Raible Designs

Try this sucker out with an attachment.

Moblogger enabled for this blog

I enabled Russ's Mobblogger for this site this evening. In fact, I'm typing this post in an e-mail (complete with HTML). I found a couple of issues and I have a couple of questions:

Issue #1: The FTP doesn't seem to support symlinks. I wanted to create a symlink so the <ftpDir> would point to my /repository/images directory. No dice. It wouldn't recognize the symlink as a directory. As a workaround, I put a symlink in /repository to point to ~/moblog/media.

Issue #2: Moblogger uses a relative path for it's URLs in images and other media. Right now, it's hard-coded to do <img src="media/filename.ext" .../> I altered the MailProcessor.java class to use a path for my media assets of "/repository/media" so that the above symlink would work. Since Roller uses /page/username for its sites, a relative path wouldn't work. Maybe this could be a configuration parameter - hint, hint ;-)

Issue #3: The script to run mobblogger on *nix didn't have quartz.jar in the classpath. And for some reason, I had to remove "#!/bin/sh" from the top of the file in order for it to run on my RedHat 8 machine. And it also only runs while I'm logged in. Does anyone know how to set this up to run constantly? Should I do it as a cron job or something? It's just a java -cp ... command.

I might set this up on the server where this site is hosted, but it seems to work fine on my local machine right now, so I'll just leave it there. I doubt I'll even ever use it. For one, I don't have a camera for my phone, and that'd be the only really cool thing to use it for. Maybe I'll post an e-mail everyone once it awhile, but most of the posts I want to write are pretty long. That might take a while, even with T9. Oh well, it's still cool software and I dig it. Thanks Russ!

[ANNOUNCE] Ant 1.5.2 Released

It actually happened yesterday, but I've seen little signs of the word being spread, so I'm here to help. Get it from the main distribution site while the mirrors catch up. I don't think it has anything I need at this point. But I'm upgrade happy, so I'll do it tomorrow.

Ant JMeter Task

By now, you've probably heard of JMeter. It's basically a Swing-based performance testing framework. From the struts-user list today, I found out there's a JMeter Ant Task. Sweet - looks easy to use too. Now if I could just figure out JMeter, or better yet - be tasked with actually implementing it. I've played with it a couple of times, but never long enough to get something I rely on and use.

Anthill, on the other hand, was so easy to install and use that I've set it up at home and I've automated some of my projects' build/deploy processes. I might have to add Roller to the mix. If I were real daring, I could set it up on this server and build/deploy Roller every day or so. Of course, I wouldn't keep this site up to the latest version - I'd setup a 2nd instance of Roller. Any interest in this? Or better yet, do you know anyone that's hosting an Anthill install that we can use?

[ANNOUNCE] Tomcat 5.0.1 Alpha Released!

This is huge for me, as I need to start working with JSP 2.0 for my own personal satisfaction (less code == more productivity). I know that Resin supports JSP 2.0 as well, but I'm familiar with Tomcat and it's free. The most I've ever done with Resin (to this point) is to install it. To my knowledge, Resin is not free (esp. when I'm running a business site like this one). Anyway, on with the e-mail from the tomcat-user mailing list.

Tomcat 5.0.1 Alpha is now available for testing.

This is actually the first real milestone of Tomcat 5, as Tomcat 5.0.0 did not include any new feature over 4.1.x other than the support for Servlet API 2.4 drafts and JSP 2.0 drafts.

Tomcat 5.0.1 includes:
- improved performance (with additional improvements planned)
- complete montoring capabilities through JMX, with JSR 77 support
- clustering capabilities (not included with that build as a binary)
- JMX configuration capabilities
- with a lot more to come in later milestones

[Downloads]

Roller Updates

I sat down this evening at 8 o'clock to make a few Roller updates. On my list was the following:

• Update this site with the latest release.
• Add ability to have comment's e-mailed to the website owner.
• Add "Remember Me" feature for comment authors.
• Add "Remember Me" feature to the Roller Editor - so you, the blogger, doesn't need to login anymore.

I'm happy to say I completed them all. I'm disappointed to say that it's now 3:30 AM and this site doesn't seem that stable. :( Oh well, hopefully it's better than before. I ended up removing a bunch of the sample apps I had hosted, as they might be contributing to my OutOfMemory errors (as far as I know).

South Florida Job Market

I received the following e-mail from one of the JUG contacts I e-mailed this weekend. Yikes!

If you are moving to South Florida in hopes of finding a job ...well, this may the worst location in the county for that. I would say 1/3 of the user group is employed 1/3 are students and 1/3 or even more have been laid off and looking for other ways of making a living -- many hope through Java or some other technology. All in all, this is an incredibly tough tech market right now.

I'd be willing to bet that most of the folks that attend the Denver JUG are unemployed too. My highest attendence record was when I was looking for a new gig.

The Debate is flawed: Struts vs. WebWork

Personally, I think the debate between Struts and WebWork is irrelevant. This is because I don't think that the Web Application frameworks are the problem. I spend most of my days getting persistence to work. Granted it's gotten a whole lot easier with Hibernate, but I've spent a lot of time tackling that learning curve in the last couple of months. Thanks to Dave Johnson and Gavin King for guiding me up the curve. I spend about 30 minutes each day writing Struts-related code, if that. More time is spent writing tests, CSS, JavaScript (the most time) and DAO's/Managers.

So the problem is my brain. If I could just get the damn thing to work right - it wouldn't matter which framework I chose, because I'd just know it. No learning curve == awesome productivity.

The WebWork guys claim to have this. Therefore, I'm interested. However, who's hiring WebWork gurus? Heh - I know - what I really need to do is learn WebWork and then I can offer an unbiased opinion. Right now, no one is offering an unbiased opinion. Patrick is heavily invested in Struts, as am I. Heck, I've written a chapter about it and I've used it on many project. Jason is invested in WebWork as he's a committer.

Baaah, I'm just gonna learn .NET - that's where the Florida Jobs are. Struts .NET and WebWork .NET - maybe I should work on getting those started. ;-) The post is meant to be read with a smile on your face - I don't want to start yet another flame war.

Hibernate's Query Language (HQL) vs. Object Query Language (OQL)

Gavin King has posted an interesting comparison between Hibernate's Query Language and ODMG's OQL Specification. This might be interesting if you're familiar with OQL. For me, I know SQL and using HQL is so similar to SQL that I hardly even know I'm writing it most of the time. I think HQL will become a de facto standard in the coming years. Does JDO use OQL? Is anyone even using JDO?! It's strange because the only Java projects I'm familiar with (or hear about) are the ones from Java Bloggers - and everyone seems to be migrating to Hibernate. Good idea IMO!

Will Apple release JDK 1.4.1 today?

According to MacRumors.com, Apple should be releasing JDK 1.4.1 Final today. I sure hope so. The latest release (Developer Preview 10) has been working fairly well for me. Then again, I only do server-side Java, so I'm sure my perspective is skewed. My fingers are crossed.