OpenJPA no longer requires mandatory bytecode postprocessing

See OpenJPA no longer requires bytecode processing from Patrick.

Awesome! This makes it pretty trivial to switch Hibernate <-> OpenJPA

a pure RESTful way of working with ActiveMQ queues

I've been snowed with the day job but really wanted to reply to niklas's post on A RESTful queue. It looks a great suggestion; I need to catch up on the discussion.

The REST support in ActiveMQ isn't really pure REST; as it uses non-idempotent GETs as a bit of a hack - though it does make it very easy to work with :). I’d LOVE a nice, proper, RESTful API to ActiveMQ. Though properly exposing message queues efficiently over REST while handling concurrency is a tricky problem, but its looking like some consensus is emerging. Niclas's suggestion sounds about right to me too.

Though I guess a proper REST API would involve more complexity on the client side (e.g. having to do a POST then follow a Location header to then do a DELETE or whatever). So even if we had the worlds most RESTful API, some folks might still want to use the non-idempotent GET hack (particularly if they no there's no caches in between :).

Ideally I was also thinking we should expose the entire broker on the Atom Publishing Protocol; so an APP client could discover all the queues & topics etc.

Am a bit snowed right now but ASAP I'd love to get a proper REST and APP protocol for ActiveMQ...

My favourite OS X software

It seems more and more fellow geeks are switching to Macs all the time so I thought I'd revamp my old post on recommended OS X software.

Incidentally while writing this post I ended up stumbling on my switching thoughts from 2003, so I guess I've been a very happy Mac user for over 4 years now (which also explains why that first generation 1Ghz G4 that I'm still using while on the road is so sloooowww - I can't wait for my new MacBook Pro to arrive...).

The one big change from my previous recommendations is that I don't use so many rich applications; as I can use the online versions on the move, on my desktop, laptop or phone. So I use Gmail for almost all mail - unfortunately I'm stuck with Mac.Mail for corporate email :(. I use Google Reader instead of NetNewsWire for reading blogs etc.

Since switching to gmail for email; I no longer feel the huge need for a virtual desktop anymore; I've gotten out of the habit. Expose is enough for me, especially on a 30" screen.

So here's my current list of recommended OS X software, excluding Java IDE (which I'm using IDEA but eclipse is good too on the Mac).

• QuickSilver. I love it; though only really use it for starting up applications & tend to use it instead of the Dock
  
• text editor: TextMate
• for terminal stuff iTerm rocks. I love tabbed shells (though maybe Leopard might have this too in Terminal)
• for creating diagrams OmniGraffle is awesome. It can even open DOT files. Also if you have some open source which creates visualisations in DOT files, then the OS X version of GraphViz rocks - as it monitors the DOT file in real time and re-renders the graph in a surprisingly flicker-free way. I've used this with some customers to watch ActiveMQ clients startup visually as they deploy their applications.
  
• irc: X-ChatAqua
• xmpp: iChat
• MenuMeters for neat monitors of CPU, disk, network etc on the menu bar (I'm quite fond of the graph view for CPU usage)
• VoodooPad is a WYSIWYG editor for wiki-ish things which I'm hooked on. I just wish it auto-sync'd with GDrive :)
  
• ByteController for a nice little iTunes controller on the menu bar; so you don't have to switch windows when the phone goes or you wanna forward to the next track etc
  
• RadioLover for recording internet radio & installing it into your iTunes library; though if you're not careful you'll end up with a monster library :)
• Clutter is cool to play with your new monster iTunes library :)
  
• Growl for notifications of things (like IRC posts etc)
• Google Notifier for easy access to your calendar etc
• I tend to use gCal for calendering but sync it with iCal

Thats all I can think of right now. Other advice for new switchers; give it a couple of weeks to get used to being on the light side; things are a bit different but after 2 weeks you'll hopefully feel at home.

To other OS X users out there, whats your favourite software?

Update: here's Charles Millers list - thanks! I particularly like the look of Chax (certainly until Leopard with tabbed iChat).

using TextMate to edit text in any Cocoa application

Many thanks to noodl for commenting on my previous post; turns out you can use TextMate to edit any Cocoa application. As noodl said...

for editting text in TextMate from any cocoa application, see:

http://macromates.com/blog/2006/textmate-tricks/

"As noted on the blog, you need to install the Edit in TextMate input manager, which is done by clicking the gear menu in the status bar (inside TextMate), navigating to the TextMate submenu and selecting Install “Edit in TextMate”…"

And for firefox:
http://macromates.com/blog/2007/edit-in-textmate-from-firefox/

Great stuff!

useful firefox plugin: Its all text!

For editing large wiki pages or big emails in gmail I find this fireFox plugin amazingly useful. Its all Text! Then just use your favourite editor; such as TextMate on OS X to edit text areas in any web page whenever you like. Neat!