Streetcar (Part 2)

So after my post earlier in the week I got a lot of feedback via e-mail. One of the links I was pointed to was WeBuyAnyCar.com, to be honest I was highly sceptical but their online quote tool offered me a reasonable price for my car so I booked an appointment to go and see them. I assumed that once there they would try any way possible to reduce the quoted price, so was quite prepared to just drive away but, amazingly, they were completely true to their word and 15 minutes after arriving I was car-less and waiting for the train to get back into London. What a pleasant surprise for the second hand car industry to pull.

When I got home I tried out Streetcar and again it couldn’t have been easier. Just book a time slot, swipe your card to get in, enter a PIN to disable the immobiliser and off you go. It’s the little touches which are nice, there is an iPod connector built in to the stereo, a log book for any damage to get recorded in etc. Overall I think this is going to be a good switch over to being a non car owner for the first time in 12 years.

Renewed Contract

It’s coming up to a year since I started my current contract. Well I moved onto a new project a few weeks ago and given that the work is pretty interesting (Domino / Oracle / JBoss / Web Services), the environment is relaxed and the team is a good laugh I’ve signed on for the rest of the project. Always good to have work sorted out 🙂

A demo iText application

I always find the best way to learn some new geekery is to write something with it rather than just reading a book. So in that spirit I’ve used one of my spare domain names to bring you Invoicr. I know, you’re wondering where I got the idea for the name from, let’s just call it inspiration!

So Invoicr is a simple form which uses a couple of neat little Javascript-y things in Andrew Tetlaw’s really easy field validation with Prototype and the DHTML XGrid for the dynamic table.

They are nice but not really the point of the app, which was to play around with iText which I mentioned earlier this week. The PDF I’m producing doesn’t really stretch what iText is capable of but it does show off element positioning, tables, font formatting etc which is all I really need at the moment. So have a look and if you’re interested in how it all works, then you can get the nsf here.

StreetCar

Ever since moving down to London I’ve been using my car less and less to the point, now, where I’ve decided to sell it and use a service called StreetCar for the few times when I do need to drive somewhere. It’s a great idea where they leave cars all around the city, you book a time slot for £4.95 per hour (inclusive of petrol, insurance etc) and just go along to the car, enter a keycode to get in and off you go. From my flat there are two cars within 2 minutes walk so the risk of them both being used at the same time is pretty low. I’ll let you know how the whole move progresses but in theory it should cost me a lot less and not restrict movement in the slightest.

In the meantime if you know anyone looking for an ’03 Audi A4 then you know where to send them don’t you 😉

Using iText for PDF generation

Over the last year or so I’ve done a lot of arseing around with FOP PDF generation. It’s really very powerful, but with great power comes great fannying around with complex XSLT (that’s what Peter Parker’s uncle said wasn’t it?). If you’re doing serious PDF work with multiple templates or complicated logic built into the documents then FOP’s your guy. But I’m doing some more simple documents at the moment for which FOP seems like the proverbial sledgehammer, so I decided to take a look at iText. This is an open source Java library which allows you to create PDF documents in double quick time. It’s actually pretty powerful in it’s own right with support for watermarks, PDF joining, complex table structures etc. I’m just not sure you’d want to go this route for serious reports where you’ll effectively be tieing UI design into code. That’s your call in the end anyway. I’m just here to tell you that this stuff works out of the box with Notes and Domino.

Vince Di Mascio has done the heavy lifting here with a sample Java agent which will generate a simple PDF document. Check it out if you need to produce any sort of documents from your app.

ADSL Migration

After all of my broadband hassles in March I decided to leave BT as their customer service was so appalling. I was tied into a contract though so couldn’t, at least until now. So today I’m starting the process of migrating to a new broadband supplier. So far the leading contender is IDNet who seem to offer a completely no nonsense, high end home package for what I consider to be a reasonable price. So the question is, who do you other UK people use for broadband? Can anyone recommend a better provider? Curious minds need to know.

Jaiku

If you’re interested in the internet you’ll have heard of Twitter. Well a newer competitor is called Jaiku. It’s different from Twitter in that it is more presence based than being purely a mini blog. With a little client installed on your phone it works out where you are automagically and updates the site when you move locations. It also lets you combine multiple RSS feeds into one, so I’m able to combine, 11tmr, 50WordReview, del.icio.us, Flickr and Defectr all into one lovely big feed which, if you have several sites may be useful for cross-site publicity. It’s quite an interesting concept that I’ll be playing with over the next few weeks. You can see my Jaiku badge on the right at the moment (if you’re reading this in RSS you’ll have to visit the site sorry!). Have a play anyway, my Jaiku name is mattwhite.