Raible Designs

My Marvelous Road Trip to the Utah JUG

I have many fond memories from speaking at the Utah JUG over the years. I fell in love with Utah when I worked at Overstock in 2011 and experienced the greatest snow on earth. It's wild to reminisce about 2018 too. I spoke at the Denver JUG on Wednesday, then woke up early on Thursday and drove eight hours (through multiple snow storms) and made it 15 minutes before my talk. I lost a windshield wiper in the process and didn't have time to replace it, so it permanently etched a line in the vehicle's windshield. In February 2020, I did a Rocky Mountain JUG tour with Ray Tsang. That's when I learned that Ray is really good at pool.

Because of these experiences, I always jump at the opportunity when I'm invited back. This year, I decided to take my time and do a road trip in my trusty VW Vanagon (Stout) to Utah. I planned to mountain bike in Fruita and Moab along the way, then ski at a couple Utah resorts before returning home.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a storm coming the night before my departure on April 16th. I quickly altered my plans and fell into an 18" powder day at Copper Mountain on Tuesday morning.

A Delightful Trip to Devnexus

Devnexus is one of my favorite conferences in the world. I have many fond memories of attending over the years and some awkward ones, too. My first memory is when Micah Silverman and I worked at a Stormpath booth there in February 2017. Okta had just acquihired us and we weren't allowed to talk about it. We encouraged folks to sign up for our service even though we knew signups would shut down at the end of the week.

It's funny how life comes full circle. My employment with Okta officially ended the week before this year's Devnexus. I tried to cancel my talk when I first got the news, but Vincent and Pratik convinced me to go, and I knew it would be good for networking. I'm glad I did because I had a blast! It all started on Monday, April 8th.

The JHipster Mini-Book v7.0 Released!

The JHipster Mini-Book v7.0 is now available as a free download from InfoQ. Get it while it's hot! 🔥 You can read more about this release on the JHipster Mini-Book blog.

The source code for the application developed in the book (21-Points Health) is available on GitHub.

Thanks to the InfoQ publishing team, Jeet Gajjar for tech editing, Maureen Spencer for copy editing, and Ana Ciobotaru for publishing it to production.

And most of all, thank you Asciidoctor for making the publishing process so easy!

Questions about JHipster, JHipster Lite, and Spring Boot 3

I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. I'm biased because I worked there from 2007-8, have alumni privileges like a free pro account, and learned how to unsubscribe from all their emails over a decade ago.

I communicate with a lot of developers via LinkedIn. I recently received a message from Raymond Meester about the JHipster project. Raymond asked many poignant questions, and I thought it'd be helpful to share my responses with y'all. Of course, I got permission from Raymond before posting this. You can find his blog on Medium.

Secure by Design Book Review

I recently finished reading Secure by Design by Dan Bergh Johnsson, Daniel Deogun, and Daniel Sawano. I started reading it shortly after I received it as a gift from Dan Bergh Johnsson at Jfokus 2020.

Secure by Design hooked me from the beginning. Chapter 1 dives right in and shows why design matters for security and how security shouldn't be an afterthought. The authors show how developers will have a difficult time grokking security if you make them remember security-related API calls. However, if you bake security into your design and codify your security practices, developers will be more secure by default.

A Fantastically Fun February at Jfokus 2020 and the Rocky Mountain JUGs

Jfokus is one of my favorite conferences in the world. It takes place in Stockholm, Sweden, during one of the coldest months of the year. As a native Montanan, I love the winter season and skiing. It was with great pleasure that I returned to Jfokus as a speaker this year, after skipping the last couple of years.

True story: the last time I was at Jfokus was 2017, and Okta had just acquired Stormpath. I negotiated my Okta employment terms in the Radisson Blu lobby!

I gave three talks this year: two on the main stage during Jfokus and one at Jforum Stockholm on Tuesday evening.

My Journey to JHipster Conf 2019

Last week was quite the whirlwind for me. On Monday, I released Ionic for JHipster 4.0, updated my get started with JHipster 6 tutorial, and recorded a matching screencast. Within an hour of recording, I was on my way to the airport to fly to JHipster Conf.

I edited the screencast on my flight and published it to YouTube on my layover in Reykjavík. I was impressed that it uploaded just fine over airport Wi-Fi.

A Beautiful Adventure to JBCNConf, Barcelona, and Boston

I love it when school's out for summer. The feeling you on the last day of school as a kid is like no other. It's a terrific feeling. The feeling of freedom. Our kids graduated from 10th and 8th grade at the end of May. We didn't give them much time to rejoice and whisked them off to Barcelona for a few days at JBCNConf and a bit of family vacation.

Oh my, it was so much fun! First of all, there's nothing like traveling to a foreign land, bringing some of your favorite people with you, and getting to experience it with old and new friends. We arrived on Sunday and experienced a wonderful evening at a conservatory for the speaker's dinner.

GIDS 2019: Adventures in India

I had the pleasure of traveling to Bangalore, India last week for the 2019 edition of the Great International Developer Summit. GIDS is a conference that spans five days and has around 5000 developers each year. The conference charges on a per-day basis, and adds the attendees from each day to its total, so it's not huge, but it's pretty big with 1000+ developers each day.

A week before I left Denver, I solicited the advice of my good friend, Scott Davis. I asked him about the weather, the conference, and India in general. He advised me to wear lightweight clothing, no shorts when speaking and be wary of the wi-fi at the conference. He also mentioned the burgeoning microbrewery scene in "the Silicon Valley of India."

I've always been interested in traveling to India. My sister, Kalin, went there as part of her university studies 20 years ago. She studied Buddhism for four months on that journey and even got to meet the Dalai Lama. I thought it'd be fun to bring her along for my first trip to India. We rendezvoused in Seattle on the way, taking the picture below on Friday afternoon, April 19.

The JHipster Mini-Book v5.0 Released!

The JHipster Mini-Book v5.0 is now available as a free download from InfoQ. Get it while it's 🔥! You can also buy a print copy from Lulu. You can read more about this release on the JHipster Mini-Book blog.

The source code for the application developed in the book (21-Points Health) is available on GitHub.

Thanks to the InfoQ publishing team, Dennis Sharpe/Jeet Gajjar for tech editing, and Lawrence Nyveen for copy editing. And most of all, thank you Asciidoctor for making the publishing process so easy!