With my dad and step-mum currently visiting from the UK I have found it hard to find blogging time of late. A lot has been going on in my technical areas of interest lately, Java has announced closures in Java 7, WordPress and JUnit have been updated, JUnit has also had a bug release update pushed out already! In this entry I will outline the best WordPress functionality added by the update, the main reason for the JUnit releases and let you know about exciting developments at work.
WordPress has recently been updated to version 2.9. This new version includes a super easy way to include embeddable media in posts via Embeds. Thought I would give this new feature a work out by embedding one of my favourite television moments of all time…from classic BBC Comedy Only Fools and Horses – Del Boy prepares to make a move on some hot chicks whilst out on the town with Trigger…
Am sure I will find more uses for this great new feature. To find out what other new features are included check out the release blog post.
JUnit has also recently been updated to version 4.8.1. This version follows close on the heals of the 4.8 release which introduced Categories to JUnit. Check out the Category changes and implementations in the release notes. The Categories implementation is marked by the authors as preliminary, not sure what is meant by that – as surely it would be difficult to remove it once people start using it! 4.8.1 fixes bugs in the Categories documentation and implementation reported by early implementors. I shall be taking a look at the implementation ASAP.
Lately I have been working on an interesting project at work that implemented a Grails/Groovy server and a .NET Extraction client. Most of my time was spent on the .NET client extractor which has been an interesting, if somewhat frustrating experience.
Today I got moved to a new project which looks like it could be really interesting. It involves the use of Tohu, an open source JBoss Drools based library for use in dynamic questionnaire based implementations. Solnet Solutions are the main developers of this open source implementation. I have been interested in making commercial use of Drools for a long time, and this project will give me the opportunity to get some real experience in this area. Tohu also currently only supports a JQuery UI. With JQuery being another of the technologies I have dabbled in but never really used in earnest as yet.
I have set myself a few goals for the coming months. Among them is blogging about the JUnit Categories updates and completing my review of the 3.7 changes. I will outline more of my plans and goals for the year in upcoming blog posts.
