Software Engineer Notes (Ziv Birer blog)

As a software developer, I open XML files all the time. I a heavy commercial XML editor. But nothing can compare to a small, thin and free XML editor like 'foxe'. A great feature is has is the alignment of long XML strings to readable XML format (Shift-F8). It help lot of times when the XML file was generated by some tool and was not readable. Homepage: http://www.firstobject.com/dn_editor.htm

If you need to draw small UML diagram - you can use 'UML pad' tool. It is much simpler than more known tools like 'Visio' and it is free ! More known tools are much too complex for simple diagram. Homepage: http://web.tiscali.it/ggbhome

From time to time, deployment to JBoss fail with strange error: 16:31:28,428 WARN [ServiceController] Problem starting service jboss.web.deployment:war=invoker.war,id=1958881146org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentException: Error during deploy; - nested throwable: (javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: comp not bound) at org.jboss.web.AbstractWebDeployer.start(AbstractWebDeployer.java:380) at org.jboss.web.WebModule.startModule(WebModule.java:83) at org.jboss.web.WebModule.startService(WebModule.java:61) at org.jboss.system.ServiceMBeanSupport.jbossInternalStart(ServiceMBeanSupport.java:289).... The way to overcome this problem is: Remove the deployment manually (delete the folder) Full deploy the application again Sometimes - even restart the machine because the deploy fails due to some missing resource (like port)

If your PC is near a window or you just have headache after reading lot of content from Internet Explorer - you can use the tip below. Change the color contrast of pages that are displayed by Internet Explorer by using 'user style sheet' feature. To do so, write HTML file called 'my_style.css' with following content: *, body, p, th, td, a { font-size: large !important; line-height: 200% !important ; background: black !important ; color: yellow !important } :link, :link * { cursor : hand ! important; color : yellow ! important; text-decoration : underline ! important; } Now, open Internet Explorer and follow the steps: Choose 'Tools' Choose 'Internet Options' Click on 'Accessibility' button Mark the checkbox called 'Format document using my style sheet' In the text box write the full file name of the style file. Example: 'C:\my_style.css' Click 'OK' button Click 'OK' again Now the text in the pages will be yellow ov...

This is a great movie that explains the two minutes rule. No need to read the GTD book or to implement the whole system. This simple rule can help to overcome the email overload. I found it very useful. But there are two hard point to do: (1) Process emails only in chunks and don't check outlook every time email received (very hard to do !) (2) Do not scan new emails for interesting stuff, just process one by one. Again - very hard to do !

If you feel tired, easily distracted or just not focused, you can use a "work sprint". Instead of just seating in the cube trying to be focused, start a 20 minutes or 30 minutes of pure work time. Then give yourself some prize (coffee break, surfing the net ...). I use 'Pizza Timer' freeware to show a timer that go backwards. It is just great freeware and help me to stay focused on hard times (like after lunch). Site: http://ant4.com/PizzaTimer

I seat long hours on the desktop. I always want to know what my PC is doing and why it works so slow. The best tool I found is the performance monitor of hexagora. In one small window that s always top most you can see usage of CPU, Disk, Network and Memory. Just great tool ! Site: www.hexagora.com