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Check out Added Bytes and subscribe to the feeds.

Make sure to check out free online Java-related learnig at http://www.javapassion.com.

Note-to-self: Add Prefetch Technologies and Blog o’Matty to my list of feeds.

Also, check out Blastwave for OpenSolaris software.

I’ve been coming up to speed on Git and swallowing up every tutorial and blog entry I can find.

A few days ago, I ran into Jonathan Rockway’s very entertaining blog entry Git Merging by Example.  Great read and very instructive.  But I was particularly amused by Jonathan’s quote:

I love the “Merge made by octopus” message; I am seriously going to have a t-shirt made that says that. I like it when sea creatures help maintain my code.

You know what?  I love when sea creatures help out as well.  So, to that end I’ve constructed a little bumper sticker in honor of Git and Jonathan.  Here’s a preview:

If you’re interested in getting a hold of one of the bumper stickers, leave a comment.
Sorry it’s not a t-shirt, Jonathan, but maybe someday…

From the “Huh, well that’s cool” department…

Today I figured how to run a background process from within a web application that utilizes Spring 2.0 or greater. At first, I investigated all sorts of ways of adding multithreading to a web application before stumbling upon this gem.

The key is that Spring provides a class, TaskExecutor, that allows you to run a background task by simply creating a class that implements the Runnable interface and hooking it up to your application with some simple configuration.

In short, as Spring allows Java web developers to program using POJOs and not against a set of interfaces, TaskExecutor and its cohorts allow us to do background processing using simple classes instead of forcing us to handle the ugly details of multithreading and synchronization ourselves.

Thanks, Spring dudes! Once again, you save the day.
See Chapter 23 of the Spring Framework documentation for more information.

Well, my cousin threw down the gaunlet by proposing this quite humorous programmatic rendition of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s indominatable “I Like Big Butts”:

I.like(bigButts) && I.canLie(false);
otherBrothers.canDeny(false);
when (girl.walksIn())
{
if (girl.hasIttyBittyWaist() && roundThing.getLocation()==your.FACE)
{
you.getSprung();
}
}

Which I thought was quite clever. So, I felt I owed him a response comensurate with the length of time I made him wait for a reply.

(Read on …)

“Read any good books lately?”

Well, I’ve got a new favorite. It contains all the elements of a great book: a snappy introduction, intrigue, plot twists and a cliff-hanger of an ending.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’m referring to The Square Root of 3 by Jerry Bonnel and Robert Nemiroff, available on Project Gutenberg.

SPOILER ALERT: The 30,788th significant digit is 4.

In all ernestness, I think Project Gutenberg is a great concept. But when I ran across this, I just cracked up.

Confused by the acronyms you see in instant messages or web pages?

I found a great list in the FAQ section of the Gush IM/RSS page.

Now that you’ve read this, I have the perfect excuse to make my conversations even more terse and obscure.

To quote Linnea, “Put it in context!”