Grails Documentation Widget

I finally polished up and released the first version of my Grails documentation widget. I normally don’t dig widgets much but it’s really useful to be able to rapidly jump to the ref docs for a taglib etc without having to go to grails.org

Get it here

Argh – Apple iPhone ate my paid applications

I tried to sync my 1st Gen iPhone in the dock today. There was some error about it not being able to mount the iphone as a disk, which I OK’d and re-docked it so it synced again.

Now I find that all of my paid applications – Super Monkey Ball, Band, Enigmo, OmniFocus and Drum Kit have been removed from the phone. Any free applications I have installed over wifi over the weekend are all still there, as are all the other free apps. However every paid app is gone – for good. They are no longer listed in iTunes either.

So now I have to chase iTunes Store to reinstate these for me.

Nice bug guys.

I have an availability window…

Many of you will know that I’ve been working solidly on Grails sites for the last 2 years now, for high profile UK food/drink brands. Due to a gap in brand budgets, I am available for contract work from mid-August for what looks like a few months.

With these brand sites I have been heading the development team, responsible for the majority of architecture/design and implementation of the application code, including some ajax JS code (primarily using Prototype/Scriptaculous) – separate developers have been responsible for the HTML/CSS and graphic design, and some of the JS code. I also mentor developers and do my best to improve working practices on an ongoing basis.

In summary, my commercial work of note in recent years -

Grails 1.x sites:

• Copella 2008 (www.copellafruitjuices.co.uk)
  with blog, recipe database, forms capture, reporting, competition draws
• Copella Garden 2008 (www.copella-garden.co.uk)
  with blog, AJAX fruit/vegetable Garden Planner application (not live yet), user registration, email confirmation round trip, web flows
• Tropicana 2008 (www.tropicana.co.uk)
  with forms, integration with external site for property search etc using REST, dynamic image rescaling
• Cobra Beers 2008 (www.cobra-beer.com)
  with dynamic podcast generation, blog as CMS, postcode proximity search for outlets

Grails 0.5.x sites:

• Tropicana Win Every 24 Hours 2007 (competition site now closed)
  AJAX based competition site and multi-page survey capture
• Copella 2007
• Tropicana 2007
• PJ Smoothies 2007-2008 (www.pj-smoothies.co.uk)
• Tropicana Go 2007-2008 (www.tropicana-go.com)

Other:

• PJ Smoothies + Tropicana Go 2006 sites
  pre-Grails custom Java webapps with Spring, Groovy and WebMacro (and hand coded SQL eurgh!)
• Southampton University – UK parliamentary document archive search system improvements (Lucene/Agora, Java webapp)

Grails Plugins I have written:

• Feeds – RSS/Atom feed generation with custom DSL
• Authentication – simple pure-grails authentication
• Debug – out of the box logging of request params and all kinds of bits
• StaticResources
• PostCode – UK postcode centre lookups with embedded data
• EmailConfirmation (not publicly released yet)
• ImageCache (not publicly released yet)
• Blog (not publicly released yet)

I have also contributed periodically to Grails core, and if you haven’t already noticed I’m a Grails evangelist of the highest order! I am am also a total Jira maniac.

For more info on the diverse range of development work previous to this and info on how much Java and other language experience I have, please see my old CV

So if you have a project you’d like me to develop or consult on, drop me a line (marc@anyware.co.uk).

Peak Oil, the state of the garden, and our willow hedge (‘fedge’)

Well summer has definitely arrived at long last, albeit interspersed with dull patches.

The garden is going nuts, and our veg patches are doing quite well – into our second year of rotation and the hard work putting in literally tons of compost is paying off. The potatoes are good this year, yields lower than last year but pest and disease-free. The peas are giving us a much better crop, and the broad beans were better too although suffered a bit with poor pollination at the end.

The cabbages have gone remarkably well, but we’ve totally failed again with carrots – this year because the slugs had the all the seedlings – ditto with the parsely which we had tons of last year. Beetroot and lettuce however have been good, as is the rocket. Climbing beans – a disaster, due to slugs/snails eating out the tops.

The sweet corn and squash are going bonkers, which is very good news indeed. Leeks… all seem to be infested with leek moth.

Our willow hedge/fence (these are called ‘fedge’  I believe) that was planted in April has doing fantastically well. We now have the challenge of weaving in/pruning the new grown to maintain the shape and increase the density of it for next year so the garden is more private, but retains a pleasing shape in winter when the leaves have dropped. I can strongly recommend woven living willow fedges – they’re beautiful and easy.

I’m recently getting more and more clued up on Peak Oil and Transition Towns, seeing as Stroud which is near us is one of the few Transition Towns in the UK. It’s pretty disturbing stuff, and like all potential calamities it may or may not happen in the way we expect – but I am sufficiently convinced by the pending peak oil crisis and worried enough by the impact this will have on food supply, transport and social cohesion (or the lack thereof) in the UK that I am working to become as self-sufficient as is feasible regarding food, water and energy.

This year we planted two apple trees, one plum tree, one peach tree and three blueberry shrubs. The peach tree is obviously planted in the hope that the Atlantic Conveyor doesn’t give up on us in a few years ("When the strength of the haline forcing increases due to excess precipitation, runoff, or ice melt the conveyor belt will weaken or even shut down"), and it seems to be growing well at the moment.

I’ve also now hooked up 3x 200L water butts to the downpipe of a small roof circa 8m2, to make sure we don’t run dry in the back garden for veg and plants and avoid using the hose. We had a massive thunder storm the other day which gave us 200L of water from that small roofspace, in just 30 minutes! Rainwater harvesting seems like a "good thing" to do, but coupled with some form of purification might be something we have to do in the not too distant future. Who says there will be enough water (or energy to clean/move it) for the taps to keep running post peak-oil?

I’m working on an idea for a solar powered mechanical pump to take water from water butts up-hill (if necessary) and possibly to drip-feed beds.

I’m also looking into electric bicycles. I’m particularly interested in electric pedicabs, as this would mean we as a family with young children could travel together, up the hills of Stroud. However they all seem to require a charge and don’t have regenerative breaking yet. It will come with time I’m sure – although a dynamo be a possible custom-modification.