Stop talking about Star Wars!

The third and final Star Wars prequal opened last night and no, I haven’t seen it. I’m a fan of Star Wars, but not of crowded movie theaters. So I figured I would wait to see it until this or next weekend. Spoilers are everywhere! I can’t event listen to NPR without hearing about the movie. So, to everyone who has seen it, please give us a change to enjoy the movie before ruining it. Not all of us can stand in line until 3am on a Wednesday and sleep in the next day!

All in good time…

Its been a while since I last wrote. Things have been good. Last weekend Kerry and I took a trip to Dallas to see my brother graduate from TCU and to meet my cousin’s 6 month old baby girl, Nicole. She is an awesome baby! Very well behaved and with a great personality. Of course I can’t tell you how many times Kerry and I got the question, “So when is your baby coming?” All in good time. Hopefully pictures are coming.

Groovy Scripting Language is groovy

Most people know professionally I mostly do java/J2EE server programming. At my current job, we are writing a server that needs to have pluggable functionality. Different clients may want different things based on their current process. I began to think this is a great job for a scripting language. However, we still want to maintain platform independence (great selling point). So I started looking for a java scripting languages. Groovy caught my eye mostly for its ability to be called inside and outside of compiled java code and the fact they will be JSR. After playing around with it I really like it and I think it will be a great fit for what we are trying to do. The language is filled with dynamic features like closures, regex, sql, xml and blocks. Plus you can actually extend it into a language that could be published to clients (much like Adobe CS does with their scripting plugins). So now when a client requests a specific feature for their site, we could just write a groovy script and upload it to the server, no code forking or special releases. I think that is very powerful. Below is my first groovy script, the famous and very complicated, Hello World (and I print out any command line args).

// my hello world stuff
println "Hello, World"
for ( arg in this.args )
{
        println "Argument: $arg"
}

One of the cools things about Groovy is that it supports Closure and blocks, so I could do the above for loop like this

this.args.each { arg -> println "Argument ${arg} " }

Arg is just a java List, which I’m able to traverse in some pretty cool ways now.

If you use java code, you should really check out Groovy.

Lady Bears National Champs!!!!!

Most people know that Kerry and I went to Baylor University for our undergrads. Well, last night the Lady Bears basketball team won the National Championships! And they just didn’t beat, they dominated Michigan State the entire game! The courtside band was there and hearing some of the tunes brought back memories. I have to admit, I really miss Baylor and the people there.

Go to Baylor Bears Sports for more information on the game.

Dune

Whenever Kerry and I go to Texas, I we usually go to this used book store chain called “Half-Priced Books.” The last time we were there I picked up “Dune” by Brian Herbert. I finished it last night and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Herbert builds a sci-fi world not really based on magic but on politics and survival. The story has multiple plot lines that seem to come together at the end, bringing answers to questions that may have arisen earlier in the novel. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading science fiction or fantasy. Its also refreshing to find a novel in that genre that’s less than 500 pages long (most seem to be over a thousand).

Kinsey, the movie

This last weekend Kerry and I saw the movie “Kinsey”. This is a drama about the works of Alfred Kinsey, an educated Zooologist who late in life changes his research interests to human sexual behavior. If you ever had anything to do with psychology, you’ve heard of his two text books: “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.”

Going into this movie Kerry was much more education on the works of Kinsey than I was, being that she has a masters in social work. The movie starts out at full speed with very graphic language about sex and approaches it an almost an uncomfortable analytical view, which is what you have to do as a scientist studying something. I thought Liam Neeson did an excellent job portraying the type of character Dr. Kinsey must have been. His co-star, Laura Linney, also did an excellent job playing Mrs. Kinsey.

All-in-all I really liked this movie and would recommend it. However, I wouldn’t go see this movie with anyone you do not feel comfortable talking to about sex, because it will spark conversation.

Fun in the snow

Last weekend Kerry and I went showshoeing , yes this is a real thing. Anyone remember the cartoons where people strap tennis racquets to their feet and walk around on the snow? Well they really do that here. Kerry found a place that would rent us both shoes and poles for the weekend and several parks in the area have trails for such a thing. I personally had a lot of fun and I think Kerry did also. They are surprisingly easy to walk in and give you a lot of traction on the snow. The poles, which are nothing more that ski poles, were also very helpful. It had just snowed over 6 inches that week which provided for some great scenery. Both Kerry and I took pictures so hopefully I’ll have them up soon.