Mr N

From 12 January 2009 it will be compulsory for non-US citizens travelling (to the United States of America) under the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP) to apply via the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) no later than 72 hours prior to departure. Each approved ESTA will be valid for two years from the date of authorization, or until their passport expires, whichever comes first. However, for each subsequent visit within that period, details including departure city, address while in the USA, airline and flight number will require updating again. The ESTA website is https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/esta.html This web site is free. It is a service run by the US government which will replace those green forms you used to have to fill in on the plane. If you do a search on the internet, you will find loads of dodgy web sites offering to do this for you, they typically charge between $50 and $250. This service is a con. The basic package they offer provides you with documentation on how to fill in the form. All the documentation is freely available online from the link above. The executive service will fill in the forms for you. The questions are simple and answers are obvious. For example “What is your name?", “Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide?” - Yes or No, “Are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?” - Yes or No. If you need help with these questions maybe you should pay for their service!!! Some extra help can be found here: British Airways US Immigration requirements Wikipedia - Visa_Waiver_Program Department of Homeland Security - Frequently Asked Questions about the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) As an extra note from the 8th September 2010 the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be introducing an administration charge of $14 when applying for an ESTA.

Came across a pretty neat website called BabelWithMe. The basic idea behind this web site is that it allows people of different native languages to talk to each other. Each person enters the chat session and selects their native language. All members write messages in their own language, but it appears on other people’s screens in whatever language they have selected. It’s really easy to use and you don’t need to sign up.

1. Go to http://www.babelwith.me/.
2. Click Start a conversation.
3. Enter your nick name.
4. Set the language you want to.
5. In the top right hand side there is a link to enter your conversation. Send the link to anyone you would like to join your conversation.

If you receive a BabelWithMe session then just click the link, choose a nick name and enter the session. Easy!

Using VNC out of the box can be painfully slow. On one of my dual core Xeons it was taking 50% of the CPU! Hunted around a bit and eventually found Peter’s article giving a solution. The problem is caused by video hardware acceleration enabled graphics cards. I think it causes VNC to spend all its (and your) time taking screen shots and sending them down the wire. It makes VNC painfully slow. So all you need to do is disable hardware acceleration:

1. Load the Control Panel.
2. Double click Display.
3. Click the Settings tab.
4. Click the Advanced button.
5. Click the Troubleshoot tab
6. Change the Hardware acceleration slider to None.
7. Click Ok.
8. Click Ok.

If the remote machine is a server you should probably disable hardware acceleration anyway, to give more power to the server. There’s no point using graphics hardware acceleration on a headless server in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard". However, if you are using VNC to manage remote desktops then you might have to get your users to reduced the hardware acceleration before you start connect.

Firstly you need to install Eclipse 3.5 Galileo, then once that’s up and running you can use the Spring update site to install the Spring Tool Suite (STS). Follow these simple step-by-step instructions. I’m assuming that you are the only Java developer using this machine.

1. Go to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
2. Follow the link for Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (189 MB) for Windows.
3. Select a mirror and download the file.
4. Create a folder called c:\java.
5. Move the Eclipse archive (eclipse-jee-galileo-win32.zip) into c:\java and extract here.
6. Folder c:\java\eclipse will be created.
7. Drag the executable eclipse.exe on to the desktop (or quick launch) and make a shortcut.
8. The workspace dialogue will pop up and ask you where you would like to keep your workspace. Spaces in file names (or directories) are always a bad idea especially when developing under a Windows environment which is why I don’t accept the default workspace location, so enter c:\java\workspace.

That was easy wasn’t it?. STS is now free so you can just install it from their update site.

1. Install Eclipse 3.5 Galileo mentioned above.
2. Open the preferences page Windows->Preferences.
3. Expand the Install/Update tree on the right hand side and select Available Software Sites.
4. Highlight all the Enabled sites and click Disable.
5. Click the Import button and enter http://dist.springsource.com/snapshot/TOOLS/sts-update-sites.xml. Eclipse spots this is a website then downloads and installs the xml. It may take a couple of seconds, but when it finishes click Ok.
6. From the file menu, go to Help->Install New Software….
7. Set Work with to AJDT - http://download.eclipse.org/tools/ajdt/35/dev/update. At the time of writing this there were no new updates so skip it and move to the next step.
8. Set Work with to Mylyn Extras - http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/extras.
9. Expand Mylyn Integration and check Mylyn Connector: JIRA, Next will become active to click it.
10. After a bit of rumbling (to work out dependencies which there are none) click Next.
11. Accept the License agreement and click Finish.
12. After installation you are asked to restart Eclipse, so click Yes.
13. Back into the Help->Install New Software….
14. Set Work with to Spring IDE Update Site - http://dist.springframework.org/snapshot/IDE/nightly.
15. Select all the components and click Next. More rumbling then click Next again. Accept the license and click Finish.
16. Back into the Help->Install New Software….
17. Set Work with to SpringSource dm Server Tools Update Site - http://dist.springsource.com/snapshot/DMS-TOOLS/nightly
18. Back into the Help->Install New Software….
19. Set Work with to SpringSource Tool Suite Update Site - http://dist.springsource.com/snapshot/STS/nightly/e3.4

Close down Eclipse and zip up the whole of c:\java\eclipse. Rename it to eclipse-3.5-sts.zip. If there is one thing I have learnt, it’s take a back up of a fixed working installation. Every one and his dog can write eclipse features and plugins. It is easy for one plugin to screw up another, so its really handy to have a “last known good position” to rollback to. Otherwise you may well find that you are going through this whole process again. Original SpringSource instructions can be found here.

The cleartool has many facets, one of which is find. The syntax of clearcase’s version of find is similar to that of GNU’s find with a couple of clearcase additions that allow you to search specific clearcase attributes. It is beyond the scope of this document to describe GNU’s find. Here are a couple of Hints and Tricks to get cleartool find to give you something useful. For the purposes of the examples my user name will be mrn. Remember that user names are case sensitive. Find files created by me:

cleartool find . -name “*” -ver “created_by(mrn)” -print

Find files created by me after 29 May 2009:

cleartool find . -name “*” -ver “created_by(mrn) && created_since(29-May-2009)” -print

Find files created by me between 29 May 2009 and 6 June 2009 inclusive:

cleartool find . -name “*” -ver “created_by(mrn) && created_since(29-May-2009) && !created_since(6-Jun-2009)” -print