Just trying to catch up with everything at the moment, been so busy, even with the Auckland Anniversary Weekend I didnt manage to get everything I wanted done during the past week. So many things to do and not enough time to get them all done in.

My article for the JDJ has been published in the January Edition. Reporting Made Easy with JasperReports and Hibernate is my first attempt at writing for the masses and as the title suggests is about generating reports using the open source JasperReports engine and how it is possible to integrate this very useful engine with Hibernate by writing your own custom Data Source class. I have had some excellent feedback, even some from the guys at JasperSoft, and in the next version of the engine a Hibernate Data Source will be included. So it will be even simpler to create these reports. I am tinkering with writing a more advanced article covering how to use Hibernate to create reports with Graphs produced from mulitple spreadsheets, so if you find this article interesting, and useful then let me know.

I passed my Restriced Driving Test on Saturday morning, so can now drive my car alone between 5am and 10pm (although I drove home from Soccer training tonight just after 10...Bad man). Have been for a few drives on my own, still getting used to it as seems strange not to have someone sitting next to me in the car. Need loads of practice so will be out and about in my motor over the next few weeks, so if your in Auckland and see a little blue Toyota Starlet going a bit carefully down the road be nice to me :-)

Found some interesting bits and bobs on my internet surfs over the past few weeks that people may be interested in. One I found last week was a useful class for testing setters and getters to allow your Code Coverage tool..such as Cobertura to register these tests without you having to write lots of little tests. The code uses reflection to simpliy setting up the tests and can be found here. It may be useful to all the developers out there who are now swearing by the use of TDD, such as myself. Another that I don't think I've put a link on here for is a Flash tutorial for creating preloaders that can be found here.

Well still busy as, still trying to get a website finished, which is taking up too much of my precious time - cant wait till its live and I can get on with some other cool developments I have in the pipeline. Will put a link to the site up when I get it finished, hopefully in the next few weeks, although with having started training now, and bowling on Wednesdays time is even more scarce!! Aaargggh!

I've been kept busy over the last couple of weeks since I returned to work after the christmas holiday by a variety of things.

I've been doing more driving in preperation for my Restricted Licence Practical Test, which I have next Saturday at 4pm - fingers crossed I'll be free to drive without having to drag a passengar along with me by this time next week. I've been driving to work ever other day with a collegue who lives just around the corner from me, which has been good practice.

As well as driving, I've been busy running and working the weight to get ready for the upcoming football season here in New Zealand. I've lost 15+kg so far and down to between 72-75kg which has been very pleasing. Training is set to start on the first Tuesday in February so I should meet my target of 70-73kg before then. Will be good to then start working on my sharpness as well as my stamina work (feel the stamina is well developed now).

Development wise I've been working on the PSB Proshop website - which should be up very soon, and had my article 'Reporting Made Easy' published in the January Edition of the Java Developers Journal.

I've discovered a bit of an addiction to EBay since I discovered the number of Football Programmes available on it. I've brought several programmes already this month - including one featuring me playing for Erith & Belvedere against QPR in the Youth Cup way back in 1997. Great to be able to get back into collecting programmes - one of my passions away from IT.

Due to my love of and constant compiling of 'To-do' lists it was interesting to come across a site in an article I was reading that offered online versions with notifications etc. Remember The Milk - is a website built for people like me. I've joined up and will see how I get on using it. If you like to organise yourself like me - this may be just the site for you too.

Well, thats a quick wrap of what I've been up to over the past few weeks, now I just need to make sure I use my Remember The Milk list to remind me to update this blog more often - as I've always got something useful and am always up to something...and all the books need updating.... :-)

Today was a more productive day at work, and I got my AJAX/PHP issue fixed early in the day. The issue was due to a syntax error where I had missed a double quote..which did not show itself as a syntax error but was actually responsible for the JSON object not getting the right values, and thus crashing the application. There was also a minor issue witht the SQL Query, which didnt take long to fix once I sorted the syntax issue out.

Came across a couple of articles today, the first was a Maven book extract from onjava.com, Mastering Maven's reporting features, a really useful insight into how Maven can be used to view a project status and stability. This article is an extract from the Maven Developers Notebook, and is a really useful read for those considering using this Project build tool. As I am looking at implementing it as an alternative to Ant in a new project (just to try it out) I thought I'd delve into what it can do. It appears to be able to do all the things that Ant does, whilst simplifying the output of the reports, and I did read somewhere that Ant is considered the procedural build tool whilst Maven is considered to be the OO equivalent build tool. I shall see how I get on once I start using it before passing full judgement.

The second article from dev2dev Java 5 Features, is an excellent look at a software teams use and tips for the new Java 5 features. There are some useful tips and excellent explanations in this short article, which I recommend for anyone using Java 5 or thinking of using it. It cleared up a few things for me, and I'm sure it has something in it for everyone. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that Enums can have methods, which from the example present in the article I can see a use for in an application I am developing at present already, as well as covariant return section.

Finally there was a Quick Ant tip - Ant Tip 1: Write a master build file, from one of Elliotte Rusty Harolds numerous sites. Real short, sweet but useful tip on how to use one build file to build sub projects within a single build file. Useful.