specifying types on static methods with generics

If you're working with generics and writing static methods sometimes you find the need to specify the type in a generic method. e.g.

class Foo {
public static <T> doSomething(String name) {... }
}

Often the compiler often does the right thing

Cheese cheese = Foo.doSomething("Edam");

but sometimes you really need to specify the type. You can use the following syntax to do that

Foo.<Cheese>doSomething("Edam");

Kinda obscure I know but it might come in handy if you're working with generics.

Sharing code snippets online with TextMate

TextMate is an awesome text editor for OS X. I just learnt of a nice plugin from proyal on #codehaus IRC...

When you want to share a code snippet in your editor with others, highlight a bit of code then hit ctrl-command-t and select Paste Selection Online and you can post a link to the code either to a URL or iChat etc. Very cool! :)

Go Sonatype

It looks like Jason, John, Neel and others new venture, Sonatype just pulled off the cloak; good luck guys. Am hoping this helps make Maven even better :).

Maven's like a car; most days it gets you where you wanna get nice and easy with a quite comfy ride (when you wanna build a project no longer do you have to mess around with build.properties files in Ant, hack Ant's build.xml or shove random jars in your ant/lib/ directory or manually install jars or mess with classpaths yada yada). Maven though does need a regular service (rm -rf ~/.m2/repository) and might not always work so well in different terrains. Though when it breaks down and stops working, its such a huge PITA :)

Podcast on Apache ActiveMQ available on feathercast

There's a feathercast of me being interviewed on Apache ActiveMQ available which discusses various things such as Apache ActiveMQ being top level etc. David Reid did a good job interviewing me and an even better job editing out my swearing and mumblings so it vaguely sounds like I know what I'm talking about :). There's a bunch of other interesting podcasts on feathercast too which are well worth checking out.

I love FakeSteve!

If you've not read it yet and you use a Mac then you should stop now and read some FakeSteve.

Its an excellent read; though be warned its quite addictive; I've found myself gradually working back in time for earlier and earlier posts. Any post with Bono in it just has me in stitches. And I love the nick names; My Little Pony, Squirrel Boy etc. LOL.

I'm increasingly thinking its really the Real Steve Jobs though...

First Post!

Am just experimenting with a new blog location. If this works OK I'll move my other blog over to here :)