Raible Designs

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.

Exceptions and Amazon.com

The March issue of Java Developers Journal has a great article on anti-patterns concerning exceptions (not published online yet). After reading it, I can see I need to improve my exception handling, as I'm tossing a DAOException in my database layer, and a plain ol' Exception in my services layer. Since all my services layer does is convert object types -> strings (and executing business rules), I should probably change it to throw a generic BusinessException and a ConversionException. Too bad there's no link, hopefully soon.

In other news, we stopped by Barnes and Nobles for a Starbucks today. While there, I noticed a book my sister gave me for Christmas and I said to Julie, "I should read that sucker while you're gone next week." She sheepishly admitted that she'd sold it on Amazon a few weeks ago! Since it was a gift (from my sister), and I really do want to read it, I decided to buy it. The line was long and slow, so rather than buying it there, I used my phone and bought it online from Amazon. I searched, selected, logged in and I was done. They had a great message after logging in:

Yes, it really was that easy. Your order will be shipped to your one-click address.

Fricken sweet! The Internet Rocks and it's only gonna get better...

MoPhoto'd

Well, I went ahead and ordered the Communicam from AT&T and it should be hear in 3 days or so. Julie thinks I'm crazy, and she's probably right that the camera sucks, but I want to be a moblogger. I want to post pictures and blog, in real time. My first adventure? I hope to mophoto Erik at the Denver JUG meeting a week from today. That is, if I get the camera and figure it out in time.

Struts Training (Darn Cheap too)

If you're looking to learn more about advanced features of Struts, you might want to checkout BaseBeans's upcoming training. I received the following e-mail in my Inbox this evening.

Announce: "*Best Practices in Struts -  Web Training*" by Cekvenich, 
Husted, and Turner and a presentation by Momjian on PostgreSQL. (each a 
published author)

Struts 1.1 might be released in March, so every Saturday at 10:30 AM 
Easter, watch and hear presentation via WebEx.com.

Meeting #	Date	 Title
616291003	1-Mar	 MVC Intermediate Setup
614301419	8-Mar	 MVC View for CMS/Contact
611367121	15-Mar 	 MVC – Ted Advanced + DAO Lab
611903740	22-Mar	 MVC – Bruce pgSQL + Multi Row Lab
611213868	29-Mar	 MVC - Turner + Options/Nested
(once you connect via PC, telecom phone is 1-408-964-1050)

This presentation is almost FREE (other than the cost of WebEx), the 
sooner you register, the cheaper it is.

A week of training by others could be $2400! Plus travel costs. Plus 
they did not get voted best, baseBeans.com did!

Register and pay at: http://www.basebeans.com/do/classReservation
Cost of all 5 sessions + labs (8 hours for each session) is .... $155 if 
you pre-register, or $275 if you late register and $475 if you register 
in March.

Labs (on your own time, hours each) include: Multi Row Updates, 
Validation, Tiles, Navigation, EL, Nested, Options, CRUD, etc. full 
agenda was published.

Each lab is at least 8 hours and required, if you do not do the labs, 
the next presentation will not make sense, no pretenders here. No money 
back for this, other baseBeans.com presentations are money back!

I'd sign up, but Saturdays are reserved for Julie and Abbie.

RE: Client-side Sorting with the DOM

After working the DOM for the past few days, I'm somewhat motivated to make my table row sorting demo support paging. In reality, it doesn't matter which table-sorting code I use, Erik Arvidsson has a nice example too. My logic is that I usually query a database and return all the rows for a particular table anyway, sometimes based on a search. Since I'm retrieving all these rows from the database, why not send them all to the UI. It might take a bit longer for the initial request, but then again, maybe not. I'm sure it's a different story for 10,000 records, but what if I only ever expect to have < 100 rows. Here's how I think I can do it:

1. Retrieve all the rows and put them in a table.
2. Call a JavaScript function on load that sets all <tr>'s (i.e. var rows = table.getElementsByTagName("tr")) with a rowIndex > 20 to rows[i].style.display = "none".
3. When a user clicks on a page number, do the math and set rows[i].style.display="" or rows[i].style.display="none" to show/hide particular rows.

BTW, I've added support in my local copy of the sortTable.js script to do sorting of <input> elements, as well as <select> elements. I can update the demo if anyone needs this functionality. Also, the W3C has a cool utility to check out what level of DOM support your browser has (based on user agent).

NOTE: I tried to manage my time today to be more productive, and succeeded at most things. I woke up at 3:30 this morning and got an hour and a half worth of editing done. I worked 8 1/2 hours at the office, and was home by 3:30. I was planning on working another 1 1/2 on editing, but it was a nice day so Julie, Abbie and I went on a hike at Red Rocks instead. I met a friend at 5:30 for an hour and a half of hoops, and returned home at 7:30. I got on this damn computer at 8:00 to do my evening editing, but instead ended up blogging and reading blogs for the last hour and a half. A month ago, I'd stay up late and still get my editing done. Not now, Abbie is much more fun and editing just doesn't sound interesting at all.

TiVo Upgrade Offer

If you're a TiVo owner, you've probably seen this upgrade offer in your TiVo messages. It looks awfully tempting:

Between now and March 10th (or while supplies last), we're offering you the one-time opportunity to make the switch to Series2 and transfer your product lifetime service. Ramp up your recording space to 80 hrs and gear up for Home Media Option.

For an additional $100, you can get the "Home Media Option" package and access MP3s, Photos, and schedule programs to record from the web. This is a good time management tool if you're a TV watcher. I grew up without a TV, so I don't really like watching TV and I think it's a waste of time. However, Julie is a TV addict - so much that she has to have it on all night while she sleeps. When I do watch TV, TiVo is a must.

Cool CSS Design

I do like Russ's new design, and I'm almost inspired to redesign myself. Naaahhh, I think I'll save that for a when I'm really bored, or maybe when Julie's in Florida for a week in March. The reason I'm writing this post is to point out the sweet DHTML over at the International Herald Tribune that Russ mentions. In the bottom right corner of the page, you can adjust the font-size and number of columns. Very cool - and the top menu floats while you scroll. All cool stuff and nicely done.

Wireless Printer Server and USB Hub?

I got my Wireless Print Server to work and I have a Canon S900 plugged into it for printing photos. I think this is a great photo printer, but Julie likes the ones we order through iPhoto better. Anyway, I also bought a USB Hub to hook up to the print server, in hopes of hooking up multiple printers. No such luck - when I hook up the hub, I can't find any printers (with the Linksys tools). Has anyone out there done this successfully?

RE: No Clock and Unplugged

Mark shares his frustration with the fact that he can get away from work in his No Clock post:

There is only one long continuous 24-hour day that is always work, always office, and I never punch in and I never punch out.

I hear him loud and clear. Lately, I've been working ~40 hour weeks and not doing any moonlighting - so I actually feel like I get to punch out. Except for my I-want-to-work-on-Roller (but evenings with Abbie and Julie are much more fun) syndrome, my life is completely and utterly enjoyable again. I don't even feel the need to unplug. But I probably should, as we all should. I challenge you all to follow in Mark's footsteps and unplug when you get a chance. I will be attempting to unplug this weekend when my parents are in town - but everyone is very computer-literate in my family, so I'm sure my mom, dad, sister and wife will all be checking e-mail and surfing all weekend, so it'll be difficult to restrain myself. It'd help a lot if all of you quit writing interesting stuff on you blogs. ;-) Next weekend I will be for sure unplugging as a few college buddies and I will be renting a condo in the hills and skiing all weekend.

Pictures from Florida

We certainly had a great time this weekend in West Palm Beach (Florida). We saw a bunch of Julie's high school friends, and also had lots of fun hanging out with Grammy. The sign below made me laugh - I hope it has the same effect on you. Click on it for more pictures.