HandleCheck: My Google App Engine and Open Source Project

So I signed up for a Google App Engine account a while ago, almost right after it's Python version was released last year. Of course, life prevented me from taking the time to learn Python, and so the learning curve prevented me from building or deploying anything.

Fast-forward to two weeks ago when Google released the Java API for the Google App Engine (GAE from here on out). Being a full-time Java programmer for the past 10 years, now we're running on all cylinders! I applied for a Java account on the day it was released and my Java GAE account was approved within 24 hours, but it took a few days for me to make some time to start writing some code. After about 8 hours of development I had my first working prototype of a web application running on the GAE.

My first GAE webapp is a service that connects to a set of social web sites that provide user names and profile pages for their users to see if a username you are interested is still available across those sites. My app is a called Handlecheck (handle in the sense of "username") and is live now at http://handlecheck.jaxzin.com.

This is also the first project I've open-sourced. I did a little reading on how to pick from the various open source licenses and settled on the GPLv3. I'm maintaining the source on Google Code.

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Simplifying logging with Maven and SLF4J (Part 2)

So in my previous post I explained how to simplify your logging with Maven and SLF4J. If you haven't read it yet, please do before reading more. Since then I've discovered an easier and cleaner way to remove the secondary frameworks from your Maven dependency tree. Here's a revised overview of the steps: Decided which logging framework will be your primary, aka who will actually write to your log file. Define the dependency scope of all the secondary frameworks to be ' provided '. Configure your project to depend on drop-in replacements of each secondary framework from SLF4J. Define secondary frameworks as provided Use the dependencyManagement section for this. Its used when you might have a dependency transitively. Add dependency on SLF4J Add the following to your pom.xml Conclusion So now in only 3 steps you can redirect all your logging to your primary logging framework without changing a line of code!

TeamCity build triggering by GitHub

So I started using GitHub for a side project and discovered their very cool feature of service hooks. A service hook allows a repository administrator to setup a callback to another service when a commit is made to the repository. For example it can send an email, or chat a message via Jabber. Now continuous integration servers, like TeamCity , can poll source control systems every few minutes to see if any changes have been committed. But wouldn't it be more efficient to use a service hook to trigger a build? Looking at GitHub's service hooks, there wasn't one already available to callback a TeamCity server, but right on that same page was a link to the open source repository for GitHub Service Hooks . They "eat their own dogfood" so to speak and make it very easy to contribute new service hooks back to them. So I took an evening, did my first Ruby coding in a while which included more time getting Ruby setup and working on my Macbook than actually coding.

3D Photo Viewer for Looking Glass

The Looking Glass I created my first Chrome extension, which is now live on the Chrome Web Store ! It's built for the Looking Glass , a holographic display that let's you view three-dimensional objects without glasses. I've also opened the source to the extension on GitHub. The Chrome extension allows you to view Facebook's "3D Photos", a feature they added in 2018 for displaying photos that include a depth map like those from phones with dual cameras, such as Apple's "Portrait Mode". Getting Started To use the extension, connect your Looking Glass to your computer, navigate to Facebook and open the viewer from the extension's popup menu. This will open a browser window on the Looking Glass display's screen in fullscreen mode. Opening the Viewer Once the viewer is open, the extension watches for any 3D Photo files being downloaded, so browse around Facebook looking for 3D Photos. I recommend some of the Facebook groups de

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