Stephen's Statements

Job Change

Stephen — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:33:00 +0000

You know my blog's neglected when I don't even think to announce a change of job until the weekend after starting at the new place. On Monday I started working at Cormine Intelligent Data.

Definitely, Maybe

Stephen — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:15:00 +0000

I just watched Definitely, Maybe with Diane as our Valentine's day thing. It was fantastically cute and sweet. Ryan Reynolds was funny and charming, as usual. Isla Fischer was very likeable and adorable. Abigail Breslin, however, stole the show as the precocious and completely sweet daughter. I found the movie very enjoyable, though I am a total sucker for all forms of romantic comedies.

EasyMock-PropertyUtils 1.1 Released

Stephen — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 18:17:00 +0000

I have released EasyMock-PropertyUtils 1.1, and it's available in the Maven repository or for download directly. If you have issues, post them at the Google Code site, or ask at the Google Group/Mailing List.

The main changes from 1.0 are:

Ability to match against an object
Static matcher methods are renamed to propEq

April Fool's Day Banned

Stephen — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 14:51:00 +0000

Due to significant decreases in productivity, the United Nations announced today that it was banning April Fool's Day. They also cited human rights violations, stating that the shame felt by those who were fooled infringed upon the inherent dignity of all human beings. A follow-up proposal to categorize all practical jokes as torture under the Geneva Convention is still under deliberation.

EasyMock-PropertyUtils 1.0 Released

Stephen — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:04:00 +0000

I've released EasyMock-PropertyUtils 1.0, and it's available in the Maven repository. If you have issues, post them at the Google Code site. If you use it, just post a comment here to let me know.

Tony Romo

Stephen — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 03:37:00 +0000

While I've been frustrated by Bledsoe's consistency, I was never among the Dallas Cowboy fans that was calling for Tony Romo to replace Bledsoe. I didn't think an unproven quarterback could make much difference. But the drive I just watched Tony Romo lead was very impressive. No matter how tonight's game finishes, I see Romo as the quarterback for the Cowboys for the rest of the season. The biggest benefit: it looks like Dallas games will be more exciting on the offensive end.

Update: Well, Romo made enough mistakes to make my prediction that he will be the QB the rest of the season questionable. I think I'd still prefer Romo, but I'm not sure if Bill Parcells will agree.

Steve Yegge: On Programming Better

Stephen — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 17:56:00 +0000

I've recently finished reading all of Steve Yegge's blog-rants. The overarching theme is Steve searching for ways to do better at software development. For instance, Being the Averagest on why many programmers aren't trying to get better, and Practicing Programming on how to get better for those who listened and decided they want to try. He also chronicles his search for a better programming language. I suggest reading all of the essays; hopefully they'll inspire you to be a better programmer, and you can take advantage of the work "Stevey" has done to guide you down the path of improvement. Stevey wrote all these articles why'll working at Amazon; make sure to also check out his current blog now that he works at Google.

Scott and Dana's Wedding

Stephen — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 21:43:00 +0000

My brother, Scott, just got married last night. Congratulations Scott and Dana!

Announcing: XPath-Replacement Maven Plugin

Stephen — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 20:26:00 +0000

I'm looking for feedback on my XPath Replacement Maven Plugin. It's barebones right now; please send me any ideas you have on how to make it better, or just let me know if you'r even interested in it. The goal of the plugin is to allow you to do configuration (similar to normal Ant/Maven filtering), but without requiring placeholders so that your source version has a valid value that let's a developer get going straight from source.

I also updated the EasyMock Property Utilities site to include the example posted here on the blog.

EasyMock-PropertyUtils Example

Stephen — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:26:00 +0000

Here's the promised example of how to use my EasyMock-PropertyUtils library. It's a TestNG test class with two test methods. The first, testSayHelloTo() uses the single-property matcher test. The second, testSay() uses the multiple-property matcher test by supplying a Map of property names to property values. If you haven't used EasyMock before, this should also serve as an example of how EasyMock can allow you to unit test in isolation a method that interacts with another class. Check out the EasyMock Documentation for more information.

package test;

import static com.stephenduncanjr.easymock.EasyMockPropertyUtils.propertiesEq;
import static com.stephenduncanjr.easymock.EasyMockPropertyUtils.propertyEq;
import static org.easymock.EasyMock.createMock;
import static org.easymock.EasyMock.replay;
import static org.easymock.EasyMock.verify;

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import org.testng.annotations.Test;

/**
 * Test the Service class.
 */
public class ServiceTest
{
    /**
     * Test the sayHelloTo method.
     */
    @Test
    public void testSayHelloTo()
    {
        String address = "someone@example.com";
        MessagingService messagingService = createMock(MessagingService.class);
        messagingService.sendMessage(propertyEq(Message.class, "address", address));
        replay(messagingService);

Service service = new Service();
        service.setMessagingService(messagingService);
        service.sayHelloTo(address);

verify(messagingService);
    }

/**
     * Test the say method.
     */
    @Test
    public void testSay()
    {
        String address = "someone@example.com";
        String text = "some text";

Map<String, Object> properties = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        properties.put("address", address);
        properties.put("message", text);

MessagingService messagingService = createMock(MessagingService.class);
        messagingService.sendMessage(propertiesEq(Message.class, properties));
        replay(messagingService);

Service service = new Service();
        service.setMessagingService(messagingService);
        service.say(address, text);

verify(messagingService);
    }
}

Announcing: EasyMock-PropertyUtils

Stephen — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 05:10:00 +0000

I've created a new open-source project: EasyMock-PropertyUtils. Basically, this library allows you to use JavaBeans-style property matching for arguments when using EasyMock. I plan to add some end-user documentation and blog some more about both EasyMock and this project soon. This is being done separately from EasyMock because it's use of non-refactoring safe strings doesn't fit the philosophy of EasyMock. The project is quite small, and I have no idea what the interest-level will be, so I'm just hosting it alongside the rest of my personal projects on my Google Code Hosting site. Hopefully there isn't something like this already out there that I missed.

Michael J. Totten in Israel

Stephen — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 10:33:00 +0000

Michael J. Totten is a fantastic independent journalist. He's currently in Isreal. Check out his latest piece on Gaza. Or this piece from the Israel-Lebanon border. Hopefully from there you'll want to read everything he's been writing. If, like me, you find that Michael is providing valuable information in a direct fashion you can't get elsewhere, then make sure to donate some money to him so he can keep reporting from the Middle East.

New Blogger Features

Stephen — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 01:18:00 +0000

A new version of Blogger is in beta now that appears to have the features I've been wanting. Now if only I could get in on the beta...

Update: How will the new dynamic architecture impact those of us using the static FTP-to-my-server functionality?

My Google Code Hosted Project

Stephen — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:08:00 +0000

I've created a project on Google Code Hosting. It's really just a place for me to put code I'm playing with so that it's version-controlled and accessible anywhere. Right now it has a simple command-line draw-the-high-card game that I'm using to try to learn Ruby.

While there may be valid reasons that Google Code Hosting isn't good enough to really compete for hosting real open-source projects, for my needs nothing beats the no-barrier-to-entry factor here. If nothing else, it's nice to have a proper SVN repository available to me for free.

No Story-Book Ending for Zidane

Stephen — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:23:00 +0000

Rather than a story-book ending for Zinedine Zidane, he's sent off after being red-carded for a totally classless move: head-butting an Italian player in the chest. Whether his team will also lose the World Cup final remains to be seen...

Update: Zidane's team, France, do lose.

Update 2: Video of the incident.

Atom 1.0 Switch Trend

Stephen — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 01:03:00 +0000

Niall Kennedy made the switch. Now will Blogger step up?

Atom 1.0 and Blogger

Stephen — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:57:00 +0000

Bloglines now has Atom 1.0 support, and though there are some problems there still, it's time for a new target. I'm sure it's clear from all my posts that I'm a big proponent of Atom 1.0. However, I probably appeared to be a bit of a hypocrite, using an aggregator that didn't support it, and only providing a deprecated Atom 0.3 feed. It's true, I'm also lazy and picky, and haven't wanted to make a change in software over these issues. It's so much more satisfying to simply complain and wait for the software to change so that I don't have to.

To continue that trend: What's up with Blogger still producing Atom 0.3 feeds? Initially, it seemed Google gave the Atom movement a big boost by supporting it in Blogger. But now the Atom 1.0 specificiation has been out for quite some time, and usage of Atom 0.3 is discouraged. Hopefully the reason for not changing yet was fear about support in aggregators, and with Bloglines probably being the biggest (most users) holdout, maybe now is the time to start seeing Blogger produce Atom 1.0. A geek can dream...

So, who are the bloggers with clout or at least information about Blogger? I had been trying to read the blogs of several Blogger engineers, but they mostly moved on, I believe.

Abdera Project

Stephen — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:41:00 +0000

The Abdera Apache Incubator project is now up and running. The project is to provide tools for The Atom Syndication Format and The Atom Publishing Protocol. Right now I'm mostly contributing by maintaining the Maven build configuration for the Java implementation. I hope to be able to do a little more later (especially once the World Cup is over...)

I'm convinced that there's a lot of potential for uses of these two standards (well, soon-to-be-standard in the case of the publishing protocol), beyond blogs & aggregators. Having a good Java library for working with this stuff is going to enable a lot of applications, and save a lot of time and money for tools and products built on Atom. Open source projects succeed based on participation, so if you might need to use Atom, then please, come join in. It's just getting started, so it's a good time to get yourself familiar with the code and get your ideas into the mix.

Bloglines and Atom: Beginning

Stephen — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:42:00 +0000

Bloglines has begun adding suport for Atom 1.0

Abdera Maven 2 Build

Stephen — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 22:14:00 +0000

I attempted to make a Maven 2 build for the proposed Abdera project. I've never made a patch before, so I attempted it by checking in the contents of the original tar into my local-file-system SVN repository, and then made my changes against that, and finally generated a patch using the Subclipse tools. In case that isn't good enough, I'm also providing the resulting tar.

The most important thing to note is that when I switched it from Ant to Maven, one unit test now fails that passed before. The resulting XML that is supposed to be checked contains some unexpected spaces. This is probably due to some dependency version difference. The dependencies will need to be looked at and worked on; I just specified enough to get the projects to compile for the most part.

I did update the Ant build file, so that still works. The security and examples modules also build now in Maven (but I did not add them to the Ant build). There's plenty of stuff to be improved/changed. The test module should probably go away, and the tests should be moved into the module that is being tested. The "bin" folders shoud go away. The .project files should go away in my opinion (they are assumably broken right now, as I didn't update them).

Bloglines Switcharoo

Stephen — Fri, 12 May 2006 02:34:00 +0000

It's odd. Suddenly Tim Bray's ongoing feed was working correctly in Bloglines. Wow! Atom 1.0 support, finally? But no, they've just automatically switched over his Atom feed to his RSS feed. I guess that's one way to get rid of complaints...

Cable Modem Problems

Stephen — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 10:55:00 +0000

For the last week or so, I'd been having trouble with my internet connection. I would lose my connection to the outside on a regular basis. It seemed to get worse over time. By Monday, it was only up for 2-5 minutes at a time. Each time I would turn off the cable modem and then turn it back on, I would get a connection for a while, and then it would cut out again.

After my third call to Cox Communications, it was explained to me that the Motorala Surfboard SB3100 was way out of date, and not supported anymore. Plus it couldn't take advantage of the higher speeds I was paying for anyway. So I ordered a new Motorola SB5120 and, voila, my internet connection is reliable once again.

Bloglines Still Not Responsive

Stephen — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:27:00 +0000

...and other feed readers still don't get the basic features right. What's a heavy reader of feeds to do?

This promise regarding Atom 1.0 support has gone totally unhonored. I can think of no meaning of "as soon as possible" that means you can't get a simple case that other aggregators handle correctly in almost 5 months.

While this comment shows that they are still alive at Bloglines, that's a long time in coming. It may have been somewhat triggered by this, but it seems that some of the problems there are probably still open.

But the biggest problem is that their general unresponsiveness and lack of timely fixes has led to speculative posts such as this. How can a company built around blogging be so bad at communicating?

My Character Traits

Stephen — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:44:00 +0000

Despite my misuse of the term in this post, I don't frequently participate in "memes". But this one from Jason seems like a good one. Basically, I selected adjectives describing my personality traits, and now you will select them too, and we can compare the overlap or lack thereof. Without further ado, here's the more-or-less positive list, and here is the mostly negative list. Please take the time to fill it out if you know me, as the number of synonyms requires a large sample size to get any useful aggregation of results...

Memetrackers?

Stephen — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:59:00 +0000

Scoble asks Why don't you use a memetracker?. Check out the comments, as I agree with most of the answers. Summary: not enough new stuff, not a useful format, and, finally, why would I?

What would a useful "Memetracker" look like? First, it will have to integrate with my feed-reader/aggregator (do we have a single agreed upon name for this yet?) data. That way you can exclude the stuff I already know about. Plus you could tailor it to be interesting to me. Bloglines could pull this off, as could any other aggregator that centrally stores feed-reading data. Or, if attention or some other feed-reading-data-sharing mechanism were available, it could be done by a third party.

Second, it would be provided primarily as another feed. Not having to go out to another website and hitting refresh over-and-over is exactly the reason we love RSS and Atom so much.

So, what I'd want is an Atom feed of new items that I have neither read yet, nor have I read anything that linked to it yet. I want to see a summary of the main content, and possibly some links to the most interesting commentary on the item. An algorithm to determine interestingness like Flickr does would be the killer feature. A combination of popularity and making sure it includes some significant commentary instead of just being a another quote-and-link would be a good starting point. And, of course, I want "interestingness" to be somewhat based on what I already read, so that I can get more Java and less Microsoft, more economics and constitutional law and less party politics, and soccer and basketball, instead of just technology and politics.