rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

Tuesday, 27 August 2002

The Tong Master is a classic, well written and amusing tale of the good ole Aussie BBQ. (I didn't write it - it's anonymous Internet email humour) Ian was the Tong-Master, a true artist, he gave a couple of practice snaps of his long silver tongs, SNAP SNAP, before moving in, prodding, teasing, and with an elegant flick Of his wrist, rolling them onto their little backs. A lesser tong-man would've flicked too hard; the sausages would've gone full circle, back to where they started. Nice, I said. The others went yeah. 2:44:09 PM  comment []      I found Tobias' blog today - Tobiased thoughts. Now what's not to like about Tobias? In 4 blog posts he has so far plugged Webwork, JIRA, Atlassian, the "Java and J2EE weblogs list" and my blog. I swear, I'm not paying him! (Besides, his company was one of the first commercial JIRA users - so we like him too. Oh, and a great looking blog!) 2:36:21 PM  comment []      Matt Mower asked some questions: I've not done anything Java wise for a couple of months but, partly to keep my hand in, and partly because I think it's easier I've been thinking about using an applet or Java WebStart application for managing the topic information in liveTopics.  This leads to some questions: What's the best XML-RPC implementation for Java at the moment? Apache XML-RPC (originally Helma) - http://xml.apache.org/xmlrpc/ For a simple API is XML-RPC a better bet than SOAP? No - build it using Glue, it's SOAP made easy for Java. It's a dream to use. And free for most uses. Is it safe to use Swing in applets these days? Wrong person to ask. What are the relative advantages/disadvanages of JWS over Applets?  Maybe even thinlets? Complex question. Thinlets are only really good for small tasks, but are very rapid to develop. JWS is easy to write and 'deploy' any Swing app anywhere. I'd say JWS Swing is better than applets, but I'm biased. And what IDE should I be using (I used to use JBuilder) Easy - IDEA. Can anyone help me out? Hopefully! 2:34:15 PM  comment []      For all those Mac lovers, don't feel left out, I have some links for you too. Jaguar, Jaguar, Jaguar is a great collection of links about OSX 10.2 and Rick asks (with an amusing graphic) if all OS X users high. 1:03:46 PM  comment []      More links - Rackspace is now using Dell, Bob actually blogged a bug in his JIRA install (cool!), Rickard is still writing about amazing code most of us can't comprehend, Ray Ozzie has released the first ever employee blog policy, Charles found some useful pub rules, and Rick found out about JCS (which sounds awesome - does it work?!) 1:01:25 PM  comment []      The ServerSide has articles on the WebWork 1.2 release and Marc Fleury responding to Scott McNealy. Both good reads. PS Both The ServerSide and "JavaLobby" piss me off by opening new browser windows for links. It's my browser, let me control it. 12:57:20 PM  comment []      Would it be considered FUD if I linked to a page of bugzilla (and others) security problems. I hope not. As always, use the latest version to be as protected as possible. Simple. Perhaps Bugzilla needs a SP? 12:55:40 PM  comment []      Steve Anglin is smoking dope about a Sun-Dell merger? Why the hell would Dell want to pollute it's nice, low cost, just in time model with Sun's problems? [Steve Anglin's weblog] [Blogging Roller] 12:51:23 PM  comment []      Russell is on fire with his blog: ProGuard is an open source code obfuscator and shrinker Java Developer's Alamanac online looks like a cool compendium of examples using various JDK classes and the Incentive to just get things done. Incidentally the best book I've ever read on time/life management was called "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I wonder if that's where Russell gets his phrase from? 12:47:44 PM  comment []      Pie menus - either a UI revolution or just plain wacky. I don't get it personally, but then again most things in UI you don't 'get' by reading about them. I'll reserve judgement until I've tried it. 12:38:53 PM  comment []      Niel is in the process of converting Russell's Miniblog to use Struts and Tiles. "In case Mike gets on me about using WebWork, I think I'm going to stick with Struts because of the resume enhancing potential, but I do have to say that WebWork makes a bit more sense to me than Struts. " This to me is very sad. Any employer who employs people based on buzzwords on their resume is in big trouble. I choose technologies based on what's best, not what is most popular. Sadly I seem to be in the minority. (PS I have no problem if you have tried both and prefer Struts. I have a problem with people who just use Struts and pan WebWork without using it.) 12:36:34 PM  comment []      Scott sent me this page of Some Useful Free Software for Java Developers which is a good summary of free tools for all sorts of Java dev tasks. I was amused to see that the only non-free piece of software mentioned is IDEA. Why? Because it's just so much better than any free IDE. 11:46:17 AM  comment []