Mary, Ann Arbor, Software Development, and More

2009-11-11T21:34:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-11T05:34:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-06T06:12:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-10-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

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?

Study Group - XSL with Andy Seidl

2009-10-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

Last night's study group was incredibly informative. We decided that if we had hired Andy at $50,000 for that hour, we would have more than made our money back given how much time he could have saved the developers in attendance on past projects. I felt more than a little embarrassed at my real lack of understanding of XSL and on top of that, my cluelessness about CSS. I'll be using these technologies a whole lot better in the future because of Andy and the 1 hour study group.

Join us for Study Group every Tuesday from 5:30 - 6:30. Check out our schedule at http://sites.google.com/site/softwaredevelopmentstudygroup/silibus-and-prerequisites-1.

Bernard Preserve

2009-10-14T07:44:00.001-07:00

I completely forgot to blog about the Bernard Preserve. So we've started to foster St. Bernards. It's been a heck of an adventure, you can learn more at http://sites.google.com/site/nardpreserve/home.

2008-09-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Pit of Success

Through a link Anne Marsan sent several of us today I saw the Pit of Success and had to share it with others.

The
Pit of Success: in stark contrast to a summit, a
peak, or a journey across a desert to find victory through many trials and
surprises, we want our customers to simply fall into winning practices by using
our platform and frameworks. To
the extent that we make it easy to get into trouble we fail.

-Rico Mariani, MS Research MindSwap Oct 2003.

2008-09-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

Running Ubuntu on Vista

I was able, with very little pain, to install Ubuntu on Vista. Using Jay Wren's advice I took a look at VMWare and downloaded their $189.00 VMWare Workstation for evaluation. VMWare Workstation setups up 1 or more Virtual Machines that can then be used to host Guest operating systems.

First I downloaded and installed VMWare Workstation, then I downloaded the Ubuntu ISO. VMWare allowed me to mount the Ubuntu ISO as a CD in the new VM. The VM booted like any computer, found the ISO and booted right into the Ubuntu Install. After that it was like a normal Ubuntu install, in other words, amazingly easy.

2008-08-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

I'm working on the following projects around the home:

Brewery

My brewing equipment is spread all over the place. I need to clean out my GarageOffice (pronounced Garagafis) and get things back together. My target is to brew on or before September 1.

I want to pick up the following equipment.

Ferminator - 14 Gallon - 1-3 weeks delivery - http://www.northernbrewer.com/ferm-std.html $584.99

Therminator - $194.99 - http://www.northernbrewer.com/wort-chillers.html

The Ferminator is the high priority, although I would love to throw down for the Therminator as well. I'm completely over the fun of moving beer and cleaning, always cleaning. I've been looking at buying a fermentor for quite some time now. The chiller is is awesome and I'll get it eventually. I'll need to borrow a chiller though since I blew mine up.

Fountain/Pond

I want to replace my current pond (which is a rain barrel in a baby pool) with something a little more elegant. I purchased the following from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Flex-Pond-Kit-Gallon-Model/dp/B000N4PQR0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=garden&qid=1218399280&sr=1-1 - 90 in.L X 51 in W X 20 in.H -formed pond for $169.99

I think between me and my brilliant friends, we should be able to come up with a water fall that's at least as effective as the current rain barrel with holes drilled in the top.

Rain water capture

This is a little tougher. I'm still in the design phase. My two fountains and the new pool can hold about 250 gallons of rainwater, so I guess my best bet is to just plumb from my eaves to my pond. Sounds like a job for my friend Kip (Journey man plumber and scotch drinker extraordinaire)

2008-06-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

I work with Jay Wren

Some of you are probably saying to yourselves "I'm so sorry, are you looking for a job?". A lot more of you are probably saying "That's so cool, how do I get a job at SRT Solutions?".

No matter what your thoughts, you have to admit, being able to tap Jay's knowledge (which normally involves me standing in front of his desk and talking continuously until he removes his headphones) is a huge benefit to getting software done and getting it done right.

Just last week Jay saved me literally days of work. Dianne Marsh and I where stuck on a testing issue using Microsoft Test. The application we where testing was using the AppDomain to find the private bin directory. This was an important part of how the application worked and needed to be preserved. For those of you have used the MS Test environment that ships with Visual Studio, you might know that it creates a brand new environment every time it runs. That new environment includes a brand new private bin directory. This made MSTest a very poor choice for our testing solution. Dianne and I where dead in the water, then Jay came to the rescue with NUnit. We went from despair to success (that green bar is something we Java developers need to survive).

Thanks Jay.

p.s. Jay is also the one who hooked me up with Resharper, which is a great way to make Visual Studio development palatable and immediately productive for those that love IntelliJ or Eclipse.

Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority Switches Focus

2008-06-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

Recently I read a complaint that the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority had become a pocketbook for the Mayor and City Council. It was written by a former AADDA board member who felt the Authority should be building more parking lots.

It looks like instead of parking lots, the Authority is focusing on encouraging downtown green development. In a post by Judy McGovern of the Ann Arbor news http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2008/06/ann_arbor_dda_shifts_focus_of.html, she describers how the DDA is switching it's focus to ensuring that Ann Arbor building owners have the funding and the leadership to make downtown buildings energy efficient.

2008-06-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Ann Arbor Rail Project

If you're driving 23 south into Ann Arbor, this Bi-Level Passenger Rail Car could be in your future.

Details are still hard to come by, but more info has come to light about the proposed Ann Arbor rail project.

According to an article in MetroMode, the plan seems to be to start in the fall with a single train running between two temporary stations, one in Ann Arbor on Plymouth Rd. and another at the border between Washtenaw and Livingston counties. The Great Lakes Central Rail Road, the company that owns these tracks, would make six trips in the morning and six trips in the evening. A trip takes 20 minutes from station to station.

Thanks to this MDot Rail Map, you can see the basic train route along the black line from Howell to Ann Arbor.

The train would have three passenger cars, each of which is a double decker car that can hold somewhere around 500 passengers. That means each trip, the train could carry around 1500 passengers. The capacity of the system would then be 9000 commuters a day if every train was full. That's 9000 one way in the morning and then 9000 back again in the evening.

Ann Arbor plans to provide bus service to and from the temporary station. I'm not sure about the other end of the line in Livingston, possibly that would be more like a park and ride.

Depending on how well the service works, there are plans to take it farther south into Saline and possibly Monroe and farther North to Howell.

I had to stop calling this the Ann Arbor to Howell rail project once I heard the latest news. I've opted for just calling it the Ann Arbor Rail Project for now.

My Wife is on Wikipedia, is yours?

2008-05-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true, Mary Heitzeg, my wife, who is not only hot, but smart, is on wikipedia. Not in some obscure post either. Just check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine.

Management isn't something you just do when things are going badly

2008-05-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

The title says it all.

Chelsea and plastic bags

2008-05-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the Ann Arbor News talked about how Ann Arbor's close neighbor, Chelsea is considering banning plastic bags in their grocery stores. My first reaction when I read this was if they really want to do something worthwhile, then ban SUVs. I mean, come on, plastic bags? Who cares?

Well I guess it turns out that many places, including Ireland, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, and Bangladesh, have come to the same conclusion. A recent article in National Geographic describes the problem better than I can. Basically, plastic shopping bags are what the article calls an environmental nuisance, especially if they get into water ways.

Unfortunately, paper bags aren't any better, as National Geographic describes it:

"Compared to paper grocery bags, plastic grocery bags consume 40 percent less energy, generate 80 percent less solid waste, produce 70 percent fewer atmospheric emissions, and release up to 94 percent fewer waterborne wastes, according to the federation."

Both articles lean toward the BYOB solution. Which sounds great until you consider that then many households will be buying a box of Hefty bags everytime they shop so they have something to put their garbage in. In addition, if you buy anything at all, from Chicken to toilet paper, it comes wrapped in plastic. The national geographic article talks about how Ireland cleaned up their landscape, but what it doesn't talk about is: Did they cleanup their environment?

Stores are full of overpackaged items, many of which don't need packaging at all. How many people even use reusable drink containers? How many coke and coffee cups end up wastbaskets every year. What about water? When I was growing up we used a glass, now everyone has a bottle that they get their water out of and then toss in the garbage (or recycling if you live in Ann Arbor).

I'm not saying that Chelsea shouldn't ban plastic bags or charge for them, I'm saying that if we really want to solve this problem, we're going to have to try a little bit harder. We're going to need to start not with the most obvious items, but those that actually make a real difference.

For Chelsea, I think the SUV is much higher on the list than the grocery bag.

Spring in Ann Arbor

2008-04-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

I got the fountain going and Mary and I and the two Bernards are sitting by it. It's about 72, the birds are chirping and Mary and I are reading. I'm cycling between a John Grisham novel and Blue Ocean Strategy. Obviously neither won out or I wouldn't be blogging. Mary's reading Civil War because I made her. She's just reading the original 7, plus the Civil War: Who's side are you on, but if she likes it, I'll probably get her going on some other derivations. This isn't the first really nice day we've had this year, but it's the nicest saturday.

Google App Engine

2008-04-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

There was a time, not so long ago, that I greeted every new Microsoft release with happiness and wonder. "How do they do it?" I would ask. "These guys are geniuses!" I would exclaim. I remember learning MFC for the first time and ATL, both were as exciting as a Christmas morning. Microsoft understood what developers needed and Microsoft was there to deliver it. To this day I tell people I owe my software career to Bill Gates and the Microsoft attitude of making things great for all developers, not just for those with huge amounts of money to spend.

I moved into the Java space just as .Net 1.0 came out. This wasn't because of Microsoft or .Net, it was because of customer demand. I still love Microsoft, but those days of wonder and excitement have passed (at least for now).

Yesterday I felt that same old feeling. I was sitting in the Las Vegas airport, waiting for a red eye when I learned that I had missed something quite huge. The release of Google App Engine.

What's so cool?

In a nut shell, Google App Engine is a way for developers to write applications without worrying about the deployment of those applications. You write the application, using the Google SDK (which runs locally, not on the Net) and you deploy those application in the Google App space. The Google App space takes the place of Apache, JBoss, MySQL, etc. running on your own hardware. In addition, Google offers a number of API's, including Data and authentication (using Google accounts like GMail).

Google's goal is to make application development faster, easier to deploy, and automatically scalable. I've only started working with the SDK, so I can't speak as to how good a job they've done so far, but it's definitely like Christmas morning again.

Check out Dave Winer's article on CNet or the Google App engine site itself for more info.

IREPORT, Hibernate Annotations, wasting all kinds of time

2007-12-19T11:56:00.002-08:00

I was very excited to tryout IReport with Hibernate annotations. I've been using Hibernate Annotations for over a year now and I'm absolutely in love with them. I saw that IReport which is apparently a great way to create Jasper Reports, supported Hibernate with Annotations. After downloading, installing, I started up the app and was ready to be impressed.

Unfortunately, apparently, there is a bug which either makes this impossible http://www.jasperforge.org/sf/go/artf2703?nav=1, or if there is a solutions, Jasper Forge doesn't feel like sharing.

I'm really not sure why this would be. I see this periodically. One person reports a problem, then responses show up that are irrelevant, the original reporter plays along, but finally, no solutions are offered and the post goes dark. I can understand this sometimes, but when you're reporting a possible bug and the programming who is reporting it is obviously credible (as in the above post), why just go dark? If you really don't have an answer, then say so. If your a programmer on the project, have the curtsy to say "Hey, we're looking into it". Going dark is really the worst thing. It says to me "Gosh, we don't know and we don't care, we would care if it was easy to fix, but since it isn't...".

Should I buy the documentation? I thought about it, but what if IReport just doesn't plain work with Hibernate Annotations? Then what? Not only did I waste money and time I still don't have my solution.

Should I download the source code and try to fix it? Well, gosh, maybe, but what if someone is actually fixing this or there isn't a problem, just a simple configuration issue? Then I should have bought the docs instead.

by the way, I did try to contact Jasper Forge, but to no avail...

Oh well, on to something other than IReports, maybe next year...

Functional Programming (why not, everyone else has)

2007-12-18T15:30:00.000-08:00

Functional Programming, what is it and why do I care? It seems like only yesterday when I didn't know anything about this and I was oh so happy. Ever since some crazy EMU student brought up Haskell, I've been lost in a sea of ideas and languages.

So far the very best resource that I've found for someone like me is "Functional Programming for the rest of us" at http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html.

This article explores functional programming from it's roots, giving a foundation to so many of us who feel like we woke up yesterday and all of sudden everyone's talking functional programming.

Another nice introduction is on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

Our first customer

2007-12-08T09:35:00.001-08:00

My friend Dianne Marsh said I should start blogging again. She told me to keep it short and sweet, so that's what I'm going to do (as much as possible).

Today's blog entry:

WE GOT OUR FIRST CUSTOMER WOO WOO!

Yes, just shy of our two year mark and about five months into selling, we finally got our first customer for summitmobilesolutions.com. We went into overdrive just over a month ago because we honestly couldn't understand our lack of sales. Now, after some course corrections, it looks like summit mobile solutions is moving in the right direction.

JBoss A Developer's Notebook

2006-10-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

I love these developer's notebooks. I wish I could have gotten one for MFC back in the day. The new one on JBoss by Norman Richards and Sam Griffith, Jr., is no exception. In fact, as a long time JBoss "User" (definitely a four letter word in the JBoss world), I can say it's some of the best material on the subject. It's always been tough to find good docs for JBoss, but it's such an awesome J2EE server, that users like myself just muddle through. For the past few years I've been depending on Meeraj Kunnumpurath's excellent JBoss 3.0 Handbook, but "JBoss a developer's Notebook" will be the first thing I reach for now.

I've been using JBoss for almost 5 years now, so I was suprised as to how many things this book cleared up for me. I especially liked the chapter on Security and the final chapter, which is on rolling out JBoss into production. I'm a programmer, so most of my JBoss experience is setting up local or development servers. In the past, I've worked with smart system admins to get JBoss setup on the production servers, but in my new, much smaller business, I'm faced with doing it myself. I feel much better now that I've got this book within reach.