Monthly Archives: December 2009

Converting .chm’s for reading on the iriver story

Posted on December 30, 2009 by spgennard

One of the first things I wanted to read on my iriver story was the montly msdn subscription magazine which is available as a .chm. Which unfortunately the iriver story does not support, so I needed to convert it into … Continue reading →

Posted in chm, iriver, iriver story, pdf, Tips | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

iriver story – firmware upgrade

Posted on December 29, 2009 by spgennard

Santa was very kind to me this year, as he has treated me to an iRiver Story ebook reader. Hopefully this will help me become less reliant to printed books! The first thing I found was that the firmware had … Continue reading →

Posted in ebook, firmware, fun, iriver, iriver story | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

12 Tips for using Micro Focus COBOL

Posted on December 22, 2009 by spgennard

12 Tips for using Micro Focus COBOL As it is close to Christmas and I wanted to do something with 12 in the title, I’ve thrown together some useful if not un-ordered list of 12 things tips using Micro Focus … Continue reading →

Posted in COBOL, Tips | Tagged , | Comments Off on 12 Tips for using Micro Focus COBOL

A Comparison Of .Net COBOL, Visual Basic and C#

Posted on December 15, 2009 by spgennard

Today my collegues Robert and Alex have finally 🙂 decided to publish a document that compares Visual Basic, C# and COBOL for .Net under The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. Rather than doing a cut-paste job, here is a quote … Continue reading →

Posted in COBOL, CSharp, Tips, VB.Net | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on A Comparison Of .Net COBOL, Visual Basic and C#

Free compiler for non-commercial use.

Posted on December 8, 2009 by spgennard

If you are interested in trying out some of my examples with a modern COBOL compiler.. let me give you a quote from a friend. From: Twitter “

Posted in COBOL | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Free compiler for non-commercial use.

Factory Method Pattern in COBOL

Posted on December 7, 2009 by spgennard

Continuing my series on design patterns for the COBOL, the next one on my list is the “Factory method” pattern. The pattern is useful, as it helps you hide the real implementation/creation mechanism of your classes. I you are fond … Continue reading →

Posted in CLR, COBOL | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Factory Method Pattern in COBOL

UK National Lottery Wierdness

Posted on December 6, 2009 by spgennard

Some people think the UK National Lottery is a bit of a con and the prize money is a bit low.. but surely it can’t be this low! I think this week I will give it a miss 🙂

Posted in fun | Tagged , | Comments Off on UK National Lottery Wierdness

Using sun.jvmstat.monitor to see active Java processes

Posted on December 5, 2009 by spgennard

Monitor’ing Java processes can be achieved using the jvmstat monitor classes provided in the JVM. The documentation is a bit sketchy but with a little experimenting it can be done. Below is a little example that shows you how to … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, JVM | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Using sun.jvmstat.monitor to see active Java processes

Java process id via java.lang.management

Posted on December 5, 2009 by spgennard

While working on a project recently I need to find out the current process of the active running Java process (for tracing/auditing), however I never found a 100% perfect solution but did come across an acceptable solution to use the … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, JVM, Tips | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Java process id via java.lang.management