Roberto Cosenza

Il 25 febbraio ho partecipato al mio primo “Öppet spår”. L’Öppet spår, insieme alla Vasaloppet é una delle gare di sci da fondo amatoriale organizzate nell’ambito della “Vasaloppsveckan” (settimana della Vasaloppet).

Sia la Vasaloppet che l’Öppet Spår consistono in 90 km di fondo in tecnica classica (cioé é vietato usare il famoso passo pattinato e si procede con gli sci paralleli all’interno dei i binari tracciati per tutta la lunghezza del percorso tranne che, ovviamente, in salita).

L’Öppet spår si differenzia dalla Vasaloppet per la mancanza di professionisti ed é stata creata per venir fronte all’elevatissimo numero di sciatori che vogliono parteciparvi (ca 15.000 iscritti annui alla Vasaloppet, le cui iscrizioni chiudono anche 10 mesi prima della gara stessa, e circa 10.000 partecipanti all’Öppet Spår, ripartiti in due giorni)

Sveglia alle 4. Abbondante colazione a base di crusca e cereali e veloce sul pullman che mi ha portato alla partenza (Sälen). Alle 7.20 ero sugli sci pronto per partire, dopo aver riempito un sacco di plastica, fornito dall’organizzazione, con la giacca pesante e i vestiti che avevo indosso prima di partire per evitare di morire dal freddo.

I 90 km sono spezzettati da 9 posti “di controllo” dove viene servita acqua, bibite energetiche, pane dolce e sopratutto succo di mirtillo caldo, ricco di zuccheri necessari per portare a termine l’impresa. Il tutto con un organizzazione degna di merito.

Dopo 11 ore e 14 minuti arrivavo al traguardo. Prima di me molti altri ma molti anche dopo di me. Era quasi buio quando ero partito ed era ormai buio all’arrivo. Ero stanco ma felice.

Quando raccontavo a mia madre della mia avventura e quando le cercavo di spiegare il perché mi sia cimentato in una sfacchinata tale, mi é venuta in mente la Festa di Sant’Antonio che si celebra a Rotonda, il mio paese natale. Anche lí si passano ore ed ore a camminare in montagna, in nome del santo protettore; anche lí si parte qualche giorno prima e una serie di tavolate imbandite interrompe il pellegrinaggio; anche lí si mangia il pane dolce (u cucceddrato); anche lí si beve tutta una serie di bibite energetiche (u vino paisano)

Today I attended at jfokus, a conference on java and on its future now that Sun is moving to the open-source world.

I found most of the presentations of pretty low level and some of them of low quality. Maybe they just had to announce what kind of knowledge an attendant was supposed to have. Moreover, the names of the presentation was often misleading in my opinion.

As I suspected, the smoke which has been raised around the Rails/Ruby has also contaminated the java world with the jRuby stuff. But it is all smoke as I said and I can’t wait to see the moment in which the Rails phenomena will provide anything really useful to the business world.
A speech that I found interesting was the presentation of Spring web-services by Arjen Poutsma from Interface21.
Anyway, it was nice to be at the conference and be reminded that there is life out there in the programming World!

Last week I finally had the opportunity to practise some cross country skiing. The snow has finally come to Stockholm and, altough not a lot, it was enough to let me go on a couple of trips. Check my training schedule on FunBeat
In about a month I will run for “öppet spår”, one of the cross country events part of the vasaloppet’s week.

Infoflex har pubblicerat en ny sajt för att lansera våra MVC konsult-tjänsterna. Genom denna nya sajten kommer vi att erbjuda mentorskap, utveckling och drift av MVC applikationer baserat mest på Spring och Hibernate men också på Rails och andra teknologier.

We at Infoflex have published a new website www.mvcexpert.se to remark the new business we have started this year. Through this site we will provide consulting and mentoring for MVC projects, mostly based on Spring and Hibernate but also on other technologies as Rails. The site is mainly in Swedish since our company is located in Stockholm (Sweden).

Since last monday I’m working at Pricerunner as a consultant to help them with the refactoring of their application. The problem they want to address is the dispatching of urls to the Spring MVC. Their office is located in Stockholm, quite close to mine so it is no problem to move from one place to the other. Söker du också en Spring MVC konsult ?

When sketching an application, I use a “standard” controller that takes the url and returns a jsp called with the same name (index.html -> index.jsp, addstuff.html -> addstuff.jsp and so on) and an empty model.
When I go deeper into the application and start writing real controllers, I substitute each of the “standard” controllers with forms/controllers that do more stuff than returning an empty model. It is a good way to have all your urls in place before you write any java code.

Of course, instead of a “jsp” you could use whatever view technology you like.

You can download the source code of my Default Spring Controller here.

During Lidingöloppet I got the “Iliotibial band friction syndrome” (also kalled löparknä in Swedish). It hurts like hell at the side of the left knee and after I while and I have to stop doing any kind of activitiy and just sit down. It sucks. I thought I was in control of my body but the effort made for the race has given me some consequences. I got a time at the physiotherapist, he should help me to recover in a few weeks.

Today I took an electrocardiogram (EGC or EKG as it is spellt in Swedish) just to be sure that I’m ok before I start training for the Vasaloppet seriously. I had token a couple of them when I was little and member of a football club in Rotonda. My heart runs fine so I don’t have to worry and I don’t have excuses :-D

The doctor told me to save the diagram for a future reference, If I ever should have problems with my heart it would be usefull to compare a new diagram with the one I took today.

Tired of having your ftp server filled up with files that your friends or colleagues have to download? That is why we have realized FileCentral.se. You can send large files up to 2GB free of charge and it is very easy to use. You just register your self, enter the e-mail address of the recipient and upload the file and BOOM, an message is sent to the recipient with the link to download the file.
The file is removed automatically after 5 days so you don’t have to clean up! And since our servers are based in Sweden (Stockholm), it is extremely fast if you live in Scandinavia and want to “skicka stora filer” !!
Cool, isn’t it? Give it try.