The SquizLogKeith Pitty takes a squiz at the world. |
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The SquizLogKeith Pitty takes a squiz at the world. |
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The anticipation is almost unbearable as the start of the Fourth Ashes Test at Trent Bridge approaches.
It's not before time that the selectors have chosen to give Shaunt Tait his opportunity. But, as quick and exciting a prospect as Tait is, we should not be expecting him to perform miracles in his first Test. After all, the legendary Thommo went for 0/100 in his first outing!
As well as watching Tait with interest, I'll be fascinated to see if the Australian batsmen can give a better collective account of themselves this time.
Bring it on!
Update at lunch on day one: England looking very comfortable at 1/129 on an extremely flat track. This will test the Aussies' mettle.
Update post-match: Despite Warnie's heroics and a disgraceful umpiring decision against Katich, I have to admit that Australia are losing their grip on the Ashes. Still, the final Test at The Oval promises more enthralling cricket.
I think I'm just about hooked...
Having noticed the potential of Ruby on Rails (RoR) a little more than a year ago, and observed the debate ever since, until recently I have been a curious bystander rather than an active user.
Dave Thomas (the pragmatic programmer) changed that with Agile Web Development with Rails, the recently published book that he co-wrote with David Heinemeier Hansson (the originator of RoR). I've been thoroughly enjoying building the Depot application that is the focus of part two of the book. Dave has a gift for writing; this book is a gem.
Along the way I have been experimenting with different editors on OS X. At first I used SubEthaEdit but tired of it's cumbersome windowing and dependency on Finder. Being an Eclipse fan for Java development, I then tried the Ruby Development Tools plugin but that doesn't support ERB files. I've now settled on TextMate, which has very nice support for Rails and has improved significantly since I tried it a while back.
Regardless of the ultimate success or otherwise of RoR and various opinions of the framework's merits, it is suffice to say that I'm having fun!
After England took the honours on day one of the Third Test, the Aussie cricketers will need to show greater resolve today.
There were some worrying signs yesterday. In the first session Gilchrist dropped a couple of crucial catches that turned out to be costly. Gillespie looks like a spent force. Ponting's captaincy lacked insight: giving Dizzy 15 overs when he was being dispatched at a run a ball was criminal; waiting for more than 30 overs before introducing Warne allowed England to take the upper hand.
The senior men in the team need to lift their games. Today will be an acid test. I hope the Aussies, especially in their fielding and batting, are mentally tough enough to meet the challenge.
Otherwise my prediction of a series 3-1 win to Australia will be looking very shaky!
Update (16/8): Well, Ponting certainly lifted to enable Australia to save the game in what was one of the most thrilling finishes I can remember for a drawn test. The Aussies can still win 3-1 but more importantly this gripping Ashes series is in the balance and capturing the cricket public's imagination.
Having recently returned to exploring JSF, I was interested this morning to read Matt Raible's informative article, Challenges in the J2EE Web Tier.
Amongst other things, Matt highlighted significant improvements coming in version 1.2 of JSF.
One is the Unified Expression Language, which combines both the ${...} style JSP EL with the #{...} style JSF EL, ensuring that both can be used together. This is good news because JSTL has been one of the major improvements of JSP, and it's problematic compatibility with JSF EL is a drawback of the current version of JSF (1.1). Indeed, the major thrust of JSF 1.2 is it's alignment with JSP 2.1.
Another improvement on the horizon is JSF 1.2's support for HTML templates. In this context, Matt alludes to an open source project called Facelets, a development that I will be interested to monitor.
Anyway, I recommend Matt's article. It's worth a read. Roll on J2EE 5.0!
I'm off with some mates for a few days of golfing indulgence ...
"I'm convinced they're the way to go", said my colleague about JavaServer Faces.
"What if you didn't have a tool like Rational Application Developer (RAD) to drag and drop the JSF components?", I responded.
His level conviction was not the same. As we discussed this scenario, we agreed that there would be a less compelling case to use JSF rather than Struts if JSF-aware UI building tools like Page Designer in RAD were not available.
Still, after a hiatus of nearly a year, I've returned to take another look at JSF. On my laptop, on which I have Eclipse and MyEclipse installed, I'm working my way through Marty Hall's tutorial. And then, when I get a chance at work, I intend to follow Jeff Wilson's article on Developing Java Server Faces Applications in Rational Application Developer (RAD).
There's obviously alot of interest in JSF. As much as I am interested in other web frameworks such as Spring MVC and Tapestry, I think it is much more likely that JSF will achieve critical mass. But I suspect it will take a while for JSF to displace Struts.