April 21, 2024
April Meeting
Update 20 April:
We will now meet at the Philharmonic Pub as usual between 7:00 and 7:30pm.
We'll move onto the Community flat at ca. 7:45pm.
Mark will send some details on how to get there for anyone that can't muster at the Phil pub first.
We'll meet this time in the salubrious surroundings of the "Community flat" at Buckingham house, at the North of Sefton Park.
As this will be quieter, we'll hopefully be able to sit around a few laptops and maybe even do some coding...
(Of course, as it's not in a pub, you may want to bring your own beer.)
Mark will send details/address etc. to the list.
If you aren't on the mailing list and you'd like to come, then please get in touch!
March 23, 2024
March meeting writeup - in brief
- Java tutorial day for beginners
- UML and test first as diametrically opposed methodologies
- SMS aggregation. (Yes, you can make money out of it, but the aggregators themselves will take something like a 50% cut)
- SVN setup, TortoiseSVN
- Various colds and ailments.
- Wikis, Blikis, and why RSS is cool.
- Carl showed us an SMS service which answers simple FAIBML queries. GSM modem, SIM, and the appropriate Java application server setup. Very cool.
- We surfed the net from inside the Philharmonic - wireless service providers and their wierd and wonderful range of payment strategies.
- St Patrick's day considered inappropriate as a date for JUG meetings in a pub.
- Diagramming tools, collaborative editing thereof (e.g. like version control/diff but by node instead of line of text.)
- Alternate meeting locations for next meeting.
We moved from the Phil to the Everyman Bistro, a different experience from the usual crisps/beer followed by late-night pizza.
Mark is going to check the community flat at his block to see if it is free for next month. (Near Sefton park: rough consensus is that it shouldn't be a problem for anyone, but let us know!)
March 17, 2024
March meeting
The agenda will include
- Discussion of FAIBML project use cases and structure
- Opportunities to promote LiveJUG
Details
- Time: 7:30 pm
- Venue: Phil pub, Liverpool
If you haven't been before, you might want to get in touch to make sure that we don't miss you!
February 23, 2024
February meeting writeup
Mark, Suzanne, Ricky, Simon, Matt, Alexander, Hakim, and Carl met at the Phil Pub for drinks and a lively discussion on the LJUG project and other miscellaneous topics.
Projects
Projects proposed included:
- Utility bill tool - Mark
to calculate the real costs of your gas/electric/phone etc.
- J2ME spreadsheet - Hakim
a pre-existing but stalled project...
- Spreadsheet synchronization - Alexander
between desktops and phones, via some XML web-service transport
- Enterprise Resource Planning - Mark
SAP, here we come!
- Tool to help develop software to the ZSpecification standard - Ricky
- Local weather tool - Simon
Scope for web-service; UI tailored to desktop or phone as appropriate.
The Spreadsheet Synchronization project appealed to most as a project that involves work on various platforms, server end development, XML transformation. This will involve some hard thinking about how to resolve conflicts in editing (in brainstorm, I particularly liked the idea that conflict resolution could be done by arbitrary criteria, for example the seniority of the person making the edit!)
But this is a complex project, and we'll need to spend quite a bit more time specifying it. A late proposal came in from Carl to do a simple task that we seem to need some help with, namely:
getting the drinks in at LJUG meetings
Some use-cases for this very important tool will include:
- Allows addition/deletion/maintenance of new user
- Allows addition/deletion/maintenance of each users drink order
- Stores history of drinks orders per user.
(Controversial)
- Allows easy query of "last round ordered"
- There should be a way for the pub to enter categorised menu items for
selection, possibly including pictures and special offers.
- Maybe it should be possible to attribute each order to a named group,
like the JUG, so over time groups that always meet in a particular pub
could get a rebate.
- The waitress should be able to set the order to a new state, so that
addition/deletion isn't possible after she has started to prepare the
delivery.
The tool will allow us to make orders (hopefully for the next meeting!) by web-service, ideally even by SMS. The XML transport (which is also the working name for the project) will be callsed FreeAsInBeerML.
Also discussed...
- Macromedia actionscript from a designer's perspective.
- Java for SAP
- Why the living dead need SMS alerts about factory production.
- ZSpecification formal methods for specifying zero-error development projects.
- Q: How to do triangulation with a mobile phone to find where another phone is (or where you are!) (A: Some mobile operators are experimenting with this, but it is probably a payable service, and there isn't a consistent standard)
- Would you trust Mark to work from home?
- The sad state of decline of Britain's public dental care.
- Translating Crazywarp.
- Speed cameras; monitoring speed across distances rather than at a specific point; and using Java to break the speed limit.
- The utopia that is now.
- Who buys from spammers?
- How to sell your legal notice from Microsoft on EBAY.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
- Laundering drug money.
- Managing edit conflicts
- Collaborative ascii art and collaborative spreadsheets?
- Problem: phones connecting to servers, phones connecting as servers.
(Phone OpCo as massive firewall: you can't get from the outside in to your specific phone).
- Usabilitiy and website design. (See Joel's book)
- Adapting
Carl's OTASlang to J2ME
- C# vs Java
- Some positive comments about Visual Studio and .Net as developer environments.
- Why .Net/JVM may not be best environments for running dynamic languages.
See Dan Sugalski's blog. (But what about Jython?)
- James Strachlan and Groovy. (Great, but buggy?)
- $Perl{syntax}, and why those @sigils can make your $code cleaner
- CVS and Subversion, some positive comments about MS SourceSafe (and some surprise thereat)
- Dynamically changing schemas at runtime. Refactoring schemas.
- Real life stories of software development.
February 18, 2024
February meeting
Our February meeting promises to be an interesting one, discussing the "LJUG project". Proposals for this project have included
- Sharing business information in spreadsheets with mobile clients (smartphones etc.)
- Crossword creator
- Weather tracker
- General purpose spreadsheet
and we're still interested in discussing more ideas!
Details:
- Wed 18 Feb (3rd Wednesday of the month)
- Time 7:30pm
- Location Philharmonic Dining Rooms (pub), Liverpool
- (possibly moving onto the Everyman bistro at 8pm for dinner, to be discussed)
- If you don't already know us, please get in touch before hand so we'll look out for you. I will try to remember to take a Java book to put on the table at the Phil pub (forgot last month...)
- Rough agenda
- Discuss (and possibly choose) the LJUG project
- Our name (LiveJUG, MerseyBean, NWJug etc.)
- Promotion (universities and colleges, SUN, newsgroups, etc.)
January 23, 2024
January meeting writeup
At the
Philharmonic Pub again
(I recommend their current guest ale,
Harviestoun's "Bitter & Twisted"). Alexander, Crazywarp Carl, Mark and I met in one of the snugs to talk about subjects such as
- the Resin application server (highly rated)
- Java One & conferences in general
- Donnie Darko
- the correct pronunciation of Mozilla
- Mexico
- Sony Ericsson's P900, and why BenQ has got it right for Java on phones
- wireless networking
- sneakily running a webserver from behind your domestic broadband connection using dyndns
- outsourcing, call centres, accountancy, and McJobs
- speed dating
-
Britney
Spears
- how to kill a Nokia phone with an
SMS of death
- Kilroy Silk
- goats
- serial killers
- kebabs
The LJUG project
Over a magnificent dinner at Hardman Street's prestigious Pizza Company, we discussed the idea of a software project for the group, to give us focus and provide a way to get the experienced and beginner Java programmers among us working together on something.
This is a really exciting idea, and we're hoping to discuss it some more on the mailing list before choosing a project and getting on with it. Please join the list, or comment to this entry if you're interested.
January 21, 2024
January meeting
Happy new year all!
The 3rd wednesday of the month algorithm predicts 21st January as our next meeting.
The algorithm isn't (yet) sufficiently advanced to determine the venue, time, agenda, dress code, or sobriety of the meeting, so I will suggest, respectively:
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Liverpool
- meet 7-8pm open ended finish
- social gathering, events for the year ahead, possible plans for world
domination
- informal
- low
I'd like to grab a bite to eat at some point, we can pop into the Everyman, Magnet or another nearby eatery.
December 16, 2003
December meeting?
Christmas is upon us, ho ho ho. And for various reasons we appear to be heading towards missing our monthly meeting as calculated by the 3rd Wednesday of the month algorithm (e.g. tomorrow).
Anyone interested in meeting up for a swift drink, leave a comment, or post to the list.
Otherwise... normal service will be resumed in January!
November 19, 2003
Next meeting
This is the scheduled date for the November meeting, using the "3rd Wednesday of the month" algorithm.
Update 10 Nov: Venue will be Liverpool Central Library.
Times ca. 6pm - 8pm
Update 18 Nov:map
- Introduction
- at last meeting, the JDO talk showed an aspect of serverside java relating to storage, while the Symbian one showed how to run java on smartphones. Now we can show with real world examples how to get them working together!
- The internet and java servers.
-
How the domain naming system works and how URLs are more than they
seem.
- How java can process data on servers.
-
A new breed of software - the "application server" and what it really
is. How java based webservers use the url to direct web requests to do
their work.
- Smartphones.
- How a J2ME app can communicate with a J2EE webserver.
The universal http request/response mechanism. Local processing (e.g. for cryptography)
- Real world examples.
- The ICC ("Internet Connection Checker")
- CrazyWarp's the user registration system.
Please leave comments here, or join and post to our
mailing list if you've got any suggestions, comments, etc.
October 23, 2003
October meeting writeup
Update 10 Nov: Susanne sent some excellent digital photos at the end of November, but I've only had chance to update now... (see below)
Update 24 Oct: Added photos. (Not very good ones, as the light wasn't really good enough for the camera on my P800)
We've had some very positive feedback already about yesterday's event...
but first, thanks to
- Our speakers, Alastair Armstrong from
LIBeLIS.com
and Martin de Jode from
symbian.com,
who were so generous with their time and experience to support our new
group!
- My company, Unilever, who provided a data projector.
- and everyone who turned up to make it an event...
The audience was a nice mix of students (postgrad and undergrad), professionals developers (J2ME development, content management, digital media) and hobbyists.
Java Data Objects
Alastair's talk on JDO was well received though the audience for the most part hadn't had any experience with it: apparently it's a very mainstream technology in mainland Europe, but less popular in UK.
Essentially, it's a way of writing classes (in standard Java code) that allow you
to do something as simple as
employee.setName("John Smith");
employee.setSalary(20000);
employee.giveBonus();
and with a minimum of boilerplate (database setup, and transaction management) have this automagically transformed into database code without
having to write a single SQL statement. This is very cool, and though I'd have
assumed that the extra abstraction would slow things down, because all the database code can be optimized and cached at the JDO level, apparently
some queries can in fact be up to 20% faster (though I'd like to see
the figures ;->).
More information on JDO at
JDOcentral.com
Symbian and Java
Martin's talk was very topical as about half the audience was familiar with
J2ME including the developers of the
CrazyWarp application, and J2ME games developers/trainers. We discussed Java on mobile phones and why the Symbian
Operating System considers it to be a complement instead of a threat.
The irritations of working with a stripped down Java like MIDP 1.0
(and the joys - apparently it is much easier to teach! And it's very
improving to get back to basics and develop your own Floating Point library...)
There are still a lot of APIs on the phone that aren't accessible to Java
(SMS, Camera, Vibrator...) or which you can only just about use with the Java
Native Interface. But the situation is improving, and developing for mobile
phones with Java is very exciting right now.
Update 10 Nov: Martin sent some clarifications:
Although MIDP (1.0 or 2.0) doesn't provide access to SMS or the camera itself, the optional Wireless Messaging API provides a MIDlet with SMS capabilities and the optional Mobile Media API provides a MIDlet with the ability to take snapshots
using the onboard camera.
Both these APIs are part of the Java Technology for the Wireless Industry
specification and as such will be available on an increasing amount of
MIDP phones (and of course are available on the latest Symbian OS phone,
the Nokia 6600).
Afterwards...
By great good fortune, the last planned round of drinks was cancelled due to
last orders... but headache aside, it was a great evening.
Got to have some great conversations with some very interesting people. We're very keen to showcase the 'members' of LJUG, their companies
and projects on this site, to show the extent of what's going on in Java in the
NorthWest, so look out for some more postings soon!
Free books!
We've been accepted into SAMS Publishing's User Group program, and they kindly sent an enormous pile of books
and other goodies a few days before the meeting.
We've already had people borrow these books:
- Teach Yourself Java in 21 days
- XQuery
- Java APIs for XML
and we're hoping to get some reviews of these for this website. If you'd like
to borrow a book, please get in touch with us (we'll post the complete list soon),
or if you've already reviewed any Java book, send it to us and we'll post it here.
SAMS are also offering a 30% discount on their Teach Yourself x in 21 days
series, give us a shout if you'd like one of the vouchers!
October 22, 2003
October: guest speakers
Update 22 Oct 2003: See you tonight!
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
- Wednesday, October 22nd. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
(map)
(pub info)
- function room
Martin de Jode
(symbian.com)
Symbian and Java
Through our friends at symbiandiaries.com
we have arranged for Martin to talk about:
- Why Java?
- Evolution of Java on Symbian OS
- A look into the future
- Examples of Java in action
Martin joined Symbian as a Java Developer Consultant in 2000. He works in Symbian's Developer Network providing support, technical content, example applications and general evangelism to Symbian's Java developer community. His particular interest include J2ME MIDP and PersonalJava.
Alastair Armstrong
(LIBeLIS.com)
Java Data Objects
- the problem: mapping complex Java Objects to Relational databases
- the solution: JDO
- an implementation: LiDO
Alastair is LIBeLIS Sales Director for UK & Ireland. Before joining LIBeLIS in 2003, he was European Sales Leader in IBM Global Services for Websphere Enterprise Edition (then called Component Broker) followed by Global Solutions Manager for Wireless Solutions.
He has also previously held Senior Management positions both in Europe
and in Silicon Valley, including IBM, Taligent (the IBM/Apple/HP joint venture) and at Planit, the Kitchen Design Software Company. He holds
a Diploma in Software Engineering from the University of Kent.
Malcolm Sparks - Cancelled
Update 15 Oct 2003:
Sadly, Malcolm has had to cancel his talk: we are still hoping he will be able
to speak at a future meeting!
(jcoverage.com)
XP & unit testing
Unit testing, code coverage, and Extreme Programming.
The talk will include live demonstration of techniques and tools.
Please
contact us,
or leave a comment to this entry to let us know if you would like to attend.
September 17, 2003
September: first meeting
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
The first public meeting: all are welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, September 17th. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
- This will be an informal social evening to meet, chat, and drink with other
Java programmers in the area.
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
August 20, 2003
August: first open organizational meeting
The first open organizational meeting.
This will focus on running the Java Users Group, however anyone is welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, August 20th. 7pm
- Head of Steam (Lime Street Station)
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
Update 29 Jul 2003: Added Head of Steam as the meeting location.
April Meeting
Update 20 April: We will now meet at the Philharmonic Pub as usual between 7:00 and 7:30pm. We'll move onto the Community flat at ca. 7:45pm. Mark will send some details on how to get there for anyone that can't muster at the Phil pub first.We'll meet this time in the salubrious surroundings of the "Community flat" at Buckingham house, at the North of Sefton Park.
As this will be quieter, we'll hopefully be able to sit around a few laptops and maybe even do some coding... (Of course, as it's not in a pub, you may want to bring your own beer.)
Mark will send details/address etc. to the list.
If you aren't on the mailing list and you'd like to come, then please get in touch!
March meeting writeup - in brief
- Java tutorial day for beginners
- UML and test first as diametrically opposed methodologies
- SMS aggregation. (Yes, you can make money out of it, but the aggregators themselves will take something like a 50% cut)
- SVN setup, TortoiseSVN
- Various colds and ailments.
- Wikis, Blikis, and why RSS is cool.
- Carl showed us an SMS service which answers simple FAIBML queries. GSM modem, SIM, and the appropriate Java application server setup. Very cool.
- We surfed the net from inside the Philharmonic - wireless service providers and their wierd and wonderful range of payment strategies.
- St Patrick's day considered inappropriate as a date for JUG meetings in a pub.
- Diagramming tools, collaborative editing thereof (e.g. like version control/diff but by node instead of line of text.)
- Alternate meeting locations for next meeting.
March 17, 2024
March meeting
The agenda will include
- Discussion of FAIBML project use cases and structure
- Opportunities to promote LiveJUG
Details
- Time: 7:30 pm
- Venue: Phil pub, Liverpool
If you haven't been before, you might want to get in touch to make sure that we don't miss you!
February 23, 2024
February meeting writeup
Mark, Suzanne, Ricky, Simon, Matt, Alexander, Hakim, and Carl met at the Phil Pub for drinks and a lively discussion on the LJUG project and other miscellaneous topics.
Projects
Projects proposed included:
- Utility bill tool - Mark
to calculate the real costs of your gas/electric/phone etc.
- J2ME spreadsheet - Hakim
a pre-existing but stalled project...
- Spreadsheet synchronization - Alexander
between desktops and phones, via some XML web-service transport
- Enterprise Resource Planning - Mark
SAP, here we come!
- Tool to help develop software to the ZSpecification standard - Ricky
- Local weather tool - Simon
Scope for web-service; UI tailored to desktop or phone as appropriate.
The Spreadsheet Synchronization project appealed to most as a project that involves work on various platforms, server end development, XML transformation. This will involve some hard thinking about how to resolve conflicts in editing (in brainstorm, I particularly liked the idea that conflict resolution could be done by arbitrary criteria, for example the seniority of the person making the edit!)
But this is a complex project, and we'll need to spend quite a bit more time specifying it. A late proposal came in from Carl to do a simple task that we seem to need some help with, namely:
getting the drinks in at LJUG meetings
Some use-cases for this very important tool will include:
- Allows addition/deletion/maintenance of new user
- Allows addition/deletion/maintenance of each users drink order
- Stores history of drinks orders per user.
(Controversial)
- Allows easy query of "last round ordered"
- There should be a way for the pub to enter categorised menu items for
selection, possibly including pictures and special offers.
- Maybe it should be possible to attribute each order to a named group,
like the JUG, so over time groups that always meet in a particular pub
could get a rebate.
- The waitress should be able to set the order to a new state, so that
addition/deletion isn't possible after she has started to prepare the
delivery.
The tool will allow us to make orders (hopefully for the next meeting!) by web-service, ideally even by SMS. The XML transport (which is also the working name for the project) will be callsed FreeAsInBeerML.
Also discussed...
- Macromedia actionscript from a designer's perspective.
- Java for SAP
- Why the living dead need SMS alerts about factory production.
- ZSpecification formal methods for specifying zero-error development projects.
- Q: How to do triangulation with a mobile phone to find where another phone is (or where you are!) (A: Some mobile operators are experimenting with this, but it is probably a payable service, and there isn't a consistent standard)
- Would you trust Mark to work from home?
- The sad state of decline of Britain's public dental care.
- Translating Crazywarp.
- Speed cameras; monitoring speed across distances rather than at a specific point; and using Java to break the speed limit.
- The utopia that is now.
- Who buys from spammers?
- How to sell your legal notice from Microsoft on EBAY.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
- Laundering drug money.
- Managing edit conflicts
- Collaborative ascii art and collaborative spreadsheets?
- Problem: phones connecting to servers, phones connecting as servers.
(Phone OpCo as massive firewall: you can't get from the outside in to your specific phone).
- Usabilitiy and website design. (See Joel's book)
- Adapting
Carl's OTASlang to J2ME
- C# vs Java
- Some positive comments about Visual Studio and .Net as developer environments.
- Why .Net/JVM may not be best environments for running dynamic languages.
See Dan Sugalski's blog. (But what about Jython?)
- James Strachlan and Groovy. (Great, but buggy?)
- $Perl{syntax}, and why those @sigils can make your $code cleaner
- CVS and Subversion, some positive comments about MS SourceSafe (and some surprise thereat)
- Dynamically changing schemas at runtime. Refactoring schemas.
- Real life stories of software development.
February 18, 2024
February meeting
Our February meeting promises to be an interesting one, discussing the "LJUG project". Proposals for this project have included
- Sharing business information in spreadsheets with mobile clients (smartphones etc.)
- Crossword creator
- Weather tracker
- General purpose spreadsheet
and we're still interested in discussing more ideas!
Details:
- Wed 18 Feb (3rd Wednesday of the month)
- Time 7:30pm
- Location Philharmonic Dining Rooms (pub), Liverpool
- (possibly moving onto the Everyman bistro at 8pm for dinner, to be discussed)
- If you don't already know us, please get in touch before hand so we'll look out for you. I will try to remember to take a Java book to put on the table at the Phil pub (forgot last month...)
- Rough agenda
- Discuss (and possibly choose) the LJUG project
- Our name (LiveJUG, MerseyBean, NWJug etc.)
- Promotion (universities and colleges, SUN, newsgroups, etc.)
January 23, 2024
January meeting writeup
At the
Philharmonic Pub again
(I recommend their current guest ale,
Harviestoun's "Bitter & Twisted"). Alexander, Crazywarp Carl, Mark and I met in one of the snugs to talk about subjects such as
- the Resin application server (highly rated)
- Java One & conferences in general
- Donnie Darko
- the correct pronunciation of Mozilla
- Mexico
- Sony Ericsson's P900, and why BenQ has got it right for Java on phones
- wireless networking
- sneakily running a webserver from behind your domestic broadband connection using dyndns
- outsourcing, call centres, accountancy, and McJobs
- speed dating
-
Britney
Spears
- how to kill a Nokia phone with an
SMS of death
- Kilroy Silk
- goats
- serial killers
- kebabs
The LJUG project
Over a magnificent dinner at Hardman Street's prestigious Pizza Company, we discussed the idea of a software project for the group, to give us focus and provide a way to get the experienced and beginner Java programmers among us working together on something.
This is a really exciting idea, and we're hoping to discuss it some more on the mailing list before choosing a project and getting on with it. Please join the list, or comment to this entry if you're interested.
January 21, 2024
January meeting
Happy new year all!
The 3rd wednesday of the month algorithm predicts 21st January as our next meeting.
The algorithm isn't (yet) sufficiently advanced to determine the venue, time, agenda, dress code, or sobriety of the meeting, so I will suggest, respectively:
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Liverpool
- meet 7-8pm open ended finish
- social gathering, events for the year ahead, possible plans for world
domination
- informal
- low
I'd like to grab a bite to eat at some point, we can pop into the Everyman, Magnet or another nearby eatery.
December 16, 2003
December meeting?
Christmas is upon us, ho ho ho. And for various reasons we appear to be heading towards missing our monthly meeting as calculated by the 3rd Wednesday of the month algorithm (e.g. tomorrow).
Anyone interested in meeting up for a swift drink, leave a comment, or post to the list.
Otherwise... normal service will be resumed in January!
November 19, 2003
Next meeting
This is the scheduled date for the November meeting, using the "3rd Wednesday of the month" algorithm.
Update 10 Nov: Venue will be Liverpool Central Library.
Times ca. 6pm - 8pm
Update 18 Nov:map
- Introduction
- at last meeting, the JDO talk showed an aspect of serverside java relating to storage, while the Symbian one showed how to run java on smartphones. Now we can show with real world examples how to get them working together!
- The internet and java servers.
-
How the domain naming system works and how URLs are more than they
seem.
- How java can process data on servers.
-
A new breed of software - the "application server" and what it really
is. How java based webservers use the url to direct web requests to do
their work.
- Smartphones.
- How a J2ME app can communicate with a J2EE webserver.
The universal http request/response mechanism. Local processing (e.g. for cryptography)
- Real world examples.
- The ICC ("Internet Connection Checker")
- CrazyWarp's the user registration system.
Please leave comments here, or join and post to our
mailing list if you've got any suggestions, comments, etc.
October 23, 2003
October meeting writeup
Update 10 Nov: Susanne sent some excellent digital photos at the end of November, but I've only had chance to update now... (see below)
Update 24 Oct: Added photos. (Not very good ones, as the light wasn't really good enough for the camera on my P800)
We've had some very positive feedback already about yesterday's event...
but first, thanks to
- Our speakers, Alastair Armstrong from
LIBeLIS.com
and Martin de Jode from
symbian.com,
who were so generous with their time and experience to support our new
group!
- My company, Unilever, who provided a data projector.
- and everyone who turned up to make it an event...
The audience was a nice mix of students (postgrad and undergrad), professionals developers (J2ME development, content management, digital media) and hobbyists.
Java Data Objects
Alastair's talk on JDO was well received though the audience for the most part hadn't had any experience with it: apparently it's a very mainstream technology in mainland Europe, but less popular in UK.
Essentially, it's a way of writing classes (in standard Java code) that allow you
to do something as simple as
employee.setName("John Smith");
employee.setSalary(20000);
employee.giveBonus();
and with a minimum of boilerplate (database setup, and transaction management) have this automagically transformed into database code without
having to write a single SQL statement. This is very cool, and though I'd have
assumed that the extra abstraction would slow things down, because all the database code can be optimized and cached at the JDO level, apparently
some queries can in fact be up to 20% faster (though I'd like to see
the figures ;->).
More information on JDO at
JDOcentral.com
Symbian and Java
Martin's talk was very topical as about half the audience was familiar with
J2ME including the developers of the
CrazyWarp application, and J2ME games developers/trainers. We discussed Java on mobile phones and why the Symbian
Operating System considers it to be a complement instead of a threat.
The irritations of working with a stripped down Java like MIDP 1.0
(and the joys - apparently it is much easier to teach! And it's very
improving to get back to basics and develop your own Floating Point library...)
There are still a lot of APIs on the phone that aren't accessible to Java
(SMS, Camera, Vibrator...) or which you can only just about use with the Java
Native Interface. But the situation is improving, and developing for mobile
phones with Java is very exciting right now.
Update 10 Nov: Martin sent some clarifications:
Although MIDP (1.0 or 2.0) doesn't provide access to SMS or the camera itself, the optional Wireless Messaging API provides a MIDlet with SMS capabilities and the optional Mobile Media API provides a MIDlet with the ability to take snapshots
using the onboard camera.
Both these APIs are part of the Java Technology for the Wireless Industry
specification and as such will be available on an increasing amount of
MIDP phones (and of course are available on the latest Symbian OS phone,
the Nokia 6600).
Afterwards...
By great good fortune, the last planned round of drinks was cancelled due to
last orders... but headache aside, it was a great evening.
Got to have some great conversations with some very interesting people. We're very keen to showcase the 'members' of LJUG, their companies
and projects on this site, to show the extent of what's going on in Java in the
NorthWest, so look out for some more postings soon!
Free books!
We've been accepted into SAMS Publishing's User Group program, and they kindly sent an enormous pile of books
and other goodies a few days before the meeting.
We've already had people borrow these books:
- Teach Yourself Java in 21 days
- XQuery
- Java APIs for XML
and we're hoping to get some reviews of these for this website. If you'd like
to borrow a book, please get in touch with us (we'll post the complete list soon),
or if you've already reviewed any Java book, send it to us and we'll post it here.
SAMS are also offering a 30% discount on their Teach Yourself x in 21 days
series, give us a shout if you'd like one of the vouchers!
October 22, 2003
October: guest speakers
Update 22 Oct 2003: See you tonight!
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
- Wednesday, October 22nd. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
(map)
(pub info)
- function room
Martin de Jode
(symbian.com)
Symbian and Java
Through our friends at symbiandiaries.com
we have arranged for Martin to talk about:
- Why Java?
- Evolution of Java on Symbian OS
- A look into the future
- Examples of Java in action
Martin joined Symbian as a Java Developer Consultant in 2000. He works in Symbian's Developer Network providing support, technical content, example applications and general evangelism to Symbian's Java developer community. His particular interest include J2ME MIDP and PersonalJava.
Alastair Armstrong
(LIBeLIS.com)
Java Data Objects
- the problem: mapping complex Java Objects to Relational databases
- the solution: JDO
- an implementation: LiDO
Alastair is LIBeLIS Sales Director for UK & Ireland. Before joining LIBeLIS in 2003, he was European Sales Leader in IBM Global Services for Websphere Enterprise Edition (then called Component Broker) followed by Global Solutions Manager for Wireless Solutions.
He has also previously held Senior Management positions both in Europe
and in Silicon Valley, including IBM, Taligent (the IBM/Apple/HP joint venture) and at Planit, the Kitchen Design Software Company. He holds
a Diploma in Software Engineering from the University of Kent.
Malcolm Sparks - Cancelled
Update 15 Oct 2003:
Sadly, Malcolm has had to cancel his talk: we are still hoping he will be able
to speak at a future meeting!
(jcoverage.com)
XP & unit testing
Unit testing, code coverage, and Extreme Programming.
The talk will include live demonstration of techniques and tools.
Please
contact us,
or leave a comment to this entry to let us know if you would like to attend.
September 17, 2003
September: first meeting
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
The first public meeting: all are welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, September 17th. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
- This will be an informal social evening to meet, chat, and drink with other
Java programmers in the area.
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
August 20, 2003
August: first open organizational meeting
The first open organizational meeting.
This will focus on running the Java Users Group, however anyone is welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, August 20th. 7pm
- Head of Steam (Lime Street Station)
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
Update 29 Jul 2003: Added Head of Steam as the meeting location.
March meeting
The agenda will include- Discussion of FAIBML project use cases and structure
- Opportunities to promote LiveJUG
- Time: 7:30 pm
- Venue: Phil pub, Liverpool
February meeting writeup
Mark, Suzanne, Ricky, Simon, Matt, Alexander, Hakim, and Carl met at the Phil Pub for drinks and a lively discussion on the LJUG project and other miscellaneous topics.Projects
Projects proposed included:- Utility bill tool - Mark to calculate the real costs of your gas/electric/phone etc.
- J2ME spreadsheet - Hakim a pre-existing but stalled project...
- Spreadsheet synchronization - Alexander between desktops and phones, via some XML web-service transport
- Enterprise Resource Planning - Mark SAP, here we come!
- Tool to help develop software to the ZSpecification standard - Ricky
- Local weather tool - Simon Scope for web-service; UI tailored to desktop or phone as appropriate.
But this is a complex project, and we'll need to spend quite a bit more time specifying it. A late proposal came in from Carl to do a simple task that we seem to need some help with, namely:
getting the drinks in at LJUG meetingsSome use-cases for this very important tool will include:
- Allows addition/deletion/maintenance of new user
- Allows addition/deletion/maintenance of each users drink order
- Stores history of drinks orders per user. (Controversial)
- Allows easy query of "last round ordered"
- There should be a way for the pub to enter categorised menu items for selection, possibly including pictures and special offers.
- Maybe it should be possible to attribute each order to a named group, like the JUG, so over time groups that always meet in a particular pub could get a rebate.
- The waitress should be able to set the order to a new state, so that addition/deletion isn't possible after she has started to prepare the delivery.
Also discussed...
- Macromedia actionscript from a designer's perspective.
- Java for SAP
- Why the living dead need SMS alerts about factory production.
- ZSpecification formal methods for specifying zero-error development projects.
- Q: How to do triangulation with a mobile phone to find where another phone is (or where you are!) (A: Some mobile operators are experimenting with this, but it is probably a payable service, and there isn't a consistent standard)
- Would you trust Mark to work from home?
- The sad state of decline of Britain's public dental care.
- Translating Crazywarp.
- Speed cameras; monitoring speed across distances rather than at a specific point; and using Java to break the speed limit.
- The utopia that is now.
- Who buys from spammers?
- How to sell your legal notice from Microsoft on EBAY.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea- Laundering drug money.
- Managing edit conflicts
- Collaborative ascii art and collaborative spreadsheets?
- Problem: phones connecting to servers, phones connecting as servers. (Phone OpCo as massive firewall: you can't get from the outside in to your specific phone).
- Usabilitiy and website design. (See Joel's book)
- Adapting Carl's OTASlang to J2ME
- C# vs Java
- Some positive comments about Visual Studio and .Net as developer environments.
- Why .Net/JVM may not be best environments for running dynamic languages. See Dan Sugalski's blog. (But what about Jython?)
- James Strachlan and Groovy. (Great, but buggy?)
- $Perl{syntax}, and why those @sigils can make your $code cleaner
- CVS and Subversion, some positive comments about MS SourceSafe (and some surprise thereat)
- Dynamically changing schemas at runtime. Refactoring schemas.
- Real life stories of software development.
February 18, 2024
February meeting
Our February meeting promises to be an interesting one, discussing the "LJUG project". Proposals for this project have included
- Sharing business information in spreadsheets with mobile clients (smartphones etc.)
- Crossword creator
- Weather tracker
- General purpose spreadsheet
and we're still interested in discussing more ideas!
Details:
- Wed 18 Feb (3rd Wednesday of the month)
- Time 7:30pm
- Location Philharmonic Dining Rooms (pub), Liverpool
- (possibly moving onto the Everyman bistro at 8pm for dinner, to be discussed)
- If you don't already know us, please get in touch before hand so we'll look out for you. I will try to remember to take a Java book to put on the table at the Phil pub (forgot last month...)
- Rough agenda
- Discuss (and possibly choose) the LJUG project
- Our name (LiveJUG, MerseyBean, NWJug etc.)
- Promotion (universities and colleges, SUN, newsgroups, etc.)
January 23, 2024
January meeting writeup
At the
Philharmonic Pub again
(I recommend their current guest ale,
Harviestoun's "Bitter & Twisted"). Alexander, Crazywarp Carl, Mark and I met in one of the snugs to talk about subjects such as
- the Resin application server (highly rated)
- Java One & conferences in general
- Donnie Darko
- the correct pronunciation of Mozilla
- Mexico
- Sony Ericsson's P900, and why BenQ has got it right for Java on phones
- wireless networking
- sneakily running a webserver from behind your domestic broadband connection using dyndns
- outsourcing, call centres, accountancy, and McJobs
- speed dating
-
Britney
Spears
- how to kill a Nokia phone with an
SMS of death
- Kilroy Silk
- goats
- serial killers
- kebabs
The LJUG project
Over a magnificent dinner at Hardman Street's prestigious Pizza Company, we discussed the idea of a software project for the group, to give us focus and provide a way to get the experienced and beginner Java programmers among us working together on something.
This is a really exciting idea, and we're hoping to discuss it some more on the mailing list before choosing a project and getting on with it. Please join the list, or comment to this entry if you're interested.
January 21, 2024
January meeting
Happy new year all!
The 3rd wednesday of the month algorithm predicts 21st January as our next meeting.
The algorithm isn't (yet) sufficiently advanced to determine the venue, time, agenda, dress code, or sobriety of the meeting, so I will suggest, respectively:
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Liverpool
- meet 7-8pm open ended finish
- social gathering, events for the year ahead, possible plans for world
domination
- informal
- low
I'd like to grab a bite to eat at some point, we can pop into the Everyman, Magnet or another nearby eatery.
December 16, 2003
December meeting?
Christmas is upon us, ho ho ho. And for various reasons we appear to be heading towards missing our monthly meeting as calculated by the 3rd Wednesday of the month algorithm (e.g. tomorrow).
Anyone interested in meeting up for a swift drink, leave a comment, or post to the list.
Otherwise... normal service will be resumed in January!
November 19, 2003
Next meeting
This is the scheduled date for the November meeting, using the "3rd Wednesday of the month" algorithm.
Update 10 Nov: Venue will be Liverpool Central Library.
Times ca. 6pm - 8pm
Update 18 Nov:map
- Introduction
- at last meeting, the JDO talk showed an aspect of serverside java relating to storage, while the Symbian one showed how to run java on smartphones. Now we can show with real world examples how to get them working together!
- The internet and java servers.
-
How the domain naming system works and how URLs are more than they
seem.
- How java can process data on servers.
-
A new breed of software - the "application server" and what it really
is. How java based webservers use the url to direct web requests to do
their work.
- Smartphones.
- How a J2ME app can communicate with a J2EE webserver.
The universal http request/response mechanism. Local processing (e.g. for cryptography)
- Real world examples.
- The ICC ("Internet Connection Checker")
- CrazyWarp's the user registration system.
Please leave comments here, or join and post to our
mailing list if you've got any suggestions, comments, etc.
October 23, 2003
October meeting writeup
Update 10 Nov: Susanne sent some excellent digital photos at the end of November, but I've only had chance to update now... (see below)
Update 24 Oct: Added photos. (Not very good ones, as the light wasn't really good enough for the camera on my P800)
We've had some very positive feedback already about yesterday's event...
but first, thanks to
- Our speakers, Alastair Armstrong from
LIBeLIS.com
and Martin de Jode from
symbian.com,
who were so generous with their time and experience to support our new
group!
- My company, Unilever, who provided a data projector.
- and everyone who turned up to make it an event...
The audience was a nice mix of students (postgrad and undergrad), professionals developers (J2ME development, content management, digital media) and hobbyists.
Java Data Objects
Alastair's talk on JDO was well received though the audience for the most part hadn't had any experience with it: apparently it's a very mainstream technology in mainland Europe, but less popular in UK.
Essentially, it's a way of writing classes (in standard Java code) that allow you
to do something as simple as
employee.setName("John Smith");
employee.setSalary(20000);
employee.giveBonus();
and with a minimum of boilerplate (database setup, and transaction management) have this automagically transformed into database code without
having to write a single SQL statement. This is very cool, and though I'd have
assumed that the extra abstraction would slow things down, because all the database code can be optimized and cached at the JDO level, apparently
some queries can in fact be up to 20% faster (though I'd like to see
the figures ;->).
More information on JDO at
JDOcentral.com
Symbian and Java
Martin's talk was very topical as about half the audience was familiar with
J2ME including the developers of the
CrazyWarp application, and J2ME games developers/trainers. We discussed Java on mobile phones and why the Symbian
Operating System considers it to be a complement instead of a threat.
The irritations of working with a stripped down Java like MIDP 1.0
(and the joys - apparently it is much easier to teach! And it's very
improving to get back to basics and develop your own Floating Point library...)
There are still a lot of APIs on the phone that aren't accessible to Java
(SMS, Camera, Vibrator...) or which you can only just about use with the Java
Native Interface. But the situation is improving, and developing for mobile
phones with Java is very exciting right now.
Update 10 Nov: Martin sent some clarifications:
Although MIDP (1.0 or 2.0) doesn't provide access to SMS or the camera itself, the optional Wireless Messaging API provides a MIDlet with SMS capabilities and the optional Mobile Media API provides a MIDlet with the ability to take snapshots
using the onboard camera.
Both these APIs are part of the Java Technology for the Wireless Industry
specification and as such will be available on an increasing amount of
MIDP phones (and of course are available on the latest Symbian OS phone,
the Nokia 6600).
Afterwards...
By great good fortune, the last planned round of drinks was cancelled due to
last orders... but headache aside, it was a great evening.
Got to have some great conversations with some very interesting people. We're very keen to showcase the 'members' of LJUG, their companies
and projects on this site, to show the extent of what's going on in Java in the
NorthWest, so look out for some more postings soon!
Free books!
We've been accepted into SAMS Publishing's User Group program, and they kindly sent an enormous pile of books
and other goodies a few days before the meeting.
We've already had people borrow these books:
- Teach Yourself Java in 21 days
- XQuery
- Java APIs for XML
and we're hoping to get some reviews of these for this website. If you'd like
to borrow a book, please get in touch with us (we'll post the complete list soon),
or if you've already reviewed any Java book, send it to us and we'll post it here.
SAMS are also offering a 30% discount on their Teach Yourself x in 21 days
series, give us a shout if you'd like one of the vouchers!
October 22, 2003
October: guest speakers
Update 22 Oct 2003: See you tonight!
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
- Wednesday, October 22nd. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
(map)
(pub info)
- function room
Martin de Jode
(symbian.com)
Symbian and Java
Through our friends at symbiandiaries.com
we have arranged for Martin to talk about:
- Why Java?
- Evolution of Java on Symbian OS
- A look into the future
- Examples of Java in action
Martin joined Symbian as a Java Developer Consultant in 2000. He works in Symbian's Developer Network providing support, technical content, example applications and general evangelism to Symbian's Java developer community. His particular interest include J2ME MIDP and PersonalJava.
Alastair Armstrong
(LIBeLIS.com)
Java Data Objects
- the problem: mapping complex Java Objects to Relational databases
- the solution: JDO
- an implementation: LiDO
Alastair is LIBeLIS Sales Director for UK & Ireland. Before joining LIBeLIS in 2003, he was European Sales Leader in IBM Global Services for Websphere Enterprise Edition (then called Component Broker) followed by Global Solutions Manager for Wireless Solutions.
He has also previously held Senior Management positions both in Europe
and in Silicon Valley, including IBM, Taligent (the IBM/Apple/HP joint venture) and at Planit, the Kitchen Design Software Company. He holds
a Diploma in Software Engineering from the University of Kent.
Malcolm Sparks - Cancelled
Update 15 Oct 2003:
Sadly, Malcolm has had to cancel his talk: we are still hoping he will be able
to speak at a future meeting!
(jcoverage.com)
XP & unit testing
Unit testing, code coverage, and Extreme Programming.
The talk will include live demonstration of techniques and tools.
Please
contact us,
or leave a comment to this entry to let us know if you would like to attend.
September 17, 2003
September: first meeting
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
The first public meeting: all are welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, September 17th. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
- This will be an informal social evening to meet, chat, and drink with other
Java programmers in the area.
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
August 20, 2003
August: first open organizational meeting
The first open organizational meeting.
This will focus on running the Java Users Group, however anyone is welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, August 20th. 7pm
- Head of Steam (Lime Street Station)
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
Update 29 Jul 2003: Added Head of Steam as the meeting location.
February meeting
Our February meeting promises to be an interesting one, discussing the "LJUG project". Proposals for this project have included- Sharing business information in spreadsheets with mobile clients (smartphones etc.)
- Crossword creator
- Weather tracker
- General purpose spreadsheet
Details:
- Wed 18 Feb (3rd Wednesday of the month)
- Time 7:30pm
- Location Philharmonic Dining Rooms (pub), Liverpool
- (possibly moving onto the Everyman bistro at 8pm for dinner, to be discussed)
- If you don't already know us, please get in touch before hand so we'll look out for you. I will try to remember to take a Java book to put on the table at the Phil pub (forgot last month...)
- Rough agenda
- Discuss (and possibly choose) the LJUG project
- Our name (LiveJUG, MerseyBean, NWJug etc.)
- Promotion (universities and colleges, SUN, newsgroups, etc.)
January meeting writeup
At the Philharmonic Pub again (I recommend their current guest ale, Harviestoun's "Bitter & Twisted"). Alexander, Crazywarp Carl, Mark and I met in one of the snugs to talk about subjects such as- the Resin application server (highly rated)
- Java One & conferences in general
- Donnie Darko
- the correct pronunciation of Mozilla
- Mexico
- Sony Ericsson's P900, and why BenQ has got it right for Java on phones
- wireless networking
- sneakily running a webserver from behind your domestic broadband connection using dyndns
- outsourcing, call centres, accountancy, and McJobs
- speed dating
- Britney Spears
- how to kill a Nokia phone with an SMS of death
- Kilroy Silk
- goats
- serial killers
- kebabs
The LJUG project
Over a magnificent dinner at Hardman Street's prestigious Pizza Company, we discussed the idea of a software project for the group, to give us focus and provide a way to get the experienced and beginner Java programmers among us working together on something.This is a really exciting idea, and we're hoping to discuss it some more on the mailing list before choosing a project and getting on with it. Please join the list, or comment to this entry if you're interested.
January 21, 2024
January meeting
Happy new year all!
The 3rd wednesday of the month algorithm predicts 21st January as our next meeting.
The algorithm isn't (yet) sufficiently advanced to determine the venue, time, agenda, dress code, or sobriety of the meeting, so I will suggest, respectively:
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Liverpool
- meet 7-8pm open ended finish
- social gathering, events for the year ahead, possible plans for world
domination
- informal
- low
I'd like to grab a bite to eat at some point, we can pop into the Everyman, Magnet or another nearby eatery.
December 16, 2003
December meeting?
Christmas is upon us, ho ho ho. And for various reasons we appear to be heading towards missing our monthly meeting as calculated by the 3rd Wednesday of the month algorithm (e.g. tomorrow).
Anyone interested in meeting up for a swift drink, leave a comment, or post to the list.
Otherwise... normal service will be resumed in January!
November 19, 2003
Next meeting
This is the scheduled date for the November meeting, using the "3rd Wednesday of the month" algorithm.
Update 10 Nov: Venue will be Liverpool Central Library.
Times ca. 6pm - 8pm
Update 18 Nov:map
- Introduction
- at last meeting, the JDO talk showed an aspect of serverside java relating to storage, while the Symbian one showed how to run java on smartphones. Now we can show with real world examples how to get them working together!
- The internet and java servers.
-
How the domain naming system works and how URLs are more than they
seem.
- How java can process data on servers.
-
A new breed of software - the "application server" and what it really
is. How java based webservers use the url to direct web requests to do
their work.
- Smartphones.
- How a J2ME app can communicate with a J2EE webserver.
The universal http request/response mechanism. Local processing (e.g. for cryptography)
- Real world examples.
- The ICC ("Internet Connection Checker")
- CrazyWarp's the user registration system.
Please leave comments here, or join and post to our
mailing list if you've got any suggestions, comments, etc.
October 23, 2003
October meeting writeup
Update 10 Nov: Susanne sent some excellent digital photos at the end of November, but I've only had chance to update now... (see below)
Update 24 Oct: Added photos. (Not very good ones, as the light wasn't really good enough for the camera on my P800)
We've had some very positive feedback already about yesterday's event...
but first, thanks to
- Our speakers, Alastair Armstrong from
LIBeLIS.com
and Martin de Jode from
symbian.com,
who were so generous with their time and experience to support our new
group!
- My company, Unilever, who provided a data projector.
- and everyone who turned up to make it an event...
The audience was a nice mix of students (postgrad and undergrad), professionals developers (J2ME development, content management, digital media) and hobbyists.
Java Data Objects
Alastair's talk on JDO was well received though the audience for the most part hadn't had any experience with it: apparently it's a very mainstream technology in mainland Europe, but less popular in UK.
Essentially, it's a way of writing classes (in standard Java code) that allow you
to do something as simple as
employee.setName("John Smith");
employee.setSalary(20000);
employee.giveBonus();
and with a minimum of boilerplate (database setup, and transaction management) have this automagically transformed into database code without
having to write a single SQL statement. This is very cool, and though I'd have
assumed that the extra abstraction would slow things down, because all the database code can be optimized and cached at the JDO level, apparently
some queries can in fact be up to 20% faster (though I'd like to see
the figures ;->).
More information on JDO at
JDOcentral.com
Symbian and Java
Martin's talk was very topical as about half the audience was familiar with
J2ME including the developers of the
CrazyWarp application, and J2ME games developers/trainers. We discussed Java on mobile phones and why the Symbian
Operating System considers it to be a complement instead of a threat.
The irritations of working with a stripped down Java like MIDP 1.0
(and the joys - apparently it is much easier to teach! And it's very
improving to get back to basics and develop your own Floating Point library...)
There are still a lot of APIs on the phone that aren't accessible to Java
(SMS, Camera, Vibrator...) or which you can only just about use with the Java
Native Interface. But the situation is improving, and developing for mobile
phones with Java is very exciting right now.
Update 10 Nov: Martin sent some clarifications:
Although MIDP (1.0 or 2.0) doesn't provide access to SMS or the camera itself, the optional Wireless Messaging API provides a MIDlet with SMS capabilities and the optional Mobile Media API provides a MIDlet with the ability to take snapshots
using the onboard camera.
Both these APIs are part of the Java Technology for the Wireless Industry
specification and as such will be available on an increasing amount of
MIDP phones (and of course are available on the latest Symbian OS phone,
the Nokia 6600).
Afterwards...
By great good fortune, the last planned round of drinks was cancelled due to
last orders... but headache aside, it was a great evening.
Got to have some great conversations with some very interesting people. We're very keen to showcase the 'members' of LJUG, their companies
and projects on this site, to show the extent of what's going on in Java in the
NorthWest, so look out for some more postings soon!
Free books!
We've been accepted into SAMS Publishing's User Group program, and they kindly sent an enormous pile of books
and other goodies a few days before the meeting.
We've already had people borrow these books:
- Teach Yourself Java in 21 days
- XQuery
- Java APIs for XML
and we're hoping to get some reviews of these for this website. If you'd like
to borrow a book, please get in touch with us (we'll post the complete list soon),
or if you've already reviewed any Java book, send it to us and we'll post it here.
SAMS are also offering a 30% discount on their Teach Yourself x in 21 days
series, give us a shout if you'd like one of the vouchers!
October 22, 2003
October: guest speakers
Update 22 Oct 2003: See you tonight!
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
- Wednesday, October 22nd. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
(map)
(pub info)
- function room
Martin de Jode
(symbian.com)
Symbian and Java
Through our friends at symbiandiaries.com
we have arranged for Martin to talk about:
- Why Java?
- Evolution of Java on Symbian OS
- A look into the future
- Examples of Java in action
Martin joined Symbian as a Java Developer Consultant in 2000. He works in Symbian's Developer Network providing support, technical content, example applications and general evangelism to Symbian's Java developer community. His particular interest include J2ME MIDP and PersonalJava.
Alastair Armstrong
(LIBeLIS.com)
Java Data Objects
- the problem: mapping complex Java Objects to Relational databases
- the solution: JDO
- an implementation: LiDO
Alastair is LIBeLIS Sales Director for UK & Ireland. Before joining LIBeLIS in 2003, he was European Sales Leader in IBM Global Services for Websphere Enterprise Edition (then called Component Broker) followed by Global Solutions Manager for Wireless Solutions.
He has also previously held Senior Management positions both in Europe
and in Silicon Valley, including IBM, Taligent (the IBM/Apple/HP joint venture) and at Planit, the Kitchen Design Software Company. He holds
a Diploma in Software Engineering from the University of Kent.
Malcolm Sparks - Cancelled
Update 15 Oct 2003:
Sadly, Malcolm has had to cancel his talk: we are still hoping he will be able
to speak at a future meeting!
(jcoverage.com)
XP & unit testing
Unit testing, code coverage, and Extreme Programming.
The talk will include live demonstration of techniques and tools.
Please
contact us,
or leave a comment to this entry to let us know if you would like to attend.
September 17, 2003
September: first meeting
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
The first public meeting: all are welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, September 17th. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
- This will be an informal social evening to meet, chat, and drink with other
Java programmers in the area.
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
August 20, 2003
August: first open organizational meeting
The first open organizational meeting.
This will focus on running the Java Users Group, however anyone is welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, August 20th. 7pm
- Head of Steam (Lime Street Station)
Please
contact us by email or comment to this entry to let us know if you will attend.
Update 29 Jul 2003: Added Head of Steam as the meeting location.
January meeting
Happy new year all! The 3rd wednesday of the month algorithm predicts 21st January as our next meeting. The algorithm isn't (yet) sufficiently advanced to determine the venue, time, agenda, dress code, or sobriety of the meeting, so I will suggest, respectively:- Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Liverpool
- meet 7-8pm open ended finish
- social gathering, events for the year ahead, possible plans for world domination
- informal
- low
December meeting?
Christmas is upon us, ho ho ho. And for various reasons we appear to be heading towards missing our monthly meeting as calculated by the 3rd Wednesday of the month algorithm (e.g. tomorrow). Anyone interested in meeting up for a swift drink, leave a comment, or post to the list. Otherwise... normal service will be resumed in January!Next meeting
This is the scheduled date for the November meeting, using the "3rd Wednesday of the month" algorithm.Update 10 Nov: Venue will be Liverpool Central Library. Times ca. 6pm - 8pm
Update 18 Nov:map
- Introduction
- at last meeting, the JDO talk showed an aspect of serverside java relating to storage, while the Symbian one showed how to run java on smartphones. Now we can show with real world examples how to get them working together!
- The internet and java servers.
- How the domain naming system works and how URLs are more than they seem.
- How java can process data on servers.
- A new breed of software - the "application server" and what it really is. How java based webservers use the url to direct web requests to do their work.
- Smartphones.
- How a J2ME app can communicate with a J2EE webserver. The universal http request/response mechanism. Local processing (e.g. for cryptography)
- Real world examples.
- The ICC ("Internet Connection Checker")
- CrazyWarp's the user registration system.
Please leave comments here, or join and post to our mailing list if you've got any suggestions, comments, etc.
October meeting writeup
Update 10 Nov: Susanne sent some excellent digital photos at the end of November, but I've only had chance to update now... (see below) Update 24 Oct: Added photos. (Not very good ones, as the light wasn't really good enough for the camera on my P800)We've had some very positive feedback already about yesterday's event... but first, thanks to
- Our speakers, Alastair Armstrong from LIBeLIS.com and Martin de Jode from symbian.com, who were so generous with their time and experience to support our new group!
- My company, Unilever, who provided a data projector.
- and everyone who turned up to make it an event...
Java Data Objects
Alastair's talk on JDO was well received though the audience for the most part hadn't had any experience with it: apparently it's a very mainstream technology in mainland Europe, but less popular in UK. Essentially, it's a way of writing classes (in standard Java code) that allow you to do something as simple asemployee.setName("John Smith");
employee.setSalary(20000);
employee.giveBonus();More information on JDO at JDOcentral.com
Symbian and Java
Martin's talk was very topical as about half the audience was familiar with J2ME including the developers of the CrazyWarp application, and J2ME games developers/trainers. We discussed Java on mobile phones and why the Symbian Operating System considers it to be a complement instead of a threat. The irritations of working with a stripped down Java like MIDP 1.0 (and the joys - apparently it is much easier to teach! And it's very improving to get back to basics and develop your own Floating Point library...)There are still a lot of APIs on the phone that aren't accessible to Java (SMS, Camera, Vibrator...) or which you can only just about use with the Java Native Interface. But the situation is improving, and developing for mobile phones with Java is very exciting right now. Update 10 Nov: Martin sent some clarifications:
Although MIDP (1.0 or 2.0) doesn't provide access to SMS or the camera itself, the optional Wireless Messaging API provides a MIDlet with SMS capabilities and the optional Mobile Media API provides a MIDlet with the ability to take snapshots using the onboard camera.Both these APIs are part of the Java Technology for the Wireless Industry specification and as such will be available on an increasing amount of MIDP phones (and of course are available on the latest Symbian OS phone, the Nokia 6600).
Afterwards...
By great good fortune, the last planned round of drinks was cancelled due to last orders... but headache aside, it was a great evening. Got to have some great conversations with some very interesting people. We're very keen to showcase the 'members' of LJUG, their companies and projects on this site, to show the extent of what's going on in Java in the NorthWest, so look out for some more postings soon!Free books!
We've been accepted into SAMS Publishing's User Group program, and they kindly sent an enormous pile of books and other goodies a few days before the meeting. We've already had people borrow these books:- Teach Yourself Java in 21 days
- XQuery
- Java APIs for XML
SAMS are also offering a 30% discount on their Teach Yourself x in 21 days series, give us a shout if you'd like one of the vouchers!
October: guest speakers
Update 22 Oct 2003: See you tonight!Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.
- Wednesday, October 22nd. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub (map) (pub info) - function room
- Why Java?
- Evolution of Java on Symbian OS
- A look into the future
- Examples of Java in action
- the problem: mapping complex Java Objects to Relational databases
- the solution: JDO
- an implementation: LiDO
Martin de Jode (symbian.com) Symbian and JavaThrough our friends at symbiandiaries.com we have arranged for Martin to talk about: | |
Alastair Armstrong (LIBeLIS.com) Java Data Objects | |
Malcolm Sparks - CancelledUpdate 15 Oct 2003: Sadly, Malcolm has had to cancel his talk: we are still hoping he will be able to speak at a future meeting! |
September: first meeting
Update 11 Sep 2003: Confirmed venue.The first public meeting: all are welcome to attend.
- Wednesday, September 17th. 7pm
- Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub
- This will be an informal social evening to meet, chat, and drink with other Java programmers in the area.
August: first open organizational meeting
The first open organizational meeting. This will focus on running the Java Users Group, however anyone is welcome to attend.- Wednesday, August 20th. 7pm
- Head of Steam (Lime Street Station)
Update 29 Jul 2003: Added Head of Steam as the meeting location.