Author Archive

Free WebSphere Application Server

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

This one’s doing the rounds of various IBM related blogs but I think it’s sufficiently momentous for me to give it a mention in case you haven’t seen it elsewhere. WebSphere Application Server for Developers provides a free development runtime environment using the full WebSphere Application Server V7 product. What you don’t get is support but feel free to ask questions on the developerWorks forum.

New Southampton Orienteering Course

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

We went along to Southampton Common this morning for the opening of the orienteering club’s latest permanent orienteering course. The map comes with three course suggestions which I duly ignored and instead went to see how fast I could get all 26 controls visiting them in any order. It took me 29’11 over 6.1km but, given the size of the red and white markers (about 1.5″ square) and the propensity for them to be hidden on the back of something in the general vicinity of the feature, it easily could have been under 25 minutes if I hadn’t had to do so much hunting around. This is at least partly because the club was not allowed to create any new fixtures on the common. Thankfully there was no temptation to dive off down the tiny tracks through the undergrowth as we weren’t allowed to map these either! It certainly took me to corners of the common I’ve never been to in our fleeting trips across the area on Tuesday nights in the winter. If you fancy giving it a go yourself, maps can be purchased from the Hawthorns Wildlife Centre down in the south-east corner of the common (which proved a pleasant enough location for a simple lunch).

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Out of Touch

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

I made it out to Beaulieu Road again this evening and we had another sunny run, this time doing a anti-clockwise loop out towards Deerleap. I was grateful for the opportunity to vote for the short route on a couple of occasions as I was aching in all sorts of strange places having played touch rugby at lunchtime. (I’m glad to say that we won the rugby but I wouldn’t claim much of the credit.)

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Cranbury Open Day

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

765We were looking for something to do today when I remembered seeing an advert for the National Gardens Scheme open day at Cranbury Park. Cranbury is a private estate on the northern edge of Chandler’s Ford and despite living here over 10 years now I’ve never ventured in to the grounds. We cycled over and, despite arriving only 10 minutes after the opening time, the grounds were already busy. Seemingly you have to arrive early if you want to get a good bargain from the plant stall!

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Trig point run

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Having given myself last Tuesday off running (donated blood in the morning and then child minding would have meant missing the pub) it was good to be out at Beaulieu Road tonight. We had a nice sensibly paced  run (which had nothing to do with Neil not arriving in time I’m sure) along a pleasant route out to the trig point near Bolton’s Bench. Jon Forster even made it out for possibly the first time this year!

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Less than Leaping

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Not a great deal to say about last night’s RR10. My legs were still tired from the half marathon at the weekend and I still felt a bit drained from giving blood the previous day. On top of which the course was pretty dull, winding around the gravel tracks in the Inclosure for most of the race. I wasn’t therefore particularly surprised to be handed a ticket with the number 28 on at the finish.

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WebSphere ESB Forum

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

There has been a WebSphere ESB newsgroup for a long while but it doesn’t see a lot of traffic compared to its sibling Integration Developer and Process Server groups. At least part of that has been due to the fact that they have been mirrored on the developerWorks forums which tend to be the preferred interface for many developers this days (although not myself!) whilst the WebSphere ESB one has not. My colleague Dave Screen has now got this rectified so post your WebSphere ESB questions here!

WebSphere Integration Developer for ESB

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

A top tip just in from the WebSphere Integration Developer team… If you only use WebSphere Integration Developer to develop for WebSphere ESB (and not Process Server) then go to Window > Preferences and select General > Capabilities. Then click the Advanced button and expand Integration Developer. If you uncheck Process Development then the Process Server specific options (e.g. SCA module creation) will be filterered out of the menu structures. It’s not perfect (the new business integration module wizard for example doesn’t take account of the enabled capabilities) but it goes a fair way to removing some of the clutter that is not relevant to you as a WebSphere ESB developer. Thankfully there are plans to make the option easier to find in future releases!