Category Archives: Technology

Kudos to the @Optus social media team for utilising social media channels effectively to help their customers. I’ve had this ongoing saga for a few years where my internet drops out when the weather is extremely hot (around 35+ degrees … Continue reading →

So after a bit of procrastination I finally bit the bullet and attempted the migration of my website back to using WordPress as the CMS. For those tech dudes out there, or those who follow my happenings, you might remember … Continue reading →

So I’ve had the opportunity of late to dabble with Spring 3. From what I had seen before I wasn’t totally sold on the move to annotated controllers but after having used it for a few months I think I’m pretty much a convert to the new approach.

One of the major advantages to this new style is that it makes it dead easy to create RESTful web services. You basically define your controller class and annotate your methods the methods you wish to expose as a REST call with the @RequestMapping annotation. With this annotation you can supply some additional attributes such as the URI pattern you wish to match and what HTTP method applies to the service,

Combined with added support for JSON such as MappingJacksonJsonView and the Jackson JSON libraries one can very quickly whip up a fairly robust REST service.

As a good starting resource the SpringSource blog has a good rundown: http://blog.springsource.com/2009/03/08/rest-in-spring-3-mvc/ Continue reading →

So in the last year or so I’ve picked up bits and pieces on how to use automated software build tools. I’ve mainly been using Maven and for the things I’ve had to do so far I’m pretty happy (apart from when the m2eclipse plugin chucks a spaz!).

One cool way in which you can use Maven and the YUI Compressor plugin is to minify and aggregate (if required) your javascript and CSS files at build time.

This will help improve your site/application by minimising round trip times and the number of resource requests that need to be queued due to browser limitations on the number of active concurrent connections.

You utilise the plugin by including the plugin into your pom.xml then defining the configuration that you want applied (e.g. files to include/exclude, aggregation rule etc). The YUI Compresspr plugin site has a couple of examples so refer to it for more info.

One thing I came across though was that if you are using overlays and have resources in the overlay that need to be included in the compression/aggregation you will need to ensure the war is exploded at the start (e.g. process-resources). This is required so that the files are available for running the YUI Compressor plugin on prior to the building of the final war. If you don’t do this step first the overlay is only unpacked during the package phase which is too late as YUI Compressor has already run.

Anyways that’s the tech blog for tonight. Time for sleep… Continue reading →

With the end of IE6 support by Google I’ve decided now is a good time to post about fun with developing web apps that work on IE6. Whilst Firefox is a much superior browser to IE, IE for the most part is okay. Except if you’re developing front end apps that need to operate properly on IE6 as well.

Life then becomes endless fun of trying to work out why things only happen in IE6 but not elsewhere. CSS gone wild, box model fun, random behavior. Caching issues (though that applies to IE5+).

The interesting thing is that IE6 usage is probably actually declining as many small-mid size sites/companies are actually no longer supporting the browser and equally users are using newer versions. But the problem then lies with large corporations who have SOE builds most often which have IE6 installed. If you then think about that, then that’s still quite a lot of people using IE6 who may hit your site during their lunch break.

Food for thought, but it’s slowly getting there… Continue reading →

So a few days ago Firefox on my Mac starting giving me “The connection was reset” everytime I tried to access my website. The odd part was, if I accessed it in Safari it loaded up perfectly fine. After which if I retried in Firefox it started working.

So tonight whilst I’m up late (on-call this week, so have some work to do tonight), I went on a mission to rid myself of the “The connection was reset” error. Disabling/enabling of plugins and resetting of Firefox preferences later it appears the problem is solved. And in the end it looks like all I had to do was clear my cookies.

And now I’m back in Firefox land

Next post will be on IE woes… the bain of every developer… especially when the dreaded 3 characters of IE6 is mentioned… Continue reading →

Got myself the WD TV Live HD Media Player on the weekend after hunting through many a JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith store with no luck. From my quick play around with it I’m quite impressed. Haven’t set it up in my room yet though as I need to rearrange my power cables.

I got the device primarily to connect my Mac to my TV, as since I’ve had the Mac I haven’t been able to output to my TV as I don’t own the correct cables. Whilst the WD TV Live probably does cost a bit more than just getting cables it is a pretty nifty device as it supports lots of audio and video formats and has a network port so you can access network shares as well.

Might do a more detailed review of the setup once I have it all configured properly… which quite possibly could be next year seeing I’m leaving on a jet plane in 11 days… Continue reading →

So a bit after lunch today one of the guys I work with walked back in with a Magic Mouse in his hand. I heard some of the others oohing and ahhing at it so I joined the convo as I had known they still hadn’t arrived as of earlier in the week. And giving or taking 5 mins, quite a few of us crossed over the intersection to the Apple Store (work is directly opposite it) and bought ourselves some nice new shiny Magic Mice.

I have to say I am impressed. It’s sleek and the multi touch surface works brilliantly. Though it doesn’t have middle click functionality which is a bit of a downer. Still, one can hope Apple releases a software upgrade in the near future that supports it. I’m thinking a two finger click could be a suitable gesture for middle click. Thoughts? Pairing it was a breeze as well, no pushing buttons here, there and everywhere…

Had to update OS X though to 10.6.1 and install the Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0 for Snow Leopard. Continue reading →