Random Thoughts on Regular Expressions

Last year I got to work on a persistent URL implementation for the National Archives, and regular expressions were a god-send for that.  I had used them before in bits and pieces, but for this project I had to use them pretty extensively, to match patterns in a URL, extract those patterns, and convert them to the appropriate values for the persistent URL.  It also doubled nicely as a security measure, ensuring that I didn't grab characters that shouldn't be processed.  However, I had to beware that I didn't go overboard on the pattern matching, as there were often simple cases that it was overkill for, like always searching for a specific text string in a URL.

On the security side of things, they also came in very handy for validation of entry fields in the forms.  Need a  ensure that your phone numbers are entered in a certain fashion? Regular expressions are great for that.

GWT thoughts

I'm really digging playing with GWT, and their MVP pattern makes it pretty easy to make some reusable and maintainable code.  Combined with the Twitter gwt-bootstrap library, I can crank out some decent looking web components.

I'll try to link to some good references later, since the most commonly found example for using MVP isn't terribly up to date.

The awesomeness of Rocksmith

Rocksmith is just a fantastic game and learning tool. I picked it up a couple of months back and it rarely leaves my 360 game slot. Quick and dirty is that it provides a cable that lets you use your real guitar to play songs which are basically provided in a tab format.  The game's difficulty ramps up as you go; after you go through the tutorial, you realize you are playing the opening to Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones.

The initial song list is mostly classic rock and modern alternative rock, which is fun to play, but not really my favorite type of music. Fortunately, there's downloads for Judas Priest, Blink 182, the Offspring, and the Police to help with that, and more on the way.  I easily find myself saying "just one more song set", and then it's way past my bedtime.

An added benefit to the game is that there are a number of mini-games that focus on particular guitar techniques, such as chords, bends, and scales.  The games are fun, and very useful.

Overall, it's a great game and tool, and definitely worth a pickup for any guitarist that wants another way to get some practice time in.

Android and Eclipse GUI editor

The Android GUI designer in Eclipse is probably the best Java GUI editor that I've seen. It actually lets you position components instead of railroading you into Java layouts. It's not without its problems, but it's a nice change of pace.