Egon's Blog http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ The contents of this blog is a real mixed bag of articles and links that I am interested. This includes information about Apple Macs, Web Services, Enterprise Architecture, XML, Software Development (Java and OSX mainly) and interesting sites that I find around the Internet. en-us egon@labf.org 2007-10-14T01:14:01+09:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site. Logwiki http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/mrpNJB7ItDo/000455.html Ads05-1One of the projects that I work on has recently been published in the Australian Defence Science magazine. The project is called Logwiki and is a wiki configured for use by the Australian Defence Force logistics community. For more information have a read of the Logwiki article available here.

Links
Logwiki Article

]]> 455@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Logistics 2007-10-14T01:14:01+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000455.html Custom JIRA Report Generation http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/Cc0S8VuT-Hg/000454.html Images Jira Logo SmallI am using Atlassian JIRA at work nowadays for tracking of multiple items on our projects including tasks, feature requests, customer questions, requirements and of course bugs in our software. The key question that has come up recently was whether I could easily format the requirement type issues in JIRA so that they can form the body of a Software Requirements Specification (SRS).

At first I thought I would be able to just install a plugin into JIRA's flexible plugin system but quickly found that there were no suitable plugins that would provide the report I required. I did start think about creating my own plugin but that would have taken too long so I turned my attention to the various export formats, which includes, XML, excel and Word. The problem with the word output is that there is no way of customising the output format easily. Then I remembered about words form merge function which allows you to import data from an external data source, which includes an excel spreadsheet. So the end result is I can export the JIRA issues as an excel spreadsheet and then use the Word Merge feature to load this spreadsheet as a data source and import the data into Word using any format that I require.

Links
Atlassian JIRA

]]> 454@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Software 2007-08-21T21:38:21+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000454.html FlyGesture Now Free http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/fWkBMERv03A/000453.html FlygestureFlyGesture from Flyingmeat has now released their gesture program for free download a use by anyone. This a nice little program that allows you to use your mouse of trackpad to draw a gesture on the screen to launch an application, load a web page or other actions within OSX. Head on over and download you free copy.

Links
FlyGesture Home Page

]]> 453@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Mac 2007-07-07T21:06:26+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000453.html Google Gears http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/o0ZEidm0d-o/000452.html Images Gears SmThe web development or web engineering space has been pretty quiet as late with nothing really new being developed by anyone or any amazing ideas being put into action, until now. The Google guys have done it again with their release of Google Gears. Google Gears is an API for web developers to allow their applications to be run in an offiline mode and therefore accessible while their user's computer is not connected to the Internet. Google Gears supports both Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows, OSX and Linux therefore supporting 99% of the Internet population. Google gears consists of three components, Local Server that stores the web application resources, and local database to store the content for the application and a WorkerPool that allows your applications to be more responsive (somehow).

If you want to see it in action head on over to Google Reader as it has been enabled with Google Gears support or if you are a web developer head on over to the Google Gears Developer page.

Links
Google Gears Home
Google Gears Developer Page
Google Reader

]]> 452@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Internet Sites 2007-06-02T17:04:12+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000452.html CSS Dock http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/OMCM5_KkHgw/000451.html Css-Dock-Menu

I am a big fan of Macs, I am also a big fan of good use of technologies for the web. So I bring to you the CSS dock Menu. Ok so maybe it is not really such a good use of web technologies, but it is still impressive.

Links
CSS Dock Article
CSS Dock Demo

]]> 451@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Web Development 2007-05-22T22:06:55+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000451.html iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/ekCt0d58jwA/000450.html Bevy1Bevy2

Anyone out there looking to buy me a present well here is cool little item. I have an iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) like many of you out there and like most of you have found it is kinda annoying having your earphones getting all tanged up. I like you also like drinking beer so this cool combination of an iPod case / beer top opener is a great idea.

Links
Bevy iPod Shuffle Case / Beer Opener

]]> 450@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Gadgets 2007-05-08T22:19:12+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000450.html Web Developers Links http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/bRzDp5yVSnw/000449.html Df LogoHere is a great set of links for Web Developers. It contains links for Javascript Libraries, AJAX frameworks, Fonts, icons and more. All the common links are there plus a heap more I have not seen before.

Links
Web Designers Tool Kit

]]> 449@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Graphic Design 2007-05-06T23:11:41+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000449.html Urban Gnomes - Vitamin http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/VZ_Zy4gL_fk/000448.html Images Logo-3 Vitamin produces a range of very different house decoration items. One of my favourites is the common garden gnome for the urban yuppies out there (like me) - see image below. Other cool items are a flower pot that is self watering with a medical IV drip or even a floor lamp that doubles as a floor sweeper.

Products Gnomes Images Zip

Links
Vitamin Home Page

]]> 448@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Gadgets 2007-05-02T23:21:48+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000448.html Google Desktop for Mac Available http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/YXC4iArE330/000447.html Images Logo3-1Google Desktop is now available for the Mac. Although in my opinion it is not as good as using my all time favourite program Quicksilver it is still pretty useful for finding files on your computer. Best of all it contains the Google Updater so that you can make sure that all your google applications are installed and up to date on your mac. It is a free download but please be warned when you first install Google Desktop it does a complete scan of your hard disk for indexing purposes which will take quite some time to complete. I therefore recommend doing the install just before you go to bed so that it can index over night.

Links
Google Desktop For Mac
Quicksilver

]]> 447@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Mac 2007-04-07T11:35:23+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000447.html Eclipse Plugin: History Flow http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/ok1jT2k9H_E/000446.html HistoryflowHere is an interesting new plugin for the Eclipse development environment. Rather than the traditional file history the History Flow plugin provides a different way to view the history of your files in CVS.

Links
History Flow Plugin

]]> 446@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Java 2007-03-25T11:01:36+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000446.html Gravitonus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/DKrPafRKys8/000445.html Imgs Gravitonus-1This looks soooooooooo cool. I really like the idea of a really comfortable computer station. As you may have guessed I spend a great deal of my time in the front of a computer. I would so be more happy if I spent that time in one of these chairs. Even the arm rests move with your arms so that you can move between the mouse and the keyboard without having to take your arm off the supporting wrist wrest. I am not sure but I think that the 3 screens if over the top.... like being over the top is an issue for a product like this. You can download a video of someone using the chair in the downloads section of the site.

Links
The Gravitonus

]]> 445@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Gadgets 2007-02-14T19:09:58+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000445.html Stikkit -The smart sticky note http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/UZ-AXMWICjo/000444.html StikkitStikkit is a new Web 2.0 application available which provides an interesting spin on web-based sticky notes. Unlike normal electronic sticky notes that simply allow you to create little yellow squares to capture mainly textural data Stikkit takes this one step further by trying to understand the content of the sticky note. For example is you start typing out the details for a meeting then it will actually create a meeting request and automatically name the note with the subject of the meeting. The best way to understand is to watch the videos on the home page.

Links
Stikkit.com

]]> 444@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Internet Sites 2007-01-22T21:21:26+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000444.html Lithium Network Monitoring Platform http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/dA_rYGKOof0/000443.html Lithium-1Lithium is a cross platform network monitoring tool that can monitor your network components, servers and other appliances. It supports both linux, Mac OSX and Windows, with its core server components running on either OSX or Linux. It is possible to access the core server to access the various graphs and monitoring information either through the Windows and OSX console application or through its web-based user interface. There are also incident management capabilities built-in to provide support when one of the components in the network suffers a break in service.

Links
Lithium Corp Home page

]]> 443@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Mac 2007-01-21T09:11:41+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000443.html Periodic Table For Visualisation Techniques http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/oT3PYNI1b4A/000442.html PeriodictableRalph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler have produced a really cool periodic table of all the different types of visualisation methods. I have had to use many of these when developing presentations in my day to day work so even the simple collection of all these methods in one place is extremely useful. If you mouse over each of the elements a little example of the visualisation method is displayed. Also linked below is a copy of the paper about the table's development.

Links
Periodic Table
Paper About the Table's Development

]]> 442@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Stuff 2007-01-17T20:30:15+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000442.html OmniGraffle Stencil for FFBD http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EgonsBlog/~3/hqu94ZpYCRo/000441.html Ffbd-1After looking around the Internet for an OmniGraffle stencil for creating Functional Flow Block Diagrams (FFBD) without any luck I decided to just create my own, which you can download from here. This stencil contains all the major components of a Functional Flow Block Diagram which is used to outline the control of flow between functions within a functional architecture. FFBD are extremely helpful to try and describe the behavior of a system while being solution agnostic.

Links
Download Functional Flow Block Diagram (FFBD) Stencil
OmniGraffle Home Page

]]> 441@http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/ Internet Sites 2006-12-17T17:06:29+09:00 http://www.egg-tech.com/blog/000441.html