Raible Designs

GMail or .Mac?

I don't feel like creating another @raibledesigns.com account because I can't think of anything that looks good. I like matt@ and mraible@ or raible@ just doesn't feel right. So I have a gmail.com and a mac.com account - and I'm thinking of using one of those for my primary account. GMail kinda sucks because you're stuck using the web interface and I like using mail clients like Apple's Mail, Outlook or Thunderbird. .Mac allows both webmail and POP/IMAP, but they only have 15 MB of space. I'm used to unlimited space with raibledesigns.com, so using an account with limited space would be tough. .Mac has synching of contacts, which is a huge plus though. What do you recommend?

Deleting my e-mail account is going to be a real pain - I'm just starting to realize how many online accounts I have it hooked up to. Oh well, maybe alienating myself from those accounts will free up some time as well.

Working too much - what about office hours?

I currently work too much. I can feel it in my shoulders and I know it because I hardly ever exercise. Even worse, I know it because Julie tells me so and Abbie doesn't get to see enough of her Daddy. In addition to working all week, I work early mornings on the weekends, but that tends to spill into late mornings. I also try to cram in a couple hours during Abbie's nap - which usually spills over past when she gets up. During the week, I'll start at 4 or 5, and I'll need to get something done, so I'll work until 7. After Abbie goes to bed, I often hop on the computer again and work until midnight or later. It's easy getting 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week for a client. It's hard doing AppFuse support and writing Spring Live on the side. I virtually ignore all the e-mail on the other open source projects I'm on - it's the only way to keep my sanity.

This madness is likely to continue. The only way to reasonably handle my e-mail (> 1000 day - after spam filters) is to check it every couple of hours. That can't continue, so I'm going to have to change my e-mail address. Sorry folks, it's the easiest solution. I'll decide my new one after the holiday weekend, but matt AT raibledesigns.com will start going to /dev/null.

Julie and I've been talking today and we're trying to come up with more solutions to me working so much - especially since a fair amount of it doesn't pay. We're thinking the best solution is Office Hours. When I work from home, I work too much. When I go into a client's office, I tend to end my day when I get home. So, from now on, I'm going to try and only work from 8 to 5 MDT (-7 GMT). Actually, Julie says she doesn't care if I work before 8, I just need to be done at 5 to play with Abbie and join Julie when she goes to bed.

To help accomplish this, I'm going to start closing the door to my office and using the backdoor to leave and come back during the day. Hopefully it'll be like an office away from home. I'll likely be working on Spring Live in the mornings from 4-8 and doing some AppFuse support as well. My best bet is probably e-mail/blogging from 4-5:30 and writing from 5:30-8 (at the local bagel shop). I'll let you know how it goes. I'd also like to hear other ideas from you "I work too much" guys/gals out there - I know there's lots of you.

XDoclet and Hibernate Tutorial

I've used XDoclet and Hibernate for quite some time - but I'm sure I could stand to learn more. That's why I'm linking to this XDoclet and Hibernate Tutorial (found on JRoller). Hopefully I'll have some time to read through it after the long holiday weekend.

Jetty and WebSphere suck, JRun and Tomcat rule the pack

I've been looking for an app server performance comparison for some time now. Maybe those folks that say Tomcat sucks and Jetty rules will change their tune. Via Lasse Koskela:

Web Performance Inc. has published a very interesting report, which included a couple of surprises. Jetty pretty much sucked, JRun was one of the top guns, and Tomcat wasn't too far behind JRun.

Anyone know of any similar (recent) comparisons?

Pictures from the debauchery at JavaOne

Java, Booze and Porn - what more can you ask for? I met a whole lotta folks this week - and had an awesome time. I highly recommend the networking track at JavaOne.

[Monday · Tuesday · Wednesday]

Escaping from the Chozgobbling Asshats

Bruce and I managed to ditch all the "chozgobbling asshats" in downtown San Fran at about 3:30 this morning. We packed and caught the hotel's limo to SFO - then proceeded to act drunk and stupid. So stupid in fact that we had to go through security twice. We arrived here at 4:15 and I finally got to my gate at 5:20. Too bad my flight doesn't leave until 8.

To all the asshats: are you man enough to do it again at OSCON?

It was a fun week gents - thanks for all the pics. ;-)

[JavaOne] Developing Eclipse Plugins

I briefly broke my mantra this afternoon and went to a session on Java Studio Creator. I lasted just past the agenda before I walked out. It looked to be a justification talk - telling us that Creator was made for corporate dummies that don't write code for a living. I skipped across the hall to a session on developing plugins for Eclipse. It was quite interesting and really made it look easy to develop plugins. I almost fell asleep quite a few times, but that's probably from the booze still peculating in my veins.

The best thing I got from the talk was tips and tricks for developing with Eclipse. I watched Eric Gamma do a lot of shortcuts to and quick fixes that I didn't know about. I probably won't remember them past today, but they were cool nevertheless. Now I'm off to the hotel to charge my camera and get ready to pull an all-nighter before our early-morning departure.

[JavaOne] What's new and cool in the J2ME Wireless ToolKit

I'm continuing my theme to only attend sessions I know little about. I'm sitting in a session on the J2ME Wireless ToolKit. So far it's fairly boring. This guy's been rambling on for a while about all the JSRs that the toolkit implements. Now he's doing a demo and using the Network Monitor to demonstrate looking at the HTTP requests when making soap calls.

This is only my 4th session of JavaOne, and I haven't been to any BOFs. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. Most of my time in Moscone is spent sitting in the main lobby, hacking away at my e-mail and talking with folks. I never imagined I'd meet so many people. It's pretty damn cool to meet all the bloggers.

The tools and demo that this guy is showing look like good monitoring and emulating tools. The WTK doesn't appear to have an IDE, just a way to run midlets and see the results. It doesn't appear to have an IDE. If I was to compare this to the web world, I'd say that the WTK is really just a web browser. Of course, it's much more than that since it can emulate HTTP requests, and well as bluetooth. From what I can tell, a midlet is really just a Java application that can run on a mobile device. After googling a bit, it looks like I was right. How easy is it to unit test midlets? Do you have to constantly use an emulator to test stuff? I'd like to write an AppFuse client for my phone, but I also want to use TDD to do it.

I missed the rest of the presentation b/c I got lost in reading blogs. Attending these sessions with an open laptop is not a good idea. I hope I can make one more session today - my goal was 5 for the week. As Dion said, this conference is all about networking.

Wednesday - the booze fest continues

Went to bed at 5, up at 9. I haven't had a hangover this week, and I'm still drunk from last night. As I'm sobering up at 1:00 in the afternoon, I feel my breakfast making an attempt to see the light of day. I have lots of photos (and video) from the evening's activities, but no cord to upload them onto my computer and the web. Will do so tomorrow. These Java guys can't dance for shit. I could use another Irish Car Bomb right now. 5 and 1/2 hours until the festivities begin again. Bruce and I have a 6 a.m. flight to Denver tomorrow - should be fun going to the airport. Maybe we should just check out of hotel today.

Rendezvous for Windows, can be called from Java

Rendezvous rocks on the Mac. Wouldn't it be nice if you could use it between platforms or even in your Java apps? You will be able to shortly...

Apple released a developer's preview of Rendezvous Networking for Windows 2000 & XP at wwdc 04. ... Also released was support for various POSIX platforms, including Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD, as well as making it callable from Java. [MacRumors]