Free reference cards on technologies in case you're interested - enjoy :)

http://refcardz.dzone.com/

Some free resources for source control & build management tools that I use regularly:

• Git http://progit.org/
• SVN  http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
• CVS ( for posterity :)  http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/

I'll be posting other resources here too.

I've always wondered what the differences were and someone has gone through a TDD explanation - nice! :)

http://blogs.sourceallies.com/2011/08/spring-injection-with-resource-and-autowired/

Incidently, using the @Resource + mappedName attribute is a nice shortcut to map to JNDI properties.

http://radio-weblogs.com/0135826/2006/04/06.html#a198

yay - word wrap in eclipse editors! :)

http://ahtik.com/blog/projects/eclipse-word-wrap/

Someone recently asked me for some advice on resources for Python so I thought I'd write up a list :)

•  http://www.python.org/  - the obvious source
• http://www.jython.org/ - python implemented on top of the JVM giving you the best of both worlds
• http://www.diveintopython.net/ - an excellent free book for programmers who know other languages already

And here's what I use to write code in python:

• good ol  http://www.vim.org/  and the command line :)
• http://pydev.org/ - eclipse based
• IDLE which comes in the download
• http://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide

happy python'ing =)

A couple of freeware or cheap high productivity tools if you're stuck in windows =)

1. Launchy - launch any application with a keystroke
2. BBLean - replace the boring shell with a port of blackbox from *nix
3. Lookout - fast search in outlook
4. Servant Salamander - powerful 2 pane file manager
5. Winmerge - merge and diff tool
6. Kitty - replacement for putty
7. Vim or Textpad for basic file editing

There's probably others that I use which I can't remember off the top of my head but these are my favorites.

mmmmmmmm ...

http://store.cstick.com/

there's a motorcycle show happening up north this weekend too:

http://www.euromoto2012.com/

We discovered an intersting bug in JAX-WS at work the other day so I blogged about it over at our company's blog. It makes for some fun stuff at work sometimes rather than the mundane day-to-day stuff :)

My buddy Will Iverson had recommended this book to me a while back and I really enjoyed reading it. Each chapter goes best with your favorite drink, ideally the one that the chapter is talking about :)

http://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/a-history-of-the-world-in-six-glasses/

Saw this talk which was forwarded on STS .. simply brilliant! Make sure you watch till the end- it's not all about programming.

http://vimeo.com/36579366

I've been working on a command line java app at work which is part of a cron based batch process which updates some data between systems. Using maven, spring and mybatis means that I had the framework up and running within a couple of hours to pull data from backend DBs and output a file with some data. 

Then I ran into a problem when I wanted to package it all up as a jar file which could be run directly from the command line via cron. The tricky part is in packaging up all the jars that are included as part of spring, mybatis, etc. and be able to run them in a way that they are all available on the classpath without munging each other.

Well, OneJar to the rescue! Everything packaged up all nice and neat. Just run 'mvn package' to get the jar and then use the usual 'java -jar app.jar' to run it. Works like a charm. Even has a Maven plugin to minimize the work needed to get it up and running.

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on February 2, 2012 4:49:00 PM PST #

Somedays just feel like ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8MMDBXh4k

enjoy!

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on February 1, 2012 4:48:00 PM PST #

Looks like a couple more inches fell last night. We're upto almost a foot now methinks. Here's a couple of snapshots. Time to stay indoors, drink hot drinks and prep for that major software release tomorrow :)

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on January 18, 2012 12:35:00 PM PST #

Day 1 of the snowmageddon. Around 8" so far outside with more expected tomorrow. Supposed to be as bad as '96 - I remember snow drifts as tall as the house back then when we lived further up north :)

This is what the yard looks like so far. Let's see how much gets dumped tomorrow. As Def Leppard would say 'Snowmageddon it!'

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on January 18, 2012 12:01:00 AM PST #

We practice Continous Delivery at Dynacron. That's the main reason why we've been able to push out a lot of new functionality for the last few months at a major local healthcare customer at a steady clip via a fairly automated deployment process which enables deployments anytime.

Dynacron has a free seminar if you're interested in learning more:

http://www.dynacrongroup.com/2012/01/seminar-292012-introduction-to-continuous-delivery/

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on January 17, 2012 10:53:00 PM PST #

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech

Here's the facts on them:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248298/sopa_and_pipa_just_the_facts.html

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on January 16, 2012 11:32:00 PM PST #

We've been using TeamCity at work for a while now and it's working out as well as Hudson, etc. It has some really nifty integration features available via an eclipse plugin ( netbeans, idea, etc are also supported I believe). Love the remote run functionality! 

http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/features/continuous_integration.html

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on January 11, 2012 2:14:00 PM PST #

I hope the new year brings you lots of joy & happiness! 2011 certainly brought us a lovely bundle of joy =)

Add a comment

Posted by Nimret Sandhu on January 4, 2012 12:49:00 AM PST #

awesome geeky video! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U1_KW6ww7Y