Here is a look at some of the better things I’ve stumbled across on the Internet. If you like this blog, you’ll love them too: creating Spring Roo applications and deploying them on Google App Engine, Google’s Code Playground, a 1kB JavaScript contest, an electronics Java applet and a bonus.
In the future I’m going to try to do some more roundup posts, I liked the first one and I believe it’s a nice addition to the blog. Let me know if you agree or disagree.
Spring Roo on Google App Engine
If you’ve been following along with some of my Google App Engine experiments and projects, you might know I’ve invested a lot of time in getting even the most basic projects running correctly, the way I liked it. Imagine my surprise when I encountered this tutorial on Creating Applications using Spring Roo and Deploying on Google App Engine. It only has 14 short steps and the result is a fully working application with 2 domain objects, a GUI to edit them and a Maven project file. Impressive and certainly worth following up on.
Google Code Playground
Google has a tremendous amount of API’s publicly available. In fact I sometimes wonder if they themselves still have an overview. Turns out they do. And Google Code Playground is the proof. It has an overview of a lot of the existing API’s, with examples. What’s even cooler, you can edit them on the fly and see how they react. And they are regularly adding more API’s.
It’s jsFiddle tuned for Google.
JS1k
If you can’t get enough JavaScript, then you will love this 1k Javascript demo contest. In 1024 characters, the contestants are able to create some very unique effects. I’ve noticed some of the more complicated ones run smoothest on Chrome. It’s definitely the best browser if you’re running JavaScript (but I still prefer Firebug for development)
Circuit Simulator Applet
This might be a little too geeky for you, but this Circuit Simulator Applet offers a fascinating insight in electronics circuits. It’s a Java applet, running in the browser, that displays electronic circuits. When you press play the magic happens, you can actually follow how (and how many) electrons move through the circuit. Very neat, even if you’re only casually interested in electronics. And the source is available if you’d like to take a peak.
Bonus: Kaossilator is (almost) all you need to create most pop songs
I’ve always wanted to buy a Kaossilator, but I’ve never been able to justify the expense, consider how much time I’ve got to spend on music these days. Seeing this YouTube recreation of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance almost has me convinced to go out and get one anyway.