that’s great…

next…

Tonight I start my first GigaSpaces project. It’s been on my mind since last November, and it’s been building steam. Why do I need a JavaSpaces/OpenSpaces framework? This project is supposed to be for a larger user base (500+ to start), and based on my academic distributed computing experience, and the excellent posts on highscalability.com, I know I need to upgrade some of my current 3rd party libraries. For performance reasons, of course.

So, I’m going with Spring-2.5.3 for my AOP and DI needs; easy choice. Hibernate-3.2.6 for ORM (I’m staving off JPA, for as long as I can!). MySql-5.0 for database. The UI… Well, I haven’t decided. I know I have to start moving away from WebWork-2. This isn’t up for debate. But I’m torn between moving to Struts-2 (familiarity) or JSF (component-based). I read this FAQ entry for the differences between Struts-2 and JSF.

Ehh… here’s to new things: I’m going with JSF. I’ll take a serious look at Seam and MyFaces.

*****

Update: After some discussion, and further research, I’ve decided to hold off on using JSF. Since it’s a fairly mature, event-based API, I definitely see myself using it in the near future. However, since scalability is the currently highest priority, I’m compelled to go with Struts-2. This also allows me to upgrade all my existing WebWork-2 projects…

No Country for Old Men

For a long time, I thought 2005’s Crash was simply one of the best modern films made. It was a reasonable story, with a a cast of imperfect characters. It was just good. I felt Syriana and The Kingdom did well in educating viewers (who may not have been aware) of the true costs of oil. OK, well No Country for Old Men has joined that short list for me. So many themes, and facets packed into just a few hours. IMDB tells me it won 4 Oscars, and 83 other awards. Not to mention the 36 other nominations. I saw exactly why.

The cinematography was perfect, with beautiful shots of wilderness. The film didn’t flinch at night shots, which many films fail at. The lack of music was a plus - forcing me to wait on the next possible break in silence. More or less, it forced you to actually live in the moment. As to say, even in war, your moments are filled with waiting… waiting for the actual act.

As for the cast, I have never seen such a succinct and disturbing portryal of true psychopath in a long time. Anton Shigur’s (said psychopath) every step is based simply on the concept that fate has brought him to make that step. Making his madness something very… special? A truly amoral being. Killing as the result of a coin toss… or in fact, not killing based on the same toss. The odd thing is even to the end, it seems as if he is right (you’ll see). It caused me to look at almost every moment of the movie, thinking, “Wow, what if?” For example, look to the beginning of the movie: What if Llewellyn didn’t go back the give the dying man water?

Some how, in all of the violence, and death, there were spots of true comedy. How this was done, who knows. I don’t know if that was in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, or the Coen brothers added it. But either way, genius. To some extent, this reminded me of the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Except none of main characters ever really share a scene. Another facet that made the film even better. Even if this movie was just half as good as McCarthy’s novel, he’s clearly in the upper echelon.

caucho’s got a facelift

You may, or may not know that I’m still a Resin user. Hence, every now and then I hit the Caucho site for documentation, mailing list archives, etc. Well today I decided to do just that; it had been at least a month since my last visit. I was pleased to see and cleaner and brighter interface, and even a blog. I’m taking this to mean there’s some new life in the Caucho’s/Resin’s development group (or at least their marketing). I for one am happy to see it!