Bart's Blog

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Continuous testing using Fireworks

This past weekend I installed the Fireworks plugin for IntelliJ IDEA. Fireworks will periodically check your source directories and if anything changed, will run all the tests (after recompilation) without you, the developer, having to initiate the test runner. There are some things that I'd like to see different in the plugin (e.g. the ability to exclude integration tests from continuous build), but overall, it's a worthwhile tool for the arsenal. One other gripe is that Fireworks pops up the compilation dialog. I think I can actually get this to work in the background by tweaking an IntelliJ preference. You can still use the test runner within IntelliJ; Fireworks just ensures that you're running tests more often. Thumbs up!

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Fireworks IntelliJ IDEA plugin for continuously running unit tests

Just installed the Fireworks plugin for automating the running of unit tests. Very cool. The plugin installs a tab that changes its icon depending on whether the test suite running successfully or not. Very similar to autotest in Ruby's ZenTest gem. Very nice complementary tool for TDD. Definitely a good find.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Compiz Fusion on Kubuntu 7.10

sudo apt-get install compiz compiz-kde compizconfig-settings-manager emerald

Alt-F2 to run compiz -replace
Alt-F2 to run emerald -replace

Configure Compiz and Emerald from KDE Menu, Settings.

Very, very cool. Much better than Vista and Mac OS X.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Issues when attempting to build native Ruby extensions on (K)Ubuntu Linux

Just a friendly reminder that anyone attempting to install Ruby gems for Mongrel, ruby-debug-ide, or anything else that needs to build native extensions will need to install build-essential and ruby1.8-dev Ubuntu packages into their (K)Ubuntu Linux system prior to installing the gems. Seems like an easy thing to remember, but I didn't, and ended up wasting a lot of time dorking around with it.


$ sudo apt-get install build-essential ruby1.8-dev

Saturday, December 22, 2007

NetBeans 6.0 is an awesome Ruby on Rails dev environment

I've been doing some Ruby on Rails stuff lately. Nothing serious, just playing with the platform right now. I've been using Aptana Studio 1.0.2 on my Kubuntu box here at home and it's worked really well. Today, I thought I'd try out NetBeans 6.0 and see how it's Ruby on Rails support is. One word--AWESOME!! It's much nicer than Aptana (which is really quite good in its own right) and for newbies like me trying to get their feet wet with Ruby on Rails, it's done very nicely. NetBeans is quite quick on my dev machine here at home. I really like the integration with Ruby and Rails that Sun has built here. Kudos to the NetBeans group for providing a top notch Ruby on Rails dev environment. BTW, I'm using Ruby 1.8 and Rails 1.2.4. I may try JRuby at some point, but right now I'm fine working with stock Ruby and Rails.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

dpuint for real Adobe Flex unit/integration testing

I've been really underwhelmed by flexunit and its inability to properly unit test Flex UIComponent implementations. Well, it looks like I'm not the only one. Digital Primates have a new unit and integration testing toolkit for Flex that is quite nice and really supports testing of Flex UIs. I've been using it for a few days and it's much better than flexunit.

http://code.google.com/p/dpuint/

Flex Builder for Linux Alpha 2 out!

Seems to bundle the new Flex 3 SDK Beta 3.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/

Monday, November 26, 2007

Integrating DbUnit and Grails together

I've been struggling within the Grails world for a while. It's pretty cool stuff, but the story around testing seems a less than desirable for my tastes. For integration tests, I like to have a database loaded with some data, and I don't want to have to load that data via object construction. In the Java world, I would use the excellent DbUnit framework to bulk load/unload data to/from the database. Why should Grails be any different? After some playing around with DbUnit 2.2 and Grails, it isn't any different. Works like a charm for integration testing. I'll still use metaprogramming and mocking techniques for unit testing, but DbUnit allows me to build up simple datasets of the database tables that I can easily load and unload through my Grails integration tests.

Friday, November 23, 2007

IntelliJ IDEA Android Support plugin out in the wild!

Well, it didn't take too long before an Android plugin became available for IntelliJ IDEA. It's available through the Plugin Manager as Android Support. Works really well for a new release. I've been able to build some simple examples and run them through the Android emulator. I'm really enjoying playing with this Android SDK. It's done very well and it seems that they made the tools easily integrable into existing IDEs (for now Eclipse and IntelliJ).

http://code.google.com/p/idea-android/

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Google's Android SDK rocks!!

Just got my first taste of the Android programming environment. Very, very cool. I have it set up on Linux and I'm using the Android Eclipse plugin with Eclipse 3.3.1. It's really freakin' cool. Much better programming environment than Microsoft's Windows Mobile stuff on .NET (formerly .NET Compact Framework). I've done some things in that world and it seemed OK, but this stuff that Google released is absolutely beautiful. Debugger works pretty well and I've heard that JUnit is included in the Android runtime on the emulator be default. That was always a hang up with Microsoft's stuff--you couldn't write test cases for anything. I really like where this thing is going. This is going to be fun!!

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Brian Goetz's Java Concurrency in Practice

Started reading this book tonight and working through the code examples from his book's website. If the first two chapters are any indication, this is going to be very good book. Very approachable discussion on concurrency, which never seems to be approachable.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

nvidia-settings, the Nvidia configuration UI

If you're using Nvidia's restricted drivers, use nvidia-settings to access their GUI for tweaking everything under the sun on your Nvidia board.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Pheasant hunting in northeastern South Dakota

Got back from an excellent pheasant hunt yesterday. I shot 7 pheasants over 3 days of hunting (limit is 9 for 3 days of hunting). Two friends (Pete and Kevin) came out from the Twin Cities to partake in the festivities. Very fun, especially on Sunday when it was just the three of us and Kevin's German shorthair pointer and a farm dog helping out for the hunt. We shot our limit of birds in about 2 hours. Weather was pretty good until Monday--Monday was extremely windy and really difficult to hit anything. The birds would fly real high and let the wind get behind them, so there wasn't much time to get a shot off. I'm still having problems ejecting spent shells from my Benelli Nova pump and get a new round into the chamber.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Finishing up the pergola in the backyard

My neighbor is just finishing up the pergola for our pool area in our backyard.

The pool is done!

We're finished building the pool. Pergola is still being worked on.

New Quad Core Linux workstation on the cheap

Built a nice new development Linux box (Kubuntu 7.10) for dirt cheap. I already had the mouse, keyboard, speakers, and LCD monitor. Everything was purchased from NewEgg. Not bad for under $1,000. I probably could have stepped up in the processor, but it's still quite quick at 2.4GHz.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor	$280
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard	$100
XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card	$130
Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU ATX 12V 2.0 500W Power Supply	$50
NZXT HUSH Black SECC Steel/ Aluminum/ Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case	$90
G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Memory	$170
SAMSUNG Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner	$30
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive	$110
TOTAL	$960

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Flex Builder Linux installs new Flash Player

Seems I have a new version of Flash Player 9 after installing Flex Builder Linux on my Ubuntu system. Adobe's Flash Player site reports the following:

9,0,60,235 installed

Hmmmm....interesting. Wonder what's changed?

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Flex Builder for Linux alpha posted

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/

Looks like Adobe's getting very serious about Flex development. Very good to see. I've been using Flex Builder on the Mac and it's OK, but Linux has Java 6. This alpha works with Eclipse 3.3 (Europa).

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Using autotest and RedGreen

http://errtheblog.com/post/15

Nice blog entry about using autotest and RedGreen together for Rails testing. Works like a charm. Thanks Ted for this "gem".

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Ruby on Rails screencasts from PeepCode

PeepCode screencasts for Ruby on Rails developers

Very cool way to learn Ruby on Rails. I bought a 10-pack of credits. Very well done screencasts. Highly recommended.

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