Anyhow, the reason I don’t write those posts that I want to, even plan to, is simple. It’s Twitter. I love Twitter. It lets me say what I want, quickly and easily. It forces me to be concise, 140 short characters, concise. Which is definitely one of my biggest struggles when trying to make a point. So Twitter is perfect for me. I can quickly say something, or retweet somebody else that has said what I want to say. I get my point “out there”. You know what I think, what stance I’m taking (Obama sucks, the Aggies will dominate the SEC, the Cubs are pathetic, Grails is the one web framework to rule them all, etc.). It’s why I went as far as posting my tweets on this blog. The tweets were replacing my posts so I wanted them here.

Well, the urge to blog has been too strong lately and the 140 char wall has been to limiting. I’m gonna try to be more regular here. However, I’m going to be raw and unpolished. I’m just gonna type an entry and publish. Plan on lots of grammar issues, misspellings, half-baked thoughts, but best of all you will get my hand-crafted, hot-sports opinions, which is why the four of you line up to read this.

So this is the first year I’ve included my boys in the fun of filling out brackets. I took the time to explain the four regions, and how they are like four mini-tournaments. We talked about how all won-loss records aren’t equal, as some teams play in easier conferences. And we talked about each teams seed, and how normally the higher seed wins. You would think with that “crash course” in bracketology the boys would have filled in their brackets in a logical way. Nope…  :) Here is what the they went with.

Zachary (1st grader)

Elite Eight:

Kentucky vs Baylor, Michigan St vs Murray St

Syracuse vs Florida St, Michigan vs Purdue

Final Four:

Kentucky vs Murray St and Syracuse vs Purdue

Final:

Kentucky beating Purdue

Noah (3rd grader)

Elite Eight:

Kentucky vs Baylor, Louisville vs Missouri

Vanderbilt vs Ohio St, North Carolina vs Georgetown

Final Four:

Kentucky vs Missouri and Ohio State vs North Carolina

Final:

Ohio State beating Kentucky

And for my picks I’ll start with the final 16….

Sweet 16:

Kentucky vs UI, Baylor vs Duke

Michigan St vs Louisville, Marquette vs Missouri

Syracuse vs Vanderbilt, Florida St vs Ohio St

North Carolina vs Michigan, Georgetown vs Kansas

Elite Eight:

Kentucky vs Baylor, Louisville vs Missouri

Vanderbilt vs Ohio St, North Carolina vs Kansas

Final Four:

Kentucky vs Missouri and Ohio St vs North Carolina

Final:

Kentucky beating UNC

Of the three of us, who do you think made the best picks?

Murach’s Java Programming 4th Edition

This book is great for people with some programming experience, that are new to Java. Murach goes from the basics of Java, starting with primitive datatypes, through the fundamentals of Object-Oriented programming, and into GUI programming (probably could have left this out). That was the first 17 chapters. This is no short book, definitely not a quick read.

Starting with chapter 18, the book moves past beginner-level topics. Murach gives a solid review of data access in Java. First with reading and writing from/to XML files. Then their is a chapter on database theory and working with the Derby database. From there you learn how to use JDBC to read and write to a database. The book wraps up by tackling Threading.

The only negative thing I can say about this book as I’m confused as to why the author chose to use the Netbeans IDE as his IDE of choice. Murach does a great job covering the ins and outs of working with Netbeans. Going as deep as how to use the debugger to step through code and fix bugs. I just feel that Eclipse / STS have such a massive share of the market the reader would be better served learning Eclipse alongside Java.

If you only plan to buy one book on Java SE, this is the book for you. Murach’s Java Programming covers it all.

Check the Prerequisites:

OS X 10.7, Xcode 4.1 (easiest, and possibly the only way to get this, is from the Mac App Store), and Java for Mac OS X 10.7 Update 1

or

OS X 10.6.8, Xcode 3.2.6 (download from Apple Developer Portal), and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 6

Mercurial version control tool. I installed this easily with the use of the awesome Mac package installer Homebrew. Simply run: “brew install hg”. (I didn’t make a dime for that blatant Homebrew plug )

Simple Process:

1. Follow the Oracle instructions to “Get the Code”
2. Run the Build command (part of the command is hidden by the box on the screen and if you don’t look close you may miss when copying / pasting)

For all practical purposes, that’s it. If you want to install JDK 7 in the “Apple recommended” location follow steps 3-5 on the Oracle wiki page.

Just for grins I’m pasting the output of my build command. Pretty nice for a “wimpy” Mac Book Air.

>>>Finished making images @ Sat Dec 17 00:09:17 CST 2011 ...
########################################################################
##### Leaving jdk for target(s) sanity all docs images             #####
########################################################################
##### Build time 00:20:58 jdk for target(s) sanity all docs images #####
########################################################################

## Build times ##########
Target all_product_build
Start 2011-12-16 23:34:39
End   2011-12-17 00:09:17
00:02:45 corba
00:08:18 hotspot
00:00:52 jaxp
00:00:55 jaxws
00:20:58 jdk
00:00:49 langtools
00:34:38 TOTAL
#########################

erik@eriks-mba ~/dev/sdks/macosx-port
$ build/macosx-universal/j2sdk-image/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java -version
openjdk version "1.7.0-internal"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0-internal-erik_2011_12_16_23_34-b00)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0-b17, mixed mode)

If you have any questions about these steps just leave a comment below or ping me on twitter (@erikweibust).

My draft preparation was focused on the great insight published by ESPN Fantasy Football guru, Matthew Berry. Specifically, I took notes from his Draft Day Manifesto.  Anyhow, the steal of the draft was me sprinting up to our board and grabbing Michael Vick with the 9th pick.  I have no idea how he fell that far but I’m not complaining!  Then, my double whammy, was me stealing Antonio Gates in the end of our 4th round!  If you think I’m crazy, go read the stats in the DDM linked to above.

Here are the rest of my genius picks:

Rd 1 – QB – Michael Vick

Rd 2 – WR – Roddy White

Rd 3 – RB – Frank Gore

Rd 4 – TE – Antonio Gates

Rd 5 – RB – Knowshon Moreno

Rd 6 – WR – Santana Moss

Rd 7 – RB – Pierre Thomas

Rd 8 – WR – Johnny Knox

Rd 9 – WR – Mike Thomas

Rd 10 – RB – Daniel Thomas

Rd 11 – K – John Kasay

Rd 12 – DEF – Atlanta Falcons

Miscellaneous observations…  I grabbed 4 guys with 4 letter last names…  I grabbed 3 guys with the last name of Thomas…  Clearly, if my job as a Technology Consultant goes south, I should be able to land a job in the NFL as a GM.

Here is the draft board to back this up:

Look for a celebratory / told-you-so blog post at the end of the season when I will the Fantasy Bowl!

There were some great new speakers, Ken Sipe was my favorite with his Gradle talks.  The story on Gradle is one worth listening to, regardless, of how ingrained Ant or Maven are at your organization.  The best place to go if you’re new to Gradle is their website. The Gradle documentation is great.  Java “developer-types” can start with this Gradle tutorial geared to building Java projects.

There were also some great returning speakers, I especially liked Arun Gupta, with his Java EE Workshop.  A few years ago, I wouldn’t consider starting a new enterprise Java application without the Spring stack.  To be honest, in my mind, Spring == Enterprise Java.  However, after seeing Arun’s talks the last two years, Oracle and the Java EE 6 stack have rapidly closed the gap on SpringSource, and now just might have a story to tell in the enterprise development space.  I highly recommend you follow Arun on Twitter, or subscribe to his blog.  The content is outstanding and the current Java EE story is really impressive.

This was my first year as a presenter at TechFest, after having been involved as an organizer the past 4 years.  I gave a double session on The Grails Framework.  The attendees were great.  Lots of great participation and an all-around good time was had by all. Don’t forget to tell Tim that you want him to use the website we built next year.  ;)

Grails Workshop - Dallas TechFest 2011

Anyhow, I’ve been disappointed that I haven’t seen Shannon Hoon’s name in any of the stupid comparisson articles with the “27 club“. He belongs in that list, so I felt like calling that out here. Google Shannon Hoon, or Blind Melon and then listen to some of his stuff. He died eight weeks after their second album came out. I love it and still listen to it all the time. I hate thinking about the music he never got to write and preform.  I’m sure it would have been awesome.

Enjoy this video if you miss Shannon Hoon’s music or want to see why I bothered writing this post…

Blind Melon – Change

The weird thing about that video was that Blind Melon performed that song on Letterman the day Kurt Cobain was found dead.  And Hoon makes a clear statement, even says it during the song, that he doesn’t want to die.  Yet he kills himself the next year.  Bummer.  Drugs mess people up…

Also, for my *old* readers/followers….  I’ve purged all the old posts that were just regurgitating my tweets here, to make me feel like I was still blogging. So this blog is back to a blog, and it may even get some new content.

First, let me say, that it wasn’t just Java and .NET.  That was just a joke because it’s always those two languages pitted against each other.  Dallas TechFest was 8 technology tracks: Java, .NET, Flex, ColdFustion, Ruby, and Silverlight, and in those tracks other technologies were mixed in.  Our great speakers present at user groups and conferences all over the country, they’ve also authored a number of books.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone that helped out.  Tim Rayburn did an awesome job heading things up, and Chris Koenig was the guy that kept things moving when we were being lazy and blowing off responsibilities, and Omar Villarreal did great with sponsors.  I was especially happy to see the returning sponsors.  And lastly, I gotta thank Jonathan Campos for all his work, that was a great after party.  I look forward to helping out again next year, given the chance.

Here are some relevant links covering the event:

• Twitter: #dallastechfest
• Twitter: #dtf09
• Flickr photo set: Dallas TechFest 2009

For those of you that appreciate my short, don’t-hold-back, opinions, I’ll start there:

Spring Web Flow 2 Web Development is both a great “getting started” book for people wanting to learn SWF2 and serves as a good high-level “getting started” with web programming using Spring / Java EE.  Definitely worth the time and money.

Now my detailed review:

Again, I really liked how Spring Web Flow 2 Web Development serves as both a jump-start on SWF2 and also covers technologies outside of SWF (Spring Security, build tools, Apache Tiles, etc).  The book isn’t a detailed reference manual, that leaves you feeling you still don’t know how to use the technology, but gives the right amount of walk-through examples and framework documentation.

When finished with the book you will understand how to install SWF2, how to build and use the examples.  You will have numerous, feature-rich examples the authors build throughout the book.  You’ll know how to use SWF2 in a request-respone Spring MVC app and also with a JSF application.  You  get a solid tutorial on using Apache Tiles (kind of odd in a SWF book), a very detailed explanation of Spring Security and integrating Spring Security with SWF.  You also will understand how to test your flow definition and SWF application while also learning about EasyMock.

Here are my bulleted notes chapter by chapter:

ch 1:
Very short, brief intro to Spring Web Flow 2.
High level terms and definitions

ch 2 setup and example app:
install swf2
discuss the distribution
discuss the example apps and how to build from src
covers build systems (ant, mvn, ivy)
eclipse and spring ide
then a thorough example app
-flow definition
-service layer
-dao with jpa impl

ch 3
web flow documentation
detailed look at flow definition (.., scopes, states)
least favorite chapter
hard to read, not enough example tying concepts together

ch4
spring faces
starts with intro to jsf
I’m not interested in jsf

ch 5
sub flows – built on ch2 and ch3
spring javascript abstraction
oddly placed apache tiles tutorial for combining swf, spring js, and tiles
reference for web flow configuration

ch 6 testing swf apps
covers use of AbstractXmlFlowExecutionTests
short intro to EasyMock
tests subflows

ch 7
really good intro spring security
spring security and swf