An Unflattering Commentary on Rackspace Cloud Server Security
I recently needed a new server instance for some testing. Normally I would go back to AWS, as I've had problems with Rackspace in the past. Being open minded...
View ArticleMQTT Over WebSockets with JavaScript and ActiveMQ
After reading up a bit about MQTT, I decided to set up a test bed to see how it works and if it lives up to its potential. The use case was simple: I wanted to...
View ArticleFun with Character Encoding and When to use ISO8859 Instead of UTF-8
What character encoding are you using? Most folks nowadays settle on UTF-8 for web centric type applications, but things can get squirrelly if you use this...
View ArticleRunning and Software Development
I have a long love/hate relationship with running and I think that it's a great metaphor to help explain the subtle differences between agile practices and...
View ArticleWeb Application Framework Popularity Over Time
I thought I'd do a quick comparison of web frameworks to see how popularity is trending nowadays per google trends. I realized this is has some serious...
View ArticleContinuous integration versus delayed integration
A vigorous area of debate in the development and architecture community exists around the value of Continuous Integration. To give context, when a software...
View ArticleThe Brokenness of Java in the Cloud
In the cloud, it's important to be able to do have computers talk to each other and invoke commands on each other. This is called Remote Method Invocation...
View ArticleTesting Love and Polyamorous TDD
The rigor and quality of testing in the current software development world leaves a lot to be desired. Additionally, it feels like we are living in the dark...
View ArticleWomen in Technology
When I stop and look around at work, I notice something that bothers me. Why is the ratio of women to men so low in technology? I've read quite a few...
View ArticleThrough The Looking Glass Architecture Antipattern
AnĀ anti-patternĀ is a commonly recurring software design pattern that is ineffective or counterproductive. One architectural anti-pattern I've seen a...
View ArticleWe Are Not Our Code
For many people (myself included), creating software is difficult, rewarding, and enjoyable. There is a feeling of pleasure in the act of creating something...
View ArticleAvoid Hibernate Anemia and Reduce Code Bloat
One of my beefs with Hibernate as an ORM is that it encourages anemic domain models that have no operations and are simply data structures. This coupled with...
View ArticleThings to Remember About Information Security
As more businesses look to cloud application providers for solution, the need for developers to understand secure coding practices is becoming much...
View ArticleIt's Not NoSQL Versus RDBMS, It's ACID + Foreign Keys Versus Eventual...
The Background Coming from a diverse background and having dealt with a number of distributed systems, I routinely find myself in a situation where I need...
View ArticleWhy OSX sucks and you should use Ubuntu instead
OK, I confess, I use OSX almost exclusively and have for a number of years now. I DO have a number of Ubuntu machines, VMs, and servers in stable, but my goto...
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