Thursday September 11, 2003

Coming soon to an office near you

... I hope ... if you live or work in the Twin Cities MN area. That is to say, my current contract will be ending on the 24th and I'm on the hunt for gainful employment. If you are hiring, or know anyone who is, please contact me at lance AT brainopolis.com.
( Sep 11 2003, 08:29:33 AM ) Personal Permalink [Trackback]

Saturday September 06, 2003

Re: It's a boy

Several people (okay, just Dave) have asked to see what my boy looks like. Here you are:

Sorry, that's the best picture we have at the moment. ( Sep 06 2003, 04:11:22 PM ) Personal Permalink Comments [5] [Trackback]

Friday September 05, 2003

On Loathing Singletons

Norman Richards posts on the ever-popular topic the evil that is singletons. I've never understood these discussions (that is, no one has ever presented what I see to be a compelling point), and here Norman grants a HUGE caveat:

Most of the time, it doesn't matter (performance and memory issues aside) if multiple instances of the object existed.

What?! You can't set performance and memory issues aside. Now, I get what Norman is saying: Don't use Singletons for Singleton's sake. It's like any tool, used inappropriately its, uh, inappropriate, maybe even dangerous. A Factory may be more appropriate, but it also may be overdesign; one thing I've liked about XtremeProgramming, YAGNI, applies here.

Or maybe I'm just tired of people pointing out all the stupid things I do. Maybe its the contradictory recommendations found across the web. Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee yet this morning.
( Sep 05 2003, 07:48:04 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [7] [Trackback]

Wednesday September 03, 2003

Circle Blog

Cameron posts on Anthony blogging about Cedric's response to Joe's column. And now I will blog about Cameron, by pointing to my comment at Cedric's:

"Roller (has) a fundamental design flaw that prevents them from scaling" - that was true. In the not-yet-released version this has been addressed. Not to say there aren't more lurking, though.

Every time someone has pointed at something wrong with Roller, we've said "yup, you may be right". We looked at it some more and said "yup, you were right". And then we did our level best to fix it. I'm sorry FreeRoller's performance has been so disappointing. The chief underlying cause has been addressed, and Roller 0.9.8 performs much better (under artificial load conditions anyway).

We continue working to make Roller faster, and to make Roller better. Some people see Roller as a product, me, I see it as a hobby. Everybody wants to be better at their hobby.
( Sep 03 2003, 08:10:00 PM ) Roller Permalink [Trackback]

Forgotten Blogiversary

Thanks to Niel Eyde for reminding me, I'd forgotten my anniversary as well. Maybe not forgotten, just had more pressing concerns (I have thought about posting this post before - just not when I was near a computer). In any case, blogging and Roller saved my sanity one year and 13 days ago.
( Sep 03 2003, 08:29:26 AM ) Personal Permalink Comments [1] [Trackback] [Link]

For further reading on today's posts:

Blogging Roller : Lance : We continue working to make Roller faster, and to make Roller better. Some people see Roller as a product, me, I see it as a hobby. Everybody wants to be better at their hobby.

Tuesday September 02, 2003

Atom 4 U, Atom 4 Me, Atom4J Released

I've joined the OSJava.org group (thanks guys) and released the first version of Atom4J. The "spec" is nowhere near complete, so expect a great deal of flux in Atom4j as well. As a part of my efforts, Atom4J includes an abstract Servlet upon which specific implementations can be built upon (thus enforcing the API). I should have a version for Roller checked in tonight.
( Sep 02 2003, 04:21:05 PM ) Atom Permalink [Trackback]

For further reading on today's posts:

Blogging Roller : Lance has a new baby boy and a new open source project. He hasn't posted any baby pictures yet so I don't know what his new baby looks like, but his new open source project, Atom4J, just landed in the Roller CVS and I'm reviewing the code now.

Saturday August 30, 2003

Atom notes

I'm nearly done with Atom4J, just doing some final cleanup and reviewing the existing documentation to make sure I'm in compliance with the latest 'spec'. A couple things I've noticed:

1) You must carefully read all the sources of information. The main wiki^[1] contains some information (but this tends to be a moving target), Joe Gregorio has a "Busy Developers Guide"^[2] and a full API spec^[3], there is a new wiki for the API^[4], and there is the Feed spec(s) located at Mark's place^[5].

2) I've had to "extend" the API a bit. The Introspection results don't specify how to retrieve the FindTemplates results - rather the edit-template element appears to specify the URI for editing an individual template. In Atom4J the edit-template URI now points to the FindTemplates service, where each template's URI is presented for editing. I've also adding "template" to the DELETE verb to allow for deleting templates. Still missing is a facility for creating templates (the POST verb).

3) Finally, it's hard to find the right place to bring up issues or point out inconsistencies. A wiki can be a wild-and-woolly place, and for a relative newcomer like myself (long-time lurker) it is intimidating. And so I've placed my thoughts here, in hopes they will filter into the main discussion in true Weblog style.

Here are the URLs mentioned above
[1] Atom wiki
[2] Busy developers guide to the AtomAPI
[3] The AtomAPI RFC
[4] condensed RFC
[5] Atom 0.2 Snapshot

( Aug 30 2003, 08:18:51 AM ) Atom Permalink [Trackback]

Friday August 29, 2003

Re: Atom and Digester

In between trips to the hospital, and sleeping, I had a little time to work on resolving my issue with Digester parsing Atom XML. As suggested in my comments and in the Digester-user list, I implemented a custom Rule and Handler. It took quite a bit of trial-and-error, but I got it working. Look for real results soon.
( Aug 29 2003, 12:10:48 PM ) Atom Permalink Comments [1] [Trackback]