New RIFERS blogs entries from JR Boyens

Groovy, Bla-bla List and You

2005-11-01T17:06:30+0100

I had a large list of todo items in my inbox this morning and I had to get them into Bla-bla List (blablalist.com). I use Bla-bla to track my todo items throughout the day and so sometimes I need to mass-add items to a list. "But how!" you ask? "Bla-bla has no import feature" you say? Au contraire mon frère! Bla-bla has a complete REST API and so it's easy to write a script to mass-add whatever you want.

And so begins my writing of another shell script to automate a tedious process...

But wait! This wouldn't be entertaining if we just did this in shell or Perl... This is a chance to learn something... Hmmm... What to learn? I know! Groovy! I've wanted to play with Groovy for a long time. This is perfect!

So I fire up an instance of VIM (more on why I did this later) and start plugging away following the tutorials. I end up producing a script that looked HORRIBLE, but actually did a pretty decent job. So I make a pass through it again. Once you've done something once, the second time around you'll do better. I finally got it to a place I was happy with.

Rudimentary error checking, creation of a new list, semi-reusable components incase I want to expand later... Yes... This will do nicely.

Groovy has really impressed me and has already begun to supplant my main-stay of scripting, Perl. I'm really quite looking forward to playing with it more. From what I've seen and done it does take some discipline to stay in line and not create total anarchy in your code. The first iteration of the script was quite nasty and used a shell command to do the URL heavy lifting. Then of course I remembered I was in Java and I fixed my error.

The reason I started out using VIM for editing was that I had forgotten that Groovy had an Eclipse plugin. I use Eclipse in my day-to-day Java work and despite all it's faults (VERY VERY slow on Linux... I thought SWT was supposed to cure that) I still love it to death. The Eclipse plugin was simple, but it did give very nice error messages back on the state of my code and I was thankful for that. I still haven't played with the plugin quite enough so don't ignore it completely because it's simple. Even in it's current state the error messages are VERY useful.

I've placed the script in Bla-bla List's java.net document space for your perusal. It's pretty simple. Make sure you have a Bla-bla List account and edit the script to fill in the login and password. Once you've done that run it like this:

$ groovy maketodolist.groovy "My List Name" /home/jboyens/todolist.txt

Each line in the file will be a new item on the list, so if you need to do a bit of cleaning up do it prior to running. The script will give some nice output on what it is doing and whether it's succeeding or not. Now, this may not work for some more exotic files because I only do simple URL encoding, so if you mess something up it isn't my fault.

I hope it's of use to you. I know I'll be using it at least once in a while.

JIA: Deploying Apache Axis in Mission-Critical Environments by Eugene Ciurana

2005-10-20T19:51:56+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

Simply put, this presentation was a font of knowledge about Axis with great delivery and good content. Eugene's presentation focused on web services in a mission-critical environment, specifically using Apache Axis. Not just why you should use Axis, but how to use it and how to secure it once you are using it.

Eugene kicked things off by running through why and when you should suggest web services to your company. Then he did a quick explanation of the 2 types of web services he considered most important, SOAP and REST, and why you should chose them, leaving out the aging but simpler XML-RPC. I don't see this omission as an issue because, as I understand it, XML-RPC is a bit of a parent to the later developed SOAP.

During the presentation, Eugene stated several times his assumptions about his audience. Assumptions about the configuration of what they are working with on the server side, and assumptions about their knowledge of Java and web services. By doing this he raises his presentation to a new level because he doesn't need to spend time explaining what he assumes his audience knows. This is a presentation technique that can be hit-or-miss but is indispensable when it hits. It can be a problem when you misread your audience and assume too much of their experience. Your presentation will flop because no one will understand or will understand very little.

Eugene also went through various starting points for building your web service infrastructure, and the caveats with each. He suggests starting with the XSD schema and generating the business objects with that, instead of starting with objects and generating the XSD or including the schema in the WSDL.

He then goes into an in-depth look at putting it all together. What it looks like, the tools to use and the pitfalls of the methods. Lots of examples and lots of code makes this section particularly interesting. He then took the time to go over, in several slides, the options for securing Axis and the best method to do so.

Eugene's verbal direction and the quality of his slides really made this presentation a must-see. After watching this presentation I realize Eugene is the kind of presenter everyone strives to be. I look forward to learning more from Eugene and using his considerable experiences in my own work.

JIA: The Server-side Architecture Behind OpenLaszlo Applications by Geert Bevin

2005-10-11T20:00:04+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

[full-disclosure: I work with Geert and therefore may be biased even if I attempt not to be]

OpenLaszlo is an RIA framework (currently Flash output only) that I've seen some incredible things done with. Pandora especially. As well as Geert's own Bla-Bla List. So naturally going in I was quite interested.

Geert started off the presentation with various demonstrations of advanced OpenLaszlo applications including an Amazon store example with nice drag and drop and a very nice UI. Pandora the front-end from the Music Genome Project which allows you to select a song or an artist and get other music that is similar to that selection. And, of course, Bla-Bla List, a simple but nicely done todo list application.

Geert was the only person in the entire conference that I saw that used video in his slides and this really made a big difference in how the explanation of the applications came across. While the videos played he walked us through what was happening at each step. It seemed that in a few places his videos went just slightly too fast for his explanation, but it never detracted from the presentation.

After this he went into the architecture of OpenLaszlo and how it changed the traditional MVC structure. This part garnered some questions from the crowd, but from my perspective (and a few others in the audience) it seemed like there were two types of people in the crowd. Those that understood MVC completely and those that had no idea what MVC was and were totally confused as to what these slides meant. I even had someone behind me ask me what the term URL (pronounced Earl) meant. I discussed this with Geert later and we both agreed that it was probably an audience issue rather than a presentation issue. However, Geert did clarify the term in his updated slides which are now available.

Earlier in the conference there was a session dealing with Ajax given by Justin Gehtland who showed an example application with a city/state lookup based on an entered zip code. Geert took this example application and reimplemented it in OpenLaszlo. So for those that attended the earlier presentation it was a nice clean example showing what you can do.

All-in-all I think it was an excellent intro presentation to the OpenLaszlo system. I would've liked to have seen more code examples, but there just isn't a whole lot you can get to in only an hour.

JIA: Comparing Java Web Frameworks: JSF, Struts, Spring, Tapestry and WebWork by Matt Raible

2005-10-09T17:34:50+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

As a minor developer on a framework, I was quite interested in the content of this session. To be able to see someone go through, code, and explain how frameworks differ would be a very useful thing for not only my development work but for the extension of RIFE.

Earlier on Matt took a poll on what frameworks are being used and what the audience knew. Which is quite a nice idea for presenters. It provides a way for you to gauge your audience and really tailor your presentation. FWIW it seemed everyone and their dog was using Struts.

Matt's presentation style is more of an informal style and it was fresh entertaining and nice. Although I might chalk it up to the early morning coffee. Later on in the presentation he had some code demonstrations that completely failed and merely wasted time, but live code demonstrations are never very easy. Preparation is always a good idea. I've seen other presenters prepare all of their code in steps beforehand, test it thoroughly and still have issues. Scripted and simulated “live” code demonstrations are probably the only safe method.

The presentation had a lot of content, but the slow demonstrations really brought the whole thing to a standstill. The earlier slides about the architecture and design of the framework were quite instructive and even a little frightening in the case of JSF, who's diagram consisted of no less than 20 individual parts. Compare that to Webwork or Spring which had at most 5 or 10.

In conclusion, the information in the first hour or so was interesting, but after that it just dragged and fell apart. Complete with mumbling and complaining about Apple and their Java implementation and fumbling for a power cord. So in short, presenters: Please, have a backup plan. This was quite possibly the longest three hours of the entire conference.

JIA: Practical JMS by Chris Pearson and Phil Miller

2005-10-09T17:22:18+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

JMS was, before this conference, something I had actually never heard of. I had a passing acquaintance with various messaging solutions. More like I'd just heard they existed. I wasn't even planing on attending this session, but I talked with Pearson the night before the session and he convinced me that it was worth my while to attended. He refused to try and sell me on JMS, but I drug out some information about it and was immediately interested.

Before I continue further I did want to mention that Chris double-teamed this presentation with Phil Miller. another Formicary employee and I didn't catch his name. I couldn't find it in my materials nor could I find it on the JIA site. If someone would comment with the name I would be happy to give credit where credit is due. For now I think we'll refer to him as The Enigmatic Dude, or Ted.

Phil ~~Ted~~ started off the presentation and gave an overview of what JMS was, a few ideas of what it might be used for and just really some general information. Once the crowd was well informed about the state of JMS and a snippet of its background. Chris came to the front to take presentation over.

The presentation was oriented as sort of a Consumer Reports for JMS. Various JMS implementations were discussed and reviewed. No real “winner” was announced, but Chris went through the caveats of the various implementations and it was clear that IBM's Websphere MQ was the loser of the reviewed products which included both open-source and proprietary products.

Pearson also provided a clear client/server code sample that ran flawlessly and showed a simple example of how easy it was to use.

I've really got an itch to use JMS now because of the presentation, the problem is I don't know what for! Formicary provides financial solutions for clients and that's about the only use I heard for JMS. I would've really like to have heard something on other uses, or what other companies were doing with the technology. This detracted a bit from the after-feeling of the presentation. I felt like I wanted to use JMS, but had no outlet in my current projects or even in future uses.

I thought this presentation really hit the mark though. I learned about JMS and got the urge to use it. Which is exactly what I expected to get out of the session.

Update: Thanks to Hani Suleiman and ~~Ted~~ Phil Miller himself "The Enigmatic Dude" is no longer a mystery.

JIA: Ajax: Learn How to Develop Next Generation Rich Web Applications by Justin Gehtland

2005-10-09T16:51:32+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

I really must commend Justin on an excellent presentation. This was one to attend. Maybe next year TSS can record the presentations and place them online to purchase and download. I would purchase and download this presentation even though I watched it live.

Justin really did an excellent job of taking the information and presenting it in a way that everyone near me in the audience could relate to. He used concrete examples. He showed us the browser and what everything he coded did. He had all his code in steps so he wasn't writing totally live, but still allowed for the feeling of the senior programming giving you some hints.

I loved that he really seemed excited about the topic that he was presenting. The energy and enthusiasm he exuded really permeated the room and energized everyone. A three-hour session can get very long if the presenter doesn't have the drive and the ability to keep the room going. Justin's session was the only one that I pulled out my laptop and was writing code in.

The examples that he pulled out were pretty cool as well. The first was a simple City/State lookup by zip code. Really just laying the groundwork. He presented some really interesting ideas. I never thought about sending just plain raw text down the pipe. I had always just assumed that XML was the way to go and then you'd parse/handle the text in your JS code. He even showed an example of sending JS code down the pipe and then eval()'ing it on the client-side. Which initially had me a little squeamish, but he made sure that our security fears were waved. Since most, (if not all), browsers run JS in a sandbox, so it can't hurt your system anyway. But he did then say that you could access all features if you added the JS to a jar and signed the jar. So I'm not sure how safe that is either, otherwise you just get guys signing their jars with self-generated certs to push malicious code. There must be more to it than what was covered.

All-in-all good tips, good code, good information, and good ideas for development. An A+ presentation.

Update: I have been informed that the presentation was not, in fact, presented by Dion Almaer but in fact by Justin Gehtland as Dion had a family event come up. While Justin did use Dion's slides, I wanted to update the post to give credit where credit is due. Thanks to all that commented to correct my mistake.

JIA: Building an Enterprise Application with Spring by Keith Donald

2005-10-07T17:13:44+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

Keith Donald's introduction to Spring was a presentation I had hoped would shed some light on the one framework that I'm truly interested in aside from RIFE and maybe JSF. Unfortunately this presentation had some good initial information but mired by, in my opinion, uninteresting slides and a problem with showing the entire ballroom Spring bean declaration XML for 30+ mins.

Spring certainly sounds interesting and I'm going to give it another look later this week at Matt Raible's Comparing Java Web Frameworks: JSF, Struts, Spring, Tapestry, and WebWork.

The thing that could've really perked this up was to show example code, and then show what it does in a browser. Back and forth. Coding... Browser... Really highlight the features, the best parts. Not trying to be unbiased and showing everything in just a factual way. If you're giving a presentation the audience expects that you have a fervent love or at least a mild passion about what you're presenting. I'm certainly not saying that Keith Donald himself doesn't have any interest in Spring, just that his presentation style suggested that.

Tragically, I was so uninterested in the style of presentation that I didn't actually learn what I wanted from the presentation. I've seen (and heard of) a few posts on JavaBlogs about the presentation and they had good things to say, perhaps it just wasn't made for my user group.

JIA: Thinking Beyond Unit Testing with TestNG by Cédric Beust

2005-10-07T07:49:59+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

Cédric's presentation was one I was looking forward to. As a user of TestNG, I wanted to put a face the the mailing list replies and to learn a bit more about a testing framework that I think has a lot of potential to go places.

Cédric's presentation was slightly different than the others so far. It seemed more intimate. It had a lot more geek humor. He slides were aesthetically pleasing with images from Battlestar Gallactica and SpiderMan. Which gave the audience a bit of a laugh each change and kept the momentum and the interest level up. Some of the images distracted a bit from the slides as they were large, but this wasn't as much of an issue as one would think.

The presentation started with an in-depth overview or a state-of-the-union of the testing world. He went over JUnit, both the current and the new not-yet-released JUnit 4, and a few other minor frameworks. This was news to me as I had not yet heard of JUnit 4 and it's new features. Cédric really did a great job of being un-biased when it came to being critical of JUnit. He then went on to address the problems that he perceived with JUnit and how TestNG addresses said problems. He also had some slides that showed some code and asked what we, the audience, thought would happen with each one and then why he thought it was a problem with JUnit. Everything was really well explained and thought out. Instead of telling us, like some presenters do, “this is the way it is” he presented the information and let us make up our minds.

He went through a few examples of use and then took a good deal of his remaining time to field questions. Of which some really interesting theoretical concepts came up, with some people challenging his assessment of JUnit and his implementation of TestNG. Cédric really stood by his decisions and the decisions of the other contributors.

I would've liked to have seen some more advanced examples and some useful TestNG patterns that had been talked about on the mailing list to be included. But all-in-all I was impressed with the quality of both the speaker and the content.

JIA: Aspect-oriented programming: Myths and Realities by Ramnivas Laddad

2005-10-07T07:44:07+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

Ramnivas really stepped up the level of the sessions with this one. I was extremely impressed with his delivery and with his content. He had a lot of concrete examples and he also presented common misconceptions that he explained. That seems to be the magic formula, concrete examples and myths. Those two things really make a session a lot more interesting.

Going into the presentation I had the assumption that while AOP was extremely powerful, it complicated things. By that I mean, you couldn't see everything that was happening in each method. What Ramnivas showed to countermand that myth was various IDE plug-ins that allowed you to see where your aspects would be applied in real-time. This myth really was one of the only things stopping me from using AOP, and seeing this made me download AspectJ for Eclipse that moment.

Another myth that was shattered was the idea that Aspects make your code harder to test, but Ramnivas makes an excellent point. If you use aspects, you can test the aspect, and then test the un-instrumented method and you've tested the entire thing. You get better separation and therefore have an easier time getting close to 100% on your test coverage.

One thing I've had a problem with so far has been the projector in the main ballroom. It seems that it's always blurry and if you don't sit in the first few rows you can't see anything at all. Some of the presenters have tried to alleviate this problem by having really gigantic fonts, with characters bigger than a man. But it only exacerbates the problem because they end up having to use the horizontal scroll to let you see all of the code.

But back to the AOP presentation, I really must commend Ramnivas on an interesting and engaging presentation that really sold me on the technology. I cannot wait to find an excuse to use AOP in my work now.

JIA: Updates coming

2005-10-06T14:57:08+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

Wanted to give an update to all the readers out there, I'm behind on my reviews because of a very packed schedule. TSS has really packed the schedule tight for this conference and I haven't had a spare moment to write reviews. I don't want to write during any of the sessions and writing during breaks isn't that feasible. So you'll have to excuse my tardiness, I'm planning on getting things posted tonight.

Thanks

JIA: Building Portals with Portlets, Content Repositories and WSRP with Doug Bateman

2005-10-05T19:18:20+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

My first session of the day was a presentation by Doug Bateman entitled “Building Portals with Portlets, Content Repositories and WSRP”. My interest in portlets going in was directed at taking my existing applications and providing views for a portal-type interface. So that you could look at a snippet of new topics in a Bamboo forum, or new comments in an Elephant blog. What I took from the presentation wasn't exactly what I wanted out of it.

What I really took from the presentation was that portlets in their current form, are not really mature enough to do anything complex. As Doug said, most of the time portlets just spit HTML back at the caller for it to display. This seems to be an absolute horrible method for integration. What if you want to change the design? What if you want to theme the portlet? You'd have to get down and dirty with the code or you'd have to have portlets that supported a theme engine.

Most of the discussion was on the definition of portals and portlet and what portletizing your application means. Going in, I knew what a portlet was and what it meant from using RIFE's embedded elements which have similar concerns. Not touching the URL, not depending on other things on the page, etc. He seemed to really want to hammer in the point that portlets require a different way of thinking. I was hoping for a code level overview of portlets, however, most of what we saw was directed towards Oracle's portal server and portlet products and the various wizards and interfaces. We really didn't delve into the code as much as I had hoped. Just looked at wizard generated classes.

This presentation seemed to be directed more at managers than at developers. It seemed like a managers overview of portlet/portal products and a session on how to sell your clients/bosses on portlet/portal products. How the different server implementations different. There was no delving into the spec and no discussion of how to implement a portal solution for your framework or for your applications. In fact, the presenter seriously discouraged people from using their own frameworks and talked on how you could get your manager to accept a “standardized” framework.

All in all I think I did learn a bit about portals/portlets but not what I think the presenter or I wanted to learn from it. I wanted to learn how to write portlets, how to integrate portlets into my product, how to write a portlet “server”, etc. The presenter seemed to want me learn how to sell portals/portlets correctly to my managers. I still did learn a bit about what different products are around and what their interfaces look like, so I suppose when we integrate portlets into our products I know what clients expect.

Stay tuned for more from JIA...

Update: In a discussion with a friend I was made aware of another point. Doug had a huge problem with the questions section of the presentation. At the beginning of the presentation and after every break he asked for questions about portals/portlets and the audience really only asked very basic questions. So the presentation was tailored to the users, but I wasn't in the majority.

JIA: The first night

2005-10-05T17:20:43+0200

[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

Wow. What a long day. Started at 5am and ended at about 1a.

Got on my first flight in Omaha. Tiny tiny plane. Couldn't even stand up. Got to Houston a little early which was really nice. It's been a while since I've been in Houston and I realized I missed it a bit.

Couldn't find any internet connections even though they were advertised. Ended up walking around with my laptop recording WAP connections to find one at the President's Club. Ended up getting myself a little bit of a following with business users using the WiFi connection and the power connection I found as well.

Second flight from Orlando to Houston was MUCH better. It was a 757 so it was much bigger. I ended up getting the entire row to myself. All three seats. So much better for working. I know how first class business travelers feel now.

Once I got to Orlando I just had to wait for a few minutes before Geert showed up. Was really nice to finally meet him. We ended up deciding to get a shuttle ($17 / person) instead of a taxi ($50). It took more than an hour to get from the airport to the resort where the conference is located. I don't know if it's just that far or if the shuttle driver was just being "safe".

The hotel is quite nice. Very well designed. Doesn't feel lik e Disney at all. Feels like a coastal-type hotel. Met up with a few friends from IRC and from the Java community. Went out for a rather expensive dinner. Hey, I splurged once. McDonalds from now on.

After that we met up with a couple other people and had a really great dicussion session over a couple of beers. I'm really looking forward to more of those sessions. The best thing about this conference so far is the people. I'm really liking the community that showed up at JIA. I was nervous at first that I'd be the young guy, or the unknown guy, but I was immediately accepted and treated as an equal. I'm not so nervous anymore and I'm really looking forward to more of the conference.

Stay tuned here for up to date reports from the different sessions that I'm attending.

Thoughts about the Java In Action conference

2005-09-16T09:03:14+0200

I'm so excited and fearful about the Java in Action conference it's sort of invaded my world.

The problem that I'm having is that I don't quite know what to think. On one hand, I'm terribly excited about going and meeting some people I've worked with for a long time but never met in person before. On the other, I'm fearful because I want to be seen as a peer and a professional and not as some snot-nosed punk clueless developer. And, of course, I always fear the latter.

This is my first job-related conference, I've been to other technical conferences before, but always as just a hobbyist (I went to Comdex one year a decade ago). Sure it was fun, but I didn't bring anything back except a few good stories. I didn't learn anything and I certainly didn't meet anyone. I've got a really good feeling about this conference though. I've read the blogs of some of the presenters, and I've heard good things about lots of people that will be there. So I've got a lot to look forward to and a lot to accomplish while I'm there.

My biggest goal is to bring something home. Something that I can say: "This conference was worth the time". Be it new contacts, or new ideas, or even a feeling of renewed love for the environment that I work it. Anymore now when I think about it I get more excited than fearful and so I've got a really good feeling about this whole thing.

So, you want to meet me and a slew of other great Java devs? Then I suggest you register and get your flight in order. The JIA conference runs from October 5-7 in sunny Orlando, FL. Just head on over to the website and find out all the information you need.

RSS is not a method to show just headlines people!

2005-06-10T22:38:03+0200

Please don't just put a link to the story and the title. Place some content in there too. If I want the headlines I'll just go to the site. Headlines tend to be way too short and way too obscure without the story. Lots of sites do this but CNN is a major pain when it comes to this. Even just the first paragraph would help.

CNN currently just puts "Go to CNN.com for the rest of the story", or something to that effect, in the content of the feed. Every once in a while you'll get a short sentence describing the story a bit, which is nice, but it doesn't help as much as the full content would.

If you're worried about ad revenue (like it's actually worth it) I'll even tolerate ads. Places like boingboing.net puts ads in the RSS feed randomly or every other story, but the entire content of the story is in the feed. No flashing ads, no popups nothing like that, just Google or Google-ish ads. If I had time to read 100 different sites I'd do so.

Sheesh.

Keyboards and You

2005-03-15T23:41:25+0100

If you spend any amount of time at all in front of a PC, you'll realize how important the right keyboard can be. A bad keyboard can hurt, a lot, and can have you looking at hand surgery very quickly if used for an extended period of time. I've been through a lot of keyboards through the years and I've found a few that I like and a few that I don't.

First off, I use a Dvorak keyboard layout. Which means that the vowels of the English language are on my left home row and the most used consonants are on the right. Now this entry is by no means an argument for or against a Dvorak layout. I've used one for years and have never been happier. I'm only stating this fact for full disclosure because it affects my keyboard choices.

Normally, on a regular day, I use a Fingerworks Touchstream LP keyboard which has served me very well for over a year now.

It's a flat keyless surface that supports gestures on either side and mousing on the right panel (I've been told you can switch mousing to the left if you wish). Now I really really enjoy the mousing and gestures system. It's quite wonderful and you get used to it very quickly. The problem I have with this keyboard currently is the lack of tactile feedback when it comes to typing. There is nothing to tell you where you are on the keyboard save for small dots along the home row and on the Space and Back Space thumb keys. This leads to hand-drift problems and generally slow typing. The "zero force" nature of this keyboard is nice because it doesn't hurt or affect your hands as much as say another type of tactile keyboard might. Now over a year, I've learned to type pretty well on it, but I still make a lot of mistakes and my typing isn't what you would call consistently speedy. I believe I timed it once at just over 30-35 words per minute. Which really sounds quite horrible, unless I also say that this was is a typing tutor program so this result should be taken with a grain of salt. All-in-all I find this keyboard great, very very comfortable to use on a regular (14 hour approx.) day of computer use. The Touchstream has been very well designed. It's got an on-board BIOS and processor that is fully upgradeable via a software update and is completely foolproof. Even if the power goes out during a flash the original factory BIOS is stored on ROM and is retrieved in the event of catastrophic error. Plus it has a suite of tools to customize the gestures, even the key sensor locations to match your hand size/type better. But where I think it falls most short is that it lacks that tactile feedback that I so often talk about. You can't feel anything on this keyboard. When you hit a key you just feel plastic. Even the paint in the Lexan plastic is smooth and offer no resistance. Spelling errors and mistakes abound with this keyboard especially in the early months of using it and when the user is tired. They've added an on-board English processor to help fix small key-finger alignment issues, but that also introduces errors when you type more odd things as we programmers are wont to do. Would I recommend this to a friend or colleague? Maybe. I've sold two other people on the wonders of the keyboard and one is regretting the decision a bit.

Currently, as a change for a little while today to see what I'm missing, I switched back to the keyboard of my youth. The IBM Model M keyboard that I received with my IBM PS/2 Model 30.

Ahh... The soothing sound of the buckling spring takes me back to a bygone era of good computer hardware manuals, decent hardware, and the slow scroll text of a saturated 2400 baud modem link. But even using this for a half an hour or more. I can feel the pain in my hands returning. The warm sensation that signals severe pain ahead. I love the way this keyboard feels to type on though. It just feels right. It's very hard to explain if you've never used one before. The sound of the buckling springs is quite loud, so loud in fact I wouldn't doubt that you could be heard about a mile away typing. The keyboard base, or backing if you will, is made from metal. Cold hard metal. You could bludgeon someone to death with this keyboard, wipe it off and get back to work. Perfect for office idiots. Note for the pedants: No the Model M never actually came in a Dvorak layout, but because the keyboard is so well made, it has flat keycaps and a sloped back. So you can move the keycaps about and not have any change in the slope of the keys. Try this with a regular keyboard and you'll be quite disappointed with the results.

What does this all mean? I don't really know. I don't know how to fix or improve on the Touchstream keyboard to make it more like the Model M. These keyboards are polar opposites. One is light, dainty and easy on the hands. The other is a weapon, a tool of pain for both the office dolt and for your hands. So what do the readers out there have as a suggestion? Do I just get over my problems with the Touchstream and accept it as one, if not the, best keyboard I've ever used? Do I use my Model M for 6 months straight and then retire forever from the business?