http://www.spenceruresk.com Random posts about Java, software development, politics, and economics Fri, 08 Jan 2010 04:00:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Just wanted to post a quick note about a new site I'm working on. I've been a big fan of StackOverflow.com for a while and when I heard they were going to start offering their software as a service, I decided to sign up for the beta and use it to ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2010/01/07/new-stackexchange-based-site/ I've been sick and recovering from surgery the last month or so, so I've been kind of out of the loop when it comes to gaming news. Yesterday, I found out about Infinity Ward's decision to not support dedicated servers in Modern Warfare 2, and instead rely on their new ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2009/11/07/infinity-ward-gives-pc-users-the-finger-a-sign-of-things-to-come/ The closing of tr.im has, for a day at least, shone a little bit of light on the URL shortening industry. It has also shed light on one of several problems with URL shortening - an idea with good intentions, but potentially bad results. When tr.im shuts down for good ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2009/08/10/why-url-shortening-services-suck/ I've been using Lift and Scala for a few weeks now to build my scala job site. I've been incrementally adding features ever since I first opened the site a week ago. Two of those features I added today involved utilizing the runtime environment support in Lift, so I thought ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2009/07/14/using-run-mode-and-properties-in-lift/ I've played around with Scala off and on for over a year now, and also looked at Lift once or twice during that time. After going to David Pollak's session at JavaOne about Lift, I decided to buckle down and actually create something with Scala and Lift, as I usually ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2009/07/06/scala-job-site-my-experiences-with-lift/ Take a look at the following code, and try to guess what is printed: [code lang="java"] public static void main(String[] args) { Date today = new Date(); Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar(); c.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, 10); System.out.println(c.after(today)); } [/code] What is printed? 1. true 2. false 3. It doesn't compile 4. Runtime error From a logical perspective, #1 is right - 10 days from now is ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/08/16/bad-api-examples-javautilcalendar/ I've been developing a bunch of small Grails apps lately, and I end up deploying them to my production box fairly frequently. This is kind of annoying because the upload speed on my home internet connection is terrible - it sometimes takes 7 or 8 minutes to upload a new ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/07/02/quickly-redeploying-grails-apps/ I've been playing around with Grails and a bit of GWT lately, and it sure is a lot of fun. I've made some applications that use Grails, GWT, and GoogleMaps (see: Find A Wii Fit), and thought I'd write a quick tutorial on how to do it - it can ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/06/15/grails-gwt-with-gwt-ext-googlemaps-maxmind-sample-application/ For some time, it has been one of my dreams to see Java-based web applications be more viable for small websites. This means two things: rapid development capabilities (like Ruby on Rails), and inexpensive, reliable, and economical hosting options. For goal #1, Grails is clearly fitting the bill. I spent the ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/06/12/running-grails-applications-on-a-vps/ Ah, the smell of a fresh codebase. I’m certain most software developers who have been around for any amount of time have had to work on “The Project”. This project has probably been going for years, has had a fair amount of turnover on the development team, and has had a ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/05/26/avoiding-unpleasant-code-with-peer-reviews/