Terrifying Aspirations

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I don’t spend a lot of time regurgitating political mantra on my blog, but I feel must do my part to bring light to this corner of the political world. If you, dear reader, have any inclanation against a U.S. Empire — one that forces its hand at the international rule of law despite the U.N., the E.U. or even common decency — keep reading.

During the 2004 campaign season, I became aware of a group called the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC. This group, made up of just about every Bush croney in the White House and nearby, states “that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.” Sounds a little fishy, but it gets better. Casual perusal of the site uncovers the tenets of PNAC which include:

  • Military increases
  • Stronger ties to allies (do we still have any?) and stronger threats toward enemies (used to be able to count those on one hand)
  • Promoting the cause of freedom abroad (presumably through war, see the first bullet (no pun) point)
  • America (not NATO, not the UN, not Western Civilization) is unique in its ability to rule the world

I strongly recommend reading the PNAC Statement of Principles which goes into more detail and also lists the members (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, just to name a few).

Folks, this group scares me to death. They outright state that their goal is to build military might and take over the world! Anyone see a problem with this? Is the reasoning behind our meddling in the Middle East becoming more apparent now?

If the last 3 years have shown us anything, it’s that PNAC is incapable of doing good. The Middle East is just one little section of their plan, and it’s failed miserably. Imagine what might happen if they get their tentacles into other parts of the world. Sheer disaster.

Please do your political duty and get familiarized with this group, so that you see what the White House is up to. Many decisions made after 9/11 will become clear when you realize the motives of the people we’ve elected.

For a more thorough assessment of PNAC, read Miles Wooley’s recent article on LewRockwell.com.

My First Rail

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I finally got a little time last night to check out Ruby on Rails. I have been hearing the hype now for over a year and I was pretty certain it would live up, and I’m here to tell you that it does. As a J2EE developer I respect OO design and and well thought-out conventions. Ruby embraces both and delivers a slick little setup that lets you get a data-connected webapp running in minutes.

The nice part is that with one install, you get the Ruby language along with Gems, the package manager. Gems works a lot like Yum does for linux, and with one gem command, you get the complete rails package, including a little webserver called WEBrick. RoR passes the 10-minute test with flying colors.

I followed along with one of the recommended tutorials before I hit the sack, and I found myself lying in bed running through use cases for my new score. Damn I’m a geek.

Normal Ringtones

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I’m in the minority here, but I like my celly to ring like a phone, not like MTV played through a tin can. I still think there’s a market for “phone” ringtones, but nobody’s biting. In the mean time, here are a couple links that contain a pretty decent collection of actual rings.

http://www.dence.net/oldphone/
http://www.davidenglish.com/ringtones.html

I’m using “Old Italian Phone” from the first link and it sounds pretty decent on my Nokia 6682. It’s got that old phone sound with a little electronic-ness in there which takes the edge off, and it’s unique enough so I know it’s my phone.

Spring MVC gets Form Tags

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Most seasoned Struts developers I know (myself included) are masters of the html:* tags, using and extending them liberally in just about every web application they design. Spring MVC has been on the forefront of challengers to Struts, and with its sensible design, endless flexibility and excellent documentation, it isn’t difficult to see why. But Spring’s MVC left the building of HTML form controls up to the developer and his own devices. This was a big issue for me and the one that has kept me from rapidly adopting the system for use in my own apps.

In their 2.0 release the Spring team has given the community its wish, and provided a JSP form tag library. It’s been added to the manual, but here’s a key term that might pique your interest: convention over configuration.

The Spring crew has taken lessons learned from the wildfire of support for Ruby on Rails and employed them in their J2EE kit. Bravo. Time (and other ‘me-too’ projects) will tell if this is really what J2EE needs to stay on return to the cutting edge.

My First Autocross

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I finally got off my lazy ass and gook the GTI out for a romp in the cones. It was every but as fun as I imagined, and I suck every bit as much as I imagined! With the exception of my last run which involved mauling the entire row of cones on the last tight turn, I improved my time incrementally each lap.

I’ll definitely be doing this again in the future, and I owe a big thanks to Equipe Rapide (autox.carlc.com) for hosting such a great event!

Welcome to the New Site

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This is the very moment all you millions of blogsumers have been waiting for — the new breddy.net site! Thank you, thank you — settle down.

The new site is a WordPress blog with a customized version of Ian Main’s Green Marinee theme. I humbly extend my gratitude to Ian for making this excellent code available for public use.

Courting SpringMVC

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As a Struts user since 1.x, I finally decided to come out of my Jarkarta shell and test the Spring waters. I’ve been using Spring in the middle tier for a year or so now and could not be happier. I’ve had only a small taste so far, but here are my initial thoughts:

Good

  • Designed from the ground up using good OO principles – Rod & crew really have this part mastered
  • Amazingly flexible – many concrete classes are provided for each bit of functionality so that you never get more than you need
  • Transparently woven-in with Spring – less glue code

Bad

  • Lack of rich HTML component library – just doesn’t cut it when you’re used to having forms and select boxes built for you. Apparently this is addressed in 2.0M3 which makes a new Form tag library available, but I didn’t see any reference to this in the docs.

More to come as I work with it.

Spoiled

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It’s times like this that I realized how lucky and spoiled we are. The air conditioning in our house went south again for the 4th time in about a year. Luckily it isn’t super hot yet, but 85 degrees and at least as much humidity is no picnic to sleep in when you’re used to a nice dry 72 :)