Raible Designs

Dinner.

Mophoto-ing begins!

I'm off on my first MoPhoto Adventure. Watch this site for pictures as they happen. Hopefully, Erik will make an appearance on this site as the night rolls on. ;-)

JSP Plugin for Eclipse?

Does anyone know of a good JSP Plugin for Eclipse? I've found that the available XML and JSP Editors are not very good, and I resort to HomeSite (which I love) for most of my regular text editing. I'd love to find a tool that does code completion for JSPs. I suppose I could use Dreamweaver, but they don't have a copy here in the office. BTW, I found the Lomboz plugin, but it doesn't appear to be latest-eclipse-release compliant.

RE: GC settings to improve Eclipse performance

I changed my shorcut icon (Win2K) to have the following as it's target:

eclipse.exe -vmargs -Xverify:none -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:PermSize=20M  
 -XX:MaxNewSize=32M -XX:NewSize=32M -Xmx256m -Xms256m

Eclipse now starts in a mere 6 seconds (2 GHz Dell, 512 MB RAM). Without these extra settings, it takes 11 seconds to start. That's what I call a performance increase!

The CommuniCam is in my possession!

I received the CommuniCam today and it's not as bad as I expected. The pictures have horrible resolution when viewing them on the phone, but don't appear half bad on a computer screen. Granted, they definitely look like they're taken with a cheap digital camera, but that is what it is. I'm looking forward to using it tomorrow night, but I probably won't be able to post the pictures in real time. It's at Qwest in downtown Denver, and cell coverage sucks there. I know because Julie used to work in that building.

Now I just have to figure out how to upgrade my phone's firmware so I can get the zoom capability. I read it's possible on AT&T's forums last week, but can't seem to find the link.

Struts from Scratch

More goodness from the struts-user list this afternoon. In reality, I don't know why I'm posting these as I'm not planning on reading them - maybe in hopes that some of you will find it interesting. Could be that I worked until 3:30 last night and got up again at 7. Red Bull at lunch and I feel like I got a full night's sleep!

Struts from Scratch covers a Struts install from ground zero.

It provides detailed install and configuration steps for a beginning Struts application. It comes with a basic sample application and basic Ant build script (available for download from http://www.strutskickstart.com).

[ANNOUNCE] Struttin' With Struts beta

Rick Reumann has put together a nice website with tutorials for learning Struts. From the struts-user mailing list:

I created a web site that walks new Struts users step by step through the development of three VERY simple web applications in three lessons. Each lesson adds a few more features so that they build upon each other yet each stands alone such that if you follow the steps in any lesson you'll have built a very basic application regardless of which lesson you start with.

I created these because there seemed to be lacking some more recent "walk through" Struts tutorials geared toward the very new Struts developer. I think real newbies will find them especially useful, but then again I could be way wrong:)

I'm considering the site a "beta" because I'm sure there will be some mistakes. If anyone sees something I'm doing in a lesson that is way off (or a very bad practice) please let me know. Some of the stuff I know could be done in a more "best practice" way, but for the sake of trying to also keep the lessons small and simple some ideas weren't included (ie- I didn't use a constants interface for my forward definitions).

If anyone wants to contribute, reword, or add anything please let me know. The site is there to help others. I got really lazy in a lot of places and didn't say much about certain things that I would have liked to. Hopefully over time the site will improve.

Struttin' with Struts:

http://www.reumann.net/do/struts/main

-- Rick

Thanks Rick - looks very cool! I like the design too - nice work!

Multiple Monitors? Get this software!

I haven't used Synergy, but Chris seems to like it. It sure sounds cool.

With synergy, all the computers on your desktop form a single virtual screen. You use the mouse and keyboard of only one of the computers while you use all of the monitors on all of the computers. You tell synergy how many screens you have and their positions relative to one another. Synergy then detects when the mouse moves off the edge of a screen and jumps it instantly to the neighboring screen. The keyboard works normally on each screen; input goes to whichever screen has the cursor.

I highly recommend setting up dual monitors if you are a developer. I did it this summer after purchasing a 19" Dell Trinitron for $150 from eBay. If you're buying off eBay, make sure you know exactly what monitor you're getting. The first one I bought was a 21" Sony that sucked. Luckily, I was able to re-sell it fairly easily. Now, I actually believe that my two 19" Trinitrons might be better than the 23" Cinema Display I long for.

[ANNOUNCE] JDK 1.4.1 for OS X has been Released! (finally)

Don't give me the credit, Matthew Porter hooked me up with the news:

Yes, it is true. Java 1.4.1 for Mac OS X is finally out. Run System Update to get it! Also, check out Apple's Java page.

Downloading now...

RE: Blogging mainstream?

Tom Klaasen writes:

Articles like CNN.com - Blogging goes mainstream - Mar. 10, 2003 seem to indicate that the "business people" are starting to smell money in the blogging area. So enjoy it while it lasts, kids, because soon, you'll be slammed with ads like any Internet page nowadays.

Ads might pester your readers, unless you use and host your own weblog like Roller, MiniBlog, or Blojsom. So my advice is, be kind to your readers - if ads start showing up on your blog without your permission - it's time to move it.