David Geary's Weblog<p>I'll scratch a hole in my life<br/>So everyone can see<p>NFJS Phoenix- July 28, 2005 After a self-imposed hiatus of nearly two months, I'm about to get back on the NFJS tour. I needed the break to get caught up on Shale and Tiles and explore Rails, but I'm really excited about rejoining the tour. I'm not sure what it says about the rest of my life, but I rarely have as much fun as when I'm presenting one of my passions to a packed room. I also miss my comrades. I'll be presenting four sessions in Phoenix: JSF Intro, Shale, Felix, and Killer Web UIs. I've revamped the Shale...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/nfjs_phoenix Black Like Me- July 28, 2005 One of my favorite audience questions on NFJS expert panels is "what are you guys reading besides technical stuff". I'm always interested to know what my esteemed colleagues are into besides Java and Ruby, so I always get out my pen and paper and take notes during the replies. The other day I was leaving a bookstore when a strategically placed paperback caught my eye: Black Like Me. When I was a kid, my uncle was studying to be a psychologist and I remembered he had to read that book for a...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/black_like_me Shale Clay- July 23, 2005 On my recent Cleveland consulting job one of the most painful things I had to do was retrofit a graphic designer's HTML mockups to my heavily Tile-laden design. For two days, the graphic designer (Hello Reggie, if you're reading...) and I went a little crazy trying to update the application. In the end, we retrofitted 90% of Reggie's design; the last 10% was just too much to bear. About the same time, Craig McClanahan and I were approached in email by Gary VanMatre, who was then toiling away...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/img_src_http_jroller_com Rails at the Denver JUG- July 14, 2005 The weather wreaked havoc on our meeting Wednesday night. Bruce Tate and I were supposed to perform a tag-team event, but Bruce never made it out of Texas due to severe weather. While that was going I on, I was stuck in traffic in 94 degree heat on my way to the meeting. Bruce Snyder and Jeff Genender stepped in for Bruce Tate and gave what I'm sure was a fine presentation. I heard Jeff say that you could call him Tate, which I thought was excellent improvisation, but then I didn't hear...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/rails_at_the_denver_jug Shale Adds Tiles Integration- July 7, 2005 In a final heave of the code I've been rugurgitating into Shale and Tiles over the past few weeks, I've committed Tiles integration into Shale. This is a simple feature to learn and use. All you need to do is add the shale-tiles.jar to your WEB-INFlib directory. That JAR file has a META-INFweb.xml that declares a Tiles view handler. The view handler strips the suffix off of view IDs (that you specify in faces-config.xml, or in dialog-config.xml) and looks for a tile with the resulting name. If..http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/shale_adds_tiles_integration Standalone Tiles Available- July 6, 2005 I have committed a standalone Tiles project to the Struts sandbox. For now, you will have to check it out using SVN like this: svn checkout http:svn.apache.orgreposasfstrutscurrent. Standalone Tiles is in the sandboxtiles directory. Standalone Tiles has dropped struts from its package names, so that has some impact on how you use Tiles; for example, the package names for the Tiles servlet and the Tiles Controller class are different, so that will affect your servlet declaration and some...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/standalone_tiles_available Reflections on the Smackdown- July 2, 2005 I see that the Web Framework Smackdown session at JavaOne has generated some buzz, including a discussion on JavaLobby. It was indeed a popular session, and I dare say it had to be one of the most fun sessions of the entire conference (discounting the 7 Secrets of Successful Computer Book Authors BOF, of course). I had just finished the Shale presentation, and you know what a tense time I had with that, so when I got onstage for the Smackdown, I was ready to cut loose. I was always the class...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/reflections_on_the_smackdown Web Framework Smackdown- July 2, 2005 The other day I got a call from Ed Burns asking me if I'd like to represent Shale in a JavaOne session titled Web Application Framework Smackdown on Wednesday, June 29 from 4-5 PM. Evidently, I am to duke it out with the likes of the fine gentlemen listed to my left. I know next to nothing about Wicket, so I went here and read this. I'm pretty well versed in Tapestry and I know Howard from NFJS. Howard's a pretty affable fellow so I don't expect much trouble from him. Besides, I'm likely to...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/web_framework_smackdown Behind the Scenes at JavaOne's Shale Session- July 2, 2005 As expected, Craig and I had a packed house for Shale: the next Struts. The talk, laced with 5 demos, went off without a hitch, including two live-coding examples. But it almost didn't work out that way... In the preceeding session, I sat in the back of the room working on our last demo. I wanted to do a live-code example of Shale's web flow by wiring a discombobulated dialog together in real time. I had approximately 5 mins for the demo which would include about 45 seconds of down time...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/behind_the_scenes_at_javaone |