Hey all,
I have just relocated to New York with my wife. I got what looks to be a cool job here and she will be continuing on with her school. It's been a busy month with moving and settling in but we are getting there.
In my down town, I have started getting back into my usual hackery. I have been reading Craig Walls' book "Spring in Action". It is a pretty good book actually. Some people on Amazon have criticized it for a lack of code examples but really, it is a good solid book that explains how Spring works and how to use it properly. If you understand Java, then you don't really need coding examples, just an explanation of how Spring works.
I am new to the Spring framework though it has been around for many years. It is an interesting framework that helps you build Java systems designed around dependency injection, as known as inversion of control. Essentially, it promotes the development of loosely coupled object which in turn makes them very modular. It also promotes aspect orient programming which allows for modularization of things like logging and security; stuff that is a pain in the butt to do and susceptible to bugs. I am looking forward to using at my new job and making a couple new research search system for my old lab at Dal; logging user behavior was always a pain to do so it should be interesting to see if I can make good use of Spring there.
I am sort of behind of my Web posts due to moving and what not. I actually got a few papers accepted for publication which is a new and happy change from my usual rejections. I will post up the references shortly.