springett's razor

Jamie's stag do

2009-09-09T20:44:00.000Z

-- Posted from my iPhone

Eriksson-Penker Business Extensions to UML - Reference Card

2009-06-12T09:55:00.000Z

http://amor.fri.uni-lj.si/dejan/delo/studenti/id/UML%20(Eriksson-Penker%20Business%20Extensions).pdf

SOA and BPM Exception Handling - Links

2009-06-03T10:45:00.000Z

Implementing Exceptions in SOA

http://www.infoq.com/articles/lublinsky-soa-exception

Managing Exceptions in a SOA World

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:pEOS_Pbb5xIJ:hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/RR091605.pdf+soa+exception+handling&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

BPM Exception Handling

http://www.workflowpatterns.com/patterns/exception/introduction.php

BPM Exception Types

http://www.workflowpatterns.com/patterns/exception/exceptiontypes.php

TDA - Technical Design Authority

2009-06-03T10:36:00.001Z

What are the responsibilities of the TDA?

Review the Solution Architecture
Review the Architecturally Significant Scenarios
Review the Architecture Quality Attributes
Review any Architectural Risks and Issues

Why does the TDA need to do this?

Validate Solution Architecture (Quality, Business Architecture Alignment and Requirements Compliance etc.)
Validate Architecture Progress
Resolve Architecture Issues
Lead Architecture Direction
Manage Technical Risks

Who is in the TDA?

CTO
Enterprise Architect (Lead)
Solution Architect
Business Architect
Third Party Architecture Leads
Key Business Stakeholders
Programme/Solution Delivery Manager

When will the TDA meet?

· A regular TDA Review Meeting will take place (frequency depending on programme size - fortnightly is suggested).

How will the TDA Review Meeting function?

Two business days before the before the meeting the following will take place:

TDA Lead to publish the TDA Review Agenda
TDA Lead to publish Solution Architecture Document and related artefacts

Before the meeting begins:

TDA Members to read TDA Review Agenda and prepare where appropriate
TDA Members to read Solution Architecture Document and related artefacts

And during the meeting:

TDA Lead to go through the agenda items, risks and issues
TDA to discuss Solution Architecture, issues etc.
TDA Lead to capture issues

service naming conventions

2008-05-08T13:27:00.006Z

PPS - Portlet Presentation Service
APS - Ajax Presentation Service

BAS - Business Activity (/Process/Orchestrated) Service
FBS - Functional Business Service
UBS - Utility Business Service

LDS - Application Data Service
LDS - Logical Data Service
CDS - Canonical Data Service
PDS - Physical Data Service

grails tip: changing local jetty server port number

2008-02-15T11:58:00.003Z

taken from scott davis' excellent beginners tutorial, here is how to change your jetty server port number.

if you want to change the port number on a temporary basis, when in your application directory, just run the following command (using your port number of choice):

grails -Dserver.port=9090 run-app

on the other hand, if you want to make this change on a more permanent basis, locate your $GRAILS_HOME/scripts/Init.groovy file and change the port number on the following lines:


  serverPort = System.getProperty('server.port') ? 
    System.getProperty('server.port').toInteger() : 9090

spring standalone jndi context

2008-01-18T15:49:00.000Z

while looking for something to allow the use of jndi out of a jee container, in an environment such as tomcat, i came across james strachan's blog detailing his work on this area for apache servicemix.

he's implemented a standalone jndi context using some apache servicemix jndi classes, and an intro to this can be found here.

spring scheduling

2008-01-18T14:26:00.000Z

javaranch has a great tutorial on spring scheduling, which uses opensymphony's quartz api.

spring jms quickstart infrastructure configuration

2008-01-18T14:14:00.000Z

using spring JMS and ApacheMQ you can set up messaging capabilities within your application, even outside of a jee container.

here is an xml sample representing the beans that set up the jms infrastructure:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">

 <bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory">
  <property name="brokerURL" value="vm://embedded?broker.persistent=false"/>
 </bean>
 
 <bean id="requestQueue" class="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue">
  <constructor-arg value="queue.request"></constructor-arg>
 </bean>
 
 <bean id="confirmationQueue" class="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue">
  <constructor-arg value="queue.confirmation"></constructor-arg>
 </bean>
 
</beans>

the latter beans are queues, which can be named and coded appropriately and you can have as many as you need. queues are required for messages to be sent on.

the broker url also needs adjusting to represent your infrastructure, however this embedded broker can be used for development and testing.

blogging html and xml code

2008-01-18T13:34:00.000Z

ive found this useful tool which will encode html and xml code into escaped characters, and if wrapped between an html blockquote, pre and code tags, it will retain whitespace as necessary.

http://centricle.com/tools/html-entities/

useful eclipse java shortcuts

2008-01-18T11:18:00.000Z

ctrl + [space] - auto-complete.

use this when you have no text and what to know suggestions, when you have started the text you want but want it completed, or after you have entered the capital letters of the class you require.

ctrl + O - quick outline

ctrl + shift + O - organise imports

ctrl + T - class (or type) hierarchy

ctrl + shift + T - find class (or type) by name

spring mvc MessageSource

2008-01-17T16:11:00.000Z

A MessageSource is sourced by a number of "message bundles" which provide the mapping from a key to a readable String. The code below points out a sample message source:


    <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource">
        <property name="basename" value="/WEB-INF/messages/validation"/>
    </bean>

This code creates a bean for a reloadable message source, so when changes are made, they will be picked up without redeployment or reloading. The basename represents where the messages can be found, and in this case the default file will be in the folder '/WEB-INF/messages' in a file called 'validation.properties'. To support internationalisation, multiple message bundles (i.e. validation_XX_YY.properties) can be created in this folder using the correct naming convention for the languages required.

Now if a message of code, for example, 'empty.value' requires a message it will look for the message within these files/this file, using the standard property convention 'key=value'.

spring ViewResolver

2008-01-17T13:23:00.000Z

spring's dispatcher servlet delegates to a ViewResolver to map returned view names to view implementations. by default, view names are treated as web application relative file paths, but this can be overridden by registering a ViewResolver bean within the application context.

by using the following code, view names will be prefixed with '/WEB-INF/views' and suffixed with '.jsp':


<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
 <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views"/>
 <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>

this means if a ModelAndView is returned from a Controller with a view name 'summary', the resource '/WEB-INF/views/summary.jsp' will be returned.

spring webflow configuration template

2008-01-17T13:12:00.001Z


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<flow xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation="
  http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow
  http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow/spring-webflow-1.0.xsd">

 <!-- Write your flow here -->
 
</flow>

spring full bean definition configuration template

2008-01-17T13:08:00.000Z


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
 xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"    
    xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee"
    xmlns:lang="http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang"
    xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
    xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
    xmlns:flow="http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-2.5.xsd
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd              
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-2.5.xsd
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/lang/spring-lang-2.5.xsd
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-2.5.xsd
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/util
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.5.xsd
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/webflow-config/spring-webflow-config-1.0.xsd">

  <!-- add bean definitions here -->

</beans>

spring basic bean definition configuration template

2008-01-17T13:07:00.001Z


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
              http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">

  <!-- add bean definitions here -->

</beans>

spring log4j xml configuration template

2008-01-14T15:16:00.000Z


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd">

<log4j:configuration xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/">

   <!-- Appenders -->
   <appender name="console" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
       <param name="Target" value="System.out" />
       <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
           <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%-5p: %c - %m%n" />
       </layout>
   </appender>

   <!-- Application logger -->
   <logger name="yourapp">
       <level value="info" />
   </logger>

   <!-- 3rdparty Loggers -->
   <logger name="org.springframework.beans">
       <level value="warn" />
   </logger>
 
   <logger name="org.springframework.jdbc">
       <level value="warn" />
   </logger>

   <logger name="org.springframework.transaction">
       <level value="warn" />
   </logger>

   <logger name="org.springframework.orm">
       <level value="warn" />
   </logger>

   <logger name="org.springframework.web">
       <level value="warn" />
   </logger>

   <logger name="org.springframework.webflow">
       <level value="warn" />
   </logger>
 
   <!-- Root Logger -->
   <root>
       <priority value="warn" />
       <appender-ref ref="console" />
   </root>
 
</log4j:configuration>

Golden Compass Daemons

2007-12-22T11:00:00.001Z

getting up and running with buildr

2007-09-14T07:32:00.000Z

for the last couple of days i've been trying to get buildr running on my laptop to build an example project. i already had java 1.5 running on windows, with JAVA_HOME set accordingly, and i have installed ruby 1.8.6 via the one-click installer.

i decided to follow the buildr getting started guide and but i unfortunately had problems at the first hurdle - installation. the instruction was to run the following at the command line:

gem install buildr

however this would not run as expected and instead refused to install due to a missing dependent library as indicated here:

C:\dev\ruby\gems>gem install buildr
ERROR: While executing gem ... (RuntimeError)
Error instaling buildr:
Buildr requires rubyzip >= 0.9.0

i thought it may be due to my firewall, so after reading this post on ashish's blog, i decided to download the missing gem manually from the gems repository, installing that first in the same way, then continuing as above.

this worked at first, but then i was informed by gems of another dependency, and after following this process a couple of times i realised this may take a while and i had to find another way around.

i had a look at the gems user guide and looked up the section for installing a gem remotely and found that by adding a '-r' or '--remote' at the right place would force the install to fetch the gem libraries remotely. i believed this should have happened if they libraries weren't found locally anyway, so i'm not sure why this didn't work in the first place.

so i decided to proceed, and i had a brief look at the buildr help by running 'builder --help':

Usage:
buildr [-f buildfile] {options} targets...

Options:
--buildfile (-f)
Use FILE as the buildfile.
--freeze (-F)
Freezes the Buildfile so it always uses Buildr version 1.2.5
--help (-H)
Display this help message.
--nosearch (-N)
Do not search parent directories for the buildfile.
--quiet (-q)
Do not log messages to standard output.
--require=MODULE (-r)
Require MODULE before executing buildfile.
--trace (-t)
Turn on invoke/execute tracing, enable full backtrace.
--unfreeze (-U)
Unfreezes the Buildfile to use the latest version of Buildr
--verbose (-v)
Log message to standard output (default).
--version (-V)
Display the program version.

For help with your buildfile:
buildr help

then i needed to create a simple buildfile and i could do that by just creating a top level project directory, entering that directory in my console, and simply running the 'buildr' command on its own, followed by selecting option 1, to create a buildfile from the directory structure. this is what was created:

# Generated by Buildr 1.2.5, change to your liking
# Version number for this release
VERSION_NUMBER = "1.0.0"
# Version number for the next release
NEXT_VERSION = "1.0.1"
# Group identifier for your projects
GROUP = "dvdcat"
COPYRIGHT = ""

# Specify Maven 2.0 remote repositories here, like this:
repositories.remote << "http://www.ibiblio.org/maven2/"

desc "The Dvdcat project"
define "dvdcat" do

project.version = VERSION_NUMBER
project.group = GROUP
manifest["Implementation-Vendor"] = COPYRIGHT
end

i could then have a look at the buildfile help by running 'builder help':

Buildr 1.2.5

Usage:
buildr [-f buildfile] {options} targets...

Top-level projects (buildr help:projects for full list):
dvdcat # The Dvdcat project

Common tasks:
artifacts # Download all artifacts
build # Build the project
clean # Clean files generated during a build
compile # Compile all projects
default # The default task it build
eclipse # Generate Eclipse artifacts for all projects
help:projects # List all projects defined by this buildfile
help:tasks # List all tasks available from this buildfile
idea # Generate Idea artifacts for all projects
install # Install packages created by the project
javadoc # Create the Javadocs for this project
junit:report # Generate JUnit tests report in reports/junit
package # Create packages
release # Make a release
test # Run all test cases
uninstall # Remove previously installed packages
upload # Upload packages created by the project

For help on command line options:
buildr --help

Using Java 1.5.0_06, Ant 1.7.0.

To run a full build without running any test cases:
buildr test=no
To run specific test case:
buildr test:MyTest
To run integration tests:
buildr integration

The buildr RDoc is very useful too browse through, as is the code in SVN through FishEye. This book on Ruby Programming will be of help if you're not too offay with that yet, as is Dave Thomas and Andrew Hunt's pickaxe book.

desktop software

2007-09-12T12:37:00.000Z

here is an attempt at an exhaustive list of all the desktop software i use from time to time...

audio
Audacity
iTunes (Apple)
Last.fm

video
DivX
XviD
AVIcodec
Videora iPod Converter
VirtualDub
TMPGEnc

photo
IrfanView
Flickr Uploadr
NeatImage
Characterizer
AutoStitch
ThePanoramaFactory
Oriens Enhancer
MS Image Resizer Powertoy
MS Photo Info
MS Color Control Panel Applet
MS Photo Story
MS SyncToy

cd/dvd ripping/burning
DVDShrink
Folder2ISO

graphics
GIMP

system
Process Explorer (SysInternals)
WinRAR - http://www.download.com/3001-2250_4-10745708.html
7-zip
cygwin
VMWare Player
MS Network Monitor
MS SteadyState
MS Command Here Powertoy
MS VirtualDesktop Manager Powertoy

network
putty
WinSCP
SmartFTP / FileZilla
TortoiseSVN
TortoiseCVS

internet
Flock
Avant Browser (IE Equivalent Browser)
Azureus
EbayTurboSeller
Pidgin
Miranda IM - http://www.miranda-im.org/
-Skype Plugin - http://addons.miranda-im.org/details.php?action=viewfile&id=3200
-Modern Contact List Plugin - http://addons.miranda-im.org/details.php?action=viewfile&id=2103
Skype - http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/
FireFox
-Firebug
-Gmail Space (GSpace)
-Google Browser Sync
-GreaseMonkey
--Gmail GTD Tickler
--Folders4Gmail
-GTDInbox
-IEViewLite
-LiveHTTPHeaders
-ma.gnolia
-MeeTimer
-ScribeFire
-SwitchProxy Tool
-United States English Dictionary
-Web Developer Toolbar

security
AdAware
SpyBot
AVG
ZoneAlarm

misc
TextPad
notepad++
notepad2
GoogleDesktop
wikidpad
wink

office
OpenOffice / StarOffice
getCals

development
OpenWorkbench
Oracle SQL Server
SQL Explorer
RadRails
InstantRails
Softerra LDAP Browser
StarUML
Maven
RubyInstaller - http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl
InstantRails - http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl
Aptana RadRails - http://www.aptana.com/download_rails_rdt.php
Aptana Web IDE - http://www.aptana.com/download_all.php
eclipse
-Mylar/Mylyn
-OmondoUML
-Mavenide

servers
Apatar ETL
MySQL
OpenLDAP
Mingle

concerned about the power of google?

2007-08-07T19:24:00.000Z

if you are concerned about the power of google and their ability to know everything about you, then you have a couple of options to remain anonymous but still make use of their services. there is googlonymous which is a stripped down version of google
and there is a yahoo pipe to allow you to search google and yahoo! together.

i hope this helps some people sleep tonight...

java? ruby? .net? does it matter?

2007-08-03T09:22:00.000Z

i've just read dan creswell's article on whether experience with a technology is necessary when recruiting, in reflection to amazon's new job posting, his main point being as follows:

Tech is for sissies - Concepts, principles, patterns, measurement, theory and so on are what matters.

i tend to agree, but do think it depends on the developer to an extent, as sometimes the list of developer's technologies can tell you their ability in the latter. Take a developer who has only programmed in c and hasn't read cs, you can pretty much identify they will need to learn oo.

joel spolsky's article discusses the problems introduced by fixed-technology schools, suggesting computer scientists graduate with just one technology under their belt.

… I watched as many if not most of the students just didn’t make it. The material was too hard. I wrote a long sob email to the professor saying It Just Wasn’t Fair. Somebody at Penn must have listened to me (or one of the other complainers), because that course is now taught in Java.

I wish they hadn’t listened.

i can vouch that this isn't necessarily the case as i read computer science at kent in the uk, a sun java campus, however we covered other language types in significant detail such as functional (haskell), distributed (occam 2), and ai (lisp), assembly, plus many more.

however, the points that both articles are making are very valid, and a developer who has a firm grounding in the principles and concepts of technology, whether it be via self-education or via a well-rounded cs degree, can turn their hand to any specific technology put in front of them.

to summarise, the way a developer thinks is by far the most important factor here.

JavaFX

2007-05-10T08:05:00.000Z

What Is JavaFX

JavaFX is a new family of Sun products based on Java technology and targeted at the high impact, rich content market.

What Is JavaFX Script

JavaFX Script is a highly productive scripting language that enables content developers to create rich media and content for deployment on Java environments. JavaFX Script is a declarative, statically typed programming language. It has first-class functions, declarative syntax, list-comprehensions, and incremental dependency-based evaluation. It can make direct calls to Java APIs that are on the platform. Since JavaFX Script is statically typed, it has the same code structuring, reuse, and encapsulation features (such as packages, classes, inheritance, and separate compilation and deployment units) that make it possible to create and maintain very large programs using Java technology. See the FAQ for more information.

What Is Project OpenJFX

Project OpenJFX is a project of the OpenJFX community for sharing early versions of the JavaFX Script language and for collaborating on its development. In the future, the JavaFX Script code will be open sourced. The governance, licensing, and community models will be worked out as the project evolves.

For those of you who want to read more, here are some useful links...

JavaFX
JavaFX Script
JavaFX Mobile
JavaFX FAQ
OpenJFX

house hunting 2007

2007-02-07T08:44:00.000Z

in order to search the more recent changes in the housing market, here, for a temporary period only, are the latest market additions according to rightmove.co.uk and each number represents the properties posted in the last # days...

se3 - 14 - 10 - 7 - 3

se10 - 14 - 10 - 7 - 3

bexley - 14 - 10 - 7 - 3

chislehurst - 14 - 10 - 7 - 3

sevenoaks - 14 - 10 - 7 - 3

happy house hunting !

roast lamb and gravy

2006-11-12T11:35:00.000Z

ingredients

salt and pepper
olive oil
lemons, at least one
flour
2.8kg lamb
4 garlic cloves
or 6 anchovy fillets
or 6cm/2½in long rosemary sprigs
or 200g/7oz parma ham in 5mm/¼in thick and 6cm/2½in long strips
10-12 branches of rosemary
100g/3½oz freshly grated parmesan/pecorino cheese
and 100g/3½oz fresh breadcrumbs
or fresh parsley, mint, thyme and marjoram
and fresh breadcrumbs,
or 100g/3½oz black olive paste
or 100g/3½oz pitted kalamanta olives, puréed
or butter
290ml/½ pint vegetable stock
150ml/¼ pint red wine
2 tsp mustard (english or dijon)
1 tbsp redcurrant or cranberry jelly

instructions

hang or rest in a cool, dry place until its surface is dry to the touch
trim off and discard any excess fat
make incisions all over the meat creating small pockets about 2cm/1in deep
stuff into each incision any or either of the following:
a. 4 garlic cloves, slivered
b. 6 anchovy fillets, quartered
c. half a lemon, thinly sliced and in halves
d. sprigs of fresh rosemary, 6cm/2½in long
e. 200g/7oz prosciutto or parma ham, stripped 5mm/¼in thick and 6cm/2½in long
season the surface with freshly ground black pepper
heat 1 tbsp olive oil and three tablespoons of water in a flameproof heavy-duty baking pan
brown the lamb all over on a medium to high heat
allow to cool and preheat oven to 200C/400F/Gas7
overlap 10-12 branches of rosemary along a length of kitchen string
smear the lamb with any of the following:
a. 100g/3½oz freshly grated parmesan/pecorino cheese, mixed with
100g/3½oz fresh breadcrumbs, 2 tbsp olive oil and salt & pepper
b. rresh chopped parsley, mint, thyme and marjoram mixed with
fresh breadcrumbs, grated lemon zest, oil to bind and salt and pepper
c. 100g/3½oz black olive paste
d. 100g/3½oz pitted kalamanta olives, puréed
e. butter
place it on the rosemary at one end
roll it up so that it's completely encased in the rosemary
tie the string tightly to secure the rosemary stays in place
return the lamb to the baking pan, and drizzle 1 tbsp olive oil and 1/2 lemon juice
optionally, add 1½ glasses of white wine and 1½ glasses of water
place in the oven to roast (15 mins per 500g/1lb2oz, plus 15 mins), turning occasionally (1h 45m)
remove from the oven, transfer to a warm serving platter and cover tightly with foil
rest for 1/3 of the cooking time (ensures a perfectly pink result) (30-35m)
set the roasting tin on the hob over a medium heat
spoon off any excess fat
stir 2 tsp flour into the pan juices
stir well until it forms a paste
stir in 290ml/½ pint vegetable stock
stir in 150ml/¼ pint red wine
stir in 2 tsp mustard (English or Dijon)
stir in 1 tbsp redcurrant or cranberry jelly
stir until thickened and smooth then simmer for 5 mins
add salt and pepper to gravy if necessary, and sieve into server
remove foil from the lamb and reserve the rosemary for garnish
steady the joint with a carving fork or large fork
make the first cut vertically, about halfway down the joint
cut until you reach the bone
cut slices either side of this first cut to give you neat slices of meat
when you have removed all the meat from the top of the leg, turn it over
carve horizontally from the base

chicken stew

2006-11-12T10:04:00.000Z

ingredients - four portions

six chicken legs or two chicken fillets
chicken stock or stock cubes
one large potato or two small potatoes
one large onion or two small onions
four handfuls of mixed vegetables (peas, sweetcorn, leeks, celery, cabbage, carrots, green beans, kidney beans)
cornflour
suet

instructions

cover chicken with water in a large pan
bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes
remove from pan and rinse
empty the water from the pan
chop chicken into golf ball sized pieces or smaller
chop vegetables into golf ball sizes or smaller
add two pints of water to the pan
add two cans of your soup of choice to the pan
add the chicken
add the vegetables
add salt and pepper
bring to the boil and simmer for 40 mins to 1 hour
roll up some golf-ball sized dumplings from suet
add all dumplings to stew 25 mins before the end
preheat oven to 180/200
take out dumplings 10 mins before the end
place dumplings on an oven tray and cover with stew juice
place in oven for 10 mins or until a little crispy
sieve in cornflour to thicken 5 mins from the end
take out and serve

current wish list

2006-10-13T18:41:00.000Z

this is a list that will evolve of all the gear i'm after...

live lounge (cd) - £8.95 @ play
singstar rocks with microphones (ps2 game) - £29.99 @ play
singstar legends no microphones (ps2 game) - £17.99 @ play
lego star wars II - the original trilogy (ps2 game) - £17.99 @ play
buzz - the big quiz without buzzers (ps2 game) - £17.99 @ play
pro evolution soccer 6 (ps2 game) - £29.99 @ play

chilli con carne

2006-10-08T19:53:00.000Z

ingredients for two to four

1 pound or 500g beef mince, not too lean
1-2 onions, finely chopped
1-2 green or red peppers, finely chopped
3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
A jalapeno pepper or chilli, finely chopped, OR 2 teaspoons of chilli flakes
2-4 teaspoons of cumin powder
1-2 teaspoons of hot chilli powder
2 tins of chopped tomoatoes
1 tin of kidney beans, drained
An optional half cup of beef stock, or a stock cube
2 tablespoons of tomatoe puree
1-2 glasses of red wine, preferably dry
salt and pepper
olive oil
half a cup of rice per person
optional but preferable: a few springs of fresh coriander
optional but preferable: 150-300g sour cream
optional cheese, grated

instructions

add liive oil to a hot saucepan
sprinkle in some salt and pepper
add the mince and start to brown
half way through the browning process, add the onions and garlic
once flily browned, add the red/green pepper
after a couple of minutes, add the chopped tomatoes, kidney beans, and wine
after another minute or two, add the puree, cumin, and hot chilli powder
cook over a low heat for a further 10-60 minutes
add stock if necessary to add moisture
add salt and pepper as necessary to balance flavour
add the chilli or chilli flakes 10 minutes before the end
boil the rice to coinside with your prospective finishing time
serve with rice, sour cream and coriander

fc shtora

2006-09-18T14:23:00.004Z

i play football on wednesday evenings for a 5-a-side team we collectively named fc shtora. we play at the catford powerleague by the train station in south east london, and after originally wincing at the number of bans for violent conduct on the club house noticeboard each week, we decided to join the wednesday night league.

we started the season badly, most teams coming across younger, fitter and collectively more skillful. however, some of these teams have been playing together for years and we are just starting out, so we told ourselves to give it time.

slowly our patience is paying off. we were getting closer and closer to getting a result, and last wednesday we finally got our first win - and an empathic one it was as we won 21-9.

the team blog is a little slow in being updated - but you can check it out as i have added it to the side panel.

Shtora is a Russian electro-optical countermeasures suite, and if you want to know more follow this wikipedia link and this link.

brush with the fuzz

2006-09-15T13:13:00.001Z

stadds-passed-out ... uploaded by springett

after another great but late night out in downtown orlando, stadds decided the trip home was too far and the curb would be as a good a place as any to sleep... the ol bill even tried to rouse him, but decided they'd leave it to us to carry him, thanks for nothing !

through the window pane

2006-09-11T15:54:00.000Z

i'm really into guillemots right now - made up love song 43 and trains to brazil are two 'kin excellent tracks. they have a myspace site where you can listen to some tracks and watch their top of the pops live performance, and if you're quick you can listen to an interview they gave recently on jo whileys live lounge (if you're not quick enough then you should be able to get the live tracks from fan site driftingnowhere). happy listening...

grails 101

2006-08-17T10:44:00.000Z

urgh. i'm not sure if im still a little drunk or my hangover's kickin in, or both. either way, im not exactly in sync at the moment, so the following may not make sense - bare with me. all i can remember england won four nil and o'neills pours a great pint of guinness.

recently i've been playing with groovy on the grails. groovy is a jsr standard scripting language which means it runs on the jvm, like java does. this means you can create classes in groovy and they will compile and run as java classes do, and hence run in a servlet container, jee container, and any other container that runs on a jvm.

grails is in it's infancy, but the idea is it is groovy's competitor to ruby on rails. rails is much further down the line, but the major benefit of both rails and grails is they allow you to develop a new application much faster than it would be possible if you were hand coding your application. from what i can see the two major reasons why this is possibly are one, much of the code is generated for you, and two, they implement the theory of convention over configuration.

so lets say you want to create a simple book management application, you want to develop a persistent book repository, and a method of managing it, where you can list all books, look at a single book, create new books, edit existing books, and delete unwanted books. all you need to do from a coding perspective is create a simple groovy pojo for your book (which is much less code than a java pojo and is essentially your model) and note your desired database connection details. now the grails console will generate the controller, the views, and will use the built-in framework to handle the http conversations, generate the database if needed, manage the o/r mapping and the application logic.

this is all because convention is used. basically if you created a string member in your book model class called author, a book table will be created with a column named author. then a hibernate mapping will be dynamically generated to map your book model class to your book table, and will use a string property with the member and column being named author. similar generations, dynamic or not, are handled a the front end.

i do really suggest having a play where you will find it is this simple (if you find my explanation simple that is).

groovy provide an eclipse plugin which will allow you to easily edit groovy files in the eclipse ide. grails doesn't really provide a plugin, but do have a page letting you know how to use grails in eclipse.

in addition to the tutorials on the website, i've also found these two great tutorials. i would initially want to use grails to provide me with crud management operations on oracle database tables via a website for my existing projects, which is why i find the following so useful, you may be in a different situation. jason rudolph has put together a comprehensive tutorial called hoisting grails to your legacy db. and grall at oracle has provided us with an oracle specific grails tutorial.

i have found a couple of sticking pointing with grails so far. my first one is i have not figured out whether grails has the ability to cope with databases with composite ids. another huge advantage with grails is if the convention method doesn't suit your needs then you can override it with configuration. so if you have a legacy database table that doesn't have an primary key column called id then you can create a hibernate mapping file for this table. however when i have tried to do this and use the composite id configuration methods i have got stuck. this may just be due to my novice level in groovy, and there may well be a way.

the other sticking point i came across was lob handling, of which there was none. again, when mapping from a legacy database you can point to a clob or blob column, however, grails didn't know how to handle this and exceptions were thrown all over the place. so after a conversation with graeme rocher, the lead in the grails project, at the grails user forum, i raised the issue at the grails jira site but being impatient decided to start attacking the problem myself.

i checked out the project from cvs, and made an amendment or two and added some additional classes, and it gave me the ability to list, read, and delete clob files, which i'm convinced would work for blob files too but i hadn't got around to testing. the only problem was it wouldn't allow me to create or edit blog files. You can see from the forum discussion linked above that this issue is still pending, as this was a week or two ago and i got stuck and moved on, but i do intend to return. the point i got to was that it seemed to me that transaction synchronisation was switched off, when it defaults to being turned on, and the exceptions were asking me to switch it on to allow lob persistence. unfortunately i couldn't find where in the code this was - but maybe i am wrong, hopefully i will find out !

so just a last couple of links you may find useful. here is guillaume laforge's blog who seems to be an active member of the forum and has a very good grails intensive blog, and finally for those of us based in london here is the groovy and grails london user group who has recently been out for a few beers, even though i couldn't make it along this time - maybe next.

happy grail hunting....

the server side java symposium europe

2006-07-21T07:40:00.000Z

i went along to theserverside.com's european java symposium this year, which was held in barcelona, a city i had always wanted to visit but had never had the change to up until this point.

it is a magnificent city, beautiful hills surrounding the outskirts of the city, a beach full of revellers (especially on friday night when the local's were celebrating st john's day, the patron saint of the city), a great atmosphere when wandering down the ramblers, intriguing lanes every which way you turn, and the architecture is like no other in europe led by the fairytale creations of the extrodinarily creative, imaginative and innovative gaudi.

back to the conference. well that was great too, it was my first conference actually, and i didn't realise how much you could learn in such a small space of time, its quite unreal. apart from the general highlights and sessions, just the general education you get from listening to your peers, about the way they think, about trends in the industry, about ways to approach technology, the list goes on.

one thing i discovered along these lines was how to approach new technologies. i am certainly an advocate for change and trying new things, but i suppose my problem is finding time to discover new technologies, to play with them, and while using this continuous learning pattern to go on to approach problems with a completely open mind. well, now i know i must find time to dedicate to r&d (i suppose you could call it) because i know will save time on my actual planning, design and development by using the newer, simpler and more feature rich frameworks, libraries and tools.

more about my actual favourite sessions later, as for now i must run to work to create a ten minute presentation summarising the conference and present it to my group this afternoon... its funny, i could talk for ten minutes easy on each session i attended, but getting ten minutes to summarise the conference, now thats actually harder... fingers crossed eh.

flickr soap wsdl

2006-07-17T23:58:00.000Z

so, lets just get into it. i'm a developer, to be more specific i am mostly a java server side developer. i have been reading a little into mashups and been considering creating a site that compiles blogger feeds, flickr photos, and del.icio.us links. now i'm sure this must have been done a thousand times before but i cannot find a template web application or service which provides these three popular services together - can anyone help me out here??

if i don't find them, i suppose i will have to create it myself, which i don't mind really. however, i started looking into the flickr web services. i understand it offers its web services in many formats - soap, rest etc, however in java, I am most aclined to using eclipse to get going by creating an axis soap client using a wizard which is generated off the wsdl. However, it seems there is no wsdl file available from flickr. i assume there are there good arguments for not releasing this when they are easily generatable, can anyone fill me in?

btw. i know there is a java client api in development. flickrj, but it seems a very early version and will be a while until it is less error prone.

anyways, I'm off to sleep, or at least try to in this london heatwave... my firefox weather extension, forecastfox, is telling me its still 75 degrees farenheight outside right now, here we go.