Lunar Phase Calendar

We’ve just added a new moon-themed Google home page gadget: a weekly moon phase calendar. Here is a preview:

To add this to your Google homepage, click here.

LL Sudoku

I overheard one of our programmers showing off his Flash Sudoku game interface he had created. The words that caught my attention were “if only I had a puzzle generator”. A background thread, most likely one spent solving a puzzle on an airplane, lit up. I volunteered to write one.
Solutions
The solutions were […]

An Email Time Machine

I have tried numerous techniques to keep email from taking over my life. I have used color coding and folders. I tried “pair emailing” (like pair programming, only with email). I tried more MBWA (managing by walking around) to see whether it reduced mail volume. I had the IT department install […]

Struts 2: Using the < s:tree > Tag

Struts 2 is very new. Unfortunately, the documentation is currently somewhat lacking. It took me a bit of effort to figure out how to use the <s:tree> tag properly, but once I figured it out, my code was minimal.
Static Content
This is simple enough.
<s:tree id=”…” label=”…” theme=”ajax”>

<s:treenode id=”…” label=”…” theme=”ajax” />

[…]

JBoss Seam: Maven Archetype for JBoss Seam

Description“JBoss Seam is a powerful new application framework to build next generation Web 2.0 applications by unifying and integrating popular service oriented architecture (SOA) technologies like Asynchronous JavaScript and XML(AJAX), Java Server Faces(JSF), Enterprise Java Beans(EJB3), Java Portlets and Business Process Management(BPM) and workflow.” (JBoss Seam)
Seam, by default, is set up to compile, package, and […]

A Software-Development Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

Custom software represents a significant investment for your company or organization. We at Lunar Logic understand and respect this significance. Building your software means more than just our developers writing code to your requirements. It involves a complex business relationship between the client and the developers that requires significant amounts of trust and active communication.
Each […]

Open Source Licensing: Mapping the Risks

Introduction
You’re the decision-maker contemplating the award of a software development contract to an outside vendor for an important application your company is going to use or sell. Your technical advisor tells you the vendor advocates the use of open source software as a component in the project. However, you’ve read that inclusion of open source […]

Basic Programming Issues in Multithreaded Code

Introduction
Imagine this scene: Five computer displays are placed next to each other, each showing a browser, each browser with the identical Internet address entered, and five people hit the Enter key at the same time. What happens?
More to the point, what does not happen is this: The first screen displays all the data and graphics […]

Collaboration: The Customer as Team Member

Back when the Internet was still DarpaNet, when the rocks were cooling and users still installed applications from 3.5 inch floppies, I was the Product Manager for a well-known DOS-based spreadsheet. I would habitually make pilgrimages to our ten largest customers, in order to get their feedback and incorporate it into the next version of […]