You know when you just think 'Oh FFS'

I've just had one of those moments thanks to an article on Chaotic Java (if you're interested in Java then have a look through the archives as it's all gold). Anyway the article is about Java GC & there was a section about using object reference queues instead of a finalize block (a good idea anyway) and there was a line:

I made NativeImage and Image implement Closeable, a new interface in Java 5 for IO classes that need to be closed.

What?!? There's a ... a ... interface called Closeable. Oh yes there is introduced in Java 1.5 and it's been added to just about every IO class. Wish I had know about that before writing the same try finally block for Readers, Writers, InputStreams & OutputStreams. I know it's a case of 20 lines instead of 3 but it seems annoying. I wonder how many more of these interfaces there are in Java 5 & 6 that could have saved me a few more lines of code. 

Oh well

A less sucky Maven; yes please!

Don Brown has posted an article detailing his grips about Maven2 (for those who do not know Maven is a decent Java build tool but is a bit XML happy). Anyway rather than people like me (who moan but twiddle their thumbs) Don has gone & done something about it.

I can't wait for some of these other fixes coming through especially the one concerning making it easier to write plugins. Do that & I'll be very tempted to write an equivalent to assembly that lets you create deployment tarballs.

Wow is this my blog?

Has it been that long since I decided to do a blog? Bleedin' heck. What is more worrying is that I've decided that I should start it up again; is it really "starting it up again" if I never really started?

Hopefully it won't be another 2 years until I do my next post (I'm really hoping that it'll only be a few days). Anyway see you all soon whoever you are ... why are you reading this rubbish unless you're a friend and about to take the mick out of me; oh that'll be a nice change