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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.

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I have a newly-minted GnuPG key that I can use to sign and encrypt emails.

Check the details out here.

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Well, it’s the middle of December and my fingernails continue to improve.

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I know, I know… You’re all clamoring to get me the coolest gift for Christmas.

Well, never fear, here are some ideas. And while they’re sure to make the anti-geek in you cringe, they’re also sure to make me happy. And don’t we all just love happy Evan’s?

If you’re Internetaphobic, just check with Nea – she’s sure to help you out.

Apparel (shirts in XL, if you please):

• All Your Oil… t-shirt – Highest on my list! *backordered*
• Ignite Realtime t-shirt – Black or navy’s fine
  
• Creative Commons ND t-shirt (lightweight/red)
• Productively Lazy t-shirt
  
• LifeHacker t-shirt
  
• Please wait… t-shirt
  
• Every time…
  
• All Your Base…
• Durable, cool-looking sunglasses (I will treat them roughly!)

Gift cards in any denomination from any of these fine establishments:

• Starbucks
• Amazon.com
• Buy.com
• Graeter’s
• Panera (Evan’s other office!)
• CompUSA
• Micro Center

Entertainment

• Family Guy, Season 4

Computer Shtuff

• Parallels Desktop for Mac – Lets you run Windows on an Apple.
• Kensington Laptop Lock
• Clear Protective Case for Laptop

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Earned my brown belt!

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Couldn’t reach you on the phone, so the family decided to record you a couple of birthday wishes.

So, in your honor, may I present our two renditions of “Happy Birthday.”

• Happy Birthday
  MP3 format, 89Kb, 28 seconds

• Happy Birthday (Zoo Version)
  MP3 format, 72Kb, 23 seconds

Enjoy!

– E

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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.

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“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.

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Now two months since my famous accident in which I saved the lives of countless orphaned children, my fingernails are making good progress:

My middle finger is back to around 80% and the ring finger to around 50%.

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Today’s workout was just that — a workout. The emphasis was on keeping our bodies in motion without many breaks.

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