Mark Derricutt's Disturbing thoughts from a developing mind...Copyright 2010 www.talios.comMark Derricutt2010-05-26T13:46:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2010:1tag:www.talios.com,2010-05-04:links.412208527Embedding Screenshots in Concordion SpecificationsOver the weekend at the Datacom Devcamp I was discussing Concordion and the benefits of writing tests in plain english. One idea that arose from the conversations was having the ability to take screenshots of an application during test execution - this is a feature that is not natively supported by Concordion - but that's never stopped me. So during a lull in one of the sessions I wrote up a simple screenshot command and added it to my concordion-examples github project.

After configuring concordion to including the command, one can simply include in their specification document the following:

<div talios:screenshot="jpg" href="screen1.jpg"></div>

and have the current screen contents saved and inserted into the rendered specification:

Specifications.html

The source for ScreenshotCommand.java is surprisingly easy, tho I'm not sure how one would go about capturing all displays on a machine rather than the primary screen.

Either way, this functionality will prove to be extremely handy when testing GUI applications.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>testingjavaconcorciondatacomdevcampconcordionMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2010-05-04T09:14:00Z2010-05-04T09:14:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2010-05-03:links.412208427Action Manu - 48 Hours Film ChallengeA few weeks ago I participated in the V 48 Hours film challenge, below is our entry for this years competition:

Short film made as part of the 48HOURS contest (write, shoot, edit in a weekend) by team Ladies Oh Ladies. Our randomly assigned genre was "Biopic". Other mandatory elements: Sydney Manson (a fabricator), a broken toy, the line "When you look at it that way" and a dolly zoom camera move. We shot mainly with a Canon 7D. (Help us win 10 iPhones for most-watched entry! Watch it again!)

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>48hoursshortfilmnewzealandappleaucklandmusicrecordingvideoMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2010-05-03T11:43:00Z2010-05-03T11:43:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2010-02-21:links.412201018You might not be HATEOAS if... There's been a lot of talk around the office and online lately about what HATEOAS actually means and how to actually implement it, so far I'm still not sure HOW to properly do HATEOAS, but I think the easiest way is to catalogue the various ways to NOT do HATEOAS:

  • #youmightnotbehateoas if your resource representations don't include any form of link information
  • #youmightnotbehateoas if your API blindly assumes you can PUT back what you GET, where you got it from
  • #youmightnotbehateoas if your client developers refer to server source code for resource details
  • #youmightnotbehateoas if your API sends/receives plain application/json or text/xml rather than application specific media types
  • #youmightnotbehateoas if you or your API has a WADL file
  • #youmightnotbehateoas if your URI's include version references

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>restjavadevelopmentMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2010-02-21T00:50:00Z2010-02-21T00:50:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-12-22:links.412195123Top Albums of 2009Out of all of the new music I've heard and collected this year, I somehow managed to whittle my favorites down to 23 albums, which for one reason or another sent chills down my spine as I listened, or kept coming back to haunt my inner ear.

This year sees a good mix of extreme metal, prog, and rock.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>musicfavoritemetalitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-12-22T10:56:00Z2009-12-22T10:56:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-08-16:links.412179546Podcast GearFor the past few months we've been recording the Illegal Argument java podcast and I thought I'd write down some quick thoughts on the tools/setup we're using.

The first ever recording (not publicly available) was recorded directly to internal mike of Richards Macbook Pro into Garage Band, unfortunately the internal microphone is located right next to the Mac's fan, so every so often you'd hear the fan kick in.

Following that first recording, we purchased a Blue Snowball USB microphone and recorded direct to Garage Band. Immediately we found the sound quality of the recordings improve, however we also quickly discovered Garage Bands 2gig file size limit after recording for 2-3 hours in one sitting. Unfortunately, given that we now had 3 people sitting around the mike talking, with the Macbook behind us on Richards desk meant no one noticed that recording had stopped.

Around episode 7 I purchased myself a Zoom h4n from Samsontech, whilst not cheap this external "field recorder" is probably the best gadget I'm purchased in a long while (the HTC Magic coming a close second).

Podcast Gear

The Zoom H4n is a portable, hardware based 4 track recording device that uses SD/SDHC memory cards for storage and can also operate as a USB hard drive. Our initial recordings just used the built in microphones, and the (now) four of us sat around the device talking as normal.

Following Antony's jaunt back to London and the Netherlands, we've now added Skype, the Belkin headphone-hub, and the Zoom's 4-track recording mode to the mix:

  • A 3.5mm to 3.5mm (with 6mm adapter) 'headphone cable' from the Macbooks headphone jack plugs into the XLR channel input at the bottom of the Zoom.
  • The belkin headphone hub is plugged into the Zoom's monitor port.
  • Three headphones used by 3 podcasters locally plugged into the Belkin headphone hub.
  • One 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable plugged into the Belkin headphone hub and the Macbooks line-in port.

This setup now gives us the ability to record any audio coming from the Macbook, and feeding our reactions back in, allowing us to record any skype conversations or audio played on the computer.

For audio editing we're using a combination of Garage Band from Apple, Fission from Rogue Amoeba depending on who is mixing/editing each episode.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>podcastillegalargumentrecordingappledevelopmentitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-08-16T03:53:00Z2009-08-16T03:53:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-05-30:links.412172571Writing Stupid Specifications with ConcordionFor a while I've been an avid lover of the concordion testing framework, but one thing I always struggled with was the separation of state/data between the specification and the fixture. As a simple work around I added a simple "eval" command, which simply takes an elements content and turns it into a camel cased method name to call on the fixture.

When using a specification marked up as:

a specification with the following methods is exercised:

The result is a very lightweight specification that contains no state, data, or scripting in it, and by sticking to a single command, I open myself up to driving concordion from a simple wiki syntax without having to worry about how to encode all the various commands.

The eval command itself is fairly simple:

I have some ideas to improve further on this (stealing from Cucumber) to extract any numbers, or strings in quotes as parameters to the evaluated method which should add even more value to these extremely simple specifications, along with a similar "echoeval" command to insert content from the fixture into the rendered specification.

I'm sure a lot of people might cringe at this way of writing tests and specifications, but I'm finding I can very quickly jot down a sentence or two about something I want to test as it occurs to me in the form of a specification (rather than a TODO comment or JIRA task) and immediately have it fire up as a failing test.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>concordiontestingdevelopmentgitgithubMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-05-30T11:18:00Z2009-05-30T11:18:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-05-24:links.412171647Recent Album ReviewsI've been meaning to write up some album reviews for the ever growing mass of recently acquired music this year, and late last year but I always find writing reviews hard - hard to give enough justice to the music, hard to fully articulate any thoughts or feelings that came up whilst listening. As we've been using Mind Meister for the Illegal Argument podcast, I thought I'd do the same to map out the music and thoughts:

Album Reviews

What started as a fairly simple mind map quickly grew into a entwined mess of genre mixing music centering around a melodic, yet frenetic mishmash of technical, progressive, and extreme styles. From artists like Belarus based Thelema, whose progressive/technical death metal fuzes elements of jazz then sliding over to the advant garde jazz entwined mathcore of Berlin based War From A Harlot's Mouth. The discovery of Prog Archives via Twitter led to a financial downfall and music journey of discovery with such delightful findings such as Brazilian based Dialeto, Norways Gazpacho, Puerto Rico's Trili.

Standout "big name" albums of recent adoration include the new Ty Tabor (Kings X) solo album "Balance", Tim "The Ripper" Owen's new solo album "Play My Game", Heaven and Hells (damnit, it's Sabbath ok?) "The Devil You Know".

Out of everything I've been listening to lately, I've not found any duds, however the new Chariot release "Wars and Rumours of Wars" and Leif Edling's solo album "Songs of Torment, Songs of Joy" were definite letdowns.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>metalapplemusicitunesreviewMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-05-24T08:50:00Z2009-05-24T08:50:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-05-17:links.412170600Illegal Argument #5Episode #5 of our new java podcast Illegal Argument is has been posted focusing on language diversity and Microsoft's new Axum programming language, static vs dynamic templates and much more.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>javasmalltalkmobiledevelopmentpodcastMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-05-17T09:17:00Z2009-05-17T09:17:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-05-05:links.412168334Connecting the Clouds - The Internet in New Zealand in PDFThe other day I was pointed to the wiki version of Keith Newmans book "The Internet in New Zealand" and but found it hard to read, so I decided to convert the content into PDF for a more consumable product (ok sure, I could just go and buy the book...) but it was also an excuse to try some more Clojure hacking.

After a short hacking session, followed by a lot of repetitive regex experiments, I've settled on the following script:

The script makes use of Brian Doyle's clj-web-crawler clojure library, and the flying saucer HTML render library.

Update: After being informed from Internet NZ that they specifically chose not to publish a PDF version of the book online, and having been pointed to the copyright disclaimer linked off the bottom of the site (thanks Mauricio) the PDF has been removed.

Leave Comment

]]>Mark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-05-05T01:14:00Z2009-05-05T01:14:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-04-24:links.412166184Code Coverage of Clojure CodeSince pulling in Dmitry's test-compile mojo, and adding a test script runner mojo to the clojure-maven-plugin I thought I'd try something fun like running the maven emma plugin against a very simple test project.

I was pleasantly surprised to see some fairly useful (ish) coverage data come back:

You can easily see coverage information for your code, even if you end up trying to decipher clojures generated class names. You even get fairly useful breakdown on the class detail, even if there's only the one method on each class:

Once you've installed the clojure-maven-plugin, simply configure the plugin in your pom.xml:

After defining which namespaces you wish to compile, and which script to use as your starting test script, bind the plugin to both the compile and test phases (it would be nice if the plugin handled this automatically, but I'm not sure its possible) and call "mvn emma:emma" for your very own coverage report.

Adding these simple automated compile, test, and coverage processes to a clojure's impressive arsenal clojure already offers gives me a greater level of trust to experiment and use the young language in projects destined for a production environment.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>testingjavafunctionalcoveragedevelopmentclojuregithubgitmavenMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-04-24T08:47:00Z2009-04-24T08:47:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-02-01:links.412151110Clojure running successfully under OSGiFunctional languages, and specifically the clojure language are being talked about at the SMX offices recently and I thought it was about time I gave it a closer examination and I've always found the easiest way for me to learn about new technology/frameworks is to somehow graft it into an existing project I'm working on - and in this instance that means running clojure from an OSGi bundle.

My first step was setting up a standard clojure workflow, this led to writing a simple clojure-maven-plugin over on github which lets me compile my clojure code with a simple maven declaration:

Next comes an initial clojure lib which simply implements a known Java interface:

Whilst very simple, this small example gives us a concrete starting point to go forward - OSGi integration:

The ClojureProvidingComponent class is a simple OSGi SCR component (OSGi metadata build via the maven-scr-plugin, when this component is activated it simple gets an instance of our clojure library, and registers it as an OSGi service. That service is then looked up, and executed.

Due to some class loader related issues with clojures' current implementation, we're required to swap out the current threads context classloader whilst we construct our object (once this is resolved, we should be able to have our clojure lib be the component itself.

As our clojure library current does very little, we don't need to mess with the class loader in order to run it, however as we extend the clojure side further, I'm sure we will. As a simple work around, the service we register into OSGi could be a dymanic proxy which handles the class-loader swapping for us transparently.

As classpath entries under under Apache Felix used their own protocol, one part of clojure still needs to be patched in order to work:

All in all, getting clojure to work under OSGi wasn't as hard as I expected, thou I expect to find other issues once I start to add actual functionality to the clojure library side of things.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>osgijavafunctionaldevelopmentlispmodularclojuregithubMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-02-01T03:00:00Z2009-02-01T03:00:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-01-26:links.412150143A day at Parachute 2009Like most years I spent Saturday at Parachute Music Festival, opting this year just for the day rather than the full weekend, but I managed to catch some killer acts, including my brothers set with the beginnings of a new song called Lifeboat:

Over on the debut stage I found Palmerston North band Ruski (roo-ski) a fun act to watch:

The highlight however was the Family Force 5 gig, great live show - although at times it didn't seem entirely all that live:

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>concertmusicnewzealandparachuteyoutubederricuttvideoMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-01-26T01:19:00Z2009-01-26T01:19:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2009-01-07:links.412147153The Music of 2008 - Top 10sMy top 10 (or less) albums of 2008, grouped by vague genre groupings:

Top rock

Top melodic/power/progressive metal

Top death/black metal/progressive death/technical

Top stoner/sludge/doom/avant garde

Top metal/hardcore/goth/thrash

Top accoustic/mood/mellow

Top progressive rock

Top other

Top disappointments of the year

  • Judas priest - Nostradamus
  • Alice Cooper - Along came a spider
  • Blessed By A Broken Heart - Blessed By A Broken Heart
  • Metallica - Death Magnetic (by virtue of mix alone)

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2009-01-07T19:26:00Z2009-01-07T19:26:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2008-12-16:links.412143818Typesafe Entity References for Hibernate/JPAIt would seem Gavin King's having similar thoughts to something I was working on last week, only with a much larger and grander scale:

The first problem isn't really solvable without major new language features (usually described as "DSL support"). The second problem could easily be solved by adding a typesafe literal syntax for methods and fields to Java. This is now a sorely needed feature of the language, it's especially useful in combination with annotations.

...

The metamodel API is a bit like the Java reflection API, except that it is provided by the JPA persistence provider, is aware of the JPA metadata, and uses generics in a clever way. (Also it uses unchecked exceptions.) For example, to obtain an object that represents an entity, we call the MetaModel object:

import javax.jpa.metamodel.Entity;
...
Entity order = metaModel.entity(Order.class);
Entity item = metaModel.entity(Item.class);
Entity item = metaModel.entity(Product.class);
...

— In Relation To...  A typesafe criteria query API for JPA

Last week I was working on some code that was suffering from an over abundance of eagerly loaded collections - both performance and problems with passing instances between transactions were causing no end of headaches. In the end, the solution I came up with was to rework the front end queries to only return ids, and wrap them in light weight, type-safe reference:

...
Reference person = Reference.referenceTo(Person.class, 32);
Reference anotherPerson = Reference.referenceTo(someExistingPerson);
...

As the Reference holds only the id and class, they're very easily to throw around between threads, sessions and transactions, resolving the reference is a simple call to Reference#load(Session) relative to a session or entity manager.

...
Person fullPerson = person.load(sessionFactory.getCurrentSession());
...

Whilst the usage requirements and usage differ vastly between my small solution, they both add much needed functionality to Hibernate.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>javajpadevelopmenthibernateMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-12-16T08:53:00Z2008-12-16T08:53:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2008-12-14:links.412143506Should Sun embrace Maven?With all the talk from Sun about bringing a focus to modularity in the JDK via Project Jigsaw, I wonder how things would shape up if a modular build tool such as Apache Maven was also adopted.

I've never looked at the JDK sources/build process and I suspect moving the current build to Maven would be an extremely unpleasant and painful process, but once thats done I if such a build tool/process designed for modularity would help, or hinder such an effort moving forward.

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>javadevelopmentmodularmavenMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-12-14T04:15:00Z2008-12-14T04:15:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2008-11-30:links.412141382The Music of 2008 - ReviewWhen it comes to music - I'm a freak. Not only do I have a overly large collection; it's varied and rather eclectic - often going form jazz to blues to death metal to opera and back to jazz in single sitting. People have often questioned my ability to listen to it all, citing unfounded accusations of the impossibility of such an act. In order to prove them wrong, and revisit music that I'd not heard in ages at the start of the year I set up two smart playlists in iTunes:

  1. Played in 2008: Last played after 1/1/08, sorted by least played.
  2. Unplayed in 2008: Last played before 1/1/08, sorted by Artist/Album

"Played in 2008" made my up mornings alarm clock playlist, allowing me re-revisit music I'd not heard in ages even when half asleep, whilst not spoiling my listening plans.

Whilst not being able to listen to ALL my music (navigating to the packed away CDs is somewhat difficult, until I throw out some old furniture), after 48 weeks I've managed to listen to every song in my iTunes library so I thought I'd also share some statistics:

  • Total songs in iTunes: 13092 items, 43.6 days, 91.25gb
  • Added in 2008: 4715 items, 15.8 days, 38.25gb
  • Added in the last 2 months: 1263 items, 4.2 days, 10.58gb
  • Played less than 5: 4999 items, 17.6days, 39.80gb
  • Played less than 50: 13156, 46.1days, 95.13gb
  • Played once: 344 items, 1.1days, 3.03gb
  • Played more than 50: 30 items, 2.3 hours, 186.3mb
  • Played more than 100: 7 items, 30.2 minutes, 38.2mb
  • iTunes purchased: 2713 items, 8.7 days, 22.18gb

I find it interesting that if I'd made the rules "every song in iTunes -at the start of the year-" I probably would have finished much sooner as just over 40% of the library was added this year (mostly from pulling out CDs of artists I didn't have encoded as they came up in the playlist, or from the evil that is iTunes one click purchasing).

So now that I'm over with my A-Z through iTunes I'm over to reviewing all the years new music to collate my thoughts for my top picks of the year.

, ,

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-30T04:14:00Z2008-11-30T04:14:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2008-11-30:links.412141380The Music of 2008 - Week 48
  • Becoming The Archetype - Dichtomy
  • Jorn - Lonely Are The Brave
  • Tomorrow's Eve - Mirror Of Creation
  • U2 - Achtung Baby / All That You Can't Leave Behind / Beautiful Day / Electical Storm / How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb / Joshua Tree / October / Pop / Rattle And Hum / The Unforgettable Fire / Vertigo #1 / War / Wide Awake In America / Window In The Skies / Zooropa
  • Underoath - Define The Great Line
  • Unexpect - In A Flesh Aquarium
  • Van Halen - Balance / For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
  • VAST - Music For People / Nude
  • Velvet Revolver - Contraband
  • Vintersorg - The Focusing Blur / Solens Rötter / Visions From The Spiral Generator
  • Virgin Black - Elegant And Dying / Requiem - Mezzo Forte
  • Vision Divine - Stream Of Consciousness / The 25th Hour
  • Voivod - Katorz
  • Warbringer - One By One The Wicket Fall / War Without End
  • Wastefall - Self Exile
  • What's He Building In There? - What's He Building In There?
  • Xystus - Surreal
  • Zero Hour - A Fragile Mild
  • Zonata - Exceptions
  • The 77's - A Golden Field Of Radioactive Crows

— Still unplayed in 2008: 0 items, 0 days, 0gb

, ,

Leave Comment

Related Entries:

]]>musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-30T03:47:00Z2008-11-30T03:47:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2008-11-23:links.412140425The Music of 2008 - Week 47
  • Edguy - Tinnitus Sanctus
  • Guns n' Roses - Chinese Democracy
  • Sammy Hagar - Cosmic Universal Fashion
  • Signum Regis - Signum Regis
  • Slayer - Christ Illusion / God Hates Us All
  • Spock's Beard - Feel Euphoria / Octane / Snow
  • Switchfoot - Nothing Is Sound
  • Tad Morose - Matters Of The Dark / Modus Vivendi
  • Testament - Demonic / The Gathering
  • Theatre Of Tragedy - Storm
  • Thine Eyes Bleed - In the Wake of Separation
  • Theory In Practise - Colonizing The Sun
  • Therion - Crowning Of Atlantis / Deggial / Gothic Kabbalah / Lemuria / Secret Of The Runes / Sirius B
  • Threshold - Dead Reckoning
  • Tiamat - Clouds / A Deeper Kind Of Slumber / Judas Christ / Prey / Sumerian Cry
  • TNT - My Religion
  • Tomorrow's Eve - Mirror of Creation II: The Genesis II
  • Tool - 10000 days
  • Tourniquet - Crawl To China / Microscopic View Of A Telescopic Realm / Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance / Psycho Surgery / Stop The Bleeding / Tourniquet Live / Where Moth And Rust Destroy
  • Traveling Willburys - Best of the Traveling Willburys
  • Twisted Into Form - Then Comes Affliction To Awaken The Dreamer
  • Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry

    • — Still unplayed in 2008: 427 items, 1.3 days, 3.20gb

    Leave Comment

    Related Entries:

    ]]>    musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-23T09:04:00Z2008-11-23T09:04:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2008-11-16:links.412139327The Music of 2008 - week 46
  • Brother Von Doom -Relentless
  • Celldweller - Soundtrack For The Voices In My Head Vol. 01
  • Dir en grey - Uroborus
  • Light This City - Stormchaser
  • Mindless Self Indulgence - If / You’ll Rebel To Anything
  • Pain - Cynic Paradise
  • Skinny Puppy - The Greater Wrong Of The Right / Mythmaker
  • Slave To The System - Slave To The System
  • Solitude Aeturnus - Downfall / Thru The Darkest Hour
  • Steve Stevens - Atomic Playboys
  • Steve Vai - Alien Love Secrets / Passion & Warfare / Real Illusions: Reflections / Sex & Religion / The Ultra Zone
  • Spheric Universe Experience - Anima
  • Still Remains - The Serpent
  • Stream of Passion - Embrace The Storm
  • Strapping Love Lad - Alien / C:enter:### / The New Black
  • Stratovarius - Destiny / Elements Pt. 1 / Elements Pt. 2 / Infinite / Intermission / Stratovarius / Visions
  • Stryper - Against The Law / In God We Trust / Reborn / Soldiers Under Command / To Hell With The Devil / The Yellow And Black Attack
  • System Of A Down - Hypnotize / Mezmerize
  • Symphony X - The Damnation Game / The Divine Winds Of Tragedy / The Odyssey / Symphony X / Twilight In Olympus / V: The New Mythology Suite
  • Symphorce - Become Death / Godspeed
  • Vanden Plas - Christ O
  • Various Artists - Covering 20 Years of Extremes

    • — Still unplayed in 2008: 932 items, 2.9 days, 6.28gb

    Leave Comment

    Related Entries:

    ]]>    musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-16T10:00:00Z2008-11-16T10:00:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2008-11-14:links.412139050Book MemeIt's meme time:

    • Grab the nearest book.
    • Open it to page 56.
    • Find the fifth sentence.
    • Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
    • Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

    The closest book to be was the new Peter F. Hamilton novel "The Temporal Void", I think this meme is the cloest I'll get to actually READING this book for a long time:

    "But they're not letting anyone out of the city, let alone offplanet."

    Leave Comment

    Related Entries:

    ]]>    bookmemeMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-14T09:34:00Z2008-11-14T09:34:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2008-11-09:links.412138156The Music of 2008 - week 45
  • Avantasia - Lost In Space (Chapter 1 & 2)
  • Joe Bonamassa - Live from Nowhere In Particular
  • My Silent Wake - A Garland of Tears
  • Royal Hunt - Paradox / Paradox II: Collision Course
  • Darkest Seed - The Seed Is Rising
  • Sammy Hagar - Ten 13
  • Sanctity - Road To Bloodshed
  • Savage Circus - Dreamland Manor
  • Savatage - Poets And Madmen / The Wake of Magellan
  • Savior Machine - Savior Machine / Savior Machine II / Legend I / Legend II / Legend III:I
  • Scale The Summit - Monument
  • Scar Symmetry - Pitch Black Progress
  • Scorpions - Humanity: Hour I
  • Sentenced - The Funeral Album
  • Sepia Dreamer - The Sublime
  • Shadows Fall - The Art Of Balance / Fallout From The War / Threads Of Life / The War Within
  • Shihad - Love In The New Hate
  • Silent Force - Infatuator / Worlds Apart
  • Sinergy - Suicide By My Side
  • Sirenia - Nine Destinies And A Downfall
  • Sieges Even - Playgrounds
  • Slechvalk - The War That Plagues The Land
  • Slipknot - Vol 3: The Subliminal Verses
  • Soilwork - Figure Number 5 / Natural Born Chaos / Stabbing The Drama / Sword To A Great Divide
  • Solitude Aeturnus - Adagio
  • Soul Embraced - Immune
  • Soulfly - Dark Ages
  • Spiral Architect - A Sceptic's Universe
  • Stavesacre - Absolutes / Friction
  • Tomorrow's Eve - Tales From Serpentia
  • Various Artists - Covering 20 Years of Extremes

    • — Still unplayed in 2008: 1340 items, 4.2 days, 8.88gb

    Leave Comment

    Related Entries:

    ]]>    musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-09T06:41:00Z2008-11-09T06:41:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2008-11-05:links.412137563If we can't have closures, can we at least have comprehensions?Dear Sun,

    If we can't have closures in Java 7, can we at least have comprehensions added to the collections API? It seems I'm forever writing, or pulling in Commons Collections (which lacks generics) or Functional Java to add simple functional list comprehension support to my projects, if the core Java collections API included something as simple as:

    public static interface Collector {
  boolean collect(T t);
}

public static  List collect(List list, Collector map) {
  List mappedList = new ArrayList();
  for (T t : list) {
    if (map.collect(t)) {
      mappedList.add(t);
    }
  }
  return mappedList;
}

    and several others, then we'd be able to introduce a new standard programming model to Java developers, and practically show them how and why adding closures would benefit them.

    Of course, we just just promote the hell out of Functional Java and be done with it :)

    Leave Comment

    ]]>    Mark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-05T21:28:00Z2008-11-05T21:28:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2008-11-02:links.412136837The Music of 2008 - week 44
  • Candlemass - Lucifer Rising
  • Cynic - Traced In Air
  • Death - Individual Thought Patterns
  • Exodus - Let There Be Blood
  • Ephrat - No One's Words
  • It Bites - The Tall Ships
  • Karmakanic - Who's The Boss In Here?
  • Many Things Untold - Atlantic
  • Neuraxis - The Thin Line Between
  • Stone Gods - Don't Drink The Water EP
  • Yngwie Malmsteen - Alchemy / Attack! / Concerto Suite For Electric Guitar And Orchestra In Flat Minor Op.1 / Eclipse / Facing The Animal / Fire & Ice / I Can't Wait / Inspiration / Magnum Opus / Marching Out / Odyssey / Perpetual Flame / Rising Force / The Seventh Sign / Trilogy / Unleash The Fury / War To End All Wars

    • — Still unplayed in 2008: 1775 items, 5.7 days, 11.95gb

    Leave Comment

    Related Entries:

    ]]>    musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-11-02T10:31:00Z2008-11-02T10:31:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2008-10-26:links.412135605The Music of 2008 - week 43
  • Axel Rudi Pell - Tales of the Crown
  • Crimson Moonlight - Veil of Remembrance
  • Cynic - Focus
  • Gamma Ray - Hell Yeah (Live)
  • Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction / Greatest Hits / Use Your Illusion I / Use Your Illusion II
  • King's X - Black Like Sunday / Tape Head
  • Kivimetsän Druidi - Shadowheart
  • Legacy of Disorder - Legacy of Disorder
  • Obituary - Left To Die
  • Origin - Antithesis
  • Parachute Band - Technicolor
  • Ronny Jordan - Off The Record / The Quiet Revolution
  • Roofless - The Wazzo Kipper
  • Royal Hunt - Paper Blood
  • Rush - Snakes & Arrows
  • Sacred Warrior - Master's Command / Obsessions
  • Severed Fifth - Denied By Reign
  • Vengeance Rising - Human Sacrifice / Once Dead

    • — Still unplayed in 2008: 1985 items, 6.3 days, 13.17gb

    Leave Comment

    Related Entries:

    ]]>    musicitunesMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-10-26T11:26:00Z2008-10-26T11:26:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2008-10-21:links.412134722Database Migrations with MavenIn order to learn more about using Apache Maven beyond a more 'simple' build, I decided to build a maven plugin, or mojo as they're called to wrap my simple database migration library.

    Now it's as easy as a few lines of XML and SQL to have your database automatically regenerated whenever you run your tests:

    <build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>com.theoryinpractise.dbng</groupId>
      <artifactId>dbng-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>1.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
      <configuration>
        <createDatabase>true</createDatabase>
        <username>postgres</username>
        <password>****</password>

        <files>
          <file>src/main/resources/test.sql</file>
        </files>

      </configuration>
  			  	
      <dependency>
        <groupId>postgresql</groupId>
        <artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
        <version>8.3-603.jdbc4</version>
      </dependency>

    </plugin>
  		  
  </plugins>
</build>

    By default the plugin is (currently) bound to the 'process-classes' phase as I wanted things to run before the 'test' phase and Maven doesn't currently have before/after meta-phases. Migrations themselves are not yet fully supported in the plugin yet, but for most cases I'm finding simply recreating the database and applying a set of SQL files (schema, default data) does 99% of what I need in testing.

    Leave Comment

    Related Entries:

    ]]>    javamavensqlMark DerricuttMark Derricutt2008-10-21T10:43:00Z2008-10-21T10:43:00Z    tag:www.talios.com,2006-11-27:links.488697U2 Performance Photos from 24 November 2006musicphotographyu22006-11-27T02:41:00Z2006-11-27T02:41:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-10-04:links.487089Cheap Trick playing Wellingtonmusic2006-10-04T03:48:00Z2006-10-04T03:48:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-09-12:links.486516'Ah men,' sigh lone church women - New Zealand's source for oddstuff - strange, weirdchurchrelationshipsreligiondating2006-09-12T23:42:00Z2006-09-12T23:42:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-08-24:links.485996» MobiCamp - Coolz0r - Marketing Thoughtsctiamobile2006-08-24T23:42:00Z2006-08-24T23:42:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-08-21:links.485918Open Source Symposium - Aucklandlinuxredhataucklandnewzealand2006-08-21T21:10:00Z2006-08-21T21:10:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-08-14:links.485753The seven ways that people search the Web. By Paul Boutinsearch2006-08-14T23:41:00Z2006-08-14T23:41:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-08-09:links.485610My Boring Ass Life » The Red Bank Stash Signing: A Day That Will Live in Infamytvmediamovieskevinsmith2006-08-09T02:31:00Z2006-08-09T02:31:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-06-26:links.384405Festival Primers: our most anticipated in top tensWith programmes already browsed, checked, underlined and dotted since their release to the public earlier this week, our own personal must-sees from the 160+ strong lineup have invariable made their way into a handful of curated top ten lists. We consider the following essential viewing – or at the very least, films we hope will inspire, invigorate, surprise or provoke debate.]]>filmmovieentertainment2006-06-26T20:34:00Z2006-06-26T20:34:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-06-26:links.384400Borders New Zealand - Winter Reading Guidebordersreadingbooks2006-06-26T11:30:00Z2006-06-26T11:30:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-05-17:links.383535Google Web Toolkit - Build AJAX apps in the Java languageweb20javagoogleajax2006-05-17T01:33:00Z2006-05-17T01:33:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-04-18:links.382883The Rolling Stones at Western Springs - 17 Apr 2006 - Rolling Stones tourconcertrollingstonesmusicrock2006-04-18T01:08:00Z2006-04-18T01:08:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-04-12:links.382771Useless, absurd, must, need, appalled, just, infuriating, essential, etc. - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)developmentusers37signalssupport2006-04-12T21:51:00Z2006-04-12T21:51:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-04-12:links.382753The State of Linux: Substantial Growth in New Zealandlinuxnewzealand2006-04-12T07:45:00Z2006-04-12T07:45:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-04-12:links.382752New Zealand's source for technology news on Stuff.co.nz: Text message charges risemobilesmsnewzealandvodafone2006-04-12T05:27:00Z2006-04-12T05:27:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-04-10:links.382705Red Hat cancels Fedora Foundation: Builder AU: Program: At Workredhatpatentlinuxfedora2006-04-10T11:01:00Z2006-04-10T11:01:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-04-10:links.382704cellular-news | New Zealand Testing Dynamic Optimization of Mobile Networksmobiletelecomnewzealandnetwork2006-04-10T10:54:00Z2006-04-10T10:54:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-04-07:links.382632Computerworld &gt; Java growth in New Zealand doubles in four yearsjavadevelopmentnewzealand2006-04-07T02:31:00Z2006-04-07T02:31:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-03-01:links.1580Need for speedtechnologynewzealandbroadband2006-03-01T05:56:00Z2006-03-01T05:56:00Ztag:www.talios.com,2006-02-03:links.1000Seven Secrets of Successful Programmerstechnologydevelopment2006-02-03T05:41:00Z2006-02-03T05:41:00Z