I've reinstalled Eclipse like 5 times in the last 6 months. It's not an Eclipse issue, it's just that I keep trying different operating systems and different machines (fun but makes life a little crazy).

Anyway, for some reason I can never remember how to turn on line numbering in Eclipse.

To turn on line numbering in Eclipse:

• Windows | Preferences
• General | Editors | Text Editors
• click the “Show Line Numbers”

Eclipse and JEE with Bill Heitzeg

Even though I was the leader last night, I learned quite a few things. First apparently when you're logged into google it returns "your" top searches, not necessarily "The" top searches. Thanks to Jay Harris for that.

I tried last night to mix lecture and the practical. We worked through the foundations of JEE (the Servlet and the jsp page) using Eclipse. It was very hard to do in an hour, but from the feedback I got, everyone seemed like they learned something they didn't already know. As Jay Harris said "Sometime's clicking on New Project for the first time is the hardest part of coding". He was full of sage wisdom last night.

Next week Chris Marinos is leading on F#. Tonight Chris is speaking on F# at Ann Arbor Dot Net Developers. Don't miss it.

First Friday in November at Tech Town

I was down at Detroit's Tech Town on Friday. We, meaning Stout Systems, have our own office at Tech Town. Each First Friday of any given month, Tech Town holds a mentoring session in the afternoon and a First Friday event which includes guest speakers and lots of food.

We hold our monthly meeting in the morning and then John Stout and I go to the mentoring session. What a great way to stay connected and to give something back. As mentors we're asked to help local startups and let me tell you, there are some amazing ideas coming out of Tech Town and it's entrepreneur community. It was really fun to meet some of the new entrepreneurs and to get with some that I've known for almost a year and see how they've gained business and grown their organizations.

Thanks to all the folks who make Tech town possible.

It took me an hour to write this line of code

String valueAsHTML = getContext().renderTemplate("/newsletter/newsletterPreview.htm", model);

It's a very cool line of code, but a whole hour? In software development, at least half of development is what you know. Since I didn't know how to use Apache Click to render HTML into a string, I had to spend some time looking for it. Now I can send my Apache Click page through email!

It is a cool line of code, thanks to: Malcom Egar-2 at Nabble.

Software Development Study Group - Ruby On Rails with Marina Fedner

Even though I didn't work the prerequisites (more on that later) and I still hadn't really grasped Ruby, I left last night's study group with my first Ruby on Rails project running last night.

Marina set out to help us get a simple Ruby on Rails application working. We learned about the basic configuration of Ruby on Rails, how MVC works, how to hook Ruby on Rails to a database using SQLLite, and how the basic conventions fit together to make a Ruby on Rails project come together. I guess it's a testimate to both the choice of materials and Ruby on Rails itself, that even I, who talked most of the night, was able to get the application running before 7:00 pm (we ran a little late last night).

We had one small problem, only a few people worked the prerequisites. This was a combination of not knowing, since not everyone wasn't subscribed to the email or twitter updates, and being lazy, such as Ben and Chris. It's important that people try to work the prerequisites if they can, but I think in general, if you have to start with the prerequisites when you get to study group, then that's OK as well. That worked out fine last night, everyone worked at there own pace and Marina was available to help us when we got stuck. Some got a lot farther than others, but in the end, everyone learned a whole bunch about Ruby on Rails that they didn't already know. Keeping with our focus of one hour of learning time a week means that it's OK to skip your homework (except Ben and Chris).

Last night was our biggest study group in the history of study group (4 weeks). I like to think it was the topic and the speaker, but it might have been the email blast from Stout Systems (pretty much all the new people except for two said they had heard about us from a Stout email blast from last week).

I have to say that Marina learning Ruby on Rails earlier this year was one of the inspirations for study group. I realized how many things I was missing out on because I wasn't taking extra time to learn each week. Now, having set aside 1 hour a week for learning time, I've learned a whole bunch in the last four weeks and can't wait for the next four.

Next week is Silverlight with Brian Genesio. I hear he's going to have us build a Twitter client in Silverlight. Just a rumour though.

St. Bernards in need of a home

These are our newest dogs. Maybe one of the worst stories so far in terms of how they came to us.

http://sites.google.com/site/nardpreserve/julie-and-lillie---in-need-of-a-home

Learning Ruby from Ben Barefield

Last night's study group was on Ruby, lead by Ben Barefield. Let me say that I didn't know a thing about Ruby going in, but from what I observed, even those who know and use Ruby, and had done the Koans before, seemed to be getting a lot out of it. Granted, there was a lot of complaining about the problems being "too hard" (that was me in the first 10 seconds). In reality, I went from not knowing Ruby to feeling comfortable enough to come home and keeping working on the Koans. And I actually know what a Koan is now! I'm now playing around with a few different Ruby IDEs. Thanks Ben.

Oh and we had a few new faces last night. Jay Harris (who frankly was dodging study group until cornered and forced to come), Carl Wright, and Becky Glesner.

If you didn't make it last night, then definitely you have to come next Tuesday from 5:30-6:30 to learn a whole lot about Ruby on Rails, lead by Marina Fedner.

Academia, please use source control!

Dear Faceless, Nameless, System Admin at the University department where my unnamed wife works,

Let's call you Tyler and we'll call her Mary.

Tyler, please consider installing SVN (server side) and Tortuous SVN (client side) so that Mary doesn't have to cry on a Sunday mornings because someone (who will definitely remain nameless) started making changes on a different document than the most current document.

It's easy and fun. You install SVN as a web application (MS or Unix servers are both an easy install) and then your users can either access their docs directly through the web page or via an installed client call Tortuous SVN. No more shared drives, no more crying about lost documents.

Before SVN:

Them: "I know I saved it

You: "uh yeah, but then someone overwrote it on the shared drive with an older version!"

After SVN:

Them: "Wow things are so easy"

You: "Yeah, I'll have another Oberon."

SVN is so simple to use that even software developers can use it. Imagine what people with actual intelligence could do?