- Andrew Kos
- Bill Burlein
- Bryan Williams
- Christian Vozar
- Jeff Brown
- John Kraus
- Joseph Mak
- Josh Durbin
- Mark Daugherty
- Matt Van Bergen
- Melissa Geoffrion
- Michael Kang
- Michael Chan
- Michael Hodgdon
- Mike Motherway
- Molly McDaniel
- Nadia Maciulis
- Pat McLoughlin
- Paul Michelotti
- Puru Hemnani
- Rohit Srinath
- Ryan Lunka
- Tom Kelly
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CITYTECH Blogroll:
Archive for 2009
JavaFX at the Chicago Java Users Group
December 12, 2009 1:30 PM
I’ll be giving a talk on JavaFX this upcoming Tuesday, December 15th at the Chicago Java Users Group. The talk is titled “JavaFX for Java Developers”, and is meant to be a survey of JavaFX from the perspective of someone already familiar with Java.
I Heart Joel on Software
December 2, 2009 1:25 PM
Let me make one thing perfectly clear before you embark on this journey with me: I very much love reading anything Joel Spolsky writes. I am a Joel on Software fan-boy. I am also aware that, due to his ubiquitously strong opinions, he is frequently cited/criticized on other tech blogs, and that doing so is derivative and shallow, even though that’s what I’m about to do here.
All I Really Need to Know About Programming I Learned in Kindergarten
November 12, 2009 9:44 PM
On the days that I pick up my daughter from Kindergarten, she’s always bursting with excitement over what she has learned that day. It often makes me wistful for my own Kindergarten days, almost 30 years ago. As I listen to my daughter talk about her day, I reflect on my own time in kindergarten, and how, trite as it might seem, that year spent in school at age six, really gave me all the tools and life lessons I needed to be a professional programmer.
Music Explorer FX v1.1: Now with “Fame” Control
November 11, 2009 1:56 PM
Version 1.1 of the JavaFX-based music discovery application, Music Explorer FX has been released. You can try it here: This version is mostly about performance and stability improvements and it’s also the first version to be released under JavaFX 1.2. Additionally, it sports a new feature: the “Fame” knob:
Search is not Discovery
October 30, 2009 6:26 PM
Paul Lamere over at Music Machinery has a great write-up about Google’s new music search feature. To give you a sense of where he stands, he ends the post with a memorable mantra: “Search is not discovery”.
The Awkward Relationship Between Swing and JavaFX
October 27, 2009 2:37 PM
Here’s a recent awkward interaction between a Starbucks Barista and me: Me: I’ll take a Grande Coffee (note, I don’t actually order “just a coffee”, but I’m too embarrassed to write out the actual drink. Being forced to write “Grande” instead of “medium” is embarrassment enough — I already conceded “barista” over “employee”).
Music Explorer FX Mobile Edition
October 20, 2009 3:34 PM
Earlier in the year, I wrote a music discovery desktop application in JavaFX called Music Explorer FX. Since JavaFX also has a Mobile SDK, it made sense to write a version of MEFX for JavaFX enabled mobile devices.
The Nonzero-Sumness of RIA Platforms
September 8, 2009 10:47 PM
In an industry that seems to thrive on competition, it’s natural to think that the three major RIA platforms are incompatible, directly competing technologies, and that an application that uses one, will preclude the use of the other two. After all, an application written in Silverlight is one less application that could potentially be written in JavaFX.
Creating a Bordered Panel in JavaFX
August 22, 2009 10:10 PM
Recently I was looking for an easy, relatively general way to visually separate arbitrary groups of components with a border. Behold the BorderPanel: BorderPanel is simply a CustomNode that wraps any number of nodes in a Panel (which is a custom layout Container), and sticks a border around it.
An Animated Chart in JavaFX
August 18, 2009 4:50 PM
For an upcoming demo I had some data in chart format, which would be changing frequently, so I wanted the charts to smoothly animate the value transitions rather than abruptly change to the new dataset.
Music Explorer FX Source Code Available
August 8, 2009 11:49 PM
Music Explorer FX has been open sourced and is available for download on the JFXtras community site (it’s about halfway down the page). Thanks to Stephen Chin for encouraging me to release it under open source.
Book Review: Pro JavaFX Platform
August 4, 2009 1:13 AM
Early adopters of new technology platforms seem to have a masochistic side in that they must put up with the pain of unimplemented features, poor or non-existent documentation, and incomplete APIs. Their reward for all of this hard effort and needless suffering once a new version of the platform is released is often hopelessly broken code and a relearning/unlearning of all that has changed.
The Evolution of Music Explorer FX
July 31, 2009 1:24 PM
In the process of getting Music Explorer FX ready to be open sourced (which hopefully will happen any day now), I couldn’t help but take a trip down memory lane with some of the early iterations, which I thought I’d share here.
Five Reasons that Show My Switch to Groovy is Complete
July 6, 2009 11:30 PM
I’ve said that I’m “working with Groovy” so much in front of my family and non-programmer friends that they’ve given up making jokes about the 60’s and getting high, and have returned to general nerd-based jokes.
My JavaFX 1.2 Blogging Contest Submission, by Sten Anderson
July 3, 2009 3:55 PM
The JavaFX team is running a contest for blogging about developer experience with the newly released 1.2 feature set. The top 10 posts each receive $500 USD. This blog post is my contest submission. —————-
User or Usability? (or, The Psychology of Software Support)
June 26, 2009 2:27 PM
Before going into Software Engineering, I took a job in PC support at the university from which I graduated where it was my job to answer the support questions of the professors and administrative staff. I quickly realized that my job had very little to do with any sort of proficiency with technology as it did with simply being a sink for raw human emotion.
Faking a Password Field in JavaFX 1.2
June 23, 2009 9:20 PM
I’ve been slowly attempting to migrate The Music Explorer from JavaFX 1.1 to 1.2. One area of the application that I was particularly looking forward to updating was the Twitter panel, which is the set of UI components that let you automatically Tweet your activity using the application.
Dumbing Down Our User Experience
June 21, 2009 7:28 PM
If a genie offered to give you some incredible super power, say the gift of flight, or invisibility, but in return would chop your IQ in half, would you do it? What if he said that, over time, you’ll recover most of your intelligence to a point, but you’ll never be quite as smart as you are right at this moment — would you do it now?
JavaFX Project Postmortem: In Which I’m Interviewed by a Five Year Old
June 14, 2009 9:44 PM
Developer magazines sometimes are able to interview key developers of high profile projects after they’ve been shipped (with questions such as “what went right?”, what went wrong?”, etc.). Since I officially kicked my first non-trivial JavaFX application, Music Explorer FX, out of the door last week, I figured that I would grant an interview of my own. Since my five year old daughter, Meredith, had refusal rights from her last interview (and also since she was the only one interested in talking to me), I happily granted her the honor.
Music Explorer FX: A Tool for Music Discovery Written in JavaFX
June 11, 2009 12:35 AM
So as I mentioned last week, in my exploration of JavaFX I’ve written a music discovery tool called “Music Explorer FX” (or just MEFX for short). It’s been available for about a week now in the Java Store, but since that’s only available within the U.S. and requires registration, I’ve provided a link here. Just click on the “launch” button and you’ll be on your way.
JavaOne, Day 3: In Which I Shamelessly Plug My App at the Pavilion
June 9, 2009 12:23 PM
And now, the thrilling conclusion to my untimely JavaOne coverage… The New World: JavaFX Technology-Based UI Controls Finally! This standout session on the new controls offered in JavaFX 1.2 is exactly what I was waiting for. Delivered by most of the same team as the previous day’s unfortunate Extreme GUI Makeover, they launched right into showing the new Look and Feel, Caspian, citing Nimbus as having a dated look.
JavaOne, Day 2: In Which the Tension Between JavaFX and Groovy Becomes Palpable
June 7, 2009 8:45 PM
Here’s the next post in my series of increasingly untimely coverage of JavaOne. Wednesday’s theme for me was all about user experience which started with… Extreme GUI Makeover Extreme GUI Makeover is a JavaOne favorite. I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s version, delivered by Ben Galbraith, which covered the case study of converting a Cobol application to a Swing Application (something I happened to be actually doing at the time).
JavaOne, Day 1: Sessions
June 6, 2009 12:29 AM
Here’s a breakdown of some of the sessions that I attended on the first day of the JavaOne conference. I meant to get this out in a more timely manner but it turns out that I’m no good at spontaneous posting.
JavaOne, Day 1: Keynote — A Labor of Love
June 3, 2009 12:25 PM
I’ve already mentioned in a previous post what I found most exciting, from a personal standpoint, about the JavaOne Keynote. Indeed, the announcement about the Java App Store itself is cause for celebration. A central point of distribution would be a potentially great injection of vitality into an aging Java community.
JavaOne, Day 1: Hey, That’s My App on Stage!
June 2, 2009 7:01 PM
The culminating point in this morning’s JavaOne key note was the announcement of the Java App store, accessible at store.java.com. The intention of the Java App Store is to give Java developers a central, standardized way to distribute their Java applications to the potentially billions of users of Java devices around the world.
JavaOne 2009, Prelude: Nerd Migration
May 27, 2009 10:18 PM
It’s that time of year again. Java nerds the world over are packing an extra inhaler and their well-worn copy of “Java Puzzlers”, preparing for the annual trek to California. In a few short days, I myself will confront my fear of flying and leave the muggy Midwest for the cool, crisp ocean air and azure skies of San Francisco — home of JavaOne.
A Text Adventure DSL in Groovy
May 21, 2009 10:14 PM
Reading Peter Bell’s write-up on Guillaume LaForge’s talk on creating DSLs with Groovy has inspired me to chime in with my own experience with Groovy DSLs. The following is a transcription of sorts of the first part of a talk I’ve given a few times titled “Building DSLs with Grooy: A Real-World Case Study” (slides available here). This section of the talk introduces the idea of DSLs, and how Groovy is well-suited to creating them, by building a small adventure game interpreter. Enjoy.
Some Great Gr8 Conference Follow-up
May 21, 2009 12:22 PM
There have been some great blog posts over at groovyblogs reporting on the sessions at this week’s Gr8 Conference, the Groovy/Grails/Griffon conference held in Denmark. Among the standouts are an excellent write-up on what’s new in Groovy 1.6 and a summary of a session titled “Groovy Usage Patterns“, both by Peter Bell (the write-ups, not the sessions).
The George Thorogood of Software Development
May 14, 2009 11:32 PM
Acting as the fiber of Software Construction’s diet, it would seem that good collaboration skills are necessary to produce anything useful. Indeed, if you go to any tech conference chances are that interspersed between the sessions about actual technology will be sessions devoted to, in some way, collaboration with others. Whether its focusing on getting the most out of SCRUM, or new techniques for Pair Programming, “playing well with others” is a perpetual hot topic.
Groovy Map Quiz Redux
May 11, 2009 7:08 PM
What will the following code fragment print? If, like me, you answered “true”, then you may want to read the rest of this post to be spared from spending more time than I care to admit figuring out why, in fact, it prints “false”.
Property Access with Groovy Maps
May 8, 2009 9:53 AM
Here’s a quick Groovy quiz. What will the following code fragment print? If you guessed that it will print “val”, then welcome to the Tripped Up By Groovy Map Property Access Club, members: you and me.
JFXStudio Contest Champion
April 4, 2009 4:33 PM
I was notified today that my submission to the JFXStudio “Orange” contest was one of three winners (…and one of three submissions). My submission, the Orangalyzer, is a helpful application for writers and poets trying to find words that rhyme with “orange”. Simply enter a word and after some analyzing, the application will report whether or not the word rhymes with “orange”.
Echo Nest Goodness
April 1, 2009 2:24 PM
It looks like the guys over at the Echo Nest have added a new metric, called Goodness, to their developer API. On a zero to one point scale, it’s nice to see that Hungry Fathers rates a whopping 0.75 (compared to Joe Satriani’s paltry 0.05).
Toggling Fullscreen with JavaFX
March 31, 2009 6:47 PM
JavaFX supports full screen mode via the Stage class, and it works well provided you don’t want to switch back and forth between full screen and windowed mode. If you want the ability to toggle, then a little more work is necessary.
Griffon Book on the Way
March 31, 2009 12:47 PM
One of my semi-daily emails from Manning Publications just informed me that a new Griffon book, Griffon in Action, is on the way. It’s great to see that Griffon is gaining enough traction to have an “In Action” book published about it.
Scrolling with JavaFX
March 18, 2009 2:28 PM
Since JavaFX has no scrolling support yet (not counting the Swing extensions), any desire to scroll around will fall to the developer to implement. In general, I don’t recommend trying to “roll your own” components since I have faith that scrolling support will be added in future a release, but in the interim, here’s a little scrolling experiment:
TDD: It’s Not Just For Zealots
March 16, 2009 11:52 AM
TDD (Test Driven Design/Development) is the practice of writing tests before writing the thing that will be tested. I’ve been simultaneously interested and suspicious of this way of writing software, trying to decide if the assumed rise in quality of the software could outweigh the dictatorial approach to writing tests (a testocracy)?
JavaOne Reject
March 15, 2009 11:36 AM
The JavaOne sessions for this year’s conference have been posted on-line. Notably absent from the content catalog (notably that is, if you are me, or my mother), are my submissions. Since I have no shame in sharing my failures as well as my non-failures on this blog, what follows is the body of the rejection email that I received:
A Critical (and Possibly Misinformed) Look at JavaFX Sequences
March 4, 2009 1:12 PM
Similar to the java.util.Collections utility class for the Collections API, javafx.util.Sequences is a utility class for Sequences. It contains, as expected, functions such for searching, sorting, general manipulation, and object lookup. This seems a bit split-brained to me though.
Staying on the Beat
March 3, 2009 10:23 AM
Paul has written (and blogged about) a little piece of software that will analyze the tempo deviations of a song to try and determine whether or not the drummer used a click track. A click track is basically a metronome piped through headphones that can help the drummer (and therefore everyone else) stay on beat.
Groovy Talk at UniForum
February 23, 2009 5:21 PM
Tomorrow (Tuesday) I’m going to be giving my “Building DSLs with Groovy” talk at the UniForum group at IIT’s campus out in Wheaton Illinois. I imagine that the talk is only open to UniForum members, but it looks like you can become a member simply by attending a meeting (and paying the fee).
Why I Like Grails
February 19, 2009 2:10 PM
I’ve always been a fan of glass mugs. In addition to being able to see what I’m drinking, I prefer their smooth feel to that of standard ceramic. Recently however, a friend turned me onto grails. On the surface, it would seem that grails are a throwback from an era long past, but there is something to be said about drinking from the satisfying heft of a jewel encrusted grail made of bronze that helps me get in touch with my northern Germanic roots.
New Beginnings (relax, not for me…unless you know something I don’t…)
February 19, 2009 10:38 AM
My good buddy Paul Lamere has moved on from Sun Microsystems to join a Music 2.0 startup. Paul was my mentor early on, and any quality in programming that I have managed to squeeze out over the years I attribute to him.
JavaFX 1.1 Released
February 13, 2009 1:35 PM
It looks like version 1.1 of the JavaFX SDK has been released, which now officially includes Mobile support. It also includes “Full Screen” support which is a great bonus for game development.
JavaFX CMIS Browser
February 12, 2009 12:38 PM
A while back my colleague, Shane Johnson, blogged about a CMIS browser he had written using Flex/AIR. If you’ve come to this post for the “JavaFX”, or if you’re me from a week ago, here’s a bit of context: CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) is a specification that defines a set of Web Services which can be used to interface with a content repository.
I Want to be on the Front Page, Too!
February 6, 2009 12:38 PM
So my company, CityTech, has recently overhauled its web site, and I’m sure you’ll agree, it looks really nice. As you’ll note, the top few posts from our company’s blogroll are aggregated off to the left.
While My Schedule Gently Weeps
January 28, 2009 11:58 PM
It never fails, we can be in mid-Sprint, our task list decided on, our Product Backlog up to date, and out of the blue the client will hesitantly approach my desk. “I was wondering…how hard would it be to…”
A Radial Visualizer in the Wild
January 28, 2009 6:23 PM
Paul sends along a link to a group of visualizations found over at Eigen Factor similar to my recent JavaFX Radial Visualizer (similar, that is, in the same way that the Atlantic ocean is similar to the puddle outside of my house).
JavaFX Radial Tag Visualizer
January 26, 2009 6:52 PM
Building off the momentum of my previous Tag Visualizer, I decided to write another one, this time using a radial model. The data is the same as before: tags from my tag cloud with their relative weights and correlations (how frequently they occur in the same post — the wider the line of the arc, the stronger two tags are correlated).
JavaFX Tag Visualizer
January 19, 2009 5:55 PM
Lately I’ve been experimenting with some of JavaFX’s animations to do some Data Visualization. Below is a screen shot of a little app that will visualize some of the top tags on my blog, much like my Tag Cloud widget does.
First Ever Chicago Groovy User Group
January 11, 2009 4:04 PM
The first ever Chicago Groovy User Group is meeting this coming Tuesday, January 13th at 6pm in the Chicago Loop. Details are available at http://cgug.org/. I’ll be giving a talk on integrating Groovy DSLs into Java applications, focusing specifically on a project that I’ve recently finished.
I’m like a Hypochondriac, but with Programming
January 6, 2009 10:48 PM
I heard the following phrase no fewer than three times at a recent tech conference: “Bad Programmers will move heaven and earth to do the wrong thing”. The first time I heard it I thought that it was kind of catchy, maybe I even chuckled a bit with the others in the room.
Sten Anderson
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