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Hello and welcome to the JSFCentral Podcast. This is a series of interviews, and today I'm here with Cagatay Civici, who is the project lead for the PrimeFaces Component Library for JSF. And you're also the cofounder of PrimeFaces Technology, right?
Yeah. Prime Technology.
Prime. Right. I always—for some reason, I always say it like PrimeFaces, Prime Tech—I'm sure you get that a lot.
Yeah. Not many people know about the company. It's just—usually it's PrimeFaces.
Right. Well, before we get started I just wanted to do a bit of a full disclosure. My consulting company, Virtua is a PrimeFaces partner. However, we also work with other component libraries, like ICEfaces and RichFaces, et cetera. But I just wanted people to be aware so no one complains later—"oh, you interviewed Cagatay because you're a partner"—and that's not why. We're having the interview because this is an important component suite for JSF. So, just so people know, you work with Prime Technologies, right?
So, tell us a little bit about your company.
The company was founded in 2008. We are a Turkish company. We have two offices: one in Istanbul, one in Ankara. Prime Technologies is currently the sponsor of the PrimeFaces project. We do consulting, software development, trainings and things like that. There are two areas that we are experts. One is regular JavaEE, and the other is Agile methodologies and extreme programming. We offer consulting trainings and regular services around these two topics. And we have the PrimeFaces product, which is open source Apache license, and we are currently the maintainer of the project.
The company is like 25 people right now. Five people currently work on PrimeFaces. I am the lead of PrimeFaces; it's my full-time job. And we have other people—it's mostly a consulting company, so we have various consultants—but we also have a dedicated team on PrimeFaces.
Are there a lot of external committers to PrimeFaces right now? Or is it mostly in-house?
As a policy, every committer should be an employee of Prime Technology.
Oh, interesting.
Just like the Spring model.
Right. Okay. So, how did the project start? Did the company start first and then the components sort of grew out of your work?
Yeah. We had been working with JSF since 2005 with JSF 1.0, which at the time wasn't very useable, but we had seen the potential of JSF, and we had started using it. We were using other libraries like RichFaces, ICEfaces; we have used them in different projects.
But in 2008, we decided to write our own stuff, which was Yahoo UI for JSF. And we started working on that, it was our first attempt to create a JSF component suite, but we failed after six months. Then, we learned some important lessons, and in November 2008, we decided to create a new product for the company. So Yahoo UI for JSF was like a regular hobby project, but it really helped us to get some experience.
And in 2008, we decided to write it from scratch and started PrimeFaces in November. I was living in the UK back then, and my partners were in Turkey, so we were working together. And we started the project like almost three years ago, and now we are here.
Wow. So, it's only been three years?
Yeah. If you check out the Google trends, then you can see that in 2009, it comes up, and it has recently become the most popular library in 2012.
Cool. Alright. So I wanted to mention one topic and sort of get it out of the way. I think it was this year or last year, there was a bit of a controversy with ICEfaces, ICEfaces 3.0, I believe. And the issue was that the release of ICEfaces included several components, which were heavily derived from PrimeFaces 2.x. And I think the ICEfaces—or the ICEsoft line on it was basically, they saw it as a quick way to wrap JQuery components at that time.
But I just thought I'd put the question out there and ask you have any additional words or anything you want to say about that controversy. I know there've been blog posts and everything.
Yeah. I mean, we have expressed on our opinions on two blog posts. And when ICEfaces 2.0, I think it…no, ICEfaces 3.0, ACE components, they call it—
When they came out, in our community forum in our Facebook room and Twitter, I saw messages like…people who are saying it really looks like PrimeFaces. I mean, CSS and JavaScript components.
So, when I checked them out, I saw that they were using JQuery UI. So, I said oh, they are using JQuery UI, so it is expected to look the same, right? So I checked the code and their code was…well, 75 percent the same. So before writing that blog post, we had just done some really detailed analysis, and it was at 75-80 percent the same code. The package names were renamed… "primefaces" was renamed to "com.ice" or something. So we did the blog posts and comparing to the panel components, which was just a nice example of copy/paste.
I mean, the whole thing…I'm not sure why they have done it. I wouldn't have done something like that. Actually, they approached us, like in 2010 or something, and said that they want sponsor PrimeFaces financially to incorporate some of their changes to PrimeFaces. And we didn't like the idea of getting sponsored by a competitor because we see ICEfaces as a direct competitor, just like other Faces libraries.
So, we said we are not going to do that, and they told us okay, that's fine. And then, after like six or eight months, they released ICEfaces ACE, which turned out to be a fork of PrimeFaces 2.0. So, that's when this whole controversy started; we have written this blog post announcing that it is the copy/paste of PrimeFaces 2.0. And we haven't…unfortunately, we haven't seen enough references…I mean, this is open source, of course, this is legal because it's an Apache license and our problem has never been legal.
We have never seen enough references…at least just put some text that it is—that the code has been forked from PrimeFaces 2.0. And after the blog post, they created two separate pages, one is a FAQ page and the other is—I think they detailed where their components originated from. And as you can see from their page, most of them originated from PrimeFaces.
They have also copied the bugs of PrimeFaces 2.0—when I checked their showcase, I saw the bugs of PrimeFaces 2.0, but they claim that the code has been improved. But I think that we have improved it a lot—over 1,000 changes and fixes—because the difference is huge between PrimeFaces 2.0 and 3.0. So, I am not sure why they've done it because—I mean, they wrapped JQuery UI, right? But they wrapped the code that wraps JQuery UI. So, they wrapped PrimeFaces, which in turn wrapped JQuery UI. By the way, as a side note, we are not using JQuery UI—we did just calendar right now for PrimeFaces 3.0, most of the stuff was written by ourselves with the plain native JQuery.
So again, the weird thing for me is that it is very easy to use third party JSF libraries. You can easily—with JSF components or if you are writing a regular component—you can just take the third party JSF library and wrap it. So, why would you wrap another library that wraps that third party? So, did you get my point?
Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying.
It's like two level of wrapping. So, the guys who've done it are JSF component vendors. So, I think that… vendor, if your product is providing JSF components, there should be some originality that… the source of the components, of course, can be third party, but it doesn't really make sense.
Yeah. I see what you're saying. And I can kind of see both sides to this. I think their argument is that—I think they're really just trying to save time because I think they thought some of—I guess they were thinking the process of the wrapping was pretty much a straightforward thing that they could save some time by sort of sidestepping that work. And I guess the other thing they did was they integrated the ACE derivative components into the ICEfaces Ajax framework, which works differently than PrimeFaces. So now, I think of them as being different components, right? Because now your PrimeFaces 3.0 components are very different than PrimeFaces 2.0 components. But yeah, it's sort of an interesting scenario there.
Yeah. I mean, again, what they have done doesn't make sense at all to me. If I would wrap a third party library to speed up the development time…we have done it in PrimeFaces 1.0 and 2.0 because the other libraries were well established, because PrimeFaces is like four years younger than other libraries. But again, wrapping another JSF component suite doesn't make sense. And they claim that they have improved it, which I actually have never seen because the bugs are still there, from PrimeFaces. And they are offering commercial support and things like that, they tried to get some customers, but they claim that they are contributing back to open source, which I don't buy.
Right. Alright. Well, we'll leave it there. And I think in the future, we'll try and get someone from ICEsoft back on here because we haven't recently done an interview with them.
Yeah. I've tried to reach them for like four months or something. I'm just sending emails, trying to get someone to discuss, but no one is answering.
Alright. Well, hopefully we'll get someone on the show eventually. That would be good.
Okay. So, one of the things you did mention was JQuery, right?
So, I just wanted to talk a little bit about that. I've been working a lot with it lately, it's a great library. But there's lots of different parts to it, right? So, obviously you still use it heavily, but can you explain how JQuery's involved in the PrimeFaces project?
Yeah. Actually, the thing started with Yahoo UI, and we were in PrimeFaces 1.0. It was based on Yahoo UI. So, every widget was a wrapper around the Yahoo UI library. And then, I guess it was…after 2010, I guess—I can't really remember the date…JQuery was becoming really popular, and we were really excited about—when we first integrated JQuery for our Ajax stuff in PrimeFaces. And we decided to keep the visual stuff with Yahoo and the core scripting with JQuery.
And then, JQuery started to take over PrimeFaces. One component by one. So, we realized that and the popularity…I mean, it's the de facto standard. It really makes our jobs easy, my life easy as a component developer. So we decided to drop the Yahoo UI stuff, and rewrite all of the Yahoo UI counterparts with JQuery. So, luckily we had JQuery UI, for example, we replaced the Yahoo UI dialogue with JQuery dialogue and things like that because they were similar components.
And still we were mostly wrapping third party libraries, which were JQuery UI, a bunch of JQuery plug-ins. So PrimeFaces was becoming a quickly evolving library, but it was kind of dirty because we have incorporated lots of different works from different people who do not know each other. And we were trying to make their work together work fine. So, we have started to face some problems—not some problems, but a lot of problems because these third party widgets are not designed for JSF. Most of the JavaScript libraries usually work with JSON or XML, and JSF just likes content, right? The components render HTML and things like that.
And there were some mismatches. And after that, we realized that by wrapping these third party libraries for over a year…all of a sudden we realized that we had gained the ability to write our own widgets, so it was kind of weird that all of a sudden, you realize that you gained some skill, which is writing your own widgets.
And that is one thing that I have changed. I believe things that have changed in PrimeFaces, that is why it is so popular right now because we write our own widgets. For example, if a customer or a community member or we want something from the widget, we can just edit. If you were using a third party library, that was probably not very easy and difficult, sometimes impossible.
That is one of the biggest advantages of JQuery, and right now we are just also leaning away from JQuery UI libraries or third party—anything visual. We are just trying to avoid that. And we are writing our stuff with plain JQuery. So, we are still using JQuery, but accessing elements and appending content or Ajax or things like that, or finding elements using JQuery selectors. But we are writing the visual stuff ourselves, of course adding CSS on top of it.
That brings me to another question. One of the things, which is a little different about PrimeFaces versus other component libraries is that the Ajax transport layer is actually done via JQuery instead of using the built-in JSF 2.0 Ajax. Can you explain why you made that decision?
We had some problems with the core implementation's Ajax updates or things like that. And we had to extend them in some places. For example, when we were testing f:ajax, for example, to update some components, the JSF implementation sometimes wasn't enough. So, sometimes it couldn't update the component, it got JavaScript errors. Of course, this was a time when we were migrating to JSF 2.0. So, of course, they are much more mature and easy right now, but also we have extended JSF—our own implementation, it's like custom Ajax behaviors and things like that.
So, that's one of the reasons that—of course, we are just using the same parameters. There's nothing different on the server side. We are just using JQuery to serialize the form and make the Ajax requests. When we compare JQuery's usage or performance tests with a JSF implementation, it is, of course, much more used and much better tested in cross-browsers and things like that.
So, everything is the same; the same parameters are sent and the same parameters are received. PrimeFaces is not doing anything on the server side to handle Ajax; just the script that makes the Ajax call is different.
But in regular JSF, for example, if you use f:ajax, the PrimeFaces Ajax Status component is triggered as well. Well, with the new release.
I didn't know that. Okay.
Yeah. We have just committed that yesterday. But there are many integration points that we hook into regular JSF implementation as well.
Okay. So, does that mean that you can use the f:ajax hooks with the…
Oh really? Cool. Alright. That's good to know.
Alright. Another sort of JQuery related topic is PrimeFaces Mobile. Do the Mobile components wrap JQuery widgets right now?
Yeah. They wrap JQuery Mobile. We have just done some research on this topic, to find out if we should just provide our own widgets or find a third party mobile platform and add some JSF magic on top of it.
So, we have decided that if we are going to write our own mobile stuff, it would be better to separate it and just offer it to everybody else, not for JSF users, like Prime Mobile or things like that.
But you realize that we are already using JQuery's stack, which is on PrimeFaces powered by JQuery. And when we did some initial tests with JQuery Mobile, it was very promising and still very active. So, we have decided to build a mobile render kit based on JQuery Mobile. So, for example, if you have a command button—p:command button—if you open that on a desktop browser, it just displays as a regular button. But on a mobile device, it is using JQuery's button CSS or things, so, that it displays in an optimized format.
So, we are using JQuery Mobile as a render kit.
Oh, interesting. Okay. Makes a lot of sense.
And so, in the showcase, PrimeFaces Mobile has a separate version number and everything. Is it a separate download or is it just included?
Yeah. It's a separate project, 0.9.3. There's a compatibility matrix, for example, this version works fine on PrimeFaces 3.3. So, to get PrimeFaces Mobile, it's a separate project, it has a separate user's guide, separate JAR, and everything.
Alright. Great. So, another sort of sub-project is PrimeFaces Push, right?
And I think it is—as of right now, and this is July 2010—I'm sorry, 2012. July, 2012—
We actually did a podcast in 2010, right?
Yeah. And as of right now, the Push feature for 3.3 works using Jetty and only worked with sockets,HTML5 Web Sockets, right? But I think you're making changes for future releases, right? So, want to talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up because that is a topic that I really want to talk about. Monday, we made a blog post introducing the new PrimeFaces Push, which is coming out in 3.4. The current Push before the prior Push framework is based on web sockets only, and there's just tons of limitations…it was just the proof of concept.
It works, but I mean, I have never seen someone using that in production. It's just for…like a fun module, but…
You know, I did see someone in the forums that… They had like Jetty running inside the web application, and I thought that was kind of cool.
Yeah. So, the problem with Push is there are lots of browsers, lots of containers. There is no Web Sockets API for Servlets. I think there's a JSR, right? But it's not standard. So, we have decided to make a change for 3.4, and we have decided to integrate Atmosphere in our framework.
So, we were actually the first adopters of Atmosphere back in 2010. Atmosphere was in 0.3, it was a new beginning for the project. But due to lack of documentation and some problems, and also, we couldn't get things right with the integration. We had some problems and we have decided to use plain web sockets in Jetty. That didn't work out very well.
So, we tried it twice but couldn't get it right. But the third time, we decided to get an expert, Jeanfrancois Arcand, who was the Atmosphere framework's founder, and a good friend as of now because we invited him to Istanbul on the beginning of July 2012.
So, he was very kind and he was available, luckily, and he accepted our invitation. He worked with us for one week. We had really a good time because he was a great guy, top-notch developer, and it was a pleasure to work with him. So…Atmosphere framework…there are various frameworks integrated with it. For example, RichFaces is also using Atmosphere, I think GWT is. Atmosphere has been used on various Web sites, including the Wall Street Journal or more—also, other Web sites.
So, Atmosphere just fixes the main problem of mismatch because we have lots of containers: Jetty, Tomcat, Glassfish, Web Logic, Web Sphere. Each has different web socket APIs, if they spent—it's like a proprietary. So, also IE doesn't support web sockets, Firefox sometimes behaves funny because they have more web socket options.
So, we needed a framework and Atmosphere handles this by bringing compatibility with a graceful degradation. For example, if the web sockets are not supported, it falls back to long polling or streaming or SSE, or other transport techniques. And it also handles…it's portable—whenever you deploy Atmosphere, it will choose the necessary APIs. For example, it can understand if it runs on Tomcat, JBoss, or Jetty. It just picks the right API to use, both on the server side and the client side. So, it will support scaling, you can use Hazelcast or other projects to scale your Push infrastructure, distribute your broadcasters and so on.
So, in short, Jeanfrancois is the architect of PrimeFaces Push. We have just taken care of the JSF part of the things. And he has written the PrimeFaces Push architecture. And he implemented that model. And we have just taken care of the JSF components stuff, and so on.
So we announced it on Monday, like, two days ago. We have added lots of new demos, like location base check-in sample, where you can get your location from Google Maps and send where you are to other subscribers. There's a nice chat sample, Twitter search streaming sample, you can Push Faces messages to everyone and things like that.
So, PrimeFaces Push runs on Atmosphere, on top of Atmosphere, and it provides integration with JSF because if you are going to use Atmosphere—because this is such an advanced topic—it is not easy. As Jeanfrancois said to me that it will always be Atmosphere with something. So, in our case it is Atmosphere, with JSF with PrimeFaces.
Oh, so it's uncommon for someone to just Atmosphere by itself is what you're saying.
Yeah. I mean, if you are using a framework, most of the frameworks have integration with Atmosphere. It's quick, and recently, it's becoming the de facto standard because it fixes one of the biggest problems of the JavaEE and Push, which is this mismatch. And usually, there's a framework available. Atmosphere has modules for GWT and Wicket and things...and PrimeFaces.
So, of course, you can do it. You can write an Atmosphere handler, you can use the JQuery plug-in of Atmosphere. But it will be easier if you're going to use PrimeFaces Push because it is integrated with the JSF programming model, because you can just push from a JSF action. So, for JSF users, it is much more comfortable to get started with Push and Atmosphere.
Right. So, that's coming in PrimeFaces 3.4. As of…what day is this recording…it's July 19th we're recording this. 3.3 is the most—3.31 is the most recent release. What's sort of the timeframe for 3.4?
Currently in maintenance state, no features. So, it's implementing...I mean, we have already implemented the requirements of the PRO users, committee users in our plans. So, we are just doing maintenance right now. I think it will take two weeks to finish the maintenance and bug fixes, and we will hopefully release by early August.
Okay. So, 3.4 is out sometime in early August. Are there any plans for 3.5 yet? Or is that still sort of being planned out?
Actually, we would like to focus on PrimeFaces Mobile after 3.4, because that was to bring production into Push, create new components, improve the library in general.
And now, we would like to focus more on PrimeFaces Mobile because we have lots of plans for Mobile, like lazy loading of views, improve resources, reduce band width. More Mobile components, for example, like calendar, because in Mobile environment the calendar doesn't display optimized and things like that.
So, I think after 3.4, we will focus on PrimeFaces Mobile and do a release. And then, continue with PrimeFaces 3.5. In the meantime, PrimeFaces will be in maintenance mode after 3.4, while Mobile is actively developed.
I see. Okay. Another area we didn't discuss yet was the PrimeFaces theming, right? So right now, with PrimeFaces you can create different themes using—what's it called? The JQuery ThemeRoller, is that what it's called?
Yeah. So, do you want to talk a bit about that?
It's one of my favorite features. So, we didn't have a skinning mechanism in PrimeFaces 2.1 or lower releases. Then, we had decided to integrate the JQuery ThemeRoller. ThemeRoller is like a generic theming framework, it defines, it separates structure—like paddings and margins—from skinning, which is colors. And it defines a series of skinning selectors like content, header, state selectors like active hover, and things like that.
So, we have decided to use ThemeRoller, and right now, we are developing new components and the components we have developed using these CSS classes. So, when we develop a new component, it is already integrated to themes. This is quite flexible because the components do not know about their colors. When we were working with other libraries, this was a major problem. For example, we had this panel component, and tried to change the background of the header. So, we had to find which panel class, like panel header, is providing that header color. But with ThemeRoller in PrimeFaces, users do not need to know about each of these component specific CSS classes because it's unnecessary, and because all these skinning classes are global. So, this is a major difference.
And we have this theme gallery; I think we have 35 themes right now and counting. People are also contributing their own themes. And it's quite easy and fun because you don't need to know CSS to create your own themes, you can just go to the ThemeRoller and design your own theme. I know people who designed their themes with their clients, so clients can see the colors instantly, and they don't need to know about CSS at all. They just need to download that theme from the visual designer, and create a PrimeFaces theme out of it, and that's it.
So, PrimeFaces Mobile also has—because JQuery Mobile also has—integration with ThemeRoller. So PrimeFaces Mobile also supports themes. More themes are coming up in the future. We had some idea of offering premium themes, like created by our Web designer, but it is on hold at the moment, and we will see how it will go. But it's one of my favorite features.
Yeah. And I agree. It does make it a lot easier when you have a certain set of CSS selectors that you know are going to work across the different components. If you create a new theme using ThemeRoller, do you have to create a separate one for the mobile stuff, or is it just the same theme?
I think it's different.
Okay. Okay. Interesting. One other thing that I forgot was in 3.4—I think you're adding better support for portal servers for portlets in 3.4?
Yeah. 3.4, we are trying on that because Neil Griffin, who is the lead of Liferay Faces. He was the lead of Portletfaces, and now after moving to Liferay, the project has been renamed to Liferay Faces. I know there are many people who are using PrimeFaces and Liferay, but we are trying to make their life easier, and we are in contact with Neil sometimes like—I guess, like last month we had a Skype talk with him to go over issues. And usually, he is kind enough to provide patches himself.
So, that is something we are trying to improve because on portlets, we have requirements or demands from the community asking for better portlet support. So for PrimeFaces, portlets are also important. So, that is an area we are working on. For PrimeFaces 3.0, for example, there were a couple of features like data export support for portlets, or running multiple PrimeFaces portlets on the same portal page. So, these are the two outstanding issues right now, which we are hoping to solve by 3.4. If not, we will solve them in a future release.
Have you had a lot of requests for people using PrimeFaces and portal servers other than Liferay?
Not really. Most of the time, Liferay.
Interesting. Okay. I do a lot of Liferay work, so I was just curious to see what else people are using out there.
Alright. So, you mentioned earlier that your PrimeFaces PRO users had added some features and everything. And I noticed in your blog sometimes you say okay, a PrimeFaces PRO user added or wanted this new component or something. So, can you tell us a little bit about your PrimeFaces PRO offering and what that is?
Okay. So, the PrimeFaces PRO is not a separate product; PrimeFaces has only one license, an Apache license, it's a free product. But in case companies need support, like enterprise commercial support, we call it PrimeFaces PRO. So, the people who subscribe to this service, they become PrimeFaces PRO users.
So, it has various advantages; for example, the PrimeFaces PRO user does not need to use the PrimeFaces community issue tracker to file a bug or feature requests. We have separate JIRA applications at pro.primefaces.org where we provide a username and password, and they can login to the system and create issues. And we respond, at most in one business day. It is usually like a couple of hours, our team responds to that. So, whenever they suffer from a bug or report a bug, we fix it as soon as possible.
For our feature requests, we tried to implement the requests in the next major release. So if you follow the PrimeFaces blog, most of the features of PrimeFaces 3.4 are requests of PrimeFaces PRO users. We also provide private branch management in case—for example, if a PRO user has an application in production and they don't want to upgrade to a newer version of PrimeFaces but need to get some fixes, we provide branches as well and backport fixes if we can.
There are an unlimited number of cases: remote desktop connection, we do code reviews, conference calls, and also offer non-PrimeFaces related JSF assistance. This is term based, three months, six, and one year. And it is hourly based, so whenever a PRO user subscribes, we provide support hours, like 20 hours and 30 hours. And they can, of course, purchase more hours if they need during their term.
So, this is—we currently have 25 PRO users, mostly organizations and corporate. So, the PrimeFaces PRO is quite important for the PrimeFaces project because it's the commercial side. And the good thing is that what PrimeFaces PRO users contribute to the project, the community also benefits from that, because everything done in PrimeFaces PRO is also available to the community for free.
Right. I think that's one of the good things about the Open Source model. Definitely.
So one of the things that often happens in projects is the developers want to use more than one component suite. And I know that for JSF 2.0, we tried to make it so that the component suites worked better together. Have you seen a lot of people using PrimeFaces and another component suite like RichFaces or something else?
I've actually never seen someone in our forum doing that.
Because I think they won't need other libraries. Because the ideal PrimeFaces is providing everything they need. So, I think they don't need any solution on other libraries that they don't see in PrimeFaces. It's usually the other way.
And you're saying usually there is some library they are using, and then they want to use PrimeFaces with it?
Yeah. Because I think—the problem could be JQuery because I think RichFaces also uses JQuery. So, if you have multiple JQuery…that could be a problem. In the past, with JSF 1.0, it was on the sever side problems with all these renderers, navigation handlers, Ajax blah blah handlers. But now, I think the problem with JSF 2.0 is on the client side. But I think it's quite easy to fix by just making sure only one JQuery is included. But again, for example, if RichFaces is using JQuery 1.7 and if PrimeFaces is using 1.8…there could be some compatibility problems. I think ICEfaces will work fine.
So, one of the component libraries that are out there that does work well out of the box with PrimeFaces is the PrimeFaces Extensions component library, which is a set of JSF components that are built sort of on top of the PrimeFaces infrastructure. So, can you tell me a little bit about that project and how it's related to the official PrimeFaces project?
Yeah. Sure. PrimeFaces Extensions is a community-driven project led by Oleg and Tomas, who also contribute to PrimeFaces a lot. And I think the Extensions projects have like more than 20 components. For example, in PrimeFaces, we have a BlockUI. In Extensions projects, there is also a BlockUI. So, there are also extended components, plus new components that you cannot find in PrimeFaces, like CodeMirror and things like that.
So, I think they are doing a great job, and I've seen more…the momentum is really great, for example, their forum is also inside the PrimeFaces forum. And we have direct links on primefaces.org, so it's the official Extensions project. And PrimeFaces Extensions project is also using PrimeFaces internal APIs, so those guys really know the internals of PrimeFaces really well.
And the releases are already scheduled, so whenever we do a PrimeFaces release, they do a release as well, just to make sure it's compatible.
So yeah, that's it. And PrimeFaces extensions, they have a showcase, and they have Mojarra and MyFaces showcases. Lots of cool stuff. And there are a couple of things they really do well…they really provide nice solutions.
Yeah. And I think that if you are using PrimeFaces, it's probably the first choice if you need…if there is some component that is missing…because you know it works well with PrimeFaces. They have a different strategy though, because they do wrap some JQuery widgets, right?
Because I've noticed, I've worked with a couple of their components and they sometimes were just wrapping JQuery. So, it's sort of a different strategy there.
Alright. So, I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes on sort of straight up JSF talk. JSF 2.2 is under development now and it's been at least a year, I think, we've been working on it. And there's several different features that are coming out; there's a multi-templating support, there's task flows, or sort of like Spring Web Flow sort of flows, and HTML 5.0 support. Is there anything in particular that you're excited about with JSF 2.2 or is there something that you want to make sure is going to be in there?
Yeah. I'm quite happy with the multi-templating and task flows. Also, page actions. And I think having HTML 5.0 stuff from my perspective, it's okay. But I mean, it's a bit late anyway because people can use HTML 5.0 stuff already with PrimeFaces, so it's not really vital. But of course, JSF itself should provide those out of the box.
One thing I would like to see is that whenever I compare JSF with other libraries, people would like to see it more lightweight. I think there are many people who would like to generate or program JSF using just Java, not with XHTML or things. So, that they would like to see generating of views done easily, like new HtmlInputText(). Like in Wicket or GWT. Because not everyone is a web developer, and I'm sure the people who like Wicket or GWT or other similar frameworks are—they have some server side background, not UI front end backgrounds.
So, I'm fine with the XHTMLs because I actually prefer separating views with the model. But I know there are people who would like to do it the other way. So, I will be happy if that's easier. I think Ed started the project—
Yeah. He did. It's called—I don't know, it's called Views or something. I don't remember.
I think he's right now he's busy with the spec. So, that's one part I would like to see in JSF.
Also, time is moving and people are trying new things, like using no server side framework at all. Like just using JQuery doing like web services calls, getting the data, because JAX-RS is quite easy with JQuery and you can bind your client site to a RESTful Web service and get the data and push the data, so there is no server side framework, or server side rendering at all. So, I wonder how that would fit in PrimeFaces because on 2.0 there were things, we are getting some requests like how can we bind a PrimeFaces component to a JAX-RS service or things like that.
I see.
For example, because most of the time, the web service will provide JSON or XML, and what PrimeFaces or JSF needs is some Java class or some content. So, that's something in PrimeFaces we will just work on, I'm not sure how that will resolve, like binding a PrimeFaces data table to a JAX-RS URL or something. But that's something I would like to see in JSF, more lightweight—I mean, it's architecturally different, but I wonder how that will play because I've seen a blog post recently comparing web frameworks and one of the criteria was using this external data sources and things like that, which JSF doesn't provide a built-in solution.
Yeah. I mean, I think there definitely is a segment that's really interested in that, you know? Not everyone has IE9 or the latest version of Firefox, but you can do a lot on a client, and so then, I think the question becomes, number one, how much of your development is going to be in JavaScript versus Java. And then, if you are just building a set of RESTful services, how can you consume those?
And I still think even if JSF has a lighter-weight model, I still see a lot of value in sort of being able to specify the components and their relationships on the server. And then, pushing those to the client and then, sort of being able to decide what things are client side and which things are server side. So, yeah. It will be interesting to see what happens with that.
Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is that we are already using that in PrimeFaces. For example, if we can do the same thing on the server side and the client side, we usually prefer doing that on the client side. Most of the markup on PrimeFaces can be generated on the client side, for example, if you take a SelectOneMenu or Autocomplete or various components that have overlays, where the dropdown displays an overlay or dialogues. We just generate the markup on the client side because it's much easier, of course—with JQuery, we just correct divs and spans and inputs, and appends and prepends, so we can do DOM relocation as well. And on the server side, of course, rendering things it will take some time. So, we are trying to do that more sort of things on the client side. This includes rendering as well.
So, JSF is getting there, but I'm not sure if JSF is a good fit for that. We will see. But of course, components libraries can do that, even if JSF core doesn't provide something.
Well, I think you're right. And I think also, it is pretty easy with PrimeFaces. You know, there's the RequestContext, you can send an object back. I've done some work before where we're sending JSON back and forth. So, you can certainly do it. And we've used that in some cases where it makes more sense to send JSON, and that's what we want.
Yeah. I think to sum up my perspective of JSF is it's really excellent for really rapid application development because I can really quickly come up with a great looking UI in an hour with PrimeFaces. So I can just create data tables—themes and skinning, filtering, sorting, paging—all these are built-in.
I worked with a project—I was using Spring MVC and plain JQuery—I think it was last year. It really took a lot of time to do some pagination—server side pagination and things like that—doing some Ajax. So, of course it has advantages, like stateless web applications. But JSF really adds a great value to wrapped application development. And this is why I think it's so popular, it's just easy to create nice looking UIs in no time.
Yeah. Definitely. And the integrated server side binding is always really nice.
Yeah. I mean, not many people are a fan of JSF...for example, when you see a blog somewhere saying that JSF is not a good framework or there are some better alternatives… And of course, it's not a silver bullet, but when I add the PrimeFaces community to other component libraries communities, regular Mojarra, MyFaces… There are lots of members in the JSF ecosystem, and if you just sum them all up, it will be a giant community. And it's just popular.
Yeah. I was going to say I don't think it's necessarily that a lot of people don't…that it's unpopular at all. It's just that there's—it's just that the distracters are very loud. And also, I think JSF does suffer a bit from the J2EE phenomenon where the first release wasn't so strong and got a lot of bad publicity. I think if JSF 2.0 were the first release, there'd be just a very small number of complaints.
That's right.
Alright. Well, I think that's about all the questions I had. Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Let me see. I had this FAQ page open on my screen, so trying to see if we had missed something. Maybe we can talk about browser support in case people are wondering, or…
Yeah. And I think that one of the number one features that a component framework provides is testing it in different browsers.
Most of our stuff works fine on WebKit—Safari, Chrome—and Firefox as well. We support Firefox starting from 3.6, which is like a really legacy Firefox. And we support Safari from legacy—I can't really remember the version right now. And Chrome as well. And the most important thing is IE, which is we support IE from 7, we don't support IE6, and luckily, we don't have anyone asking for IE6 support in the community.
Really? That's great.
Yeah. I was very surprised, but that's a good thing. And IE7, 8, 9 and 10, it will go like that. By supporting, I mean, if something breaks, we will fix it. But that's not the case with IE6.
Also, maybe I can just briefly talk about cloud support. We have a sample running on Google App Engine, and also, we have worked with the Jelastic guys and they have created a tutorial on how to deploy PrimeFaces applications to Jelastic cloud. And JSF and PrimeFaces support cloud applications as well, in case some listener is wondering about that.
So, to sum up, I have some small announcements for 3.4, which is we are missing support for Maven Central. We are trying—we will try to deploy PrimeFaces 3.4 to Maven Central, and we will try to get rid of our own custom repository so that PrimeFaces artifacts will be in Maven Central repository, and snapshots somewhere else.
Just out of curiosity, Cagatay, how do you get your artifact into Maven Central, what's the process?
I'm not an expert on that, but I think you need to create a JIRA ticket with your Open Source project references. And I think there's some—the documentation is pretty good, but it all starts with the JIRA ticket.
And PrimeFaces Extensions is also in Maven Central, so they were trying to convince us that PrimeFaces is up. And also, other users because they are using Nexus and other things, which in some corporations and companies, I think they do not allow some custom repositories, so everything should be in Maven Central. So, that's one of the reasons that we are trying to push, but it will take a couple of days, I guess, for us to go through that process because we are not very familiar with it.
So, I think that was it. Just again, to sum up, if you are following PrimeFaces, just join the community; we have a Facebook group, which is like 2,500 people. Community forum is there, if you need support, there are like more than 10,000 people there. Just follow PrimeFaces on Twitter. It is one of the most active projects regarding development. We usually do three, two or three posts every week, to demonstrate the new features. So if you are using PrimeFaces, these are the necessary steps in case you'd like to monitor the project, what's going on.
So socially PrimeFaces quite good. Also, I forgot to mention, PrimeFaces also has two native mobile applications. One is for Android, and one is for iPhone, which you can just download from the Android shop or app store. And you can just track PrimeFaces news and development from your mobile phone as well.
Oh really? I didn't know that.
It is really original, which you cannot find in other projects. We also created these movies as the trailers for the new versions, and new trailers coming up for 3.4. So, stay tuned for 3.4, that's all I'm going to say.
Okay. Alright, Cagatay, well, thank you very much.
Well, thank you Kito for having me.


text:
"Prison Break" star Wentworth Miller has a secret up his sleeve; he's been writing horror scripts on the sly! Using the nom de plume Ted Foulke, Miller is now shopping his scripts for "Stoker" and its prequel, "Uncle Charly". Both films have Fox Searchlight as well as Jodie Foster interested.
Behind the scenes footage of "Scream IV" is starting to arrive online! Though the pictures don't show much as far as details, we can at least deduce that yes, this is actually happening.
Sam Raimi is going to further test his comic adaptation skillz by signing on to direct Radical Comics "Earp", a futuristic tale of the O.K. Corral gunfight.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
On Sunday, February 8th and Monday, March 1, the Makeup Show will be at the California Market Center from 9 am to 6 pm each day.
There will be hands-on workshops with artists such as Ve Neill, Jon Hennessey, Kathy Aragon, James Vincent, Orlando Santiago, Myles O'Reiley, Christina Farrell, and more.
Visit The Makeup Show online for more information. Meanwhile, I'll be wishing I had the foresight to plan a trip to LA at the end of February! No worries, beauties - I'll be covering the Makeup Show in NYC this spring.


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Southern Copperhead, Copperhead, Highland Moccasin, Chunkhead
Scientific name:
Agkistrodon contortrix contortrix (LINNAEUS 1766)
* Currently accepted name
* scientific names used through time
- Boa contortrix – LINNAEUS 1766
- Agkistrodon contortrix – BAIRD & GIRARD 1853
- Ancistrodon contortrix – BAIRD 1854
- Trigonocephalus contortrix – DUMÉRIL & BIBRON 1854
- Cenchris atrofuscus – THEOBALD 1868
- Agkistrodon contortrix contortrix – GLOYD & CONANT 1990
Average adult size is 22-36 inches (56-91 cm), record is 53 inches (135 cm). A stout-bodied snake with broad, light brown to gray crossbands, alternating with dark brown to reddish-brown crossbands. Constrictions along the backbone give the dark bands an hourglass shape. On the sides of the body the dark bands usually have light centers, and occasionally one dark spot. Southern copperheads sometimes have an overall pinkish tint. The scales are keeled. The top of head in front of the eyes is covered with large plate-like scales. The pupil is elliptical, a catlike vertical slit. There is a deep facial pit between the nostril and the eye. Juvenile color is similar to that of adults, except that the tail of new born copperheads is bright sulfur yellow.
A. Top of the head (notice the large plate-like scales on the top of the head)
B. Underside of the head (chin and throat)
C. Front (face view) of the head
D. Side of the head (notice the facial pit between the eye and the nostril)
E. Keeled Scales
In Florida, this snake occurs only in the panhandle, primarily along the Apalachicola River and its tributaries, and then in the western tip of the panhandle. The FLMNH has specimens in its collections from Jackson, Calhoun, Gulf, Gadsden, Liberty, Leon, and Escambia counties. The range might extend to other nearby areas, but there are no confirmed records from other Florida counties. Outside Florida, the species ranges north to Massachusetts, and west to Texas and southeastern Nebraska.
The preferred habitat is low, wet areas around swamps, stream beds, river bottoms, and damp ravines, but it also occurs on the hillsides above the wet areas. It also is found in suburban neighborhoods near people.
VENOMOUS: Copperhead bites are extremely painful but usually are not life-threatening for healthy adults. They can be dangerous to children or older citizens in poor health. As with all venomous snakebites, the victim should seek immediate medical care from a physician or hospital experienced in treating snakebite. Juvenile copperheads have a bright, sulfur yellow-colored tail which they hold erect and wiggle like a caterpillar to lure prey to within striking range.
Comparison with other species:
This beautiful snake is often confused with juvenile cottonmouths. If you find one in Florida outside the Apalachicola River valley or the extreme western end of the panhandle, chances are you have a young cottonmouth and not a copperhead.
The two species are easy to distinguish because the dark bars on juvenile cottonmouths have numerous dark spots and speckles in them, while the dark bars on the copperhead have no dark spots or at most only one. Also, the eye of the copperhead is not obscured by the dark facial band typical of the cottonmouth.


text:
I have an exchange 5.5 server running.I can receive emails
through my exchange but when a client tries to send any mail
using smtp it gets sent back to the sender. Internal email
is handled with no problem just any mail ouside of the LAN
is where i cannot figure this out. I have IMS installed but
am not sure how to set it up. My mail and smpt server is the
same. Do i have to run DNS on my server and create a MX and A
If anyone has any examples use
mydomain.com as an example to give me an idea..Thanks


text:
Home » CareerBuilder » Entry level jobs
Most Recent Flipbooks
Case Study-How Humana transformed its hiring strategy with data
5 ways to be a more strategic recruiter in 2020
6 ways successful employers use data to hire - CareerBuilder
Truck Driver Jobs
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Virtual Interview Best Practices by CareerBuilder
Practice Interview Questions by CareerBuilder
Dress for Success - Tips from CareerBuilder
Critical Thinking for Job Seekers from CareerBuilder
Cover Letter Tips from CareerBuilder
CareerBuilder Job Seeker Tool FAQs
Hiring essential healthcare workers quickly (case study)
5 tips for recruiting with social media checklist
3 strategies to reduce staffing turnover in 2020
Turnover in the staffing industry is all too common. With 1 in 4 front line employees projected to leave their current firm in 2020, investing in your team is vital.
5 technology roadblocks that harm your ability to hire [checklist]
Here are 5 of the most common talent acquisition pain points that today's recruiters face—and what to look for when choosing a technology solution to help address them.


text:
VICTORIA — Vancouver radio station CFOX has hired Justin (Drex) Wilcomes, the Vancouver Island host who was fired after he asked Premier Christy Clark a sexually charged question on the air.
"I think it's unfortunate that a talented guy is out of a job and I had the ability to bring him over here," CFOX senior program director Chris Duncombe said Friday.
"He's available. He's a talented guy and we're always looking for creative talented people on the Fox."
In December, Wilcomes then a host on Comox Valley rock station JetFM, asked Clark what it's like to be a MILF — a vulgar acronym used to describe an attractive mother.
Clark responded saying she'd rather be a MILF than a cougar.
Wilcomes was subsequently let go from his job.
On Friday, Duncombe said Wilcomes will work on air at CFOX starting Monday, working overnight and on weekends. He added he did not see an issue with the controversial interview.
"I think that if you listen to that clip the premier certainly felt that it was appropriate to comment on it so I don't think there was any issue on it from how I would judge it," he said.


text:
Pakistan coach hails 'incredible' South Africa
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Pakistan coach Dav Whatmore hailed an "incredible" performance by South Africa's pace attack after his team were bundled out for a record low of 49 on the second day of the first Test at the Wanderers.
"I've never seen two hours of relentless, incredible pace bowling such as I have witnessed today," said Whatmore.
Dale Steyn was the main destroyer, taking six for eight in 8.1 overs as Pakistan slipped below their previous lowest total of 53 against Australia in Sharjah in 2002/03.
South Africa did not enforce the follow on and took command of the match, posting 207 for three in their second innings to take an overall lead of 411 into the third day.
Captain Graeme Smith (52), Hashim Amla (50 not out) and AB de Villiers (63 not out) hit half-centuries.
"Most of our batsmen got out to terrific balls," said Whatmore. "I'm very disappointed with the result but you really need to give credit to the opposition. It wasn't an easy wicket by any means but the way they bowled was incredible."
Steyn said a pep talk by Smith before play had fired up the South African players, who had been bowled out for 253 on the first day.
"Graeme sat the guys down. We don't often have these conversations. He just felt the need to sit us down for two minutes and mention to us that he wanted a hundred percent day today and he didn't feel we gave it yesterday," said Steyn.
"He felt that if we gave a hundred percent we could dominate."
It was another triumph for South Africa's battery of fast bowlers and the third time in less than two seasons that the world's number one Test team had bowled out opponents for fewer than 50.
Australia were routed out for 47 in 2011/12 and New Zealand were dismissed for 45 earlier this season. Both matches were in Cape Town.
DeVilliers equalled the South African wicketkeeping record by holding six catches and there were three catches in the slips as the Pakistan batsmen failed to cope with top quality bowling on a pitch with steep and sometimes variable bounce as well as some sideways movement.
Whatmore said that although Pakistan had bowled out South Africa relatively cheaply he knew that it would be a difficult day for his team.
"Personally I thought (South Africa's) 253 was not a bad score given the conditions of that pitch and knowing what the South African bowlers can do," he said.
Vernon Philander took two for 16 and Jacques Kallis two for 11.
Azhar Ali (13) and captain Misbah-ul-Haq (12) were the only Pakistan batsmen to reach double figures.
Steyn was outstanding, bowling at high pace and making the ball move away disconcertingly from the right-handed batsmen.
He started Pakistan's collapse by taking three wickets in 14 balls at the start of the day and followed up with three more in 12 deliveries to wrap up the innings soon after lunch.
Asked whether he thought the pitch was too difficult for the second day of a Test match, Whatmore responded: "It looked that."
Steyn struck with his fifth ball of the day after Pakistan resumed at six for no wicket, having Mohammad Hafeez caught behind for six, edging an out-swinger.
In his next over Steyn trapped new cap Nasir Jamshed leg before wicket when the left-hander went back on his stumps against a full delivery.
Jamshed, who had survived in the previous over when Philander unsuccessfully sought a review of umpire Bruce Oxenford's not out decision, was himself the victim of a failed review after being given out by umpire Billy Bowden.
Five balls later Steyn claimed the key wicket of Younis Khan, caught at first slip when he edged a perfect out-swinger.
Azhar Ali and Misbah-ul-Haq survived for more than an hour before Kallis claimed two wickets in three balls, having both batsmen caught behind.
Misbah was given out on review after Bowden turned down an appeal, although "hot spot" evidence showed only the faintest, momentary touch.
Whatmore said the review decisions were "part and parcel" of the game.
"I'm not going to comment on that. Any comments will be done in the right channels," he said.


text:
go to ebay and take a look at LED power supplies. There should be about a thousand or so. Here's the link for the first one I found:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Led-Driver-6-12x2W-Inside-Driver-Power-Supply-for-E27-GU10-Led-Light-Lamp-2pcs-/110982585621?pt=Lamps_US&hash=item19d713dd15And, that was just a basic search. Alibaba, sourcingmap, etc have many, many of these at prices that made my jaw drop. I have two that I bought (quantity 1) for 3.95 free shipping. If I bought ten of them and redeemed the coupon I got I would have gotten them for about .80 cents each (still free shipping).
The ones I have supply a constant 350ma until the load resistance drops enough to cause it to shut down. On the high side, they max out at a little over 11V and don't go any higher. Carefully hooking it to the VIN on an arduino (UNO), they seem to work fine. The problems may come when the combination of arduino and other devices need more than the 350ma and the thing shuts down.
I haven't seen wall warts or small power supplies that were made anywhere else.
Has anyone else noticed that there are a ton of constant current power supplies out there for extremely low prices that are very small and quite powerful? I've got a couple I'm experimenting with that supply 6-11 volts at 350ma. I take it that that means they go as low as 6V and as high as 11V trying to supply 350ma to a fancy led or string of leds.Well, why can't we hook one of those up to an arduino and have it run just fine. There's already a regulator on the arduino that will take the incoming voltage and hold it at 5V for the board, so it shouldn't matter that the CCPS (constant current power supply, I just made that up) is varying its voltage as the current load changes.Right??? Thoughts.
The little transformers provide ("are supposed to provide") as much isolation as the traditional large "step down transformer." They can be smaller because they operate at a much higher frequency. You can think of a switch-mode power supply as modulating the high-voltage side of the supply so that the frequency and waveform are varied in a way that causes them to provide exactly the right amount of power needed by the load.


text:
Mission Statement
The mission of the College of Arts and Sciences Office of Diversity and Community Engagement (DCE) is to support the College in its efforts to transform the teaching, learning, and working environment into one of full inclusion and equity for all, to promote and advance the value of global citizenship, and to develop and sustain engagement programs that empower the community and build knowledge while integrating scholarship with real life experience.
To this end, DCE coordinates faculty-led study abroad programs and facilitates faculty and student international exchanges, joint research and joint publications. We offer programs, workshops, and seminars aimed at increasing cultural competency and developing a campus climate that respects the full range of human diversity. We collaborate with community organizations to identify areas of need that can be addressed with the support of human and financial resources from the College of Arts and Sciences with particular focus on linking students, faculty, and staff as respectful partners in community development efforts.


text:
Serious Reads: Smart Chefs Stay Slim, by Alison Adato
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.
"Life is meals."
This is the powerful, simple message that Alison Adato leaves the reader with at the end of Smart Chefs Stay Slim: Lessons in Eating and Living from America's Best Chefs. The book discusses how men and women who are surrounded by food all day—whose jobs necessitate them to taste in excess of 4,000, 6,000, or even 10,000 calories a day—are able to maintain healthy lifestyles and a trim waistline. The book generally has a healthy outlook on proper eating: you should appreciate your food, don't deprive yourself, and embrace the many important meals that make up your life.
The book is organized into 92 lessons, each of which provides a tip or trick for eating better. Most tips have to do with the lifestyles of chefs themselves: "Smart chefs eat oatmeal;" "They have a routine;" even "They eat roast chicken." For her book, Adato interviewed 39 famous chefs and food celebrities, from Michael Psilakis to Joe Bastianich to Alex Guarnaschelli. She integrates the insights of all of these chefs into nicely-organized chapters based around how to eat. She is able to seamlessly wind together the thoughts and opinions of chefs who cook all types of cuisine and are of all shapes and sizes.
Indeed, the one uniting factor among these chefs is that all of them have struggled with their weight at some point—and have also succeeded in shedding those pounds. Adato emphasizes that she made a point not to interview twenty-something chefs whose metabolisms would allow them to stay trim no matter how many chocolate cake tastings they had to endure. Instead, she opted for slightly older and more experienced chefs whose insights into health and dieting come from true experience.
By and large, these chefs are not judgmental or prescriptive about diet—most of their philosophies can be summed up into some combination of exercising moderately, enjoying small portions of satisfying food, and allowing indulgences. There are some, like Joe Bastianich or Nate Appleman, who use extreme exercise as a means of controlling their weights. But most of these chefs are normal folk who use the same dieting techniques that any non-marathoning person might.
Smart Chefs Stay Slim accomplishes its goal of sharing helpful tips for dieting and weight loss, and also provides many inspirational tales for dieters who might feel overwhelmed or exhausted by the thought of making significant eating changes. I was a little concerned that at no point does Adato really question the use of weight and trimness as measures of health and dietary success. It's an assumption throughout the book that being thin is every chef's (and every person's) ultimate health goal, and that this goal is appropriate for all of them. But at the same time, chefs of all ages, genders, and weights are represented and each bring a different perspective on dieting. This book was encouraging and optimistic—plus it includes lots of delicious and healthy recipes straight from the kitchens of internationally-renowned chefs.
About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work has also been featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


text:
This page exists within the Old ArtZone Wiki section of this site. Read the information presented on the linked page to better understand the significance of this fact.
Product: Jepe's Animated Water for Poser
Product Code: ps_ac2683b
DAZ Original: NO
Released: June 18, 2008
Visit our site for further technical support questions or concerns: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/support
Thank you and enjoy your new products!
DAZ Productions Technical Support
12637 South 265 West #300
Draper, UT 84020
Phone:(801) 495-1777


text:
I've a serious case of Blog-itus.
The kind that isn't good.
I get in front of this crazy computer and for-the-life-of-me have nothing to say.
For a wordy gal, this is very weird.
I feel dry. Not just on the blog, but a bit in life too.
I'm not down, nor depressed, not even think-y. Which may be part of the problem....
I haven't had much time for pondering, or crafting, or baking, or writing...all things that lend to thoughts worth sharing. All things I miss very much.
So carry on my friends....if you are still reading this neglected blog there may be a day when the fire of creativity is more than an ember.
Hope burns eternal.
Friday, May 27, 2011
A Touch of Itis
I've a serious case of Blog-itus.
Posted by Unknown at 8:17 AM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: about a lot of nothing
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Posted by Unknown at 8:46 AM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: summer 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
What Time Is It? SUMMERTIME!!
Today is the day.
The last day of school at the La Vida Academy.
Yesterday as the kids took their final exams I started to pick up my (teacher) desk and get curriculum put away.. it felt so good to close down the shop.
Tonight we have our last co-op class of the year. Then I will scoot out to the closing ceremonies for Girl Scouts.
This weekend is the piano recital and then the swim season begins on Monday.
My favorite time of year!
What plans do I have for the summer.
Well, I plan to spend a good chunk of time in my office/studio. My friend Becky and I are planning a Christmas in
July June sale. I have a ton of stuff I have made, and placed on a shelf. Crochet, fabric, jewelry, painting...its all going up for sale. And Becky, an amazing crafter and sewer (who is a lot more humble than I, and doesn't brag about her craftiness) will also be pawning her wares.
We plan to make it Open House style...with coffee, tea and cupcakes.
More details to come!
I would also really like to finish the quilt I started, as well as the afghan. Both are for my room. Both are at the halfway mark. I have a feeling the afghan may be a fall project. It's a little too cozy to sit under all that yarn right now.
While I am talking about blankets, I think I may have an obsession. I found this chenille blanket at an antique shop a couple weeks ago.
It's amazing. Beautiful. Nearly perfect.
I have no idea what to do with it.
Any ideas?
The Mister said it looks like an old-lady blanket... but I love it. I think....
Happy Wednesday!
Posted by Unknown at 8:11 AM 5 comments Links to this post
Labels: about a lot of nothing, summer
Monday, May 16, 2011
Bluebonnets and Tornados
This weekend I had the privilege to teach at a prayer retreat.
I hurried home with my two small children, praying the entire way. It occurred to me that the conditions perfect for painting the highways purple are the same conditions that turn the sky to black: a cool morning, a warm afternoon, a little humidity, a bit of wind.
...they both come in the spring.
In Texas, they almost always come together.
Last week, as I drove the highway of life, I saw splashes of color that made my heart sing, and I watched as friends dealt with storms that came upon them without warning - changing life as they've always known it to be.
I'm praying for them, for myself, to cling to God in times both good and bad, because He holds us in His hand.
He is all that is True.
He is bigger than life's storms.
He's the shelter in these storms.
Even so, my heart feels heavy...
Bluebonnets and Tornado's,
...wonderful and unpredictable...
...they always seem to come in spring.
Posted by Unknown at 3:01 PM 2 comments Links to this post
Monday, May 09, 2011
What I Did on My Mother's Day Weekend: An Essay (Of Sorts)
No phone. No TV. Just us chickens, and 72 hours of togetherness.
We were long overdue.
Thursday morning we threw the kids in the car and headed to Mt. Airy, or Mayberry if you will, to visit the home of Andy Griffith.
As you can see in the picture above we immediately took our kids to the Mayberry jail - to show them what would happen should they choose a life of crime.
Unfortunately, the plan backfired....
Happy Mother's Day!
Just down the street from the old Mayberry Jail is an emporium and antique mall.
My kids L-O-V-E antique malls. Which is sort of funny, but it works for us. Last year at this time we took them to an amusement park and they both said they liked it but probably wouldn't want to go back. Which is just as well. Antique stores are cheaper...usually.
The only hard part about antiquing is that The Mister and I couldn't believe some of the wares were truly antique shop worthy. You know, things like 8-track tapes and vinyl records.
The next picture is one of my husband having a "teachable moment" with the kids.
As we set that record down and walked away The Girl asked, "Did you even have TV's when you were my age?"
Rotten kids.
|She LOVED all these old couches.
We also ran into the Barefoot Prophet. He was very nice and gave us great directions to the Post Office and told us that he had gone without shoes for 18 years. He said, "I'm known around here as the Barefoot Prophet. Do you take the internet? Cuz I'm on the YouTube. Just punch in 'The Barefoot Prophet" and you will see me there."
He was a very nice man. Wish I had taken his picture.
River Rhys Cabin, where I promptly put on a pot of coffee and set down for a spell.
It was a lovely little cabin with a warm and homey kitchen.
Two at the front door....
When I grew tired of sitting on the front porch...I sat on the back.
|(The vista was nice to look at too.)
Posted by Unknown at 10:07 AM 6 comments Links to this post
Labels: family, Mother's Day, North Carolina, vacations
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Deep Thoughts from the Dentist's Office
Hey all - this post was hastily written this morning...Its been a busy week, and its certain to get busier, so I'm going to post, lest I lose the last of my lingering readers. xoxo
The good news is that they now have wi-fi!
My head is spinning with all the activity of last weekend. The Girl and I started with a Royal Wedding and then I shipped both babes out for a weekend of camps and fishing.
I have to admit that while I enjoyed time alone with The Mister, I suddenly realized we've come to the time we knew would come -- its just come too soon.
Who knew a decade ago, when I would have begged for a weekend sans kids, that there would come a day when having both kids gone for 48 hours would cause such heartburn.
The Mister and I were awesomely aware that this course of raising children is quickly running short. What seems like a marathon when the hospital-nurse hands you a bundle and sends you on your way is a sprint. Don't even try to catch your breath.
It's going too fast. I don't like it at all.
I guess I don't mind sitting in this waiting room as much as I thought. Because it means I've got kids in my nest and under my wing. Not to mention emptying my pocketbook.
I get asked (a lot) if spending all my time with the kids drives me crazy. "How can you homeschool and be with them all day long?" they ask...
The truth is we do have a lot of quantity time around these woods - and it isn't always peaches and cream. But quality is born of quantity...and even I'm surprised to realize I'm selfish enough to still want more.
I've only been a parent for 13 years. I'm still learning, but I know enough to understand I'm working myself out of a job.
As I enjoyed the blessing of an uninterrupted weekend with The Mister, I could easily see that soon it will be just him and me - every night a date night should we choose...and realized I don't regret one second of time spent with these kids.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Posted by Unknown at 10:24 PM 5 comments Links to this post
Labels: parenting


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Through the years of collecting and working with vinyl, I've always been enchanted with attractive, forward-thinking album artwork and design. I can still say that to this day I will still buy a record because of its stunning artwork, without regard for the content. These records are wonderfully tactile, touchable things with graphic design that stands out, screams out to be held and admired, displayed or even framed, in addition to being nurtured in one's carefully curated collection.
In 2012, Amoeba bought a record collection in New York (it's here) that contained some absolute gems of 1950's record cover design on 10-inch Long Play (LP) discs.. I stashed some of the most interesting designs as I went through the collection for us to peruse here. Conceived shortly after the 7-inch Extra Play (EP) era, these covers virtually attack one's visual senses, created in such a way by these labels as to literally command a person to pick the thing up! Imagine a record store back then displaying these gems next to a rather austere Perry Como record!
Never have I encountered more captivating packaging than these 10-inch "Long Players" from eastern Europe, mostly on the Supraphon (Czech) or Melodiya (Russia) labels. The paper quality feels absolutely sublime on the fingers, and some of these covers are actually stitched together! Just holding these records sends me back in time to my Czech brothers-in-music! These are true mid-century iconic designs.


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I have received several emails regarding the right order to apply skin care products especially regarding prescription topicals and here are information from two sources I have gathered.
The first, is from the book "Your Future Face" by Dr Dennis Gross, who is a dermatologist as well as the founder of the M.D. Skincare product line. According to Dr Gross, one of the keys to maximizing the benefits of any product in our daily skincare regimen is to apply products with a thinner consistency before the thicker more creamy ones, no matter what their active ingredients are. This is because products with heavy consistencies can block lighter-weight ones from penetrating the skin and doing their job.
This view is also echoed by Dr. Jeannette Graf, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at New York University School of Medicine according to this useful how-to guide on what comes first: eye cream or moisturizer at Total Beauty.
Day skincare regimen
Hence, after cleansing your face in the day, you should be applying your toner, followed by any prescription topicals, then serums or gels before you apply your moisturizer in the form of lotions which are usually milky in texture to lock in benefits from the other products and boost their efficacy. After which, you can apply your sunscreen followed by your makeup primer or foundation.
The exception is when you use a chemical sunscreen which absorb UV rays and neutralize them in the skin tissues, and hence they should go on clean, bare skin first because in order to be effective, it must interact with our skin cells. (see my entry Tips on sunscreen protection & application for more details.)
Night skincare regimen
In the night, the same order is true but your moisturizer could be in the form of a cream and you would of course omit your sunscreen and makeup. Also, I've read that if you're applying bleaching creams in the night, it is best to apply at least an hour before bed so that the cream won't slide into your eyes when your face presses against the pillow.
Dry or damp skin
While I have written earlier that both moisturizer and serum should be applied to toner damp skin to seal in the hydrating benefits from the toner deep into the skin but if you're applying prescription topicals, then you should wait for your toner to dry before you apply the topicals on your cool, clean and dry skin, to enhance their penetration as well as decrease any chances of irritation.
Another highlight is that if your face is red for some reasons after showering or cleansing, it is best to apply any products to your skin only after the redness has subsided and calmness has been restored.


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Our children do not receive a regular allowance, but do earn money in a variety of ways. (More on that another time.) In addition to earning money, they are very blessed to be recipients of cash gifts for birthdays and Christmas. As I mentioned the other day, Ray and I have taught them how to shop smart and save more. Although we encourage them to save for the big things, sometimes the kiddos' urge for that book or pack of gum overtake their will to save, adding to the need to teach them about the valuable financial concepts of creating some financial goals, albeit pretty basic at their age.
We've attempted to teach these valuable lessons in a variety of ways. We adopted the envelope system for a time, placing a bit of money in three different envelopes – one for saving, one for spending, and yet another for giving. Then the twins opened "accounts" at The Bank of Mom and Dad, in which they placed all of the money they desired to save, while handling the spending and giving portions themselves. Now the younger kiddos are discovering ways to earn some extra cash and we are beginning to teach them how to properly handle their money.
Teaching these concepts and putting them in to practice at an early age will prepare my kiddos for their future. Did you know kids get an average of $25,000 in gifts and cash from 0-18? Yet most children have a net worth of zero when they leave home. With Christmas just around the corner, it's time to try a new way to set some financial goals for my kiddos, as I'm sure their school breaks will bring many opportunities to earn some money and gifts will most likely include some amount of cash. We found a great site called Kidworth that is designed to help kids of all ages learn financial goal setting so they can succeed financially. More accurately, it found us!
Kidworth is a free tool designed to teach kids financial goal setting. With the holidays fast approaching it's a great time to set up a Kidworth account. You would set up the account and together you and your kids could enter some goals. Whether they'd like to save up for guitar lessons or a donation to the local animal shelter, Kidworth can help them achieve their dreams this holiday season, and you won't have to deal with so much stuff.
We've signed up for Kidworth and have given our children the best gift of all – financial responsibility. How about you – How do you teach your kiddos about financial responsibility?
This post was sponsored by Kidworth. All thoughts and opinions are my own.


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MLB: New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox rivalry heats up in Florida
FORT MYERS, Fla. >> Opening day at Yankee Stadium figures to be a lot different than the first meeting of the season between New York and the Boston Red Sox.
With Brett Gardner the only regular in the Yankees' starting lineup, New York beat Boston 5-2 Sunday in the first of their two spring training matchups.
Red Sox starter Ryan Dempster threw 25 of 28 pitches for strikes, allowing his only hit in three scoreless innings when Gardner reached on a single to shortstop starting the game. The rivalry is a new experience for Dempster, who signed a $26.5 million, two-year contract.
"It's super-intriguing," he said. "I've always enjoyed it from afar, being a baseball fan. So I'm sure we'll have lots of good games against each other. I know that that rivalry is different than pretty much any rivalry in baseball and one of the best rivalries in all of sports. So it probably makes for a little more excitement."
Boston's Mike Napoli, in just his second spring training game after being diagnosed with avascular necrosis during the offseason, homered off Adam Warren leading off the second.
New York took a 3-1 lead in the sixth off new Boston closer Joel Hanrahan, who allowed Eduardo Nunez's run-scoring single and Jayson Nix's RBI grounder. Another run scored on a fielding error by third baseman Drew Sutton.
"I thought he threw the ball very well," Red Sox manager John Farrell said. "Put the ball on the ground. A couple of plays extended the inning for him but otherwise that would have been a clean inning of work for him."
Farrell also was impressed by Dempster.
"His command was outstanding," he said. "Very good location throughout. He threw three pitches for strikes once again, and extremely efficient."
Winner Jose Ramirez allowed three hits in three scoreless innings. Warren gave up one run and three hits in three innings.
"He did a really good job," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "I thought his changeup was good, I thought his breaking ball was good, I thought he threw the ball great."
With Curtis Granderson likely out until May while a broken left forearm heals, Girardi had Gardner in left and Melky Mesa in center. Girardi said the injury might cause him to keep Granderson in center when he returns rather than shift him to left and move the speedy Gardner to the middle.
"It's just something that I've thought about," Girardi said. "I don't know how many games he would have in his rehab coming back, and that's a concern for me.
So I want him to be comfortable wherever he's at, because his bat's real important to us."
NOTES: Red Sox 2B Dustin Pedroia said he would not object to stricter penalties for PED violations, .
"You want everybody to compete on the same playing field. That's all I'm asking."


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So my foot hurts again.
A lot.
Just like BEFORE I got the shot from hell. Seems that sometimes these things require more than one treatment.
Can I be frank about something here? I was a trooper about the shot. I gave myself huge props for NOT sobbing like a baby or thrashing about or SCREAMING because that mofo HURT. A lot. But I sucked it up, I did what I had to do because I saw the end in sight. Kind of like when I once got done giving birth, and then I had to take a deep breath and do it JUST ONE MORE TIME to get the other one out.
I saw the end.
I took a breath and GOT THE SHOT.
And now, you're telling me I have to go do it again?
Son of a bitch.
As an aside if I don't get my period soon someone is going to die. Just an FYI for all those in the ATL. No I'm not pregnant I have MIRENA but this whole feeling like you are going to have it and then not having it thing is about to make me insane.
Totally unrelated ......but I'm jealous and feeling like bitching. I knew they had it good at Google.
I just didn't know they had it THIS good.
I have my own suggestion for THIS one.......which is worse, giving birth to twins or getting a shot of cortisone into the bottom of your foot..........(I am not exactly sure of my answer here, THAT is how bad the shot was). Hell I just emailed it to them.
I just ate a chocolate brownie sundae. And now I want a beer. Dammit I need to start my period.
Props to Linky and Dinky for those links. Funny stuff. Even the damn Google employee who I'd like to smack right about now.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Return of the Fascii(tis)
Posted by Gidge Uriza at 9:19 PM
Labels: Fluff N Stuff, Intellectual Vacuum