http://www.spenceruresk.com Random posts about Java, software development, politics, and economics Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:14:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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/ I couldn't find any tutorials on how to use Amazon AWS with GroovyWS, so I took a few minutes to figure out how to do it. Here is some sample code: [code lang="java"]import groovyx.net.ws.WSClient def proxy = new WSClient("http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/AWSECommerceService.wsdl?", this.class.classLoader) def req = proxy.create("com.amazon.webservices.awsecommerceservice._2008_04_07.ItemSearchRequest") req.searchIndex = 'Books' req.keywords = "Groovy and Grails" def search = proxy.create("com.amazon.webservices.awsecommerceservice._2008_04_07.ItemSearch") search.AWSAccessKeyId ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/05/18/amazon-associates-web-service-with-groovyws/ With the skyrocketing cost of fuel and the increasing impact of fuel costs on American workers, I have to ask - Why aren't more people telecommuting? My comments are specifically for IT-related jobs, since that is where my experience is, but I believe a fairly large number of other jobs ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/04/27/why-arent-more-it-workers-telecommuting/ It looks as though developers using the Apple iPhone 2.0 (Beta) OS (via the official development program) have been completely locked out of their phones within the last few hours, based on posts on Apple's forums. To make matters worse, you apparently cannot restore the 1.1.4 firmware. Ouch. http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/04/08/ibrick-20/ I was pretty excited when I saw that you can debug your iPhone apps on your actual phone with Apple's SDK. Not being one to bother with instructions, I downloaded the new version of Xcode and started hacking away on a sample iPhone app. When I went to try it ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/03/21/no-debugging-on-the-iphone-for-a-while/ 2008 is shaping up to be a great year for mobile development. Google released its Android platform late last year, and Apple has released an early version of its SDK for the iPhone just a few days ago. I'm not a full-time mobile developer, so I figure I'll eventually ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2008/03/18/iphone-vs-android/ It has been interesting to see the various reactions to Java 6 not being included with OS X Leopard. Several people on Javalobby advocated boycotting Apple over this. I  don't think a boycott is in order - in fact, I just bought a brand new iMac, even knowing Java 6 ... http://www.spenceruresk.com/2007/11/02/more-leopardjava-6-reactions/