Raible Designs

RE: Sun to Rave about ease of use at JavaOne

Does Sun have something cool up there sleeve? Or do they have something they think is cool? As far as I can tell, they thing that Sun ONE is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm sure it is when compared to their iPlanet products. I should know, I've done way too much development on iPlanet. Actually, most of the coding I did was workarounds, rather than writing code. Anyway, I found this post on architectslobby.org that indicates that Sun thinks they've got something good.

Sun Microsystems next week will unveil a developer tool and community portal designed to broaden the appeal of its Java programming language.

The new developer tool, code-named Project Rave, will be demonstrated at Sun's JavaOne Conference in San Francisco next week. It will incorporate the JavaServer Faces Web APIs as well as a number of Java Web services and database connectivity technologies, all with the aim of making Java development -- and in particular, Java Web services development -- easier to do. [Full Article]

I doubt it'll be that good - just some enhancements to Sun ONE Studio I expect. If it was written in SWT, and it was open source (so we could all make it better) - that would be very cool! But I doubt that'll happen. The'll also be going live with java.net (whois record). Hope it's good - it's going to take a lot to make me want to read java.net over java.blogs.

Regardless of this announcement (and the new logo), next week IS going to be a good week. Java will be on the spotlight and in the news, and we all get to look forward to a vibrant week of blogging and announcements. Cool - I can't wait!

[Ant] Trying to override old definition of task $taskname

I've seen the following message printed out as part of our build process for quite a few months now - and decided to try and fix it today.

compile-common:
Trying to override old definition of task runservertests
Trying to override old definition of task canoo
Trying to override old definition of task dbunit

I found that moving my <taskdef>'s from the root level (right under <project>) to inside my "init" target fixed the problem. Easy fix, no more messages.

Roller.com is For Sale

I've been doing some research, trying to purchase roller.com or roller.org. Why? For the simple reason that I'd rather type "roller" than "rollerweblogger" whenever I go to rollerweblogger.org. I'm sure that folks that type in "raibledesigns.com" might feel the same frustration. There's always javawebapps.com, but that's pretty long too. What about mattraible.com? Needless to say, I found some humor when the folks at roller.com replied to my e-mail about the price of roller.com:

We want US $20,000.

Ha! I'm guessing this domain will remain for sale for many years to come.

New Computer Contemplations

I'm thinking of getting a new computer. I currently have two Dell Dimension 8100's (1.5 GHz). One runs Windows XP and has 1 GB of RAM. The other, Red Hat 9 with 768 MB RAM. The reason I want a new one is that it's tough to ignore the performance increase from a faster CPU on my work machine, a Dell OptiPlex GX260 (2 GHz, 512 MB RAM). Also, my Dimensions are 2 years old and that's about the end life for a computer these days (if you're a developer that prefers Windows like me).

So the question is: Can I combine my two 8100's into a kick-ass Linux box. It has dual-processor capabilities (1 GB max RAM though) and I'm wondering if the performance increase is that significant. Is it easy to do?

What will I get next? I'm thinking about a Dell Laptop. Don't know which one, but I've never skimped on price (I have a PowerBook), so performance and wireless are the most important. Suggestions are encouraged. I like Dell because their customer service rocks - whenever anything has broken/failed on my machine, they've come out to my house within 48 hours and fixed it. This has only happened once (video card went bad).

Why don't I just get a new PowerBook? Because they're slow - especially for Java. And I'm slow on a PowerBook. Windows keyboard shortcuts are imbedded in my brain and I can easily get something done twice as fast on Windows as I can on a Mac. Java tools work best on Windows and Linux. I have to give it to Apple that Java client apps run best on a Mac, but I'm not developing those, or using those, so who cares. Actually, what I'd like to do is run Red Hat as the primary OS and run VMWare with Windows XP. VMWare is very fast and IMHO works just as well as a dual-boot machine. Unlike Virtual PC, which is slower than molasses in January.

RE: Dumbing-down AOP

Merrick Schincariol explains Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) and attempts to dumb-it-down to my level. This is not an easy task, but he does it well. [Blogging Roller]

This is a great article - thanks Merrick. This is what I've always thought it was, but I was never quite sure. If all I need to do (to implement AOP) is add the aspect class to my classpath - this seems super simple. This doesn't make me want to refactor any existing projects to use AOP, but it does make me want to use it on my next project. Then again, appfuse and moblogger have a pretty small codebase at this point - maybe now is the time for refactoring?

New Theme Switcher

I finally decided to replace my old theme-switcher with a more standard one. Switch themes all you like with the drop-down below the search box. If the text is too small right now, try the sunset theme, I think you'll like it. I noticed the Aqua theme needs a little work on the date bar, but I'm guessing no one uses it, so I'm not too concerned. Future enhancements (in the next 6 months - 1 year) include adding this to the X2 theme in Roller, as well as changing the drop-down to a slick "customize" button like the one found on Netscape's DevEdge (top right corner). Let me know if you experience any issues.

My main reason for doing this was so I could validate my CSS, which obviously needs some work!

The Pragmatic Programmer

I began reading The Pragmatic Programmer this morning. I bought the book after hearing that it was Erik Hatcher's favorite technical book. Since Erik's Java Development with Ant was my favorite technical book - I figured this was a good recommendation. I've read one chapter and I'm loving it. This book will inspire me to be a better programmer - I can already tell.

I don't do nearly enough reading - too much blogging and OS development. So I'm going to try to read more - as David and Andrew recommend - at least one book a month. Actually, I'm going to shoot for two books per month - one technical and one non-technical. I'd compare this book to Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which I think is a great book for motivating good financial health. I read that bad boy last week in 2 hours!

[ANNOUNCE] Struts BSF (Scriptable Actions) 0.3

Boy, Don Brown is a busy man this week. He releases a new version of the Struts Cacoon plugin on Monday, and today he released a new version of Struts BSF.

This project allows Struts Actions to be written in the scripting language of one's choice rather than as Java classes. It uses the Beans Scripting Framework to allow scripts to be written in any language BSF supports like Perl, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, BeanShell, and I believe even VBScript.

Version 0.3 adds the ability to pass parameters from the Struts config file, a pluggable filter system to pre-define custom variables, more documentation, and more. [Learn More]

Looks cool, but I have no need (currently). If you're using the BSF and have experiences to share, please do so. I'm interested, it just hasn't made it past my crap filter yet.

A little excitement in the Open Source Community

From Matt Croydon:

Thanks to Russ and the guys at #mobitopia, here's an Inquirer article on the JBoss fork/coup:

8:00 am -- Seven consultants for The JBoss Group publicly announced the immediate termination of their contracts and the foundation of their new company, Core Developers Network. Their charter "is to provide a commercial infrastructure to enable open source contributors to deliver their professional expertise to the marketplace, independent of their contributions to open source projects".

For some reason, reading the article made my heart beat a little faster. Good? Bad? Who cares! It's engrossing!

Draggable IFRAMEs

Matt Kruse's JavaScript Toolbox is awesome. So good, in fact, that I've actually made a donation (small, but nevertheless, a donation). Today, I noticed a new script: Draggable IFRAMEs. I dig it. Don't know that I'll ever use it, but I've always liked drag n' drop examples for the web. While they are cool, I've found that sometimes a true popup window is much easier.