Raible Designs

What's the best Java Hosting Solution?

A friend recently asked me who I'd recommend for a Java hosting provider. Since I get asked this question every-so-often, it seemed appropriate to post my answer here.

1. KGB Internet - I use KGB for this site. I have my own JVM and have full control over what I want to install. I can control Tomcat versions and upgrade as needed. I don't know if I'd recommend him for a business site as he can take up to 12 hours to respond to requests.
2. Kattare - These guys will give you your own Tomcat instance and seem to have reasonable prices. They do seem to take quite some time to respond to requests (24-48 hours). I have a free instance that I use for a non-profit, so that could be the reason.
3. Contegix - These guys are far-and-away the best company for Java-based hosting. They're not cheap though. However, they have the best customer service in the business - often responding to e-mails in less than a minute.

Do you agree with these recommendations? If not, who do you recommend for Java hosting and why?

Subversion Hosting

In years past, I never had much of a need for source control outside of open source projects I worked on. Now, as I create more and more training materials and presentations - it's essential. While I could host a Subversion repository myself, it doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle. I'd prefer to have it hosted (and backed up regularly) outside of my house. This week I'm looking to setup svn.raibledesigns.com.

I'm not really looking to get my own Linux box hosted somewhere. I pay around $60/month to KGB Internet for raibledesigns.com, demo.appfuse.org and appfuse.org. To get my own "managed" box is somewhere around $300/month. When I say "managed", I mean Contegix-style where I can say "install this", "do that" and they handle all the sys-admin for you. So all I'm looking for is a reasonable SVN hosting provider that'll give me 1-2 GB for a reasonable price. What's reasonable? I'd say $25-50 per month.

I did some googling and there's a lot of Subversion hosting providers. I e-mailed a few of them with my main question - "can I point my subdomain at your servers?" A few of them have gotten back to me, but now I'm curious to hear from folks using these services. Are you using a Subversion hosting provider for your business? If so, which one?

I'm more interested in bad reviews than good ones - but if you're happy with a service, I'd love to hear about it.

The cheapest one I found is SVNRepository.com. However, it's been an hour since I e-mailed them and I haven't had a response. Nevertheless, $10/month for 5 GB, unlimited repositories, Trac instances, etc. sounds pretty nice.

Update August 2, 2007: I ended up going with SVNRepository.com (Level Two - $6.95/month) and I've been very happy with them. I'm using them for Raible Designs' artifacts (presentations, training materials) so I don't use it on a daily basis - more like monthly.

Southeast Light Rail

On my way in via Light Rail this morning, I noticed a sign with http://www.southeastlightrail.com on it. This site tells you about the new light rail that's opening in Denver in a few months. The road part of the T-Rex Project was finished last week, and we couldn't be happier. We finally got direct access to the freeway after 3 years! Aaaahhh, the things you notice with an EVDO card on the train...

Carpal Tunnel

Every month or so, after working a long-ass week, my left arm usually starts hurting as if I have carpal tunnel. Usually, I go get a massage and it feels better the next day, or a few days shortly after. The Massage Therapist always asks me if I've been diagnosed with carpal tunnel, to which I reply "No." They also ask me if I have tingling in my hands or forearms, and I always tell them "No, I just get a dull pain in my forearms when I work a long week." So I've never really had carpal tunnel AFAIK, just symptoms every month or so.

That all changed this week. I started noticing the dull pain in my left forearm at TSSJS, and I started noticing the tingling in my left hand yesterday. I've never had tingling before. Furthermore, last week was a pretty light typing week (but I might've played cards too much ). So now I'm worried; I'll probably get a massage this week and I have a chiropractor appointment next week. The only think I can think of that might be causing the tingling is: 1) riding my bike to work, or 2) the cheap-ass crappy keyboard I have at work.

I went to the Apple Store and CompUSA to get an ergonomic keyboard tonight, but had no luck. The Apple Store only sell the standard Apple keyboard and CompUSA only sells black Microsoft keyboards. The M$ keyboard's will work, but it seems wrong to hookup a Microsoft keyboard to a MacBook Pro with a cinema display. I have a meeting in South Denver tomorrow morning, so I'm going to stop by Micro Center. Hopefully they'll have something good.

Carpal Tunnel is a scary thing as a programming professional. It's one of the few things that can put you out of commission as a programmer. It looks like I'd better start taking it seriously if I want to keep slingin' code for the next 10 years.

Related: Carpal Tunnel in May 2004.

A Week Later: I went to a repetitive motion specialist yesterday. They said that hand surgeons hate them b/c they can solve most issues. They worked my left arm and hand, and expect everything to be better with a couple more treatments. It already feels a lot better, but I'm also doing stretches every hour - which helps a lot too.

Subversion options for open source projects?

I've been using Subversion on quite a few projects lately and I have a hard time switching back to CVS. I currently use CVS for most open source projects, particularly AppFuse and Equinox - which I work on the most. A discussion started this morning on the AppFuse Mailing List about moving to Subversion. While I'd love to do this, I'd prefer to do it at java.net - so I don't have to completely abandon our hosted environment there. However, I don't think java.net is planning to offer Subversion anytime soon. If we move source control to somewhere else, we're pretty much just using it for the mailing list. Then again, the mailing list archive kinda sucks and you can't get it archived by mail-archive.com.

That being said, it might be nice to host everything ourselves. This might allow us to get something like Jive Forums setup. WebWork uses it and it has a pretty cool feature that the mailing list and forums are integrated (messages go to both). While the idea of self-hosting sounds appealing, it also sounds like it might be a lot of work. For hosted SVN options, it seems that there's JavaForge, Codehaus (which I believe is invite-only) and CVSDude. Any other options you know of?

BabyBash - kids love it!

A few months ago, I saw Toby Reyelts' post about a game he wrote called BabyBash. I downloaded it when I first saw it and let Abbie play it. She loved it immediately, and would ask me to play it whenever she saw I was "working" on the computer. Of course, she'd say "Daddy - no working" first, and then say "play Abbie's game?".

Then I lost the link for a couple of months and this conversation turned very sour. A couple of weeks ago, I found the link and vowed to never let it go again. This morning, I gave Jack a run at the game (he's almost 8 months now) and he loved it too! It probably doesn't hurt that they're playing it on a 23" display.

If you've have small children, you should really let them try this game. Thanks Toby - you rock!

[ANN] Struts Menu 2.3 Released

Download · Release Notes. This release's major feature is the complete de-coupling from Struts - so that no struts.jar is required in the classpath anymore. Of course, if you have it in there, it's used as before. This release was primarily motivated by my need to include this in the WebWork version of AppFuse. In addition, I fixed a lot of bugs that I never even realized were entered. I'm monitoring the tracker's now - hopefully the delay won't happen again.

Additional Struts Menu Links:

• Project Home
• Demo