I'm back

I took some time off blogging, because I was very busy. Now I'm back, and I've already posted two items, as you probably noticed.

I hope I can keep updating this blog. It's fun.

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Tag: Blogging

Firefox 1.0.x was downloaded more than 50,000,000 times

Two or three years ago I "found" a new web browser called Phoenix. It was based on the Mozilla rendering engine (Gecko), but was much smaller. I gave it a shot. I liked it, but it wasn't enough for me, so I uninstalled and forgot about it.

Some time later, I saw another new browser, also based on Mozilla. This one was called Firebird. Only after downloading and reading about it, I found out this was actually a new name for Phoenix. This version was much better (as far I as remember) than the Phoenix, so I kept it.

I updated Firebird with every minor version. One upgrade suddenly changed the name to... Firefox. Whatever. Firefox was a really good browser, so I stopped using MSIE (*).

I followed Firefox with anticipation through all versions. I was really happy when version 1.0 was out, and installed it on every computer I go to (work computers, friends computers, etc).

And now - 50 million is a real milestone. Wow.

Congratulations, Mozilla developers! Thank you, and keep up the good work!


(*) Except for annoying sites that won't render correctly in non-IE browsers.


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Tag: Firefox

Gmail Blacklisted by SpamCop.net

Gmail's SMTP (outgoing) mail servers seem to be blocked by SpamCop.net. I keep getting failure messages from servers I try to send mail to.
See:
SmapCop.net checkblock

This means that Gmail users (at least in my cluster) can't send mail to servers that use SpamCop's blacklist. I've notified Gmail, and I wait for them to take action.


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Tag: Email

The Eclipse Modeling Framework

I've downloaded EMF, and I'm trying to figure out how it can help either my final project or my work in general (at work I also use Eclipse). I like the fact that it can generate a model from Java source code, but I wish it could also generate a Rational Rose model.
Can it do that?

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Tag: Software

My Final Project

Today I had a presentation-exam about my project. I talked about my progress and my future work. It went pretty good, but I didn't get a grade yet. It is expected in a week or so.

To summarize:
My project is about code generation from UML statecharts. Using Java and XSLT, I take the XMI that represents the statecharts, and generate a QHSM state machine in Java/C.

Confused? Sorry. I'll try to explain:

• Statecharts are a graphical representation of complex systems. They are based on finite state automata, but extend (and complicate) them greatly.
• UML is the Unified Modeling Language. It is a graphical language that allows software developers to describe their software designs in a visual way. Statecharts are a part of UML. There's a FAQ about UML here.
  
• XSLT is a language for transforming XML into other text, including other XML. Here's a tutorial.
  
• XMI (the XML Metadata Interchange) is a representation of UML data (and some other metadata) in XML format.
• QHSM is "Quantum Hierarchical State Machine", which is Miro Samek's implementation of a state machine (a state machine is an executable statechart). It is described in his book.

If I'm not clear enough - please post a question as a comment below, and I'll elaborate on the topic of your choice.

For implementing both Java and C code generation, I use something like Martin Fowler's Two Step View pattern (I was actually told that there exists such a pattern right after I suggested my approach, which I though to be original) - first, I create an XML pseudo-code state machine. Then I take this XML and turn it to either a Java or a C state machine.

It was fun, and I learn a lot, especially on XSLT and XML. I have more things to do for this project. Among them:

• Implement the C code generator - at the moment I only have a Java code generator, because that's the main priority of the company for which I develop the software.
• Build some king of testing tool, that can take events from a script file and fire them at a running machine.

This Blog is Still Alive!

I have not abandoned this blog. I'm still here. It's just that I'm very busy - work, exams, and the project are killing me. I'll be back.