Hamburg – Harbour

November 2010

Big bridge at the harbour

Photo taken from a ship

 

August 22, 2011 | Filed Under Impressions | Leave a Comment 

Review of Gradle vs Maven

I solved the issues regarding the ‘com.sun.xml.ws:jaxws-rt:jar:2.1.4′ with a google search. I’ve found threads from people with the same problem, but they used maven. Maven only feels really good if you are building unspecific things like the well known “petshop”.

  1. With Gradle you can escape from all the xml junk.
  2. Gradle also supports Apache Ivy.
  3. Tool support from Gradle gets better (eclipse toolset, …).
  4. Moving from maven to gradle using maven integration, you’ll not get rid of the problems maven causes (for example incorrectly defined pom.xml ressources in the maven repository).
  5. Using Gradle results in freedom because it solves major issues such as: The “central repository” way (your problem if you can’t find your dependencies or licensing issues apply to a few jar files). You get rid of the “forced convention” and “forced workflow” style (writing your own scripts and plugins in maven is not recommended).
  6. Gradle is a step away from the monolithic way of building software (build results in a system) to a more heterogenous style (build results in a module / service).
  7. Gradle can split the project definition into different files (the include mechanism).
Gradle is also not a “magic bullet”; plugin “hooks” are missing (for example “after project dependecy calculation is completed”). I think maven is also a good system with many advantages. I give the Gradle project good odds to stick around awhile. Buildr is also very good but the target audience of this build system is more focused on alternative jvm languages like scala and jruby. Since buildr uses a ruby syntax many people will stay away from it, but I think it’s possible that we will also see buildr as an active project in the next years.

August 22, 2011 | Filed Under Software Engineering | Leave a Comment 

New power supply for my valve amplifier

Target: No oscillation on lower frequencies (pumping speaker) and adjustable output.


First Image: Construction: ~400VDC to ~310VDC.
Second Image: Testing with valve amplifier

Final Version of the power supply: Output Voltage ist 305.5V DC Stable. Changes in the base voltage can drive the voltage up or down a little, but only by 0.025V. Voltage filtering at Input: 10 x 68uF + 2x 47uF + 2 x 20H inductor. Regulation is done by FET with temperature compensating precision reference, protection from shorten circuit / load faults. No hum or fuzz can be measured in the anode voltage.

August 16, 2011 | Filed Under Electrical Engineering | Leave a Comment