Grails Post Complete

I started to do a bunch of writing about Grails and Blaze and the like. Then life got in the way. I had a lot planned but I just had too much work going on to complete the posts. I’m sorry that I left any of you hanging.

Fortunately somebody else has realized the awesome power the stack has and has started writing a great series on it.

If you are still interested in the Grails/Blaze/Flex stack then I highly reccomend you check out Sébastien Arbogast’s posts:
Part 1
Part 2

Klok – This stuff shouldn’t be free

I recently started testing the new version of Klok.  Klok is an Air app used to track your time.  Version 1.5 has been out for quite a while and I didn’t work without it running.  I tend to jump around my projects quite a bit and I usually have to keep track of how much time I spend on which tasks, etc.  Klok has always been a great tool to let me do that.  And it’s a free application!  Version 1.5 is available now and 2.0 is under active development and has made some FANTASTIC improvements.  This thing is, it SHOULDN’T be a free application.  I really think it’s that good.  I won’t go over all of the features that make it awesome cause this is a short post and I’ve got lots of actual work to do (yes, I’m logging the time I’m spending to write this blog post).  There’s lots of great time keeping apps out there and I’ve used lots of them.  This is the one I like the best.

Right now you can’t download the 2.0 beta unless you donate to the project.  So ACT NOW while the application isn’t free.  It’s totally worth it.

Now back to the work I get paid to do . . .

Swiz vs RobotLegs LIVE!

Since I began my DI framework journey I have used these two tools a lot.  I’ve gone back and forth and back and forth over which I like better.  Strangely, it’s usually the one I’m NOT currently using that I favor.  The things I miss always stand out when I can’t use them.

Well on Wed Jan 27th I’m going to be hashing these two frameworks out live at the Phoenix Flash Platform User Group.  For those unfamiliar with Dependency Injection frameworks I’ll go over the basics of how to get started with both Swiz and RobotLegs and how they are the same.  It will be a “lab” session and my plan is to walk everyone who is interested through the process of building a working sample.  Check back here the day of the presentation for links and resources to help us along.  It MAY help to have a Facebook account and SOME familiarity with building Facebook apps with the AS3 API.  I’m thinking of doing that as the example apps.  What do you think?

Then I’m going to talk about how the two frameworks are different.  I’m going to try very hard to be impartial.  I LOVE both of these frameworks.  There are a few points about them that I’m planning to go over (besides the basics of how to set them up).

• What is a Context and why does it make my hair look better?
• Will Swiz 1.0 alpha make by teeth whiter than 0.6.4?
• What if I want to process my own MetaData?  Can any of this help me?
• I REALLY like to use PatternX instead of Pattern42 when dealing with my views.  Can I do that?
• Commands vs Controllers on WWF SmackDown.  Who’s logic will win?
• Does/should a 1.0 version really matter? (Yes, I want to talk about this one, but probably only AFTER the meeting once the booze has started flowing).

My question to you, the concerned reader is what else should I discuss?  Are there any benefits or differences that you would like to see that I point out?  Please leave your comments here (in a timely manner) and I will do my best to get the points into the presentation.  I know there are other similar frameworks out there (Parsley is actually one I like a lot too) but these are the two I use daily and am most familiar with.  They are the ones I decided to put into my toolbox so they are the ones I will talk about.

I will try to tape the presentation or at least make the slides available so maybe that can help others out there who want to get started.

Swiz; But I don’t WANT everything public!

So I was wrapping up my project’s Swiz conversion before I took RobotLegs for a spin and noticed something I didn’t like.  None of my view’s mediated events were firing.  I didn’t actually have many, so I didn’t notice at first.  Then I realized that all of my methods were private.  They were private because I didn’t want to expose them.  Kind of like my parts.

I switched all of those methods to public and things started working.  Except, now I had all of these even handlers exposed.  It doesn’t really BREAK anything, it just . . . feels dirty.  I really don’t think that anybody working with this project would mistakenly call onActionHandler() but I just don’t like exposing things that shouldn’t be exposed.

Of course that’s not an issue at all for my Controller classes.  Public events make sense.

Also I didn’t get a compiler (or even runtime) error about that.  Likely that’s a mistake on my part.  If anybody has a suggestion as to how I would be aware of that private issue please let me know.

As to the Flex-only comment I made earlier Ben Clinkinbeard let me know that it shouldn’t be that way for long.  That’s excellent news for sure.  If I can figure out (or get over) the public mediated handlers then I’ll probably stick with Swiz for a while.

Before I settle though, I am going to give this RobotLegs a try first.  Getting started on it now.  Wish me luck!

Gold Nugget Fever and Dunbar’s Number

A couple of days ago I said farewell to social networks. I removed my Facebook and Twitter accounts from Digsby and continued on my merry little way just bursting with productivity since I wasn’t spending any time staying updated.

I was slinging code left and right. But then I kinda got stuck and needed a break. It was an easy problem, I just need a short breather to let my brain figure it out. So I went to Google Reader like I always do. But dang, I had already read all of the worth-reading blogs. So I did the next-best thing. Fark.

Ok, there’s really nothing GOOD about Fark other than it’s entertainment value. There’s plenty there, but it’s kinda like sitting down to watch TV and just flipping through the channel. Rarely do I enjoy it but it passes the time.

Well the next time I actually had something GOOD to read in my blog list I read this article from Seth Godin about Dunbar’s law.   I realized that one of the things that wasn’t working for me about social networking was that I was attempting to break that law and it just wasn’t working. It never works. “Dunbar postulated that the typical human being can only have 150 friends. . .  After that, we just aren’t cognitively organized to handle and track new people easily.” I actually think that my number is more like 20.  Maybe. Once I realized my mistake I decided to try again.

This time I installed a different Social app, TweetDeck. It’s another fantastic Air app that I’m having a great experience with. With TweetDeck I was able to filter my Facebook friends down into a manageable (and very small) list. I get only a dozen or so Facebook updates a day from only those people that I actually care about.

Same thing with Twitter. I was getting some REALLY great information from all of those flash guys I was following and I found that I was really missing that stuff. So I just filtered my following list down. I no longer feel obligated to follow EVERYTHING that comes in, but when I have a couple of minutes when my brain needs to work without me then I’ve got a few things to read. I’m still sick of all the re-tweets and I wish that there was some “rating” mechanism that I could use to filter incoming tweets. @theFlashBum I’m still on the fence about you. You send me great stuff but there’s just so much . . . dirt . . . in with the nuggets.

But this whole process has gotten me thinking a lot about my communication. I used to spend so much time thinking and preparing for blog entries (both personal and professional). Perhaps you couldn’t tell, I’ve never been a fantastic writer. But I’m gonna quit that. I should be writing for myself anyway. If others want to read it then fine. I hope you get something good from it. Or are at least entertained for a moment. So look for a lot more (and less grammatically correct) posts to come. This isn’t a New Year’s resolution, it’s one of those important ones that I’ll actually stick with.