Extending Java’s Semaphore to Allow Dynamic Resizing

Marshall wrote an excellent post explaining how to dynamically change the number of permits when using semaphores in Java, which I thought I'd share for anyone interested. This can be particularly useful if you have a long-running daemon which you don't wish to restart for changes such as this. If you are using semaphores in Java, or if you don't even use Java but just want to learn more about semaphores, I'd recommend giving it a read.

Email Deliverability & RFC 2142: Everything you wanted to know and never dared to ask

Today Franck Martin wrote an interesting post regarding RFC 2142 ("Mailbox names for common services, roles and functions") and how it relates to email deliverability. If you are running your own email server or own a domain, you may interested in reading it as it sums up what email addresses are expected to be manned at any domain and for what purposes.

For example, did you know that "if an Internet service provider’s domain name is COMPANY.COM, then the ABUSE@COMPANY.COM address must be valid and supported"? And are you manning your postmaster and hostmaster addresses?

Genius.com is Eagerly Anticipating PHP 5.3

Over at the Genius Engineering blog we just put up a post regarding our anticipation of PHP 5.3 and what we are looking forward to in it. We'd love to get some feedback and thoughts on it, and hear what other people are interested in regarding PHP 5.3 that we may have missed. If you've been following PHP 5.3, or haven't and want to catch up, check it out!

wxBanker 0.5 RC available for testing and translating!

Recently I've been hard at work on the next version of wxBanker, a lightweight personal finance application, and would like to get out the 0.5 release candidate for testing and translations. To check it out, add my wxbanker-testing PPA. It also runs on Windows and OSX (albeit less tested), so feel free to grab the source tarball (it's python, so no compilation necessary) and then check out the included README. The only hard dependency is wxpython, although installing numpy and the simplejson library for python allow for graphing and csv importing respectively.


wxBanker 0.5 has been a long time in the making, as it represents a large refactor of the underlying code to make everything much faster, more stable, and easier to extend and implement new functionality. This is especially noticeable in the start up time.

There is also a new transaction grid which allows for sorting, a CSV import option in Tools (so you can import transactions from your banks initially)


...and enhanced right-click actions for transactions which now work on multiple selected transactions:


See the included changelog for a full list of new things. Launchpad is also fairly well integrated into wxBanker, so to file a bug or do almost anything else, just use the help menu. The Spanish and French translations are complete but I could really use help everywhere else: https://translations.launchpad.net/wxbanker !


Check out https://wiki.ubuntu.com/wxBanker for more screenshots, or the wxBanker homepage at https://launchpad.net/wxbanker for more information including the users team/mailing list, and the translations team. If you are interested in the less exciting stable version, 0.4.1.0 can be found in the Ubuntu repos as of Jaunty, available in about 18 languages.

Enjoy, and let me know of any issues or comments you have, and thanks in advance for translations :)