Chinese LED bulbs fail

Posted on 2018/02/18 by andy
Sometimes cracked LED

Some time ago I have replaced most of light bulbs with LED bulbs. Typically these imported directly from China were significanlty cheaper so that I gave them a try. LED diodes can work thousands of hours without an issue, right? Unfortunatelly not in this case. Less then hundred workhours later one by another started flickering just to stop turning on soon after that. Each LEDs bulb stopped due to burnt LED. I tried not to give up for really long time. Until another broken LED last week.
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Stinging Mac

Posted on 2018/02/01 by andy
50V AC when touching charging Macbook

For a long time I was ignoring that tingling feeling where my forearm was touching Macbook while typing on second laptop. Sensation that was sometimes closer to stinging, as if tiny hair was pulled of my skin. It happen at home, in the office, just from time to time. Always when bare skin was laying down on aluminum casing of Mac. When I finally realized it happens always when Mac is plugged thru adapter to mains I took closer look. Does Macbook Air 2012 suffers from grounding issues giving me some noticeable residual AC voltage enough to irritate the skin? Continue reading →

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Magic smoke out of fridge

Posted on 2018/01/22 by andy
fridge-icon

When fridge got me popping sound and display turned black, I realized that 10 years old Whirlpool went out of service. My “damn it” comment was quickly followed by my wife: “You are going abroad next week! What we do now?”.  Considering subtle smell of magic smoke I felt next to fridge’s back, I knew any repair shop will simply get me new control module, and these are overpriced, sometimes nearly 1/3 of appliance cost. The choice was easy: fix it or get a new fridge, next day.

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Trap in BPM new event handler editor

Posted on 2017/09/14 by andy
eh_icon

Early 2017 cumulative fix for IBM BPM 8.5.7 brought new section in properties for coach views configuration – events tab. This looks like a wink at SPARK toolkit being integrated with BPM product. SPARK introduced nice concept of configuration options storing Javascript code created outside of coach views, events code as one of them. Configuration option was limited to one line string however. New editor in events tab is multi-line with code coloring. It has also nasty trap for young players though, let’s take a look. Continue reading →

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Like father like son

Posted on 2017/09/04 by andy

It is easy to notice that for last ten months I was away from my blog. There is a growing reason for it: my little fellow. For first few months after birth of Jackie I could split time between family, work and hobby. His recent addiction to whatever dad hides from me effectively keeps me away from workbench. Continue reading →

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Intercepting Boundary Events in Coach View

Posted on 2016/12/03 by andy
be-boundary-event

Boundary Event is core concept of UI technology in IBM BPM: any visual element (coach view) of screen (coach) can fire such event moving control from current screen to some other place, crossing “screen boundary“. In fact Boundary Event is the only way to make such transition on diagram of coaches. Problem is that IBM BPM event model is trivial and does not allow virtually any interference with event in progress, one cannot change event bubbling or handle it in try-catch manner. Find how I bypassed this limitation and implemented events interceptor.

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Custom container with SPARK UI toolkit

Posted on 2016/11/12 by andy
spark-layout

Salientprocess acquisition by IBM will make SPARK toolkit core part of IBM BPM in future release. SPARK introduces some nice new concepts, one of it is addressing that keeps SPARK containers invisible. Its public API promises to make your own coach view a container and I needed it on my code. So I tried and it did not work. Few hours of experiments with debugging SPARK code led me to workaround and defect report. Continue reading →

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WebPD JS editor hack

Posted on 2016/09/04 by andy
webpd-courier

IBM BPM Process Designer started migration from desktop to pure web client long time ago. While lightweight tools are enablers for everything in cloud game, it is shame how productivity is ignored. For several releases IBM has not corrected even such fundamental feature like fixed-width font to give visual aid on indentation. Fortunately this was easy to fix once and for good. Continue reading →

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Connecting Hermes JMS to WAS 8.5.x over SSL

Posted on 2016/08/07 by andy
wasjms-hermes-tree

Hermes JMS client documentation lacks of how to connect to Websphere Application Server (WAS) messaging. Most googled receipts with Websphere keyword refer to MQ. While it is possible to expose WAS internal service integration bus (SIB) as MQ link, I failed on that part as WAS was throwing at me 2035 error no matter what I tried. I stepped back to use CORBA for native dialog with SIB bus. Continue reading →

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e-snowflake revisited

Posted on 2016/04/24 by andy
esf-in-action

Four years ago I made microcontrolled snowflake decor using home made PCB based on toner-transfer process. I got back to this idea late in 2015 to make short batch for family and friends. Second version was about fixing design issues and adding extra features: rechargable battery, USB interface and automatic brightness regulation. Nice looking factory-made PCBs were ready in November 2015. Continue reading →

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