Michael Harry Scepaniak - Software Development Posts

Giving to Freely Given Software - The How

2022-01-10T18:48:50Z

As you may or may not be aware, a relatively recent development in my life has been the decision to start paying (in earnest) for the open-source software that I use. I've already explained my thoughts on why to sponsor open-source. I'm now going to explain, in detail, how I go about doing the actual sponsoring. (I'm using the present tense here, as I intend for my sponsorship efforts to be an ongoing endeavor.)

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Giving to Freely Given Software - The Why

2022-01-05T00:25:10Z

Very fortunate. I feel very fortunate to have started into software development when I did (around 1996/97), because it was then that two things were happening:

The World Wide Web was coming into its own and going mainstream.
The open-source software movement was about to get started.

At that point in my life (and career), I didn't have the experience or perspective necessary to understand or appreciate the massive importance of both of those developments - not just for my future self, but for the world at-large. Twenty-plus years and a career later, I can now see clearly what was fuzzy to me then.

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Vimeo Disabled My Account for Submitting HTML

2019-07-23T22:28:51Z

Just yesterday, I created a Vimeo account and uploaded my first two videos. This effort was in support of my most recent blog post, Early Retirement Expert. Today, a day later, I thought I’d go in and include links to that blog post in the description for each video. I wanted to provide context for each video, just in case someone came across them directly and not via my write-up. It didn't go well.

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Fixed-Length Level Logging in Winston

2015-11-29T20:29:06Z

Do you do Node.js development? Do you use winston for logging in your Node application? Are you a stickler for having consistently-aligned content in your log entries? Have you struggled to prevent the log level portion of your log entries from shifting the positioning of your log entry formatting? If so, you might find this helpful.

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How to Read HttpClient Logging and Prevent Connection Leaks

2015-11-25T21:12:09Z

"Where there is great power, there is great responsibility"
~ Winston Churchill

If you have a Java-based application that makes HTTP requests, there's a good chance you are using Apache HttpClient to make these requests. If the application in question needs to make these requests at scale or with any sort of concurrency, there's a good chance that you are using HttpClient with the PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager.

If you aren't familiar with the PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager, in short, it makes requests via a pool of re-usable persistent connections. Re-using connections (to the same destination) is (I assume) more efficient and more performant than repeatedly tearing them down and re-establishing them. If you would like to read more about how to make use of this class, Eugen Paraschiv's article about HttpClient Connection Management is a good read.

Dangers Outside the Cocoon

While the PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager is very cool, working with it properly (in a way that won't leak connections) can be challenging.
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How To Use CasperJS with Mocked Data to Test Your Site's UI

2014-09-05T17:48:38Z

Did you know that you can use CasperJS to script, in an automated fashion, usage of your site - including clicking links and filling and submitting forms? Did you also know that, if you've got a site where most/all of the data is being delivered straight to the browser via Ajax-ified payloads, you can mock all of that volatile data to produce robust tests? Do you know, given that Ajax-ified site, exactly how to do data-mocking with CasperJS? If you said "no" to any of these questions, this article is for you.

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Are You Still Not Testing Your Site's UI Because of Your Database?

2014-09-04T21:02:45Z

Just like peanut butter plus jelly is a satisfying and delicious combination of two otherwise individual ingredients, CasperJS plus data-mocking is a powerful and effective pairing of two otherwise individual tools. However, whereas bringing peanut butter and jelly together in a sandwich is pretty straight-forward and requires a bare minimum of instructions, getting CasperJS and data-mocking libraries like Sinon.JS and Mockjax to play well together takes some effort. However, the awesomeness that you get when putting CasperJS and these data-mocking libraries together dwarfs the amount of information available explaining exactly how to do that. I'm going to take a stab at fixing that.

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Hibernate, Sybase, and the Unchained Transaction Mode Error

2013-05-08T00:47:04Z

The other week, the following error got raised in our testing environment - against some rather new code that we deployed (into our existing Java/Hibernate/Spring-based web application running against a Sybase database):

Stored procedure [procedure name] may be run only in unchained transaction mode.

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How To Print Checks Without QuickBooks

2013-05-01T22:44:41Z

Writing checks makes me angry. Not because it represents a withdrawal from one of my accounts. I'm OK with that. I just really don't enjoy engaging in the physical act of sitting down and scribbling on a piece of paper, knowing that there are much better ways to relay money these days. I'm all about efficiency, and check-writing is all about... something else.

But, there are still situations in life where cutting a check is still the best or only option. They're becoming fewer and far between, but they still exist - occurring often enough to be annoying/frustrating/anger-inducing.

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Becoming a Successful Java Consultant

2013-04-19T00:57:16Z

"I saw that you are a senior Java consultant for many years, which is what I want to be, too. So I thought I'd connect to you and ask what it takes to get there..."

Somebody actually sent this to me. Somebody that I've never met. Pretty cool. 😃 So, what's the answer?

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