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The first annual JSF One conference is taking place in Washington, DC from September 4th through the 6th. Think of it as JavaOne, but with a focus on JSF only.

I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll be able to attend. The price tag is quite high at $1,650, as is nearly every conference with the exception of Google I/O. It’s nice to see a conference taking place on the east coast. Nearly every major or interesting conference takes place in California.

They have a nice speaker lineup with representation from many types of organizations. Take a peek.

I’ve started a number of websites and communities in the past and none of them have been very successful in any way. However, that has never stopped me from starting another one. It’s fun to get involved and create a community site about something you’re interest in.

In early March I started www.iphonedevsdk.com. My goal was simply to blog about the news surrounding the new development platform and to provide a place for developers to come and discuss topics related to the iPhone SDK. I got lucky and hooked up with a popular tutorial site that was also just getting started. They essentially link to my site as the official forums for their tutorial driven site.

Over time the visitors and pageviews increased to levels I had never been able to see in something I created myself. My site and the site I partnered with worked together to create a resource that people wanted to keep coming back to.

Looking at the Google Analytics report right now, iPhone Dev SDK has had 163,266 pageviews by 21,896 visitors in the last 30 days. I’m amazed by that. In only a few months the site has grown far beyond anything I ever expected. What’s really interesting is that in just the last 7 days we’ve seen a huge surge in traffic, mostly driven by the upgraded forum software. Over the last 7 days, the pageviews have been holding steady at 8,000 per day, 68% higher than the average over the last 30 days. Once the 30 day cycle completes, and assuming traffic remains steady at 8,000 per day, we’ll be looking at 240,000 pageviews a month. Amazing.

My first exposure to real programming was with the Java platform. I spent my first two years in technology learning Java and that platform’s web-specific frameworks for developing applications. At that time JavaServer Pages (JSP) was a relatively new technology and Servlets had been the real work horse. Of course now the landscape has changed and web frameworks have dramatically improved. It’s laughable to think of presentation code being generated by Servlets these days, legacy applications excluded, of course.

The hot new framework at the time was Struts. The idea of MVC was not exactly new but bringing it to the web was a very interesting idea. Struts was pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread to every Java developer doing web programming. Personally, I just couldn’t grasp it. I was too new to programming in general and that framework was simply over my head. I stuck with my JSPs and Servlets.

Shortly after my time ended at that company and I started working at VCU, I was exposed to Microsoft’s .NET framework. This was roughly in the spring of 2003. Even though my bachelors program was focused around Java, I spent a lot of time devoted to .NET. The Imagine Cup project consumed a year of my life and was completely in .NET. I think at one point we had counted nearly 100,000 lines of code in that project. One of my higher level courses was somewhat language independent and I ended up using .NET there as well. I essentially had moved on to what I considered greener pastures and had no interest in looking back.

After school, which was winter of 2005, I had a number of jobs that were all specific to .NET. I worked with GIS technology, built some very interesting AJAX/C# applications, and rebuild Richmond.com. Simply put, I know the platform very well and had really invested myself it in.

Everything changed one morning last September. I was sitting in a room with my buddy Matt and the CEO of his company. Originally I was there to chat with the CEO and find out if there were any areas I could help the company in, on a consulting basis. By the end of our conversation, I had a job offer on the table which I happily accepted. The kicker was that the company was a Java shop and it had been a number of years since I had done any real Java work.

Since the start of my new job I was actually doing everything in C#. I built a new company web site, created an automated way to transfer and validate data, and a few other miscellaneous things. It wasn’t until a month or two ago that I actually picked up Java again for something real.

What I quickly noticed is how much had changed since I left Java. Nothing! Struts is still around, only with a new version number, JSP and Servlets don’t appear to have changed at all, and now there are dozens of web frameworks out there trying to fill a void I can’t seem to find. The only “Sun sponsored” framework I’ve seen is JavaServer Faces (JSF).

In my search for a framework I looked at Spring, Struts 2, and JSF. I decided to go with JSF. Where JSF stands out in comparison to the others is in the simplicity of getting started and the ease of use. Struts has been and will always be a monster to set up and code with. Spring is a monster of a framework that pretty much does everything you could want. That’s all well and good, and a lot of people swear by it, but for what I wanted it was just too much to take in. I just wanted to get started on a web application. I wasn’t interested in AOP, Dependency Injection, ORM tools, and the other things Spring includes.

JSF provides a fresh and simplistic approach to MVC. Frankly, a framework that didn’t follow MVC wasn’t an option for me. Anyone who knows me knows how nutty I am over architecture, design patterns, and elegant solutions. JSF is a great solution for MVC, while maintaining an environment where I can understand how everything works. The lack of “automagic” is a good thing and I appreciate JSF for it. Working with JavaBeans in JSF is a dream and a fundamental aspect of the framework. The abstractions of Models and Controllers aren’t enforced by JSF, but rather implicit by design. It’s my call on how I structure my Java code and I simply inform JSF by using the faces-config.xml file. JSF gives me an easy environment to implement a “domain driven” model, my interpretation of it at least. I’ve stuck with that programming model for this project and it has worked out incredibly well.

What’s really shocking to me is that JSF has not caught on in the Java community as I would have expected. It really goes to show you how important the community is in Java. Had this been in the Microsoft camp, it would have been devoured and sword by immediately. In that world, Microsoft is your dictator and what they say goes. Sure, there are successful open source projects, but it’s nothing like the Java community. There are so many options it can almost become a problem but that’s another subject I guess.

I’ve enjoyed JSF, a lot. It has it’s problems. For me, most notably, the lack of URL importance. I think a lot of people have not bothered to give JSF the proper look it deserves. Many pass it off as being complicated. I’m very surprised by that as I’ve found it extremely easy and open to work with. If you’re starting a new web project and want a fresh look at web development, take a peek at JSF, you might like what you see. I sure have.

Blaine Cook, one of the original Twitter founders, recently left Twitter to go on to different things. Twitter has had a very public history of downtime in the recent months. Coupled with the recent growth in the application, we’ve seen a lot of people hating on Twitter lately.

I was reading Tech Crunch and noticed a podcast that had Blaine Cook on the show to ask him about Twitter. I thought it would be interesting to hear his insight on how Twitter works at the developer level and how their team worked to create such a hugely popular application.

As I started listening to the show, which had Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Dana Gardner, and Robert W. Anderson hosting, I could tell it was going to be a negative show on Twitter. Scoble opened by bitching about Twitter being down at the moment. I find it funny how he and Arrington can bitch so badly about this free service being down, yet they exploit it for their own marketing usage on a major level. Stop your bitching and thank these people for creating a free service you use to spam everyone to drive more traffic to your sites.

Blaine was awesome. He essentially stepped up and jumped into a tank of sharks blasting Twitter. There were a number of times he was answering their questions and they interrupted and flatly said he was not answering the question. Of course it was because it wasn’t the political or business answer they wanted to hear.

This panel is obviously not a group of engineers. They very obviously do not understand the technical challenge involved in creating anything like Twitter. Listening to the podcast, I felt bad for Blaine. He’s trying to be helpful, taking time out of his schedule, and answering these ignorant questions.

The Gillmor Gang podcast is not something I listen to on a regular basis, and after having listened to this show, I’ll never listen to it again. It’s nothing more than a group of people that think they know more about technology than they actually do. Do yourself a favor and ignore it.

Along with the rest of the gaming world, I’ve been eagerly waiting to get my hands on Grand Theft Auto IV. I’ve been playing this series since the PS1 days and was really hyped about this installment. The basic idea of GTA is to work your way up in life by doing jobs for various people. Given our character is often a guy lower on the social ladder, the kind of work done isn’t exactly in the form of a 9-5 job. In previous games, drugs and violence have been a staple of the series. I’m not far enough in this game to know drugs are a big part but I can say there has been a lot of violence in the first few missions already.

The story opens up with your character, Niko Bellic, arriving to Liberty City on a boat. Given the appearance and accent, you’ll discover Niko is from eastern Europe. Niko comes to Liberty City to meet up with his full-of-bullshit cousin Roman. You’ll quickly learn that Roman has been less than truthful to Niko regarding his lifestyle in this country. Roman runs a taxi service and owes a lot of the wrong kind of people a lot of money. Before you know it you’ll be helping Roman with his taxi service and protecting him from his debt collectors. The kind of debt collectors in this game don’t call you on the phone. They make house calls with a number of lethal weapons.

What I’ve really enjoyed about the game so far is how likable the characters are. Character development is a major component to the game. You’ll make relationships, female and male, that matter in how you play the game but that don’t effect the outcome of the story. Early on you’ll meet a woman who’s very interested in Niko. Developing that relationship appears to bring benefits later on as the story develops. These characters will give you access to their special ability as they value your relationship more. For example, I can pick up and drop off a taxi customer for Roman to earn a few bucks if I’m in need. It’s not a mission of the game and doesn’t really do anything special, but it’s something I can do to earn some money to buy food and clothes. I imagine later in the game you’ll meet people who will hook you up with weapons if they like you enough.

Liberty City was last seen a number of GTA’s ago. Back then it was a loose representation of New York City. In GTA IV, Liberty City is New York City. The level of detail present around every street corner is unlike anything you’ve seen in a video game. Instead of a handful of different pedestrians walking the streets, you’ll find it difficult to see the same person twice. The streets have different textures from one another. There are advertisement flyers posted on the sides of buildings, hotdog vendors, and enough lifelike action going on to really make you question the fact that you’re playing a video game. These people don’t care about you either, they’re just going on with their daily schedule. Go hang out at the corner for a few minutes and watch the city around you. You’ll observe the same kinds of activity you would had you stopped in the middle of Times Square. The detail and presentation of Liberty City is nothing short of phenomenal.

Tuesday night, the official release day, was the first time I was able to sit down and get into the game. The game starts very slowly. I played for about an hour and thirty minutes and it’s quickly apparent how deep the story is. It takes a few hours to have the background knowledge of how to actually play the game. During this time you’re meeting new people, learning how to navigate the city, and just getting a feel for the game.

My first impression of the game was less than perfect. Nearly every major review has given this game a perfect rating. For me, it was definitely not perfect. The graphics are beautiful and detailed but there was noticeable framerate drops every so often and the world itself was overly dark. It was to the point that I had trouble seeing things at night. The driving aspect of the game was very realistic as well. It felt more like Gran Turismo, which is a bad thing in my opinion. And because the game starts off so slow, I didn’t feel pulled in yet. I didn’t feel like I couldn’t stop playing. I had that feeling with Call of Duty 4 and I wanted the same from GTA.

Those were my first impressions. Essentially, I was very “meh”. I liked it but I didn’t love it. Given the hype it was hard to only feel so-so about the game and not be disappointed.

Last night when I was able to sit down and play, I adjusted the brightness in the game to help with the darkness I had the night before. I also took a little while to simply cruise around the city. As I did that I became comfortable with the driving physics. The key point there is to understand that you can’t take a 90 degree turn in a 15 year old 4-door at full speed. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

During my session last night I continued to play the missions and meet more people. As I did, the game became more and more enjoyable. I met Little Jacob who gave me my first gun. And during a mission with him I picked up an Uzi one of the guys I killed was carrying.

By the end of my 3rd hour of play overall, I’m loving the game. The story has opened up enough to draw me in and I have enough experience around the city and driving that everything feels natural. Adjusting the brightness helped the visibility in a major way. Now I’m starting to see where the perfect scores for GTA came from. It really does take a few hours of intro gameplay but once you get in, you’ll be hooked.

I picked up Mario Kart Wii today while I traded in some games to pay for my Grand Theft Auto 4 pre-order. I wasn’t very excited about this game. I thought it would be a fun Wii game to have and considering I only have one, Mario Galaxy, I could really use something that Katie would enjoy.

I’ve been blown away by how much fun this game is so far. We’ve been playing it all evening. We’ve played 2 player, single player alternating, and a lot of online. The game is pretty much what you remember from before. What’s new is the control scheme since it’s a Wii title. Now, you actually use a wheel to steer. It makes for a fun experience. We’ve both really gotten into it.

The online game is great! I jumped in a quick game just to get a feel for how it’s played. I jumped in to a game and selected the regional option. You can also choose to play worldwide or just with friends. Once I selected regional, it showed my Mii positioned over Richmond, VA. As players were connected with the game it showed where they were located geographically. Very cool touch. The game itself was great. There was no lag and I believe we had 10 players in there.

Once Katie played some of the single player game to unlock the circuits available, we decided to jump online for some friend action. Katie’s sister also bought the game today. So her sister and brother in-law logged in from their house, and Katie and I logged in here. We were able to play 4 player games online. That was awesome. We played a match of all for one, a team match-up, and finally a coin collector match. There was never an instance of lag, and even with the split-screen action on our side, the framerate was good. Playing online with 2 people at each location was a freaking blast. I seriously wish we had each other on speaker phone or something. Some form of communication would have put that over the top.

I’m loving this game so far. It’s one the whole family can play and really enjoy. I can see many evenings in our future playing Mario Kart Wii with friends and family.

I’ve always been a fan of the Gran Turismo series on the Playstation. Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec was the initial reason I bought a Playstation 2. I can still remember my first experience of playing that game. The graphics were amazing, compared with Playstation 1, and the game was an excellent racing simulation experience. The game was extremely popular and ended up selling roughly 15 million copies worldwide.

With the release of the Playstation 3, there has been a lot of hype surrounding a next-generation version of Gran Turismo. In December of 2006, Gran Turismo HD Concept was released as a free download on the Playstation Store. This game was the first look at the possibility of this kind of experience on a next-gen system. This game was the first in the series that provided 1080p resolution at a full 60 fps. While originally intended for release, Polyphony, the makers of Gran Turismo, decided to scrap the project and focus on Gran Turismo 5.

With Gran Turismo 5 still unknown in terms of a release date, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue made it’s debut in the United States yesterday. Think of the prologue games as a lesser version of the full game. This game is essentially a place holder until the full game is available. GT5 is likely to be released in 2009, or possibly 2010.

Simply put, GT5:P is a beautiful game. It runs in 1080p at 60 fps with no drop in performance. The tracks are extremely detailed and the surrounding area has seen a lot of attention. The lighting is perfect. All of the reflections, shadows, and tunnels are very well accounted for. The cars are said to contain upwards of 200,000 pixels each. Compare that with 50,000 that we’ve seen in past games. The detail is remarkable. There’s nothing lacking in the graphics department.

Gran Turismo has always been an excellent simulation experience for racing fans. GT5:P is no exception with the most realistic car handling and physics engine in any game. The cars are lifelike in their response, more so than any other game period.

There is an online component to this game that I’ve yet to attempt. Not being a full game, the online component isn’t as fully featured as it will be for GT5. Instead of having a lobby to meet up with gamers you’re thrown into a game with a bunch of random people. There’s no car damage in this game so it’s easy for the lesser drivers out there to keep up even after they’ve slammed into you a dozen times.

Overall, I’m loving the game. I completed the C class last night and will probably complete the game in a matter of weeks. I’m looking forward to checking out the online mode and getting into some faster cars. That has always been the drag with GT games. You start off with a 100hp POS and it takes awhile to progress. As I ended the C class, I purchased a Lancer EVO IX so I’m looking forward to taking that for a spin in the B class series.

At our townhouse we had Verizon FiOS Internet service. At the time the TV service wasn’t available in our area. This was about a year ago when FiOS was really new in the Richmond area. Once we moved to Chesterfield we lost the ability to have FiOS so we went back to Comcast. Lately we’ve seen a number of people in the neighborhood having FiOS installed.

Katie has been bugging me for months to get a home phone again. So once I looked into the prices I discovered that I could get TV, Internet, and Phone service from Verizon for a little bit cheaper than we were paying Comcast for just TV and Internet. Not to mention that the difference in Internet speeds is staggering.

Today was the day for the install. It took about 6-7 hours total. I would say a lot of time was spent just waiting for the activation process to happen.

Home phone is home phone. I really don’t have much I can say about that. When I pick up the phone, there’s a dial tone, so I’m happy.

The Internet was what I remember it being. Instead of the crappy ActionTec modem/router, Verizon now uses a slimmer and Verizon branded modem/router. I did notice that by default it uses WEP security, which gave me trouble with my iPhone. Once I switched the security to WPA2 everything was good to go. For a quick speed test, I started downloading Xcode from Apple.com. The 1GB+ file was coming down at 1.2MB/sec. Certainly can’t complain with that performance.

The TV service is pretty nice. It sucks to learn a whole new set of channels but oh well. All I care about is 826, which is ESPN HD. The HD service is solid with roughly the same number of channels as Comcast. I will miss INHD as I actively watched two of their shows. The quality of the HD channels really doesn’t look any different to me. The standard definition does look a little better. Enough that even Katie noticed the difference. She actually asked if I was watching an HD channel, which I wasn’t. I wouldn’t say it looks that good but that was her initial reaction.

Overall, I like it so far. Price was the biggest factor for me and that was enough to make the switch.

The company I work for has a pretty large Oracle installation and we’re looking at migration and upgrade paths. Not knowing much about our current licensing situation, I figured I’d just give Oracle a call and see what I could find. As I think anyone would these days, I was expecting a long “conversation” with an automated telephone system and a few hops across the globe in the process of finding what I was after.

I dialed the 800 number on Oracle.com and someone actually picked up the phone on the other end. At first I was half shocked and half thinking it was just a really good phone system that came with an American accent. I asked to speak with Oracle Sales and the real live person on the other end said he could help me with that. After about 2 minutes of explaining what I was after and giving him the company name and address, he said he’d locate our account representative and have them call me back. How’s that for customer service?

With the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and the recent flip-flop on web standards support, a lot of web developers will likely have some upgrade pains once IE8 does hit the mass market. I have a few spacing issues I need to address but am simply swamped with other things at the moment. Until I can get to those issues I wanted a solution to tell IE8 to render the site as if it were being viewed in IE7. After some searching around, I came across this meta tag that will do the trick:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=7″ />