The Angular Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with Angular. You'll learn how to develop a bare-bones application, test it, and
deploy it. Then you'll move on to adding Bootstrap, Angular Material, continuous integration, and authentication.
Spring Boot is a popular framework for building REST APIs. You'll learn how to integrate Angular with Spring Boot and use security best practices like HTTPS and a content security policy.
For book updates, follow @angular_book on Twitter.
The JHipster Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with hip technologies today: Angular, Bootstrap, and Spring
Boot. All of these frameworks are wrapped up in an easy-to-use project called JHipster.
This book shows you how to build an app with JHipster, and guides you through the plethora of tools, techniques and options you can use. Furthermore, it explains the UI and API building blocks so you understand the underpinnings of your great application.
For book updates, follow @jhipster-book on Twitter.
Today is Bike to Work Day in Denver. I rode my bike into The Hive this morning. It was a perfect morning for a ride - overcast and cool, with the sun just starting to poke out as I approached downtown. Unfortunately, I didn't realize all the festivities were at Civic Center Park, so I didn't win any prizes, get any breakfast or drink any free coffee. Oh well, maybe they'll have free beer somewhere on the ride home...
Do you know AppFuse well? Want a job in Boulder, Colorado?
I met with a couple of guys from Morphlix last week - they're using AppFuse as a base for building a new video distribution system - like Netflix, only a lot better. They're building up their team and looking for ace back-end and UI developers. If you're interested, drop them a line via [email protected].
Why do I mention this here? Because it sounds like an awesome company to work for. They're in startup mode and, from the sounds of their business plan - destined for success. Who knows, I may even join them after I get done with the LinkedIn gig. 
This morning I did my first keynote at the JA-SIG Summer Conference in Denver. My talk was on Comparing Java Web Frameworks. I told attendees I'd post it here afterwards, so here it is:Download Comparing Java Web Frameworks Presentation (1.1 MB)
In addition, I mentioned my Java Web Frameworks Sweetspots Whitepaper.
Will I be comparing web frameworks at conferences for the rest of my life? Possibly. I've been submitting 2-3 proposals to conferences and it's the only one that keeps getting selected. I'll be delivering it at OSCON, JavaZone, Colorado Software Summit and ApacheCon US.
The Colorado Software Summit wants to have an original presentation - so I may need to drop a framework or two and add in Seam, Grails and GWT. If you are planning on attending one of these talks, which frameworks would you like to see compared?
Related: Comments after I delivered this presentation at ApacheCon EU.
It's been a little over 2 years since my mountain bike got stolen. I bought a new bike a few weeks later, but it's a commuter, not a mountain bike. Today, I finally bought myself a new mountain bike and took it straight to 3 Sisters for a nice ride. My last bike was a Gary Fisher Sugar 3, and this one is a Gary Fisher HiFi Plus. It's awesome to ride and I can't wait to take it some more of the front range trails. Denver has some incredible trails in the foothills. They're not easy, but they sure are fun. This week, I hope to ride Apex, Deer Creek Canyon and White Ranch.
OSCON is July 23-27. The Oregon Brewers Festival is July 26-29. If you combine those two with a night at McMenamins Kennedy School, it sounds like the perfect summer vacation to me.
From the Wicket user mailing list:
We have Graduation! Apache Wicket is established as a top level project within the Apache Software Foundation.
Congratulations to the most enthusiastic and passionate web framework development team in Javaland!
If you're not doing anything this Wednesday, you might want to checkout my Introduction to Apache Roller Webinar. It's sponsored by Covalent and has the following agenda:
11:00: Introductions 11:05: What is Apache Roller 11:10: Installing Roller 11:20: Roller Architecture - 11:25: Blog Customization - 11:35: Server Customization 11:40: Other Features: Using Weblog Clients and Planet 11:50: Q & A
Heck, even if you are doing something, you should still check it out - especially if you're planning on installing Roller for yourself or for your company. Here's the details and how to signup:
| Cost: | Free! |
|---|---|
| When: | Wednesday, June 20, 2007 |
| Time: | 11:00am PDT (2:00pm EDT) |
| Where: | From the comfort of your home or office |
| Technical Level: | Intermediate Technical Track |
To register, click here and follow the provided steps.
About Covalent and Roller
Covalent recently announced it is offering full commercial support for Apache Roller, the open source blog server from the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Apache Roller drives the Covalent blog, Sun Microsystem's blogs.sun.com blogging site, IBM DeveloperWorks blogs, the Javalobby's 10,000 user strong JRoller Java community site, and hundreds of other blogs world-wide. Roller is a Java Web application that is run on any Java EE server and any relational database.
<Sidenote/>
I think it's important to point out that JRoller and Roller are not the same thing. JRoller is a service provided by JavaLobby that provides free blogs, whereas Roller is the software that powers it. There's been a lot of negative press about JRoller in recent months and from talking to folks, it sounds like most of it is well-deserved. The service is down a fair amount and when it's up, it's extremely slow.
The good news is these problems should go away in the near future. From Matthew Schmidt in a recent JavaLobby Newsletter:
DZone Network Server Upgrades Coming
Over the weekend, Rick and I started the long and painful process of finally upgrading our three-year-old servers to some hardware that should let us scale and meet the needs of the network for the foreseeable future. With these new servers, comes some upgrades that many of you have been trying to beat into my head for months now, including an upgrade to a recent a version of Roller (powers JRoller) as I can find, and an upgrade to the latest and greatest Codebeamer (powers JavaForge). In addition, there's also going to be a much-needed make over to Javalobby and EclipseZone. Of course, these changes won't happen immediately and we'll be migrating to the new hardware first, but keep your eyes open for some nice updates to nearly all our communities. These upgrades have already started and we'd appreciate any feedback you have on whether things like Javalobby and EclipseZone are working properly. Drop me a line if you notice anything not working properly or feeling slow.
IMO, JavaLobby has been mostly mute about its stance on JRoller, and I've heard from folks there's virtually no support. My guess is this is because they've been concentrating on DZone so much. Maybe they need some volunteers to make JRoller more robust? Or maybe it should be moved to other servers that can make money off the service and re-invest it (like wordpress.com)? Hopefully nothing has to change and JRoller can become a higher priority for JavaLobby in the near future.
Update: The webinar went quite well - thanks to everyone who attended! You can download the PowerPoint (or PDF) and audio from Covalent's Webinars. Also, I mentioned a couple of Dave's presentations in my talk. You can download those by clicking on the links below:
I'm happy to report that after posting The good ol' Job Hunt last week, I had a prosperous week searching for my next gig. I got an offer from a local company in Denver on Tuesday and had 5 interviews on Thursday with various companies. I ended up accepting an offer from LinkedIn for a 3-month contract that starts in a few weeks (thanks for the hookup Brian!).
I also landed a 2-week contract that'll keep me occupied through the end of June. There's a nice week between the two gigs where we're heading to The Cabin for the 4th. I'm currently working on getting an "anchor desk" at the Hive Coorperative, but unfortunately won't be able to use it much in July. I'll be in Mountain View the first couple weeks, followed by Portland (for OSCON) at the end of the month.
Anyone out there interested in a tech meetup in Mountain View in July? My birthday is the 16th - maybe we could meet up around then?
Update: My first day at LinkedIn rocked.
My Boston gig ended last week and I'm currently enjoying a week off with the kids at my parents' place in Oregon. While I have a few opportunities, I can't help but think there's got to be a better system for connecting developers to contracts. While I'm open to full-time work, I've found that contracts suite me better because of all the conferences I attend and time I take off.
In Denver, there's quite a few gigs available, but they all seem to have the same two problems: 1) no rate is published and 2) you have to go through a recruiter to get them. Recruiters aren't bad people, and I don't mind dealing with them. However, they do tend to take 20% off the top. Most of the recruiters I've worked with in the past are responsible for one thing - the initial introduction. After that, they tend to disappear and you never see them again. However, you're constantly reminded they're there when you realize they're taking 20% of your wages. With a recruiter involved, the rates in Denver are OK, but lower than expected. Without a recruiter, the rates are pretty good.
The best solution I've found to the getting rid of the recruiter-middle-man problem is this blog and networking. When someone contacts me directly for a contract, it's usually easier to negotiate a rate that makes both parties happy. However, most of these contacts come from out of state, so then there's the travel and working-from-home problems. I think I can solve the work-from-home problem by joining something like the Hive Cooperative. As for traveling, I'd rather work in Denver but I'm willing to travel to select cities: namely Boston, NYC and Portland (Oregon). Why those cities? Because I have friends and/or family that live there.
As I'm out here in Oregon this week, I've realized that working in Portland would likely be the most enjoyable for me to travel to. My parents live close by, it's a kick-ass city and it's especially enjoyable during the summer. However, I'm faced with the same problem: how do I connect with folks looking for good help without going through recruiters? According to Dice.com, Portland has a lot of interesting gigs, but they're (once again), all listed by recruiting companies. Does anyone know of a service that connects employers directly with consultants? Or, even better, is anyone out there in Denver or Portland that's looking to hire someone with my skills?
Not much has changed on my bus since the last time I visited it in the shop. However, this time it is out of the corner and the guy (Mike Lopez of Twins Auto Body) is actively working on it. He's in the midst of replacing the floor pan and doing all of the welding it needs before prepping for paint. I doubt it'll be done this summer, but I'm still hopeful. We snapped a few pics to record its progress.
