April 2006 – Page 5 – Kev's Development Toolbox

April 9, 2006

Running scripts at predetermined times

You can use cron to schedule jobs to run at regular time intervals, but to run a script at a particular time and date, use the ‘at’ command.

at TIME [DATE] -f scriptname

where TIME is like 2:30pm or 10:00am, and date is in the format like ‘Mar 10’ or ‘Apr 01’.

To view scripts that are scheduled for execution, use the command: atq

This lists the scripts that are ‘queued’ for execution. The first digit on each line is the job number for each scheduled script. To remove/cancel a scheduled script, use the atrm command, with the job number.

April 7, 2006

Designer of the Cell CPU: “more powerful than a Vindaloo from a Newcastle curry house”

Peter Hofstee, one of the main designers behind the new 7 core CPU, the Cell, which will be powering the upcoming PS3 console, recently spoke at a lecture in Texas on the development and potential success of the Cell CPU.

Only time will tell now as we wait for the launch of the PS3 in November worldwide this year, plus hopefully an early look at this years E3 conference where Sony is expected to have playable consoles on the exhibition floor for people to play with.

The Cell, jointly developed by IBM, Toshiba and Sony, had a $400 million investment from Sony. As Hofstee puts it, ‘this is about as serious as it gets’, in terms of Sony’s influence on the development of this new CPU.

April 7, 2006

Linux to replace Palm OS5.0 on next Palm smartphones?

Palmsource demonstrated it’s new Linux powered smartphones at the Linuxworld conference this week. Does this mean that Palmsource are abandoning the Palm OS?

Palmsource also made an annoucement about the new Linux based OS for its phones in February at the 3GSM World Congress – there are further details here on their website in a press release.

April 7, 2006

Excellent article on excpetion handling in Java

Tim McCune has an excellent article on Exception handling in Java on the java.net site.

In the article he introduces the different types of Exception in Java (Checked, Unchecked, Error), explains their purpose and how they should be used. He also covers a number of Exception handling antipatterns that are commonly seen in Java code, patterns usually written by someone who does not have a good understanding of how Exceptions should be used in Java.

This is an excellent article on Exception handling – if you are unsure about exception handling then take a read of this article.