Category: Activities

Love: strace. Hate: RedHat

Well, thanks to my second favourite debugging tool (after System.out.println), strace, I figured out what was going wrong in Rants and Revelations » Today’s Java puzzlement.

(Short aside: CentOS is actually RedHat Enterprise Linux with the proprietary stuff filed off. So any changes between versions are RedHat’s fault, not CentOS’s.)

I had a short program I wrote some time ago to print out the names of all the fonts that Java knew about. Today I straced it on my CentOS 4.4 and my CentOS 5.0 machines to see what was the difference. Both machines opened up /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_11/jre/lib/fontconfig.RedHat.bfc just fine. And both started opening up various TrueType font files. But what’s that? On the CentOS 5.0 machine, I’m getting ENOENT (file not found) for /usr/share/fonts/ko/TrueType/gulim.ttf. Oh, that’s not good, since I know the installer installs the “fonts-korean” rpm, which is the CentOS 5.0 equivalent of “ttfonts-ko”, which is what I’ve got installed on CentOS 4.4. Oh, but when the geniuses at RedHat renamed the rpm, they also renamed the directory the directory that the TrueType font files go, from /usr/share/fonts/ko/TrueType to /usr/share/fonts/korean/TrueType. And when they did similar renaming with Japanese and Chinese fonts, at least they had the decency to put symlinks at the old locations.

After that, it was a simple matter to copy the /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_11/jre/lib/fontconfig.RedHat.properties.src to /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_11/jre/lib/fontconfig.RedHat.properties, fix the directory names, and voila, I have Korean fonts.

Now I just have to figure out how to get this into the delivery RPMs.

Today’s Java puzzlement

Does anybody know why my CentOS 4.4 desktop system shows Korean fonts in both native apps (like gvim) and our Java application, but our CentOS 5.0 Theatre Management Systems (TMS) will only display Korean fonts in native apps. Obviously the fact that the TMS displays Korean fonts in gvim proves that the fonts are installed. And the fact that my CentOS 4.4 desktop shows the Korean fonts in our application proves that Java 1.5_011 can do Korean. Although the rpm names have changed, as far as I can tell the same Korean fonts are installed.

Anybody have any clues?

Bleargh

Last night I attempted to do an IPC with the instructor (Lenny) who I did my instrument rating with.

I’d booked our club’s Dakota because we’d just upgraded our GPS from the 530 to the 530W and I wanted to try a LNAV+VNAV approach in it to see how it compares to an ILS.

Because I’m the sort of geek that I am, the first thing I did was download the new 530W manual and the 530W simulator, and read through the manual and try a couple of approaches in the simulator. The new upgrade gives the 530 significantly more information, especially guidance through approach holds and procedure turns, and turn anticipation, which is pretty cool. One thing I couldn’t find was information about doing ad-hoc holds, like at an en-route VOR. Unfortunately, the simulator simulates an HSI which our plane doesn’t have, so I wasn’t sure if the method I worked out to do them on the sim was going to work with the Dakota.
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Dear Boss

Three years ago, when I was asked to implement a DocumentCache class in the cinlib, I made a mistake so that first build that had it was actually horribly slower than before it was implemented. Yes, I admit it. But I fixed that problem in the very next build, and it actually did end up being a net gain.

So is it really fucking necessary that every time since then when there the slightest question about cinlib performance, the first words out of your mouth are “can we try disabliing the DocumentCache to see if that fixes it”? I mean, it’s been three years. Give it up, already.

A tale of two flying clubs

Greater Rochester International Airport (KROC) has two flying clubs, which through historical accident have a lot of overlap in our respective fleets, but huge differences in our operating philosophies. Both clubs are also suffering from the down turn in flying caused by the lousy economy, high fuel costs, ridiculous security theatre, stupid liability law climate, etc. Our costs are going up, which causes members to leave, which causes costs per member to go up further, which causes more members to leave, etc. It’s a bad spiral to be in. So naturally both clubs are wondering if we could combine forces to weather this down turn.
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