No time to do it all

I have been on a programming tear and have had little time for anything else.  Continuing to work to the finish line on ASAAP but there seems to always be one more tweak that leads to a weeks worth of work.  I am still searching for the holy grail of CRUD frameworks (no luck so far) but I have been impressed with jqGrid when it comes to inline editing of “line” records (multiple occurrences of same records for the same entity…think of invoice lines and you get the picture).  Actually my jqGrid stuff is what has preoccupied me for the past weeks.  Still, it hasn’t been as productive as I had hoped.  I still have weeks of work.  Shooting for the end of the calendar year to finish this stuff.

A couple of other things.  IzPack looks like a great packaging and deployment tool.  It’s open source and easy to use.  I am going to look into using it as a deployment tool for my IBM i applications.  Probably some work there.  Also, some renewed interest lately in tn5250j indicates 5250 green screen applications aren’t dead yet.  A tn3812 printer application would be great as well but until my ship comes in, and that won’t happen soon in this economy, I’ll be focusing on revenue generating applications.  Once exception will be updating my RRE program (RPG Report Generator) to support iText and Birt reporting.  I am developing them so I can use them in my Common presentation in May 2010.

That’s it for now.  The blog is still alive.  I am still alive.  I just have to work through my endless backlog of commitments.

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EGL-CE on Linux (and Windows 7)

I had a chance to do a quick reality check on the new EGL-CE and it looks pretty solid, even on “unsupported” platforms (at the moment) of Linux and Windows7. I just finished up the demo using  EGL-CE and all seems to be working well.  Granted, I am not using a DB connection yet and I haven’t had to deploy an app but a simple RUI app was successfully completed.  Does that mean that EGL-CE on Linux is stable and ready for production?  Well, I can’t say.  However, the results so far have been encouraging.  It wasn’t my intention to jump back into EGL at this moment but I did at least want to kick the tires and give EGL-CE a whirl on Linux.  Now I need to boot back into Windows 7 and see if it all works on that side as well (can’t see why it wouldn’t).

Next step is to do something substantial to exercise these EGL legs again.  At least the Linux hurdle was a low one.  I still have a pretty substantial Java project to finish (more enhancements and features for my ASAAP product) but as *soon* as that is done, I am going to work on something of substance with EGL.  Maybe even use EGL-CE on linux.  We’ll see.

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Back from reality

Since I needed to update WordPress to fix a security flaw (gasp!) I decided to add a quick note about reality and the world we live in.  4 days off the grid does much to remind one of how unreal our day to day world really is.  Spending time reading, reflecting and unwinding clears the mind and imagination palate.  Too much of our lives is spent in fruitless pursuits. As immortal beings, our short term view is nothing short of baffling.  We comment about the passage of time but we do nothing about the quality of that passage.

My “reality” is rooted in something far more significant and lasting (ask me anytime). This life, as joy filled, challenging and fun as I find it, is a temporary diversion.  One I heartily enjoy, don’t get me wrong, but fleeting none the less.

Spending a day in email and code vs gazing at the immensity of the universe on a cloudless Idaho night puts it all in perspective.  I would *hope* that you have more to your life.  I certainly do.

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Summer is nearly gone…the projects are not.

A long term contract I have been a part of for almost 17 years was not renewed on July 1st of this year.  By all rights that would make me unemployed but it hasn’t slowed the lengthy and growing list of projects that await me.  I have never lacked for work.  I have often lacked for cash.  Entrepreneurism isn’t for the faint of heart, nor the lazy, but it can get a little dicey from time to time and I do occasionally yearn for the 9 to 5, if only to be able to go home at the end of the day and leave work behind.  But technology is my passion and call and as I endure the recession (yeah, even school districts are hurting) and try to augment my Java skills with Ruby and Javascript, I know that someday things will settle back into a dull roar.

So I have been coding Java and using jQuery and jqGrid almost non-stop for the past two weeks and I estimate about two more weeks of this before the more frayed ends of the projects that have deadlines are tidied up and I might be able to work on a couple of my overdue open source projects (like RRG and web5250).  So *just* about the time that I have some time to kick back and enjoy, summer is gone and I had no time to enjoy it…

Ah, the benefits of running your own business!

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The curiosity button

I just got an email from someone I know that has great enthusiasm for technology, just like I do.  He was effusive in his excitement over the use of ext.js and his CGI applications.  Such enthusiasm is contagious.  He hit my curiosity button.

That button is well exposed and easy to depress in my case.  It rarely takes more than a comment, a news release, a post, a magazine article or a target mailing to get me to follow a link and then spend minutes, possibly hours, reading  something and then playing over the possibilities in my mind.  I am a tech junkie and I *think* I can quit whenever I want to, I just never want to. That explains, in sad detail, why I work seven days a week, 10 hours a day and have the productivity of a chimp at a typewriter.  Lots of activity but no useful (in my case, billable) output.

What to do?  Unfortunately, there is very little I can do to avoid the siren call of technology.  My days off the grid at my brother in law’s cabin with no electricity, no phone, no cell service, nada, are about as close to a detox for me as it gets.  Family interventions, attempts at self-discipline, it all fails.  I try to focus, continue to work on projects with some tendril of promise of future revenue and then someone punches that curiosity button and I’m gone.

Hey, take a look at this…….

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The ever moving finish line

The good news: I have *plenty* of work to do.  The bad news: Not all of it generates income.  At least directly.

I have been cranking away at several projects and hence my scribblings here and my Facebook and Twitter activities have been rather muted.  How DO people keep all those things going?  My goal is create a tool that will allow me to post stuff of interest into my Facebook wall, tweets, email and this blog at the same time.  Someday..

Whats new? Spent a bit of time with iText cranking out Q & D report listings (headings/footers are weird in iText though) and been moving from Java code to proprietary application integration (electronic time cards at the moment), building servers and diagnosing network issues for my Alaska customers.  No end of the treadmill as of yet.

Just checking in.  The list gets longer. The 24 hours in a day never changes…..

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Back on the grid

For a techie/software craftsman/geek type, I sure like getting off the grid every once and a while.  My brother in law has a cabin in central Idaho that has no electricity, no phone, no Internet.  I love it!  Those quiet, reflective days are just what I need to recharge the creative juices.  I have given some thought to getting a solar array and spending a week or two up there, writing code at my leisure and enjoying the great outdoors.  The biggest issue is that I DO have a very small install base of customers using my ASAAP product so two weeks off the grid might be too much.  I could get a satellite phone as well and I know a few residents up there that have satellite Internet but then, with all that, how would I get any R&R.

So back on the grid and back into Java and an interesting project involving electronic time cards. Prepping for a week of technology at my Alaska customers site.  I need to prepare well in advance because it takes 3 days to receive anything “overnight”. So getting the gear together and ordered ahead of time is the challenge.

Fishing? Maybe.

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Working like a dog

Been up to my eyeballs in Java this past two weeks with just a smattering of RPGLE to deal with.  I am also officially on the street looking for work as a very large and lengthy contract I’ve had has now come to the end.  So the recession has come to roost at Value Added Software, Inc.  However, being busy and gainfully employed has never been connected for me so it comes as no surprise that I am incredibly busy but also “unemployed”.

Actually the pipeline will stay full until about October.  I have my ASAAP product to work on as well as a new electronic timecard entry system to design and write so I’ll have revenue coming in for quite some time.  With time to work on ASAAP, I should be able to get all the loose ends tidied up in no time. ASAAP has come together quite nicely and  all the work in jQuery over the past month has me itching to rewrite a bunch of code that I wrote 5 years ago as I got started on the web version.  Ajax can make quite a difference in the way an application functions and jQuery makes it all pretty easy.

So, it should be an interesting summer.  Looking forward to some R&R soon, just as soon as I finish a few of these projects…

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More work to do

I love/hate the blog thing.  Love it because it sometimes can help me memorialize important stuff and organize my thoughts.  Hate it because I am always behind.  I need a reminder / nag tool to keep up.

Spent a week last week with my customer in SE Alaska.  We are working on a server installation which should solve some administrative control issues and are planning on implementing a new electronic time clock that I will hook up to their payroll system.  So I am beginning yet another new programming project before I have had the opportunity to finish several others. Still working on putting the finishing touches on my Automated Substitute and Attendance Processor product (ASAAP).  Having bailed on trying to find a CRUD tool, my efforts to crank out code with jQuery and Freemarker is moving right along.  Two consulting visits have kept me from making the kind of progress I need to get this thing off my place though.  And the implementation of this new code is next week (Yikes!).

Much uncertainly about future projects and, more importantly, revenue.  Finally feeling the effects of the recession. One of the good news/bad news aspects of working with schools that have annual budgets that begin in July.

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Best CRUD for i

Ok.  I’ll cut t the chase:  There *aren’t* any.  At least that I can find and that have the features I want.  I have tried the following:

Rails – It is REALLY hard to handle legacy database issues.  My particular Achilles heel are the field names with # in them.  # is a comment flag in Ruby so naturally it hoses up the code.  No way to work around it either.  Rails is fast, easy to get up and running but the # issue is a deal breaker.

EGL – Great code generation and tools for creating CRUD applications quickly.  Biggest issue for me is the ease with which you can change databases (I usually develop with MySQL or MSSQL and then deploy to DB2).  Also, the RUI requires web services in order to work and web services just add another level of complexity making *quick and easy* CRUD difficult.

jEspresso – Cool Java based framework.  Easy to develop a CRUD app but the UI is a little clunky and I had difficulty in getting things going.  This has some promise though.

Roma – Another cool Java Framework.  I just couldn’t get it all to work.  The documentation is lacking and the framework is difficult to get your head around. It does work and like jEspresso, has some promise.

ATK – A PHP framework that makes CRUD very easy.  This is a cool little framework and it has been developed with the i in mind.  But, there’s the rub.  It isn’t as friendly to rapid switching of databases like Rails or other JDBC oriented frameworks are.  This IS a cool little framework though.  It is PHP5 based and if you plan to ONLY deploy to the i, this is a great way to go.

So, I dropped back to my tried and true Freemarker/jQuery application development method.  I have even given build my own CRUD framework, using Freemarker and jQuery some thought.  But, I have LOTS of applications yet to finish. And, without a good CRUD framework to use, I have to hand roll all of them.

Gotta go!

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