Posts by Paul Eggerling-Boeck
While working at my current client, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a dynamic image generation tool from Adobe called Scene7. We had a need to put togther different elements of an image dynamically based on user input and render a final image to the user’s browser. I can’t believe how well and how fast the Scene7 software accomplishes this task. Granted, I have no prior experience with image generation software so I have no baseline with which to compare, but it seems really fast and easy to me. In order to make it all work, all the pieces used to generate the final image are uploaded to the Scene7 server ahead of time and processed (this is where the magic must happen). This processing takes a very long time, but it’s only done once, and it’s done ahead of time so the end user feels none of the pain. To have the Scene7 software generate the final image, we simply construct a URL with a number of parameters telling the system which pieces to pull together and how to put them together. The result is a final image file which is generated in a fraction of a second. As a bonus, it just works and when we’ve had some confusion about how it works, Adobe techincal support has been Johhny-on-the-spot with help. Is it open source? No. Is it expensive? Most likely yes. But it just might be worth the expense if you need the services it offers because it works damn well.
P.S. Just in case the FTC comes asking, I was in no way compensated for this article.
Filed in: Team Member Blog
Having recently worked in two very different development environments (one being very complex, and the other being very simple), I noticed something about myself that really surprised me. I prefer the complex environment. As much as I dislike always having to overcome a challenge in a complex environment when I’m in the thick of things, I have found that I thrive on that challenge and actually NEED it in order to feel successful. It’s true, that I’ve been much more productive in the traditional sense of the word during the time I’ve been working in the simple environment, but I come down more on the quality side of the quantity vs. quality debate. I tend to get much less done in a complex environment, but what does get done, is (IMHO) of a higher quality and I think it has to do with constantly having to be at the top of my ‘game’ in order to overcome the challenges present in a complex environment.
Filed in: Team Member Blog
I’ve been working lately on setting up Ubuntu linux on my home and work computers with mixed success. On one hand, I love how much faster many things are than XP/Vista. On the other hand, I’ve struggled mightily in a couple different areas to do things that XP/Vista do pretty well out of the box. I know, I know, you get what you pay for in many cases. I was really looking forward to getting going in Linux and sticking it to ‘the man’ by dumping Windows altogether, but I’ve found a great degree of truth in what a wise friend once said. After his own initial foray into Linux he posited that “Linux is free … If your time is worthless.” I was hoping, given all I’ve read about Ubuntu, that I would be able to prove him wrong with that distro, but alas, he was right. Crap.
Filed in: Team Member Blog
So yeah, here it is, May 1 already. I think I worked more in the month of April than in any single month of my career. I guess I’m not surprised that I didn’t have a blog entry for April given the fact that all of the time I’ve had when I wasn’t either working or taking care of my kids was spent sleeping. Now that things have calmed down a bit at work, I plan on getting back into the new things I was planning on learning like Ruby, Maven, Spring, and oh yeah, I’ve added Linux to the list.
Here’s hoping for a more relaxed May.
Filed in: Team Member Blog
Or rather, my inner programmer.
I make the distinction because, aside from a complete lack of social skills, I can’t really lay claim to any of the other attributes that make a geek a geek. I’m not a gamer, trekker, or Star Wars fanboy. I don’t read/watch sci-fi or fantasy (with the exception of LOTR, duh), and I have never taken up residence in my parents’ basement. However, I do loves me some coding. I have always gotten a lot of satisfaction out of solving problems by writing computer programs. Now, if I could only write one that gets my 2 yr old to sleep better, I’d be ecstatic, not to mention rich.
Of late, I’d been trying to diversify my interests by playing guitar, reading, and one or two other things. After starting and stopping these activities and generally not being able to generate much interest in doing them, I realized that I just need to give up and accept the fact that what I really enjoy doing is programming. I think I’ll still plunk around on my guitar because I spent too much money on it to just drop it, but I’ve pretty much given up any ambition of becoming a musician. Not because I couldn’t, but because I just don’t want to. Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I’m realizing that I need to be honest with myself and just enjoy the things that I enjoy and stop trying to be something I’m not. I think I’ll be happier in the end if I can do that successfully.
So I’m off to learn Spring, Maven, and RoR.
Filed in: Team Member Blog
…I find it increasingly confusing to sort out the multitude of different frameworks available in the Java web development space. I seem to remember being pretty darn productive writing plain ‘ol servlets with JSPs. OK, OK, I did use custom tag libraries, but that’s all. Give me a simple ORM framework (not Hibernate, I said simple) and a simple MVC framework and I’m good to go. I really start to chafe when it comes to view frameworks like Wicket or Tapestry. IMHO, these frameworks make it extremely difficult for someone to start new on a project and understand how to fix something that might be wrong. As a consultant, one of my goals is always to create very maintainable code. If you compare that way of working to a pattern, then using some of these view frameworks is a great example of it’s anti-pattern. I just wish more people would see the value of keeping things simple and not always be looking for a tool to throw into the mix to solve a problem that could be solved in a more simple way with a little forethought. I hate to think about how much time (i.e. money) is wasted by IT employees world-wide who are tasked with trying to evaluate some of these frameworks with the goal of choosing one over the other.
“They tell me I have ADD. Look! A Chicken!”
Filed in: Team Member Blog
I’m beginning my foray into the world of Ruby programming and eventually Rails development. As a crotchety, old C/Java developer, I’m struggling with the flexibility of a language like Ruby. What’s all this about being able to change a class definition at runtime? I’m sure I’ll become more comfortable with it after I’ve cut my teeth on it a bit, but my very early readings on Ruby have left me sort of dazed and confused. My transition from C to Java was a lot smoother, most likely because they’re both statically-typed languages. I can look at a piece of Java code and pretty much know what I’m getting without executing that code (at least that’s the illusion under which I choose to live), but can I do that with Ruby? I’m looking forward to what Ruby has to offer and I think my yearnings for simplicity will be satisfied by the language from what I’ve read. I guess it’s just going to take a leap of faith on my part to trust that I’ll be able to wrap my head around it and come to love it as much as everyone else does.
P.S. Get off my lawn!
Filed in: Team Member Blog