My shared clips from Google Reader

A couple of weeks ago, I switched from Opera to Google Reader as my primary RSS reader. So far I am very happy, and I have also created a public feed where I post entries from the feeds I subscribe to that I find particularily interesting.

You can view the page in HTML form here, or you can add
this URL to your RSS reader.

I find this a very quick and convenient way to share and tag the things like, and if you have a similar feed, slip me a note so I can see what you like.

Clever One from butunclebob.com: Part 1

As it turns out, pretty much everything I write about can be considered a series of some sort. Here is the latest one: Clever one from butunclebob.com. It will cover blog entries from butunclebob.com that I find very good.

The first entry is an article; The Craftsman 49: Brown Bag VI: Abstract Factory. It appears to be a discussion of the Abstract Factory pattern, but as it turns out in the end the message Robert Martin is conveying is something different. Read it, it's quite good!

Craftsman49BrownBagVI.pdf

Usefull Eclipse plugins: Part 1

You regular readers out there may have noticed I just started a series I called Usefull Firefox plugins. Well, today I'm starting another series I'm calling Usefull Eclipse plugins. Unsurprisingly, I will cover Eclipse plugins I find usefull in my day to day work.

The first plugin to hit the fan is the Simian UI. You can find it at http://www.integility.com/simian_ui. I'm actually starting at an odd end of my plugin list here. I don't find myself using Simian UI all the time, but when I need it it's certainly handy.

So far in my career, I have been so fortunate to work on several legacy code bases. Legacy code bases provide a special kind of challenge as they often lack unit tests and documentation, and is littered with duplicated code, all of which make the code hard to work with. Simian UI help with the latter problem; identifying duplicated code. It integrates nicely with Eclipse and highlights areas of code that have been duplicated elsewhere. An invaluable tool for getting an overview and for refactoring.

Thats all for now. Stay tuned for more Usefull Eclipse plugins. Part 2 will cover a plugin for synchronizing folders, and why on earth you would need such functionality.

Usefull Firefox plugins: Part 1

Welcome to the first post in a series about plugins to Firefox I find useful in my day to day work. I have been using Firefox more and more recently, and I'm starting to explore the vast repository of plugins available.

The first plugin I present is the ColorZilla plugin by Alex Sirota. It is a color chooser, that lets you pick any pixel on any webpage and see the hex and rgb codes for that pixel. Very simple, but very useful.

You can find it at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/271/

Stay tuned for more on this topic! Also, don't hesitate to drop me a comment with tips for future posts!