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In 2020, we opted for a socially-distanced vacation.

Tabitha is our 2025 nuCamp T@B 400 travel trailer.

This article looks thread management in a Swing GUI.

The Application load balancer started life as a way to support micro-service back-ends from a single exposed endpoint.

I recently implemented Log4J 2.0 support for my AWS appenders project.

Moving to the cloud makes logging more difficult: not only do you have multiple instances of the same application, but your virtual machines start up and shut down based on load, and locally-stored logs disappear when that happens.

Most Java programs spend their time working with objects on the JVM heap, using getter and setter methods to retrieve or change the data in those objects.

A repository server, such as Sonatype Nexus, is incredibly useful if you use Maven (or any tool that uses Maven repositories, such as Gradle or Leiningen).

Java's built-in serialization mechanism has a bad reputation; everybody seems to have a story of serialization gone wrong.

Reference objects allow you to interact with the garbage collector, specifying levels of reachability between "in use" and "gone."

This article covers techniques to make logging more useful as a debugging tool, and less intrusive to the logical flow of your program code.

The typesafe enum pattern was made part of the Java language with the 1.5 release.

OutOfMemoryError is a frustrating exception: usually it indicates a bug in your code, but sometimes it happens when your have plenty of free space in the Java heap.

Far too many Swing applications follow the anti-pattern of subclassing a JDK container class in order to add components.

Reflection proxies, introduced in JDK 1.3, allow you to write a class that implements only part of an interface.

Unit tests are often used to support refactoring mainline code, but tests themselves are candidates for refactoring.

Coverage tools are great for telling you about code that you haven't tested.

A large, monolithic JSP is the same as a large, monolithic method; refactoring can make both easier to manage.

Git is becoming the source control system of choice for many teams.

XML output is surprising tricky to get right.

Describes how to use the JDK's DOM parser, including validation using both DTD and XML Schema.

XPath is a way to select portions of an XML document, modeled on the paths of a filesystem, with the addition of tests on the content and attributes of each node.

The Auto Train is Amtrak's route for snowbirds: an overnight train from Virginia to Florida, where your car rides with you.

A micro-benchmark is designed to evaluate the performance of a short piece of code, typically in comparison to other code that provides the same functionality.

If you're using an unsecured wireless network, as in a coffeeshop or conference hall, anyone in range can listen to your network traffic.

West Virginia is one of my favorite states for motorcycling, and this is the story of a recent four day trip to and around Lewisburg, in the southern portion of the state.

A recipe for grilled salmon with an ancho-lime sauce.

It's hard to find a motorcycle-friendly road that heads west from eastern Pennsylvana; this article looks at a few of the routes that I've found, along with an in-state destination for when you give up.

The traditional MVC implementation, where the controller creates a model containing all the data for a page, breaks down with complex pages where the markup changes depending on model data.

One of the perceived drawbacks of Java's parameterized types is that type erasure means they're not truly typesafe.

Parameterized types, aka Generics, have received a lot of negative press.

Photos to go with the sourdouh article.

Recipe for gluten-free pancakes using ground kasha or buckwheat flour.

A motorcycle-friendly loop anchored by King of Prussia, Reading, and Allentown.

Recipe and process for baking sourdough bread.