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Twitter Follower Value in Groovy
Nat Dunn, who runs the training company Webucator, posted an interesting idea on his blog. He was thinking about Twitter, and wondering about how the number of followers and friends (he called them “followees”) affected the likelihood of someone actually reading your tweets. If a person is following too many people, they can’t possibly read…
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Using Google’s v3 Geocoder with Groovy
For quite some time now (at least the last couple of years), I’ve been using the Google geocoder to translate addresses into latitudes and longitudes. It’s a good system, and unlike some of the other free systems, works all over the world. The reason I use the geocoder is to do what the true mapping…
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Using a codec in a Grails unit test
This is a small issue, but I encountered it and found a solution on the mailing lists, so I thought I’d document it here. I was demonstrating a trivial Grails application in class today and decided to unit test it. The app has a single controller, called WelcomeController: When I deploy the application and access…
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Easy SwingBuilder/RESTful web service demo
I’m teaching (yet) another Java Web Services class this week, and the subject of RESTful web services came up. When I talk to students about that, I often like to use the example of the Google Chart API. (Whether that’s a truly RESTful web service or not depends on who you talk to. Google Chart…
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Groovy, Twitter, and Basic Authentication
The other day, Scott Davis published an article at developerWorks entitled Practically Groovy: SwingBuilder and the Twitter API, Part 2. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that it’s a good article. No surprise there, given Scott’s excellent reputation and abilities. As it turned out, though, I was teaching a Java Web Security class…
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Live blogging World Series Game 4: Yankees/Phillies
11:48 pm: It’s over. The Yankees win 7-4, as the Phillies hit three balls to Mark Teixeira, the best fielder the Yankees have. Cliff Lee now has to save the Phillies season. Even if he does, though, it’s hard to imagine the Phillies beating the Yankees three straight times. That just doesn’t happen in the…
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My approach to academic teaching
I recently read a fascinating post by Joel Spolsky entitled “Capstone projects and time management”. It’s highly opinionated, as usual, but makes several interesting points about teaching computer science in academia. He basically claims that academic computer science doesn’t teach you to use modern tools, or do version control, bug tracking, teamwork, planning, etc., etc.,…
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SpringOne 2GX final thoughts
I wound up too busy to maintain my daily reports, but here are a couple of items I want to highlight as important take-aways from SpringOne 2GX. Rather than just recap sessions or dole out marketing-type praise, I’m going to focus on some things I learned that I didn’t necessarily expect. A lot of people…
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SpringOne 2GX Day 1
… or day 2, by the official count. Today was the first full day of sessions, though, so I’m counting from 1. From now on, I can only comment on the sessions I attended. There were many parallel sessions I wish I could have gone to, but until I get one of those cool Time…
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SpringOne 2GX Day 0
I’m at the SpringOne2GX conference (http://www.springone2gx.com) in New Orleans this week. Monday (which they’re calling day 1 but I’m referring to here as day 0) consisted only of registration plus a reception and finally a keynote by Rod Johnson. As a frequent NFJS attendee, the “reception” was a bit of a culture shock. One of…