with two Quad Core Xeon at max GHz runs pretty smooth at 1% under Domino 7.0.2CF2 all the day, it is still possible to jump the CPU load to over 50% by doing some additional tasks, like compacting files with WinRAR*32 at maximum compression. That is not acceptable for a high end business critical server. However, it's not IBM's fault, it's Intel's fault. Yes, I know Intel CAN also do CPU vector arrays as they have shown before, but there's no official solution on the market for that. IBM however has an official solution: pSystem and zSystem. I prefer pSystem since it grabs on the line of the world leading supercomputers, and Power6 CPU sounds very sexy (IBM Blue Gene/Q). The time has come, and it starts now. Workstations are not using Windows XP or Windows Vista anymore, but Fedora 8 is the only solution. It remains to be seen if Fedora 8 Server optimized setup can keep up with SUSE Linux in I/O performance, but it's also good to remember that Fedora has many other benefits over that. The future is here and now. Fedora 8 will rule the world and there's nothing you can or want to do about it.

The Nerd Test

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:03:41 +0200

Sounds about right:

Fine tuning the Notes 8 Mail template

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:26:39 +0200

The out of the box Notes 8 Mail template is pretty well done, and can be used as-is as a real e-mail application. However, a few things need some fine tuning to make it more convenient and natural to use. I don't use the Inbox folder, since it doesn't show what mails I have sent (which are at least as important as the mails I have received), plus as it's a Folder, there's no quarantee that you see even all incoming mails. Views are the way to go. I use basically only the "All Documents" view, but by default Lotus has made 2 big mistakes in the Notes 8 mail template: 1) The icon column is spammed with icons, so that it's very hard to see which mails you have sent, and which you have received. 2) The date column is sorted upside-down, so that all new mails appear at the bottom (!) of your 10000-100000 mails. Originally it looks like this: After the fine tuning it looks like this: The fine tuning can be done by any Notes Developer, or even Notes Administrator in about 10 seconds: 1) This value is originally 0, so change it to -1. This makes the icon of the mails which you have sent disappear, thus making the icon column have some sense. 2) Reverse the Date column sorting, change it from "Ascending" to "Descending", and change the "Click on column header" option also to reverse, from "Descending" to "Ascending": Now you're good to go, and can use the Notes 8 Mail template much more efficiently!

IBM is donating Lotus Notes source code to OpenOffice.org

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:41:06 +0200

It remains to be seen if the donation is only about the integrated OpenOffice applications or also about the real Lotus Notes source code, including native database access methods: News article on arstechnica.com

Installing Notes 8 without uninstalling Notes 8 Beta 3

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:57:12 +0200

I ran into a problem on one workstation which had Notes 8 Beta 3 installed, but I didn't have the setup files for it available. The Notes 8 installer wants to uninstall Notes 8 Beta 3, and if it can't find the Notes 8 Beta 3 "Lotus Notes 8.msi" file, it will cancel the installation. I tried to remove all Notes8 appearances from the registry, and also moving the Notes8Beta3 folder to another location, and removing the folders which Nathan T. Freeman described in his Notes 8 Beta 2 manual uninstall process, but that all didn't help. I couldn't either uninstall Notes 8 Beta 3 from the Windows Add/Remove programs, since it needed the "Lotus Notes 8.msi" file also. But then I found a way how to solve this problem: I installed CCleaner (which was also not able to uninstall or simply delete the entry in Add/Remove programs), but it was able to RENAME it. So I renamed the "Lotus Notes 8" entry in Add/Remove programs as something unique which I could easily find in the registry, I called it something like "PokunNutosZapDing", and then I opened regedit and searched for that string. It found it, and I was able to remove the whole tree branch where it occured. After that I could Install Notes 8 without any problems.

The fastest graphics card in the world: XFX NVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra XXX

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:17:06 +0200

The XFX NVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra XXX transfers 103.7 GigaByte per second, and has full DirectX 10 hardware support, at a reasonable price of 749.99 USD. The EVGA NVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra Standard version costs only 574.99 USD:

Nokia Communicator E90

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:50:31 +0200

I'm glad I didn't buy the Nokia N95 yet, as this could be a more professional upgrade to my Nokia Communicator 9500: the new Nokia Communicator E90. What makes this phone interesting?

GPS device and real-time map navigation system using it
Decent keyboard and display
Usable quality loudspeaker for conference calls
Stable multiple mobile network connections
Quad Band GSM
3 week lasting nonstop use battery

Of course it also has 3.2Mpx camera, video, FM radio, mp3 player, WLAN, 3G, etc... but those can't be used as business requirements as clearly.

Surface Computing

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:14:12 +0200

I just saw a variant of this on a wall of a building in Helsinki. But as a table version, it brings even more possibilites. I like especially the part where the guy takes a photo with a digital camera, then puts the camera on the table and immediately the taken photo shows on the table, then he even moves the photo into a mobile phone, which is also on the table: Looks even easier to use than Lucid in my opinion, since you don't need a mouse or keyboard, but can use your fingers directly. However it's only 2D, but then it also has touchscreen and image detection which is really cool and useful. Lucid then again is 3D and works also on computers without touchscreens, and considering that you need to move a mouse only a few centimeters, it might be still more convenient than having to stretch you fingers, hands and arms around a table. So I guess both are still quite good for different computer types, and don't exclude eachother.

Majami

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:44:09 +0200

Project Majami is going forward again, as I got an opportunity to meet the singer of the band soon. I've started to create some sound samples for ModTracker, so we can record the vocals while he can sync his singing speed to the final song. After the singing is recorded, it's just up to me to play the final instrument tracks and finish the song. I think this will be the main guitar, as it has some unique distortion and sound: Main Comp Guitar (this is just a quick test, so it contains life errors in rhytm and note accuracy). Now THIS is wierd: I just bought the newest CD from Obituary, called Frozen in Time, and the first song is very similar to our planned main comp guitar (same notes, but slightly different playstyle - well, the typical Obituary notestep style of course). I swear I never heard of their song before today, and the original riff for Majami was done over a year ago. Somekind of telepathy? Then again, this pattern has been probably played by hundreds of bands before, as it's very simple yet metal genre specific one. But still a wierd coincidence that it happened almost at the same time (around 10 minutes before) when I played it, before I opened the CD case and listened to theirs... EDIT: Now I listened again to the original Majami working draft, and it was not exactly what I just played. It was similar, however inversed down, and shifted 4 notes up. Ok, it could be explained that I have tested some new sound patterns since then, and probably just assumed that I originally played it using the improved sound pattern.

Domino 7.0.2FP2 does not need or want 7.0.2FP1

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:36:46 +0200

When you launch the Domino 7.0.2FP2 incremental installer on an Domino 7.0.2 server, it gives you an info that a few files will be updated. When you launch the Domino 7.0.2FP1 incremental installer on a Domino 7.0.2 server, it gives you info that some other files will be updated. When you launch the Domino 7.0.2FP2 incremental installer on a Domino 7.0.2FP1 server, it gives you the info that the files which were updated in 7.0.2FP1 are going to be "updated" again, and also the files which the Domino 7.0.2FP2 incremental installer wanted to update on a clean Domino 7.0.2 server. This brings me to the conclusion that the Domino 7.0.2FP1 incremental installer was a too quick and dirty emergency fix, which has been revoked in Domino 7.0.2FP2. This also means that you should NOT apply the Domino 7.0.2FP1 incremental installer on a Domino 7.0.2 server, but just apply the Domino 7.0.2FP2 incremental installer directly on the Domino 7.0.2 server, as the Domino 7.0.2FP2 incremental installer apparently tries to fix what the Domino 7.0.2FP1 incremental installer messed up. If you have already upgraded your Domino 7.0.2 server to 7.0.2FP1, then upgrading it to 7.0.2FP2 should do no harm, and it's probably better to upgrade it to 7.0.2FP2 than to degrade it from 7.0.2FP1 to 7.0.2 and then upgrade it to 7.0.2FP2. I just have a feeling that the newer upgrade is better in fixing the 7.0.2FP1 problem than the older 7.0.2FP1 itself, plus it's more of a "mainstream" action, than going down and back up again, and thus probably more likely tested by Lotus. And what about the picture? It's just an ironical joke to make a nerd topic look more dramatic and interesting, plus it looks nice! :P

IBM Lotus Domino 7.0.2FP2 eAssembly is now available

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:54:37 +0200

Just got an e-mail from IBM saying that I can download IBM Lotus Domino 7.0.2 Fix Pack 2 eAssembly from my Passport Advantage Express account. I love it when a service works! And I can get nasty when a service doesn't work: The Greenhouse Effect.

Lotus Quickr 8

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:53:31 +0200

Wow, that was fast, it was really Quickr! I totally missed Quickr 1.0 as it's now already version 8 :) Hmm, well this starts to look like a true companion product of ND8, so should we start talking soon in terms of NDQ8? Maybe you can see where I'm coming from, as IBM Lotus has made this new trinity to look very synergetic: | Lotus Notes 8 | Lotus Domino 8 | Lotus Quickr 8 | And stay tuned also with the latest headlines on The Quickr Blog.

Java did it again

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:07:32 +0200

Just went to some innocent looking blog site (Ray Davies), which asked me to register to some Sony Vaio Forum to post a comment, and then it happened: There was an Java applet on the site, and my Firefox went totally nuts. Now I can't even open Firefox anymore and had to launch Internet Explorer! People, take this as a lesson. Java is bad, very bad. Java is our worst enemy, it's dead evil and without any morale. It will destroy anything what it can get, memory, firefox, and at least trying to slow down your computer to an extend that you get insane when using it. I hope Notes will never be using Java. Oh, wait...

Replacing Domino NSF with Domino NSF to overcome Domino's NSF limits

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:32:36 +0200

This seems to be an rather unexplored and unexperienced area. While we all know what the limits of Domino are, there seems not be much information out how to avoid and duck those limits. I am facing some of those limits now, and have started to search for possible and feasible solutions to overcome them. First there is the 64KB limit of document size, which means all field values together (not RichText fields) cannot exceed 64KB, else the mail.box is not able to send the mails anymore. Ok, that can be avoided by not creating that big documents and sending mail, but rather sending a link which presents the data. The other big limit is the 64GB size of databases. As we are moving towards centralized servers and centralized databases, this limit jumps up much faster than expected. Here comes the interesting part: it seems that even DB2 is not capable of handling larger than 64GB segmented linear table spaces. And as using NSF format on a DB2 server does not really bring any benefits regarding speed and size, and using a DB2 database would be a big step back to history if it means that we can't use LotusScript anymore, but have to use some cumbersome J2EE and WebSphere, it seems that the only reasonable way to overcome the 64GB database limit is to use NSF in a relatively relational manner on a Domino server. Kick me if I am wrong here. Assuming that NSF on Domino is really the best solution on the market now to overcome the 64GB database size limit, considering that you already have an NSF based enterprise application on Domino (=no change in technology needed), we need to declare a new best practices rule: Don't use more than the minimally needed number of fields per document in a database, and keep all databases strictly using only one Form and field set per document. That's how tables in relational databases are built anyway. As you will get now multiple databases to present one document to the user, it's also good to keep the relational databases in line with some common design rules. Basically you need only 1 view per database, so lets call it "Index". You also need only one Form per database, but you can call it how it best fits for the Notes-side Application Data Administrator person, for example "OrderHeader" or "OrderRow". Some ERP systems running on IBM AS/400 (=IBM System i) are also built this way, as they have seperate physical DB2 tables for header and row records. Lets say you have some decent number of orders per day, so your OrderRow database will soon have 6-10 million documents, and we might be talking about a database size of 4-6GB when you run the business over 10 years. But even when you see your database approaching the 64GB limit, you can always split your OrderRow database into another OrderRow database. The splitting can be done for example by the number of the row of the order, by the row type (=AS/400 style), or by the order number. Of course you can also archive older documents, but that might need then unnecessary and additional program logic to present archived documents to the users. Talking about program logic, I mean server based agents which combine the fields from several databases into one HTML page for the user, and of course also for internal transactions, like composing an XML file and sending it to an ERP system. Domino does that very fast, as you can see even on my crappy blog server it does over 300 superrelational database lookups in about 0.3secs. And relatively relational database lookups should be a bunch faster as they deal with homogenous data and data types. If my term "Superrelational" still is not ISO standard and well known to everyone: it just means that you can join any data with any data using value-like lookups, or some more sophisticated lookups like object methods, to perform the relational match (object method could be for example a computed value returned from a NotesViewEntry class, which is then used to perform the final lookup). How does a Domino NSF database behave with this kind of setup: a huge number of documents per database, but only 1 view and strict fields? It's amazingly fast: if you change about 20000 documents with an server based agent, pressing F9 will update the view index in less than 1 second. It almost looks like Domino was designed to be used this way. I talked only about Order Headers and their Order Rows so far, but you might of course also have response documents for each order, and even rows for each response document (like order confirmations, etc...). Just do the same here, create a database for response headers and response rows, and if needed a seperate database also for each response row type, or response type row, and/or even response type row type. So, the 64GB database size limit is now history, and it remains to be seen if any other limits compromise Domino's future as the ultimate web application and database server.

Calculating an image URL for a WebService

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:35:19 +0200

A common difficulty in Domino is to calculate the correct URL of an embedded image in a RichText field. When a WebService which should return the correct URL of any image, may it be embedded or attached as file, is called from a remote server, the WebService should look at the HTML source of the web page where the picture is embedded, and then parse the contents to find the picture file URL (search for "img" and then the next "src" tag) and send the URL of the picture from the parsed content to the remote server.

Lucid

Wed, 30 May 2007 19:43:42 +0200

3D online/offline world
Fully parametrizable environment
Secure, closed system
Portal, Collaboration, Chat, E-mail, File Sharing, Newsreader, Web Browser, Operating System Frontend, Programming Environment
Modular programming environment using a pseudo BASIC language which is compiled via an integrated C-compiler into native machine code and OpenGL/DirectX instructions. No Java slowness!
Available for Windows, Mac, Linux
Free and commercial versions available for all audiences
Launch Summer 2007 as core version, which will then auto-update itself in the future

Scheduled Hardware Maintenance

Fri, 25 May 2007 18:45:37 +0200

Server will be shutdown for hardware maintenance on 2007-05-25 20:00:00 EET. Estimated downtime is 1 hour. We are adding new harddisk space. Another shutdown is scheduled for 2007-05-26 12:00:00 EET. Estimated downtime is 15 minutes.

Getting Things Done

Thu, 24 May 2007 21:34:55 +0200

Just saw Ed posting an article about Lotus Notes related GTD, and that reminded me to do things. It seems that GTD is even a registered trademark of David Allen & Co, which seems to have some good ideas about organizing your time and tasks. Some years ago I had an related idea, the Case Classification Code, but compared to GTD it was a more specific approach to a partial solution of the whole process. Before you can start to do things, you need to brainstorm what you have in mind, and categorize them by which you want to do and when. Time for some brainstorming then:

Posting bugs I found ND8 Beta 3 to Lotus Beta Forum.

Seems that HTTP retrieval of images in MIME mails over a proxy doesn't work anymore, worked in Beta 2.

Writing an review about Notes 8 Beta 3 (not just about the mail box template!).
Adding last modified date of last response document to Blog Area display.

Coded this just a moment ago, need to verify the code and inject it into the template by tomorrow.

Maintaining my mountain bike and start to ride to office.

Bought some tf2 teflon insulation spray for the transmission chain, gears and wires. The chain looked rusted but after closer inspection it seemed to be just superficial rust, as the links of the chain moved easily.

Vectorizing my company logo and mail it as EPS file to the sticker manufacturing vendor.

Tested already Inkscape, and it can save as clean EPS and vectorize bitmaps using the "Trace Bitmap" menu option. But I need to hurry with this as the manufacturing of the stickers takes approximately 2 weeks.

First version ready: siipi.svg. It's not perfect, as editing bezier curves needs quite some accuracy and skills to find the correct turn point.

Publishing some info about my new project: Codename Lucid.

This is a project which is aiming to replace the internet, including browsing, mail and collaboration technologies in a way how Linux replaced Windows and Mac in the OS area.

Start to develop project Toiveita.
Checking availability and price of IBM System p570 with Power6 CPU, this should be my next Domino 8/DB2 9 server.
Making an IBM Blue Gene/L looking (black tower with slant front side) sound isolated (pyramid shaped foam technology inside) "dog hut" for my current Domino 8 server, as it's very noisy.

Bought some new Western Digital harddrives on 2007-05-25, as they had no Samsung in stock before tuesday. However, the salesman said that WD is the best brand at the moment, we will see about that.

Leveling up my Minstrel and Guardian in LOTRO.

Ok, only when "time allows" :)

Continue mine and Marko's musical project Majami.

Project will continue on a set date (which is depending on other processes to be completed first), and subsequently a new project was inspired, lets call it "Modular Mobile Music", which will help musicians to utilize their music workstation's productivity effectively without actually needing to carry it around.

Write more enemies, arcade sound effect and stuff into my game ARCLITE.
Inject UDP engine into my game Ancient Myths, and write more stuff in it.
Designing and letting get manufactured a designer collection of unique women's handbags.
Developing an on-line web site for taking measures of dogs and letting get manufactured custom sized, ergonomically designed, dog coats for the cold weathers.
And then there's a few hundred ideas and tasks in my primary work site.
To be continued and edited...

Spammers vs Blog owners, 1:0

Sat, 19 May 2007 23:00:13 +0200

It seems that many Blog owners have made their sites unusable, because of the fear of spamming. For example Christopher Byrne, Damien Katz, Al Gore Blogs don't immediately show up your comments, if at all. This is clear win against the spammers, they made you to degrade your online services to a manually driven service. Siipi Blog has however been invulnerable until now (knock the wood :) against any spam attacks, since we don't use any of the commercially available Blog site templates, but a very own sophisticated Blog template. Whenever there is an spam attack, we will not try to disable our functionality but elimate the spammer instead. This can be done by contacting the host of the originating IP or blocking the IP (in the Domino Server document). In many countries, the police will aid you to arrest the criminals, and asking doesn't cost you anything. Just recently we encountered a mail spammer domain, @finnfour.fi. It is obvious that they do not use a Domino Server, i'm not sure if even God may forgive them. This was our request (translated to english):

Hi,

We have received an considerable amount of spam mail from your domain @finnfour.fi.

Hereby we ask you politely to elimate the spam causers, or to shut down your servers.
If the spam does not stop, we are obliqued to contact the Finnish Police and via them to remove your spam.

Thanks in advance,
Mika Heinonen, CEO of Siipi Finland

IBM System p servers reduce global warming

Wed, 16 May 2007 23:33:59 +0200

The sheer power of IBM System p servers is simply amazing. Nearly 300 Unix servers can be easily consolidated into just 6 System p servers, according to this IBM Press Release. This is not just the tip of an iceberg, but an remarkable factor to reduce also the global warming. Global warming has already gone too far. If you want to be helpful somehow, save at least planet earth. Although this is about an Hollywood movie, it's not all fiction, not even nearly all. The point is to give you an motive to start studying about it.

And the winner is...

Mon, 14 May 2007 21:49:02 +0200

IBM System p! With a (or as many as you want) Power5-7 based (vector scalable) CPUs. Yes, it's the good old RS/6000 system in new clothes - the system which has also earlier beaten all world records in speed and performance. Even the God of Supercomputers, IBM Blue Gene/L and it's honorable ancestor, the Deep Blue, is a System p after all. Macintosh made the wrong choice, they switched from Power5 to Intel. Windows' limits are breached. Customers who want the maximum performance and value for their money of Domino 8 and DB2, should definately have a look at System p. The future is about consolidation and clustering of potential supercomputer child nodes (while not forgetting about the network topology of course). Even a single core System p runs at amazing 8.33 GFlops/s. For a price as low as $2,995 everyone can start today their journey into the world of supercomputers. The only limit is your need (ok, and money :).

The Best Packer

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 21:26:42 +0200

While the 7-Zip packer has been out since Year 2000, it has been relatively unknown. It's always amazing how the ZIP format is the best known packing format, while it's packing ratio is plain horrible. I've used RAR format for years, and it's has become also quite known in the professional computer scene. However, the 7-Zip format is the most advanced packing format known today, using the LZMA compression algorithm. It's simply amazing how much better it can pack than ZIP or RAR (ZIP 5 means WinZIP with maximum compression, 7Z means default compression): Original Size Packed Size Packing AntiRatio Saving Size Format Original File Type 2353875814 1855209107 78.81508 498666707 ZIP 5 2.19 GB MPG 2353875814 1854309536 78.77686 499566278 RAR 5 2.19 GB MPG 2353875814 1847655459 78.49418 506220355 7Z 2.19 GB MPG 2353875814 1840583498 78.19374 513292316 7Z 9 2.19 GB MPG This test file was pretty hard-to-crunch since it's an already packed MPG file. The packing differences are much bigger with unpacked files. There was also a very good packer around a few decades ago, called Quantum 0.97. It was quite slow though, but had the best packing ratio at that time. For a complete and quite up-to-date list of most existing packers, visit: http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/dict.php?historic=true

Microsoft's OneCare is worse than any virus!

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:05:52 +0200

You can Google for OneCare, the net is full of reports of fatal to catastrophic reports about Microsoft's newest security program. Here is just one. Similarly fatal problem were also reported with earlier Microsoft OneCare versions, and now their latest OneCare 1.5 is worse than any virus you could ever have. Some people have lost 3.5 years of their work and life because of this, some have lost even more. It deletes whole e-mail databases of Outlook when it detects a virus, which might not even be a virus. I've seen also McAfee think that my "Open CD drive bay" Blitz3D source code was a virus, and I don't think OneCare is better in detecting viruses than McAfee, not after this incident.

Siipi Blog Improvements

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:01:38 +0200

I added some new features and bug fixes to the Siipi Blog Template: ■ Added display of last modified date of last reply of Hot Topics (=Blogs which have the latest replies) ■ Added display of number of Blogs in each Area in the Area List (this is kinda cool, it uses the NotesViewEntry.DescendantCount property) ■ Removed 1 line gap before the Area List (it was a
) ■ Added Paragraph break after the Referers List to avoid automatic line feed in the first displayed Blog ■ Changed the "ND8 POWERED" logo to point to www.lotus.com/nd8 (=Notes & Domino 8), instead of to Domino 8, as this Blog is indeed additionally powered also by Notes, since you can use Notes RichText formattings in the Blog entries (and also maintain and see more details about the Blog using the Notes Client than just with a Web Browser) ■ Added Body title to the Blog Editing Form ■ Removed 1 line gap before the Blog title when reading a single Blog on the Web (stupid Notes bug: you need to add one space which is marked as PassThru before the field)

Technorati Blogs

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:28:57 +0200

I've haven't earlier checked what this Technorati Blog thing is all about. But it sounds like it's something useful, something which connects Blog entries which belong to the same category from any Blog sites together. When I signed up it asked me to claim my own Blog, and then it wanted to verify that my Blog is my Blog, so it asked me to put this HTML code on my Blog: Technorati Profile

Andre Guirard talks about ND8 and Composite Applications

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:22:21 +0200

I found this Episode 56 streaming .mp3 (podcast) over on Bruce Elgort's blog. I think it's a must to listen to for all people who are interested in Notes/Domino 8. He explains the new Composite Applications very clearly, which makes them easy to understand. Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux are also asking him questions and give additional comments. There's a few words about the new Java/Eclipse based Domino Designer in R8.5 or RNext. It was also Andre's first podcast ever, and I hope more great stuff like this will come in future too!

Tweaking a lawn mower

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 03:35:21 +0200

I found this movie on Jon Udell's blog, and I was just simply amazed by this excellent movie how to tweak and maintain a lawn mower. But tweaking it is not everything what matters, it's also the sound it makes, and especially the sound it doesn't make. Compared to other cybertech megablaster lawn mowers which make a horrible noise and pollute the nature, this one performs with a noise level standard which is millions of years ahead in technology, safes nature and earth for your children and their children to come, and it even provides body exercises which makes your life last longer (preemptively). And what could be more valuable for you than your own life? Please, sit back and enjoy this movie which might change your whole life: http://akamai.infoworld.com/weblog/udell/gems/ReelMower.mov

Making the Notes 8 mod tool

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 22:54:02 +0200

Notes 8 offers yet never before seen possibilities for modding and customizing. I will start to make a simple tool in C++ to change things I have have found out so far (no, I don't read manuals, I read config files!), besides there are no manuals AFAIK for the things I need, at least no public ones. The first version will probably include just very basic things like changing the IBM logo to your own company logo, changing unread mark colors (this is where Nathan got excited about the possibilites), changing texture bitmaps, icon bitmaps, laucher splash screen removal, and Beta 2 bug workarounds. I won't promise anything yet what it will include, but I can promise there will be a tool, maybe even by monday. "Sounds easy", every programmer would probably say now, and I don't deny that at all. It is easy, but it just has to be done!

Notes 8 Beta 2: Set Bookmark as Home Page

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 09:18:31 +0200

Are you missing the "Set Bookmark as Home Page" option to set any bookmark or application as your Home page? It's still there, you just need to use the full page bookmarks to find it: When you open the Workspace while holding down the Shift key, you get the full page bookmarks, and can right click on any of the bookmarks and choose "Set Bookmark as Home Page". You can open the Workspace by setting it either as the "Home" link in the Open menu, or making a Toolbar Icon with the formula: @Command([WindowWorkspace]). Shift-Clicking the "Home" link or the toolbar icon opens the full page bookmarks. Also, when your Notes starts with the Workspace you can Shift-click on your Notes icon on the windows desktop to start Notes with the full page bookmarks. Don't move the bookmarks in the full page mode with your mouse though, as it will crash Notes, and I have reported this as Bug to IBM already.

Tweaking the Notes 8 Launcher

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:46:56 +0200

I found a new command line option for the rcplauncher.exe: -nosplash, which removes the Notes 8 splash screen when you start Notes. I also managed to get rid of the "Getting Started" page, but as I did too many things at once, I don't know which one caused it. Now I never get the "Getting Started" page, and I would like to get it back to be able to reproduce how I removed it. Amongs many other things, I added -noautostart -nolauncher to the Notes 8 icon. But also tried to switch parameters in some XML files, and Ctrl+Shift clicking on the Help/Getting Started menu item. One of those has done it, but I don't know which one it was. According to Mary Beth Raven, the "Getting Started" page should not automatically open again when you start Notes, after you have once closed it, but it seems not to work for everyone or every time. Some people have complained also about the black DOS screen when Notes starts, or even the black Full Screen text mode, if your Windows starts by default all Windows Console applications in Full Screen mode. This DOS window or screen can be minimized, so that you won't barely notice it appear for a split second in the task bar. Also often forgotten are the shortcut keys to launch applications in Windows, why not assign Ctrl + Shift + N to start Notes, or even to bring the Notes window to front when it's already running and you are working in another window. And finally, you can enter a comment which will pop up when you hover with your mouse over the icon. This might be useful when you want to describe the icon a bit more, and don't want to have long names flooding your desktop. Here's my complete tweak set for my Notes 8 Beta launch icon:

Wohoo! Lotus copied my folder icon :)

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 15:30:42 +0200

However, I got the idea from Lotus' Views icon first. I originally suggested to have these kind of Folder+ icons in Mary Beth Raven's Blog: My suggestion was: And now we have them in Notes 8. However, Lotus made also a small improvement to the model by replacing the "opened folder" icon with a Folder- icon, way to go! They didn't add the dotted lines though, which I would have liked, since I have sometimes huge and complex trees. What Lotus did:

Top 10 complaints from Notes mailbox-only users who moved to Outlook

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:20:31 +0200

This is an imaginary scenario, which would apply at least to me, in case I would have to move from Notes to Outlook: 1) I wrote an LotusScript agent to identify and move spam mails with an advanced AI logic using a huge notes database for knowledge. In Outlook it doesn't work anymore. Do I need a MSSQL server and learn C++? 2) I can read other people's mailboxes by simply loading their mailbox file into a text editor. They are totally unencrypted! 3) My buttons which have LotusScript code in them don't work anymore in my e-mails to my users. We have still thousands of Notes applications, and simply moving the mail into Outlook doesn't seem like a proper migration to me. 4) I don't like the design of Outlook, how can I make my own mail template, like I used to do many times in Notes? 5) I want to automate things in my mail box, like I used to do in Notes. Where has all the programmability gone, do I need to do my daily work all manually now? I think we need 10 secretaries per user then. 6) What the heck? My computer was just infected by a virus when I only opened an e-mail! McAfee didn't even notice it, and I noticed it also accidentally by the task manager load of my PC, before it could delete all my files. This seems very dangerous to me, and in Notes this was not even possible! 7) Now it says the Exchange Server is down again, I never had this kind of problems with Notes and Domino. 8) Whoah, the Exchange Server is up again, after 12 hours of waiting, but they say all todays work was lost, and they could only restore a backup from yesterday. Man, how I miss the consistency checks of Domino when Domino crashed, I can't even remember when any document was lost afterwards. 9) Where is the calendar and resource reservation? Don't say I need to manually maintain a seperate calender program and a database with all our thousands of resources in the company. We need 10 more secretaries per user. 10) Ok, my mailbox is too big again, how can I cut & paste mails or use my archiver agent to move mails into my annual archives?

Siipi.com will be upgraded to Domino 8 Beta 2 on saturday

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:03:41 +0200

This will be probably one of the first public Domino 8 production servers in the world, and I know all you Domino enthusiasts value that. I personally trust Lotus' quality department that much, that I can go live even with any Beta release on a production server; they have their daily builds and they won't release any majorly disfunctional build to the public. Also on saturday, you can download your very own Notes 8 Beta 2 client, Notes Designer 8 Beta 2, and Notes Administrator 8 Beta 2 from the Notes 8 Home Page. Enjoy your experience!

Internet root servers are burning!

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 23:41:02 +0200

It seems that there is going on somekind of attack to certain internet root servers as this screenshot from ripe.net shows: http://siipi.com/public/news.nsf/rootaeburn Looks like somekind of AE point blank fire nuke to me. However, only f, g, l, m root servers seem to have insufficient fire resists, or are just targeted. For online information see here: RIPE NCC 2007-02-05.

This makes me feel a bit happy

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 22:14:27 +0200

Recently, a few lines of human language code struck my mind: "Thanks for all the help Mika. Lisa" I remembered everything I had learned in my life again at the very moment when I read those lines. Money doesn't make you happy, it's the people who do it. A sincere, honest thanks can mean more to you than a million dollars.

Formula Engine Rewrite

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 22:31:37 +0200

As Damien Katz locked his thread about Formula Engine Rewrite (btw, his exposure is a very good reading, and I really appreciate that), I could not post this: Maybe IBM killed the spirit, but without IBM, Iris and Lotus would maybe also not have gotten the marketing force and publicity which IBM Lotus Notes got now. Now it's Big Blue vs (or and?) Microsoft. Although I also see IBM as a big dinosaur, I also see Lotus and Iris still as teams within. They know it themselves, using their "secret upside down" codex in LotuSphere :) Microsoft and IBM both have their bad and good sides, and I could list hundreds of things which I don't like about both, and which I like about both. However, in the end all what counts is what you use. I use certain Microsoft products, certain IBM products, and I think those are the best of both worlds, and those are the best not only in their worlds.

IBM Lotus Notes 8 Beta 1 is coming in a few days

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:33:55 +0200

Notes/Domino 8 was released on March 10th. This information is updated daily, based on words from IBM like: "A beta version of Lotus Notes 8 is currently planned to be made available to the public starting this February." and hear-sayings like: "sometime mid-February 2007". There is also an official press release about it. Be prepared to update your production workstations, since this will be a very stable release, as we saw already on R6 and R7 Beta 1 releases. Anyhow, it beats any R5 or R6 client in bugfreeness, as there are already thousands of bugs fixed since R5. Plus that R5 has not been supported for long time ago, and R6 support also ends in the coming months. Your work motivation and productivity will be raised to new heights, and you have the chance to report bugs to the new Notes 8 Beta Forum when it comes out simultaneously with the Client Release, and improve this product even more when it goes Gold. I want a better Notes 8, you want it, and everyone else wants it too!

Siipi Web Forum

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:43:55 +0200

The Siipi Web Forum is now completed, and one user is already using it (Marko Vesapuisto). The Forum is a bit different from conventional Message Boards as it automatically archives posts by month. The areas are also not strongly seperated from eachother, but appear all on the same page categorized. This gives in my opinion a better overview what has been recently discussed, as other boards show only the last post per area. Features: ■ Anonymous can read and write posts, however not edit or delete them. ■ Registered users can also edit and delete their posts. ■ Easy registration, only username and password are asked. ■ Registered users have also a profile page, where they can upload files and other information. ■ The board supports also World of Warcraft item links, which are dynamically retrieved from wow.allakhazam.com and then stored in a domino database for fast access. The World of Warcraft item links appear as hovering layers on the mouse cursor, which can be clicked off with the left mouse button. The icon of the item and all stats are displayed. ■ Board adminstrators and moderators can mark posts as sticky, and this sticky is not a static one, but it's done via a "Sticky Until" date, which means you can choose when the stickyness wears off. ■ The board supports virtually any number of access levels, as they are done via domino groups. For example you can have a "Private Area", "Moderator Area", etc... The pricing policy for this tool is that same as for all web based products from Siipi: You only pay 10� per started GB per year, no matter if you use a Blog, Forum, or your own custom database. Which means you don't pay anything for the tool itself, just for the disk space used.

Siipi Web Site Creator

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:18:13 +0200

The Siipi Web Site Creator is now completed, and one user is already using it (Godwin Ikegwuonu). With this web based tool you can create complete web sites running on a Domino server. You can choose to run it under a user site under siipi.com, for example siipi.com/yourname or under your own domain, for example www.yourname.com. The price for this tool (used disk space is counted as total sum of your applications) is 10� per started GB per year. If you want additionally your own domain to run it, a domain (.com, .net, etc..) costs 10� per year when ordered from Siipi, but of course you can also choose to have your domain hosted by an other provider. No additional tools are needed, only a web browser. You can also choose your own graphical web site editor, for example Nvu (which is a free, open source, cross platform web editor), and configure it to publish the web pages directly to the Siipi Web Site tool. You can deploy web pages and all kind of files into the tool, and all known protocols are also supported: ftp://, mms://, http://, https://, etc... Especially easy is the linking of web pages and files in this tool, you just need to say "/files/bagname/filename" or "/pages/pagename" in your HTML source. The tool is available in English and Finnish language.

Turkish Music

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 21:07:17 +0200

I don't know what it is, but everytime I listen to turkish music, I can barely hold my tears back. I am crying from pleasure, pure joy and passion. No other music does that to me (and yes, I listen to everything from all metal via pops to classics and romantics), and as a I am (usually) a rationally thinking man, I wanted to find out what causes this and came across this study of turkish and middle eastern rhythm patterns: http://www.shira.net/arabella/me-rhythms.htm, but it's not only the rhythm, it's also the language, the singing style, the violin patterns, and many other things which all come together. I must admit that I was also a bit embarassed when I was shopping CD's in a shop in turkey, and probably looked like I was about to cry :) It's hard to try to shop and listen to that kind of music, because your emotions stir you up totally. If you have a chance, try the songs Ahdım Olsun from Ebru G�ndeş, Ben Seni Sevduğumi from Kazım Koyuncu, Beni Unut from Serdar Orta�, or Aşık Olma from Sibel Can (Don't you just love that turkish i without the dot on top :). If one thing in my life is for sure, it is that I will go back to turkey on my next summer vacation (impressions of my first trip to turkey: http://siipi.com/public/mika.nsf/blogs/9D1DB19610705C4EC225706F007A527D). Should I start to believe in reincarnation, soul mates, and memories from past lives? My heart says yes, my mind says study.

Growing Organizations

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 03:25:02 +0200

The curse of all larger organizations is that they can not afford to do anymore what they want, but they have to align to the needs and demands of their customers. However, if the organization incorporates also system analysis and consulting, a firm basis for cooperation between the customer and the organization can be established. My goals were always experimental and pioneric, I tried not to make profit, but to keep the costs as low as possible, while also keeping the costs for my customers also as low as possible. However, being too good and overcompetitive can be unwanted in some countries. Rather than doing the best what you can do, you should perform as crappy as the others do. But the battle is not over yet, indeed it hasn't even started yet, so we will continue to be the most competetive and priceworthy company of the world while keeping quality at the best it can be. That is our vision, and always will be. If you want some numbers, here are some: ■ .com, .net, .org, etc... Domain hosting: 10� per year. ■ Domino based Notes or Web application hosting: 10� per started GB per year (including unlimited bandwidth up to 4 TB space). ■ Blog Site: 10� per started GB per year. ■ Asus High End Laptops: 940� including full quality control, complete installation and configuration of OS and applications (open office, etc..), and lifetime warranty on support services. ■ Solving problems which nobody else in the world can do: 100� per hour (You will first get an work time estimate, and you only pay if you are satisfied with the solution, and get a detailed breakdown of all tasks involved).

Siipi Blog Template 1.2

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:25:48 +0200

New features included: ■ Automatic categorizing by years. When you open another blog area, the most recent year which has blogs will be opened. After that you can click on the year link to choose another year for that area. ■ Some small fixes to the RSS feed ■ Referer list display compacted. As some referer URLs were very long, all referer URLs are now shortened to 16 characters on the display.

Domino File Manager Preview

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:31:57 +0200

The number of files in directories can grow huge on industrial Domino servers. Not necessarily in the Domino directories itself, but in all kind of support directories around the whole file system. When you have over 20000 files in a directory, it can take several minutes to open the directory with Windows Explorer, locally from the server, and especially over a network drive. I found a solution how to reduce the waiting time from 3-5 minutes to 3-5 seconds (!). Using a native C++ engine (xdir.exe), which is located on the Domino server, and a simple Web based UI, you can now explore file system directories lightning fast, and even searching for some text string inside the files is speed up in the same manner.

Benefits of Web Browser over Notes Client on Domino

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 17:13:55 +0200

I posted this already as a reply on Ed Brill's site, in his Blog entry about the ND7 Release. But I want to continue this topic and add more issues. Over longer time, when developing Notes applications and getting new feature requests, you encounter sometimes things which simply can't be done in the Notes Client, but can be done easily on the web. I've seen for example these kinds of issues which need to be done on the web: 1) Printing: In Notes, it's a horror. On the web you can just use a HTML2PDF converter, or just a css stylesheet for printing, or just print directly the page from the web browser. 2) Version problems: Many companies still use older Notes Clients, like R4/5, which hold you back from utilizing new useful and effective capabalities of Domino. On the web, everything is done by Domino, and the user just needs a HTML/JavaScript capable browser like IE5/6, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari. 3) Embedding external content: In Notes no way to do it, on the web easily with an IFrame, like for example a package tracking page from DHL for the current order. 4) Search engine: In Notes you are basically stuck with the built-in engine, on the web you can do your own engine, as the search results can be redirected to a text file, and presented via an LS agent as a web page. 5) Tables, dynamic layouts, high quality pictures: In Notes, simply not possible. On the web easily done with HTML code, stylesheets, lookups, and PNG file attachments. 6) Multitasking: In Notes, not officially supported, but you might be lucky to have a few Notes sessions running simultaneously. On the web, you can have lots of browser windows opened at the same time, and it's fully supported. 7) Accessibility: When you travel, you need to have your computer with your Notes always with you. On the web, you can go to any internet cafe, or use your mobile phone and just log in. 8) Performance: In Notes, you have @DBLookups, databases and views on remote servers which cause the biggest performance lags. On the web, you just need to transfer the HTML page from the server. 9) Multiple Client suppliers and beneficial competition: In Notes, the Client is just developed by one company, on the web you can choose between multiple suppliers and each of them tries to keep their Client better than the others'. 10) Platform independancy: In Notes, you are restricted to the OS selection which IBM supports, on the web you can basically choose any OS, and always have the newest client for your favorite OS. 11) Public access and user registration: In Notes, well first the customer needs a Notes Client, and then you need to cross-certify their notes.ids. On the web, everyone can access the site Anonymously, or register online. 12) Free style views and superrelational database queries: In Notes not possible, on the web you can have thumbnails, on mouse over pop-ups, help texts, buttons, editable fields, superrelational (not key field dependant, but can use any logic to connect inter-database fields) database lookups from several databases, and basically everything you can do with a HTML page. Just to mention a few...

From Turkey with love

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 01:15:45 +0200

Recently I blogged about Holiday planning, and in last minute I decided to destinate for Kemer, Turkey. I must say, it was much better than I could ever imagine. Something touched me there, really deep. The culture, the style, the origins, it's a mystery. But them, as we fins share that destiny. I interviewed some locals about their origins, and it seems that we both came from the same geographical area, Ural, Russia. The turks just shifted a bit more south, intervening with chinese and oriental cultures, while the fins headed north to a merely uninhabited area, except for the confrontation with the native sami people. While Kemer was a small and peaceful town, with all the environment you would expect for a sun beach holiday, it had also amazing mountains raising directly from the sea, and the sea was shallow and turquoise for miles ahead. But that was not was touched me, although even that was way over my expectations. What really got me is hard to explain, it's a combination of their language, culture, music, and style. You can't imagine how dry western cultures are compared to that kind of love of life. I was close to tears and beyond from pure joy and love from almost everything there. Paradise lost & found.

My Notes/Domino Rnext wishlist

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:40:20 +0200

I guess everyone has always wished some things in future ND releases. Please feel free to post your own wishes here too :) Here's mine: 1) Freely positionable Windows/X-Windows style Notes Workspace icons and folders/subfolders 2) Shutdown program document for Domino (now it only has Startup program documents) 3) Agent manager schedule min delay also in second intervals (even 0 sec interval for extreme transactions, like one time backup agents) 4) Ability to use XML style text file databases directly 5) Web browser based Notes Client and Domino Designer, either as Java or server based Domino application 6) Prohibit Design Element change access as Editor 7) Password expiry in notes.id files, and server ability to change notes.id password when connected to that server 8) Include/exclude field list for search engine, plus decent pattern matching algorithm (~ (not),* (0-n),? (1)) and option to specify word break/whitespace characters 9) Ability for servers to replicate databases with Reader only access on remote server 10) Database rebuild option for compact: just copy all design elements and documents, and ignore unread marks, whitespaces, and all other space wasting stuff 11) @HashPassword instead of @Password in Person document Form 12) Bring back the quick web user access change ability from R5, or make it even faster, immediate, when moving user from a group to another for example results in huge (60+ sec) delays on R6/R7 13) "Drop Lock mydb.nsf" command for Domino: drop all users, and server tasks from that database, and lock it for administrator access only, allowing in-place rename of physical file, etc.. 14) Native mms:// protocol support for Domino (streaming multimedia) 15) Native ftp:// protocol support for Domino 16) Fix my R7 buglist

Bob Congdon

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:36:38 +0200

I found another interesting Blog, Bob Congdon. He worked in Iris with Damien Katz, but now he works at Microsoft (he just joined them a bit over a month ago). Lets hope he makes the built-in IIS web server in Windows read directly NSF databases, and adds NSF design elements to Frontpage. Now, that would be some real competiton from Microsoft :P

Damien Katz's domain gone?

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:00:26 +0200

I wonder what happened to Damien's Blog ( http://damienkatz.net ), it looks like it has been taken over by some domain trading company.

Notes/Domino 7 goes gold

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 08:45:26 +0200

You can download ND7 from PartnerWorld: IBM Software Access Catalog or Passport Advantage ( http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld ) now.

xcompact Beta 2 delayed

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 22:03:38 +0200

I promised to deliver it today if all goes well, but as Mr. Murphy prophecied, all didn't go well :) However, I do know the core of the problem of the Beta 1 bugs now, but they need a bigger redesign of xcompact than I had expected. Since I will be leaving for holidays tomorrow for 1 week, you fellow guys will have to wait 1 week until Beta 2. I apologize for the inconvenience and delay caused to all enthusiastic Beta testers.

The biggest known prime number

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 23:59:53 +0200

I was looking at my old archives, and found this topic about the probability of the biggest known prime. The problem is that no existing computers can verify if this is a prime or not (IBM Deep Blue or Blue Gene/L, can you?). So I based this rather on a probability theory. This the beginning of the 2^p-1 (p=prime) series: 2^2-1 is prime 2^3-1 is prime 2^5-1 is prime 2^7-1 is prime 2^11-1 is not prime 2^13-1 is prime 2^17-1 is prime 2^19-1 is prime 2^23-1 is not prime 2^29-1 is not prime 2^31-1 is prime 2^37-1 is not prime 2^41-1 is not prime 2^43-1 is not prime 2^47-1 is not prime 2^53-1 is not prime 2^59-1 is not prime We see that the bigger the potences grows, the rarer 2^p-1 is prime. However, because (for consequent 2^p-1 is prime clauses, we take the result and insert it into the next 2^p-1 statement): 2^2-1 = 3 is prime 2^3-1 = 7 is prime 2^7-1 = 127 is prime 2^127-1 = 170141183460469231731687303715884105727 is prime (and in the above mentioned series rare), I conclude that 2^170141183460469231731687303715884105727-1 is prime also.

New e-mail spamming method: Impersonating spam

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 21:21:14 +0200

Today I received an e-mail from some asian internet area, where the sender was my own e-mail address, well almost. I examined the document and found something wierd about the SMTPOriginator field, it had quotes around my e-mail address, which might be the indicator for this new impersonating spam method, since normal e-mail sender addresses have no quotes around them.

IBM Business Partner, Passport Advantage, PartnerWorld

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:35:00 +0200

I was wondering at Ed Brill's posting why only Business Partners get to see the Notes/Domino 7 launch events, so I had a few comments on his Blog, where Alan Lepofsky (also an IBM employee) kindly advised me to join PartnerWorld, which I then did. From my previous experience I know that the public incremental installers are delayed by about 3 months (=rough estimate, but it feels like 3 months anyway), and Passport Advantage members get them to download much earlier. The recent case was that I needed the 6.5.4 incremental installer for Notes/Domino, but the one on IBM's public site didn't quite work, it failed always on several machines. Then I got a full install from someone who has Passport Advantage and it worked. So, I hope that this PartnerWorld thing will get me access to the Passport Advantage things too, like full installers. Especially R7 gold will be interesting to test for me, as it will be a major decision whether to upgrade our production servers to R7, or stay at 6.0.2CF2 with totally replaced and fixed core modules, like the FullTextSearch engine, 3rd party Java web services, replacement of all web views with LS agents. My boss keeps thinking that there was no benefit to upgrade from R5 to R6, on which I partially agree, but R6 has also lots of good stuff for the web applications, which were a PITA to do in R5. One major thing which R6 still lacks is the fast switching of web users from one group to another. In R5 it took a few seconds, on R6 the users have to wait at least 1 minute to get their renoved access. This seems to be some internal bug in the HTTP task in R6, and also in R7 Beta 4.

Blog Spamming

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:57:58 +0200

What the heck, now those evil e-mail spammers also found a way to spam Blogs. So what's next, Black/Gray/Whitelists for blogs, and content analysis to prevent spams? I saw this on Esther's Blog:

LotusScript Speed Testing

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 19:22:01 +0200

The goal of this project is to document which methods doing the same job in a specific application need in LotusScript are the fastest. The test database can be downloaded from here: http://siipi.com/public/mika.nsf/pages/files/$file/getcolumnvalues.nsf The database has no documents, so you need to run the agent "Create 10000 Products" before you can run the test agents. It would be interesting to gather timings also from other people, so if you want to try one of the agents ("GetColumnValue vs DirectField", "TraverseView") on your Notes, please post your results here. First test results: 1) @GetDocField() is faster than @DbLookup() 2) NotesDocument.GetItemValue("FieldName")(0) is faster than NotesDocument.FieldName(0), and surprisingly both are way faster than NotesDocument.ColumnValues(ColumnNumber). NotesView.GetEntryByKey() is slightly faster than NotesDocument.ColumnValues(), but still much slower than the first two methods. Typical times for the 4 loops (in seconds), the first column was a test run with McAfee On-Access scan enabled, so it was a bit slower for all Methods, the 2nd colum is a typical test run which didn't change much after multiple repeated runs: Method 1) 18.42, 14.23 (NotesView.GetDocumentByKey()+NotesDocument.FieldName()) Method 2) 14.06, 12.87 (NotesView.GetDocumentByKey()+NotesDocument.GetItemValue()) Method 3) 25.74, 18.13 (NotesView.GetDocumentByKey()+NotesDocument.ColumnValues()) Method 4) 21.29, 17.73 (NotesView.GetEntryByKey()+NotesViewEntry.ColumnValues()) This test was done with a R7 Beta 4 Client where the database was on Local. Here are test results when the agent was ran by the server itself, via HTTP or the Agent Manager, and below when it was run from a Notes Client while the database was on a server: On Server HTTP HTTP Amgr Amgr doc.FieldName 25.25 31.63 26.70 24.81 doc.GetItemValue 20.53 22.05 21.62 20.36 doc.GetColumnValues 30.47 29.58 26.06 23.70 view.GetEntryByKey 24.23 25.42 23.55 22.35 On Client Db on Server doc.FieldName 137.93 136.23 doc.GetItemValue 133.25 131.18 doc.GetColumnValues 137.31 134.33 view.GetEntryByKey 117.38 115.33 Note that view.GetEntryByKey is the fastest method only when the agent is ran from a Client and the database is on a Server. In all other cases the doc.GetItemValue is the fastest method. This test was only to find out what is the fastest method to get a single document's fields by key from a view or database. If the document UNID is available in the application, I would assume that NotesDatabase.GetDocumentByUNID would add some more speed. 3) Next I have to test also what is the fastest traversing speed if you want to scan the fields of multiple documents, the competitors are: 1) NotesView.GetNextDocument 2) NotesView.GetNthDocument 3) NotesViewNavigator.GetFirstEntry 4) NotesViewNavigator.GetNthEntry 5) NotesViewEntryCollection.GetNext 6) NotesViewEntryCollection.GetNextDocument 7) NotesViewEntryCollection.GetNth 8) NotesViewEntryCollection.GotoPos 8) NotesViewEntryCollection.GotoNext 10) NotesViewEntryCollection.GotoNextDocument NotesDocumentCollection is disqualified from this race since it doesn't return the documents in the view order. Check out also the discussion on LDD6: LDD Post

Case Classification Code

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 01:02:00 +0200

When you are dealing with many customers, and have limited resources, you need to optimize your work load in order to do the most important things first. A new idea came up to have a classification code for each case, idea, event, etc.. The code consists of 2 characters: IS I stands for Importance, and can be A: Very Important B: Important C: Quite Important D: Not so important E: Not important S stands for Size, and can be: 1: Tiny 2: Small 3: Medium 4: Big 5: Huge For example if there is an very important case which can be done in very short time, the code would be: A1. The codes are alphanumerically sortable by priority order, so the order of execution should be: A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 B1 B2 B3 etc... This means that all A cases are usually to be done before B cases, however using overlapping process queues in practical work, A3 will be on same level as B1, A4 like B2, A5 like B2, and B3 will be on same level as C1, etc.. A1 A2 A3 B1 A4 B2 A5 B3 C1 B4 C2 B5 C3 D1 C4 D2 C5 D3 E1 D4 E2 D5 E3 E4 E5

I am number one on Google!

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 11:05:42 +0200

But so is Ed Brill, Nathan Freeman, Richard Schwartz, Damien Katz, Benjamin Langhinrichs, and many other Domino Bloggers :)

Lotusphere 2006 Special Offers

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 08:44:12 +0200

From the Lotusphere 2006 home page: "Registration will open soon, check back here for continuing updates. The registration fee will be a special low price of $1395 especially for "friends of Lotusphere" who demonstrate their loyalty by registering early. On October 15, the early-bird rate of $1595 will be in effect, and then on December 3, 2005, the standard conference fee of $1795 will apply." My employer doesn't let me go every year to Lotusphere, but of course I insist to go there whenever a new major Notes/Domino version is announced. So, next time this will be in 2007 when ND8 is out I guess. The upgrade exam from R5 PCLP to R6 CAAD, and next to R7 CAAD and R8 CAAD will be one of my most important personal reasons to attend Lotussphere. I just wish they had something more challenging in future, like R8 Certified Superior Application Developer :) Ah yes, that would be another project for me to do, a Siipi Finland certified upgrade exam from PCLP/CAAD to CSAD.

xcompact Public Beta 1

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 23:18:21 +0200

Here you go, it's still "very" beta, but now I need the experience and input from beta testers, as I could not find theoretically any problems with it. For now, the "all database" compact has been secured behind the "-a" option, as opposed to Domino's ncompact which does the "all database" compact when it's called without parameters. This is just for beta security, and may change in the final release. The usage is like it gives from the command line: If you get some error messages (I've put error messages basically everywhere), it will help me to track the specific error down, and fix it for Beta 2. I wish you all happy testing, here it is: xcompact 1.0 Beta 1 (12 Aug 2005) You can put it either in the Notes/Domino program directory, or in a non-OS-path directory, but then you must change your current working directory to your Notes/Domino program directory and call it from there, this is how all C API programs work anyway. Please note that Beta 1 phase will end 2006-01-01 and this program will not run after that date anymore.

New compact command for Notes/Domino

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:23:18 +0200

Time to make a better compact command for Domino. As domino's own ncompact.exe can not compact databases with whitespace, orphan agent data and other undocumented stuff, I decided finally to make my own version. It's running under codename "xcompact", and Beta 1 is already working and very impressive. It compacts a 60MB whitespace loaded database in just a few seconds, where Domino's own ncompact can take up to 10 minutes (using the "-C" option for copy-style compaction) for the same database while not even reducing it's size. The database is really compacted to the minimum possible size, and this will make the need to manually copy/move documents and design documents to a new database finally void. Check back for the public Beta 1 release in the coming days.

A new LotusScript IDE coming soon?

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:05:07 +0200

Here's an interesting thread from Wes A Gilster on LDD about some yet unconfirmed plans from Lotus: An Exciting Time for Lotus Script Developers

R7 Performance Testing - Part 2

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 22:30:50 +0200

What gives? Clearly there is a tendency to slower performance, mostly noticable for the Create documents agent, as the database whitespace grows, that's nothing new. Interestingly, the NotesViewEntryCollection.RemoveAll performs slower than NotesView.GetNextDocument occasionally. This is what I have always said, and the same applies for NotesDocumentCollection.StampAll, it's also slower than NotesView.GetNextDocument occasionally. The biggest problem with .StampAll though is that when it's interrupted, it won't do anything, while the .GetNextDocument based agent would continue from the break point on the next run. Change documents is pretty steady and is not merely affected by the database whitespace. Action Documents 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Create 10000 18.31 17.20 23.80 37.58 37.36 44.81 46.74 44.99 43.66 51.70 Change 10000 17.93 18.08 18.09 18.01 18.09 18.26 17.97 18.19 18.00 18.17 Delete 10000 09.89 10.21 19.71 18.83 17.70 25.33 21.86 19.87 18.92 22.58 Delete All (10000) 07.55 08.41 17.39 15.85 15.73 20.92 18.36 17.24 21.71 19.04 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 53.66 50.60 54.48 50.20 49.06 54.14 51.07 49.48 51.72 57.78 18.18 18.14 18.13 18.23 18.15 18.18 18.20 18.20 18.16 18.12 20.84 20.33 24.22 21.78 20.51 24.97 22.09 20.80 25.91 22.81 18.16 23.96 20.52 18.55 25.13 21.05 18.97 17.94 21.67 19.39 Now, the initial database was 320KB. After run 20, it was 56MB, 93.1 % used. I did an compact to it, and it went only ridiculously down to 53MB, 98.5 % used (no documents in the database, just 4 agents and 2 views, so this "used %" is not quite accurate as it counts whitespace as used space). Only the hardcore Database/New Copy, brought it back to 320KB, 83.5 % used. And even that does not work always, if you have orphan agent data in the database and other undocumented stuff. The only reliable solution to "compact" a database is to create a new database and copy all design documents over. This should be clearly a built-in feature of the Domino compact command too. The compact command as it is now, is just a casual whitespace remover, which can be scheduled to run automatically at periodic times, however it does not really reduce database sizes in a manner how it should, neither does Julie Kadashevich's compagnt.exe (Compress Orphan Agent Data Tool, available for download from IBM's web site). Well, this would be a another project for me to do, an C API program which does a full compact, by moving all design documents and documents to a new database, deleting the old database, and renaming the new database as the old database, and changing it's replica ID and other database properties back. A copy of the test database is available for download here: Big Database Test

R7 Performance Testing

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 20:38:27 +0200

Today I tested a bit the performance of R7 from the Notes Client. The database is on Local. This table shows how the times grow, and keep steady after several runs on the same database: Action Documents Time (new db) Time (2nd run) Time (3rd run) Time (4th run) Time (5th run) Create 10000 18.60 sec 19.30 sec 25.42 sec 38.84 sec 37.11 sec Change 10000 20.37 sec 20.30 sec 20.38 sec 20.34 sec 20.36 sec Delete 10000 10.77 sec 11.27 sec 20.70 sec 20.01 sec 18.73 sec Delete All (10000) 08.25 sec 09.02 sec 18.49 sec 16.62 sec 16.74 sec Remarkable is the time behavior of the Delete All (NotesViewEntryCollection.RemoveAll True) LotusScript agent, first it's very fast, and after a few runs it stagnates at a speed which is just a bit slower than the Delete 10000 LS agent (NotesView.GetFirstDocument/NotesView.GetNextDocument). The Change agent keeps also quite steady, no matter how much whitespace the database has. Create times raise first to the double time from the initial empty database, but then calm down and don't raise much anymore. Next, I will repeat the test with more runs, as this is still a quite small sample set, and additional runs might reveal new behavioral tendencies.

Brainstorming

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 20:20:16 +0200

Today there's a heavy thunderstorm outside, the clouds are really low, and thunderstrikes are very close to my vicinity. This reminds of another storm, the brainstorm. There's so many things to do and finish, so I'd better write them down that I don't forget them: - The right side of my Blog looks so empty, and since many blogs have Categories and Archive, it would be good place to put them. - How much time do we actually use to check different news sites, wouldn't it be cool that you had one central page where you could see all news which are in your interest? Maybe even with some content analysis and alerting you when certain keywords are detected. It should be able to read Notes databases, Web pages and RSS feeds. - I need to make that CSV/XML import database with delete, flush and update functionality - Domino Designer needs some automation, it could be possible to populate the clipboard so that it will paste Notes elements like buttons, fields, paragraphs, etc.. into Notes. That way you could for example create Notes elements automatically from LotusScript - A tool which converts a Domino web view into an LotusScript agent would be useful, when you encounter the limits of Domino - Universally configurable application for checking user defined application data and alerting user defined groups and users to whom the alert concerns - Researching and documenting performance between different programming and implementation methods including LotusScript, Java, views on the web, views done with LotusScript agents, number of documents/views in a database, R5/R6/R7, relational database joins - Replication hops and turnaround analysis and optimization tool for large Domino networks, also including ping checker across each server to optimize connection speeds and pass-through connections - R7 bug list - An attempt to standardize/faqize answers on LDD using a library style web site - An application to scan attachments which are sent by Lotus Notes mail users to groups of users, and replace the attachment with a link of the attachment to a attachment database, while ensuring privacy, security and access rights of each recipient

Automatic Administration Tool for Domino

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 21:50:39 +0200

Another project I am working on, is an automatic/scripted administration tool for Domino. The idea is that the administrator can use predefined scripts to automate periodical administration processes over several servers. The administrator can also make custom scripts by clicking existing commands to his own script. Unlike conventional administration tools, this will also include commands to check the documents of databases, check for duplicate documents using a defined unique key, check if replicas have same amount of documents, and also check if relational document (documents from one database match documents in another database using an unique key) links are intact.

Blog improvements

Sun, 07 Aug 2005 19:35:48 +0200

The comments are now behind each blog entry, and not on the main level anymore. This should make the blog more readable. I also added read counters for each blog and the entry page. The counter counts who read which document and how many times a document was read total, but I display only the total counters. A referer list (=from which website this blog was linked) is also available, and I am not displaying it either.

Holiday planning

Sat, 06 Aug 2005 16:04:46 +0200

Holidays are coming, so I've started to plan some possible destinations where I want to go. I've never been to a real lagoon yet, so I am considering finally to make a trip to some paradise islands in a few weeks. Maldives sounds and looks exactly what I want, deep blue skies, swallow turquoise lagoons and fine white sand. The maldives has 1196 islands, of which 198 have an hotel, the rest is unpopulated, so I have to think carefully what kind of island and hotel I want. I would like a water villa, a restaurant with original chinese food, native maldivian food, italian food, internet cafe, rowing boat or float so I can visit the unpopulated islands. Of course the restaurants don't have to be on the same island, as there are water airplanes and speedboats which take you to other islands where you can visit other restaurants.

New search engine for Domino

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 22:07:00 +0200

I've been working on a new fulltext search engine for Domino, which works like the built-in FullTextSeach engine. The core of the engine is a C++ program, which does the search from a FullTextIndex text file. The FTI.txt file is created per database which have the new search engine enabled. There is a seperate configuration database, where you can enlist all databases on which you want to run the new search engine. It's just an add-on to Domino, and the default Search engine still works for each database, if it's full text indexed. The new engine has some essential benefits compared to Domino's built-in engine, which were also the main reason for this project: � Improved pattern matching algorithm, also word breaks like "-" can be included in the pattern, and all combinations of * and ? work correctly, and brackets as well. I am also planning to have exclude patterns, like ~*abc* (=do not find fields which have *abc* in it). � Better control over the fields you want to include in the search. Domino always includes unwanted fields in the search which can get wrong results. With the new engine you can get a list of existing fields in the target database, and select which fields you want to include or exclude. � Faster search speed: firsts tests show that the C++ search speed is quite fast, a database with 300000 documents is searched in a few seconds. � Unlimited search results: the new search engine does not use any memory lists, but rather streams directly from the input file to the output file. In Domino 6.0.2 you were limited to 65534 results. This has been fixed in later Domino versions, but due to slowness problems in later Domino versions, many companies are forced to use Domino 6.0.2CF2. � Sorted search results: While in Domino you need seperate views for each sorted search, the new engine does the sorting using linear optimized quicksort, and thus you can get rid of some few big views and improve your database performance.

This means business

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 19:43:35 +0200

My freetime entrepreneur company, Siipi Finland, received it's first order from a big company. It's a pretty straight forward Notes application (and it works from the Web too) to maintain the information of the skill levels of employees. Some interesting technology features were involved also, basically due to the challenge of making it universal and reusable, as it had to include an item editor for the skills of each person, and it had to be customizable by the customer without needing to use Domino Designer. It was fun to develop, and now I got a bit hungry for more projects, so I can offer a challenge to my standard templates. The customer was positively surprised about the high quality and low price level of my work, and I explained them since I do this as a freetime entrepreneur, I can keep the prices low and competetive, and spend time to make the results of my work as high quality as possible, since it's also my hobby and passion. After all, people spend the most time of their life in freetime (hopefully), and instead of being bored, there's a lot of interesting things to do instead, which can raise the quality of your lifestyle and goals.

Parameters of parameters

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 00:50:13 +0200

Ever programmed in C++ and found that templates are too "hardcoded"? Well, I remember when I was in university (Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, btw), and doing some theoretical C++ programming, I staggered at the point where my C++ templates were made for one certain data type. I wanted to stay general and universal and make templates which fit any datatype, but at that time C++ didn't support templates of templates, nor does it nowadays. Why I pick this issue up, is that I had to do some pretty parametrizable Notes application for a customer, so I went back to my innovation box, and picked up the "Parameters of parameters" template, which is a very simple, but also a very efficient way of making Notes applications dynamic. Most, if not all that I know, Notes programmers use hardcoded Forms to provide fields to customize the application behaviour. My idea is to have a general parameter Form, which has basically only 2 fields: Name and Value. This works for most applications, but in practice you need sometimes an Option field (like an additional value field) and a Free Text (RichText Field) also on that parameter Form, but that's about it. So, the Parameter Form itself has a @DbLookup in the name field, which looks for defined parameter names. This is convenient for the user who wants to create new parameters in the application, as he can see a list of existing parameter names of the application. Now, the database has also a default Parameternamesname parameter (the only hardcoded value in the whole application), which defines the name of a parameter which defines a parameter name in the application. This may sound a bit confusing, but it's very simple, and most of all it provides a way to make applications as dynamic and universal as possible. Each of my applications has the same Parameters View, and Parameter Form, and sometimes also a global Parameters View, which resides in a root database (replica) for the whole application domain.

Next generation spam filtering

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 02:31:00 +0200

I've been working on a true spam filter for Domino, which actually reads the content of the messages and decides via an fuzzy/AI algorithm based on phrases found in a domino database, if the mail is spam or not. Most spam filters just look at the domain, and simply keep blacklists and whitelists (and graylists), but that is like only 50% of the job done, and causing many mails land on the blacklist which are not supposed to be. How my spam filter works, is that it will first try to analyze the text and reverse-find (yes, it's not a search, but rather an reverse-search, looking known words and phrases against the text in the mail), this gives totally new possibilites to matching almost all words and phrases (and especially partial words and mistyped words), even with probability driven criterias, like how many words of a knowledge document matched against the mail. If a mail was not spam classified after those methods, it will still do the conventional black/gray/whitelist matching, as there are some rare cases where this is really needed, like on mails which have only a picture in them (as some viagra, etc.. ads have been doing recently). The amazing thing about this method is that you don't need a very big dictionary, since the reverse-search will always find something - and the tolerance setting just controls how many words must be matched in relation to the total amount of words in the mail (excluding proverbs).

Best of both worlds

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 00:46:06 +0200

Like IBM Lotus Domino 7 rules the world of databases and web servers, the YAMAHA Motif ES-7 rules the world of musical instruments in a similar manner. Both share a somewhat unique and extravagant design and ideology, but that is exactly what makes them so powerful. They have the freedom to experiment in their own little worlds, and maximize the performance and integrity of their products. Always running after mass "standards" is not always giving the best results - there's always some weakest link in the chain, or some democratic discussions, which cause major slowdowns of progression and development of those standards. But of course, total soloing is at least as worse as that, and the best choice is to take the golden middle road, and thus maximize productivity, innovation and quality, and still not lacking behind major standards. Also an interesting parallel between IBM and YAMAHA is that they both share long term experience and knowledge in hardware, starting from typewriters and pianos, while Microsoft and Korg - their most serious competitors - are rather those "softies".

Cup of Java? No, thanks.

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:51:27 +0200

I'm glad I could avoid any Java agents in Notes so far, since LotusScript has done it all for me. Just a simple Environ("UserProfile"), causes big problems in Java, because it wants to be cross-platform compatible, and not all Operating Systems have environment variables. I wonder why they call them Operating Systems then, sounds more like an graphical user interface to me. It turned out, that getenv() worked earlier in Java, but not in the current versions, and thus not in Notes. In future it will be supported again. So, if you want to read an environment variable from a Notes Java agent at the moment, you need to do it like this: Example on LDD

Operating Systems

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 01:19:06 +0200

Microsoft announced that Windows Vista will be officially out by 2006. However, by 2011 there's already a succeedor planned, Codename Windows Blackcomb. I wonder how Linux will develop meanwhile, while it's nowadays a good OS, it's not the one-and-only OS you can use. For games and native Windows applications (including IBM Lotus Notes, at least until R7), Windows still delivers an universal platform.

Blogs I Read

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:09:55 +0200

I just added a new functionality to this Notes Blog template, which shows a list of Blogs I Read. How I wish that Rod Whiteley and Julie Kadashevich had an Blog too - I couldn't find them on google. But I have to go trough some old posts on LDD and find more interesting people and cool blogs :)

Kimi wins F1 in Hungary

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:41:07 +0200

Kimi R�ikk�nen just passed the finish line over 30 seconds ahead of the 2nd car (Michael Schumacher), and won the Hungary Formula 1 grand prix! Alonso, the leading driver in the F1 world grand prix of 2005, got no points from this race, and Kimi catched up as much as he could. There's still 6 races to go, so it will be a thrill to follow the driver's and car manufacturer's race to the finale of 2005.

RSS Feeds

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 12:21:52 +0200

I found this article how to make your own RSS Feeds. It looks pretty simple, and could be created easily with an LotusScript agent from this Blog. Another thing to add to my Blog development list. http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271 This web based RSS Feed Validator is kinda nice too: http://feedvalidator.org

Fonts

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 11:44:09 +0200

I just read somewhere that Verdana and Georgia are especially designed for computer screens. Verdana also supports bold text in smaller font sizes. Georgia also supports bold text in smaller font sizes, but it's not so readable. Arial shows bold texts just a bit broader, barely noticable.

My first Blog

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 09:52:25 +0200

There are so many people Blogging, so I decided to make my own too. Of course I made it with Domino, and editable from Notes/Web. The messages are written in Notes RichText, and the fonts are controlled by a stylesheet.css document. While the default font is shown as Verdana, the font family, color and size changes made in Notes RichText are still coming through. Perhaps I will publish the template, once it's a bit more polished.