25 Jun 09 Movie Review: Gran Torino
Gran Torino is a Clint Eastwood movie,
Walt Kowalski is a widower who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. Kowalski is a grumpy, tough-minded, unhappy an old man, who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in mint condition. When his neighbor Thao, a young Hmong teenager under pressure from his gang member cousin, tries to steal his Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Thao’s family, Kowalski is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that infest their neighborhood.
This movie had classic Clint Eastwood one liners and a solid ending and certainly worth watching.
Tags: Gran Torino, review
24 Jun 09 Movie Review: Taken
Last night I watched Taken starring Liam Neeson. The movie was released in 2008 and is summarized as follows:
The seventeen year-old Kim is the pride and joy of her father, the retired agent Bryan Mills that left the secret service to stay near Kim in California. Kim lives with her mother Lenore and her wealthy stepfather Stuart; she convinces the reluctant Bryan to sign an authorization to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda. When they arrive, they share a cab with the stranger Peter and Amanda tells to him that they are alone in Paris. When Bryan succeeds in contacting his daughter, she tells that criminals have just break in the spot and they are kidnapped by an Albanese gang of human trafficking. Bryan promises in the phone to kill the kidnapper of his daughter and immediately travels to Paris to find Kim and chase the criminals.
I’d give this movie 4.5 out of 5 stars because it was action packed and really kept my attention. It did have a little bit of “cheese” where Bryan (played by Liam Neeson) says some corny things and the like…but overall it was a great flick, certainly worth checking out.
07 Jun 09 DbUnit AmbiguousTableNameException – possible solution
I’m using DbUnit 2.4.2 and I was getting an AmbiguousTableNameException when running my unit tests from Maven 2. Basically what I found was that the entries in my XML Data had to be grouped by table/type.
Originally I had something like:
<AUTHOR ID="1" NAME="Craig" />
<BOOK ID="1" TITLE="DbUnit AmbiguousTableNameException - possible solution" />
<PDF ID="2" TITLE="Some PDF" />
<BOOK ID="2" TITLE="Another Great Book" />
Notice that there are two BOOK entries, however, they don’t appear consecutively…which caused me problems, so I re-ordered them:
<AUTHOR ID="1" NAME="Craig" />
<BOOK ID="1" TITLE="DbUnit AmbiguousTableNameException - possible solution" />
<BOOK ID="2" TITLE="Another Great Book" />
<PDF ID="2" TITLE="Some PDF" />
Not sure why it matters, I didn’t see anything that explicitly mentions the order requirement..but it works for me.
Other possible solutions:
- http://www.dbunit.org/faq.html#AmbiguousTableNameException
- http://billcomer.blogspot.com/2008/08/ambiguoustablenameexception-in-dbunit.html
Tags: dbunit maven
05 Jun 09 Problem Creating entityManagerFactory in Spring
I was working on the “data” layer of an application, Book-o-Tron 4000, and I ran into an issue where my tests were failing when running them through Maven.
Quick notes:
Hibernate 3.2
Maven 2
Spring 2.5
I had a LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean defined in my Spring context, however, when I ran:
mvn clean test
My tests were failing! They worked when I ran them in IntelliJ (not using Maven, but running the JUnit test). I was getting an error similar to…
Error creating bean with name ‘entityManagerFactory’ defined in class path resource [META-INF/orm-context.xml]
Basically what I found, in this case, was that I had some classes which had been annotated with @Entity and @MappedSuperclass.
Removing the @Entity solved my problem.
27 Jan 09 Core Spring: Day 1
I am currently attending “Core Spring” training from SpringSource, the company behind the Spring framework. It is a 4-day course,
In this four-day bootcamp you learn how to use the Spring Framework to create well-designed, testable business applications in an agile manner.
In this course, students build a Spring-powered JEE application that demonstrates the Spring Framework in an intensely productive, hands-on setting.
Today was Day 1 and we went through an introduction to the various components provided by the spring framework such as Inversion of Control, JDBC, Web Services, Security, etc. Then we went into using “core” spring (i.e. the IoC stuff) followed by the application lifecycle. The lifecycle section covered the instantiation, usage and destruction of Spring beans.
Looking forward to tomorrow.
Tags: spring framework
18 Oct 08 Automoblox: A9-S Convertible
Automoblox has recently released a new full-size car (as opposed to the mini’s they have). It is the first convertible in the lineup, the AS-9 Convertible.
Think this one might have to show up in Rylan’s collection this Christmas 
Tags: automoblox
16 Oct 08 Flock – A Social Web Browser
Flock is another web browser, but it offers something different. It is a “social web browser” which makes it seamless to interact with the ever growing online services we have all (well many of us) have signed up for. It provides support for MySpace, Digg, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Facebook, etc.
Read more about the latest release here:
Flock Browser – Flock 2.0, Out Of Beta And Ready To Rock | Flock
15 Oct 08 Portable Tunes
In a few days the wife and I will be receiving our first Apple iPod, an 8GB (PRODUCT) Red Nano! To join it, we are also expecting a Bose SoundDock II. The Nano will let us jam out while exercising, cutting the lawn, etc.
The SoundDock will let us enjoy our music while cooking, running around with the kids, or while we are outside!
08 Oct 08 2008 Honda Fit
Last month I took the plunge and bought a new car, a 2008 Honda Fit (base model). It’s blue, 5 speed and rocks the MPG. My best yet was 41mpg, but I am consistently getting 38-39mpg.
It’s a perfect commuter car that reminds me of a 1988 Ford Festiva I used to drive, hence the name for the new Fit, Fitiva!
Tags: honda fit
13 Aug 08 Hundred Push Ups – Week 3 Day 1 – Again
So I repeated Week 3 Day 1. I was supposed to do the following sets with 60 seconds rest between each: 20, 15, 15, 13, 20 (at a minimum).
Again this week I didn’t quite make it. It seems taking 3-4 days slowed up my progress. It’s also a mental thing as I tend to psych myself out sometimes.
Anways, I did: 20, 15, 15, 13. Still need the final 20. I’ll be repeating Week 3 Day 1 again.
Tags: push ups
