Vanity Foul

Vanity Foul
Dedicated to the wanderings of an egotistical mind.

Tuesday May 19, 2009

Exploding Soup

Did you know ham can explode? I didn't. I heated a 1/2 can of Campbells Chunky Split Pea w/Ham for 1 minute. I then stuck in my spoon, expecting to stir the soup and heat some more. Instead, the bit of ham I touched exploded in my face (leaning into the microwave in order to stir). A big chunk hit my lower lip and burned a spot, but it isn't visibly damaged. Just glad it didn't hit an eye!

I cleaned up the interior of the microwave, heated another 15 seconds (originally planned for 45) without incident. Phew!
( May 19 2009, 12:42:59 PM ) News Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/exploding_soup

Wednesday April 08, 2009

Satellite Sheiks

Satellite Sheik n. A televangelist for Islam. These media-savvy religious leaders broadcast moderate Muslim beliefs on satellite TV and social networks, appealing to Arabs alienated by traditional imams.[Jargon Watch]

Isn't that the opposite of Christian televangelists?
( Apr 08 2009, 03:38:02 PM ) Politics Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/blockquote_p_i_satellite_sheik

The Daily Chuck

It's silly, but I look forward to the Daily Chuck, but not so much as before Chuck got a sister.
( Apr 08 2009, 02:32:36 PM ) Entertainment Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/the_daily_chuck

Groovy Markup Builder

Rather than post this to the Groovy User's mailing list and look like a fool, I thought I'd restrict my foolishes to a smaller audience.

My employer generates a lot of XML, some of which contains an element that looks something like this:
<updatetime day='2' mon='8' date='11' yr='2008' hr='4' hr24='4' tz='GMT' mer='am' min='1' sec='0'>04:01 AM GMT Monday, Aug 11</updatetime>

The perl for this was straightforward (blat out the xml as a string), but when I rewrote it in Java it got complicated, using a SimpleDateFormat to generate a string that I parsed to constituent bits and built a DOM Element. The parsing to bits is irrelevant here, what was "nice" was that in Java for each attribute I just called (in a loop):
updateTimeEl.setAttribute(nameVal[0], nameVal[1]);

Now, for a bit of R&D, I'm rewriting it in Groovy (along with the rest of the class) using the MarkupBuilder and I built a map of attributes. I wanted to do
builder.updatetime( attributes.each{key, value -> key:value}, sdf.format(updateTime) )
but that failed (groovy insists that key/value must be members of my class) and I resorted to:

builder.updatetime(
	// first the attributes
	day:attributes['day'],
	mon:attributes['mon'],
	date:attributes['date'],
	yr:attributes['yr'],
	hr:attributes['hr'],
	hr24:attributes['hr24'],
	tz:attributes['tz'],
	mer:attributes['mer'],
	min:attributes['min'],
	sec:attributes['sec'],
	// now the text value
	sdf.format(updateTime)
)

This works, but is certainly less elegant than I like.
( Apr 08 2009, 02:15:44 PM ) Groovy Permalink Comments [4]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/groovy_markup_builder

ReadWriteWeb on iPredator

ReadWriteWeb has a great entry today about a new service from The Pirate Bay, iPREDator. In particular, the following quotes really hit the nail on the head:

This is where the copyright witch hunt has brought us: in order to access the content we want, we have to become anonymous and hide our identities. Because people just want to watch a TV show or see a movie, they have to play a ridiculous cat-and-mouse game with the authorities who somehow equate downloading a file with stealing a car.
...
Yet here we are, only a day away from the launch of a tool that is surely going to be used for much more than just torrenting. [iPREDator]

I share the sentiments of Sarah Perez, the article's author.
( Apr 08 2009, 09:14:44 AM ) Politics Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/readwriteweb_on_ipredator

Monday March 30, 2009

Standalone GORM via Java

I spent some time re-jiggering the code, specifically getting Burt's GormHelper to load from the applicationContext.xml. I also pulled the use of domainclasses.txt and listed them directly (I'd rather make the code smarter and have it load anything with the @Entity annotation - but that's beyond the current exercise). Don't forget to change the base-package in the gorm:sessionFactory bean.

    <bean id="gormHelper" class="com.burtbeckwith.gorm.GormHelper">
	  <constructor-arg>
	  	<list>
	  		<value>com.brainopolis.GormAuthor</value>
	  		<value>com.brainopolis.GormBook</value>
	  	</list>
	  </constructor-arg>
	</bean>

I've got a simple GormProxy for a few dynamic GORM methods - save(), findBy() - but you'd probably want to build a proper Interface for the GORM classes to extend. I've built a small demonstration app, complete with new GormHelper, applicationContext.xml, and a couple Test Cases.
( Mar 30 2009, 01:07:25 PM ) Groovy Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/standalone_gorm_via_java

Friday March 27, 2009

Using GORM from Java

As the advocate of GORM, it fell to me to prove that it was possible to use GORM from within a Java application. I knew, theoritically, that is was possible, but it took me a couple days to prove it. The few related links I could find were all pre-Grails 1.1, and most were over a year old. Still, based on the shoulders of the giants who went before me, I was able to get it working.

Here is the list of Giants, and the pages the left behind to guide me:

The old Standalone GORM page told me it was possible, just not how.
Many links were found on this Swik page.
The Grails 1.1 Release Notes told me that something important had changed, and I couldn't just use what went before.
Anthony Caliendo was trying to do the opposite, but his struggles were still instructional.
Burt Beckwith's adventures were key, and without his GormHelper I wouldn't have succeeded. I've made changes based on Grails 1.1 GORM.
I'm going to buy Robert's GORM book, but I don't want a PDF and I don't have time to wait for it to come out in 'dead tree.'
Graeme answered my stupid and obvlivious question on the user-AT-grails.codehaus-DOT-org mailing list.
John Mclean provided many complicated posts that once I figure out will make my hack much more elegant.
Finally, the excellent API docs for Grails.

( Mar 27 2009, 01:27:54 PM ) Groovy Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/using_gorm_from_java

Thursday March 19, 2009

Parrot 1.0 It's been a long time coming, Parrot 1.0 is finally released. How far behind is Perl 6?
( Mar 19 2009, 06:27:10 AM ) Technology Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/parrot_1_0

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