Sid Blog

Celery stew

2010-12-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

Living on the cheapest available food would be very unhealthy. Rice, beans and vegetables are a better source of food. "Start by investing in a rice cooker, if you don't have one.". I've read above text from Paul Graham (Ramen Profitable essay[1]) at 2009.

His advise was very useful for me in last semester at university. After I moved to university campus, I had to cook for myself. I bought a rice cooker and I was using beans and vegetables a lot. At the same time, it was another easy, cheap and common food available for students: "Instant Noodles". Please don't use this type of food often and instead of that try to cook something healthy like "Celery stew".

As I am in holiday at home with my family. I've decided to learn some new recipe from my mom. My mom's cooking is the best (and famous) between our friends and relatives. I've asked many times from her about her secrets in cooking, she is always answering me with the detailed recipe. Let's use my mom's recipe for cooking celery stew and see how much you may enjoy ;-)

Rice
Oil
Yellow onions
Fresh Celery
Red meat or chicken or mushroom (form left to right is better to use)
Red chili, salt and turmeric (turmeric is for changing food's color, Saffron can be use instead of that too but it is much more expensive)
Sour water

First put rice in rice cooker. Add water as specified on rice cooker. Add salt and a little bit of oil if you want to. Turn on rice cooker now and forget about it (Ideally rice and celery stew would be ready at same time, but usually celery stew takes more time to cook).

Cut and fried the onions until their color changed to bright yellow.
Add small pieces of celery plus it's leafs (Celery stalk should be between 1.5 cm to 2.5 cm. Wash and chop chop celery leafs before adding). Fried celery for 4 to 6 minutes (until the green color of leafs became darker).
Add pieces of meat and fried them until they changed the color too (not cooked neither row).
Add nearly twice as much as all of the food water to the container. Or add water until it cover food plus 5cm above it.
Add red chili, salt and turmeric.
Then increase the fire level to high to boil the water until it lost half of it.
Add a little by little sour water and taste the food.
Decrease the fire level to low and wait for food to cook slowly.

That's all, when celeries are soft and nice to eat, you could eat the celery stew with the rice.

Enjoy the food and share your feedback :-)

P.S. if you are using Saffron then it's better to add it at the end (after #8).

Beach Walk #2 (Fishing tips)

2010-02-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

After writing Beach Walk #1 on 11th July 2009 I went to the beach, on average one times a week. Walking, Running and Swimming are activities that interest me. But last night I went fishing, and it was my second time to go to this spot at Boambee and I guess my fifth time in my whole life!

Yeah and I am quite new in fishing and last night something magical happened! ;-) , I went home with two fish(a flat head and another type!) How did this happen? I was lucky to meet David and Kerin (I hope i spelled that right) . They told me a lot of tips about fishing. Then I thought it would be nice if I shared tips in my Blog. Maybe someone like me can use these tips and go back home happy and excited ! :D

Tips that I remember are :

* After heavy rain more fish will come from sea to river.
* After sun goes down , you have more chance to catch bigger fish .
* We used fish meat for bait , they told me cheap/fresh fish will do the job , in our case I guess it was Mullet fish.
* David showed me how put bait onto the hook,and make sure you go pierce through the skin twice and hook with bait.
* David showed me how to drop line to water and leave line in ground until fish bite the bait properly, yeah it's time to be patient.
* If you didn't feel much bite with fish then it's time to check your hook again.
* last tip is about being positive and lucky, good luck ;-)

Another interesting thing about last night was the talk that we had together. Australian's are famous for being friendly and that is really true, they treated me like their close friend and taught me a lot of tricks and tips about fishing. The only things they asked me was sharing these tips with others ,and that I think it's a great thing and I am doing it right now! ;-)
I also talked about my nationality and they were interested to know more about my culture and politics in Iran (formally Persia). I explained to them Why I wore GREEN last night(11th February 2010)? And I saw their support and interest in Green movements all over the world.

I noticed about one pattern in my life that is about the 11th of each month, for example I was born on the 11th of March and I arrived to Australia on the 11th of March as well,and I caught two fish on the 11th of February ;-) and I'd like to post in my blog after this day :-) Anyway there are many 11th days in front , let's see what will happen in the future.
Cheers,
Sid
PS. I caught one fish(flat head) and David gave another one to me , thanks David ;-)

Configure Jasperreports 3.x Spring 3.x Maven 2.x by Roo 1.x

2010-01-03T18:48:00.000-08:00

In this post we are going to see how easy and fast we could integrate Jasperreports to the Spring-MVC based projects by Spring-Roo. Spring Roo is a next-generation rapid application development tool for Java developers.
Note: Spring Roo uses Maven2 as a default build tool for generated projects.

In the first step we will create sample project with Spring-Roo and in the second step we will add required configurations manually.
Before going to steps, have a look at my test environment :

jasperreports-3.5.2
springframework-3.0.0.RELEASE
spring-roo-1.0.0.RELEASE
apache-maven-2.2.1
sun-jdk1.6.0_16 (64bit)
linux-ubuntu-8.04 (64bit)

And don't worry about the differences to yours , you just need to have Spring-Roo-1.0.0.RELEASE installed, then you can expect same result as me.

Step one: create sample project with Spring Roo

$mkdir sample
$cd sample
$roo
roo> project --topLevelPackage com.company.sample
roo> persistence setup --provider HIBERNATE --database HYPERSONIC_PERSISTENT
roo> entity --class ~.domain.Customer
roo> field string --fieldName name --class ~.domain.Customer
roo> controller scaffold --class ~.web.CustomerController --entity ~.domain.Customer 
roo> quit
$mvn clean tomcat:run

Now you can go to http://localhost:8080/sample/ and check the CRUD functionality that you have created with 'controller scaffold' add-ons.

Step two: modify files manually:
You may want to edit files in Eclipse IDE or STS :
Note: STS has all required plugins installed.

$cd sample
$mvn eclipse:eclipse

sample/pom.xml

      <dependencies>
...
        <dependency>
            <groupid>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.springframework.context.support</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>jasperreports</groupId>
            <artifactId>jasperreports</artifactId>
            <version>3.5.3</version>
        </dependency>
      </dependencies>

You may ask why jasperreports version 3.5.3? while last stable version is 3.7.0? the answer is I couldn't find any higher version in mvnrepository.com . If you could find a higher version in any other Maven2 repositories, please let me know.

sample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/spring/webmvc-config.xml

<beans ...>
...
    <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
       <property name="basename" value="views"/>
    </bean>
</beans>

sample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/views.properties

customerReportList.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.jasperreports.JasperReportsPdfView
customerReportList.url=/WEB-INF/reports/customerReportList.jasper
customerReportList.reportDataKey=customerReportList

sample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/reports/customerReportList.jrxml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jasperReport xmlns="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/xsd/jasperreport.xsd" name="customerList" pageWidth="612" pageHeight="792" columnWidth="555" leftMargin="20" rightMargin="20" topMargin="20" bottomMargin="20">
  <field name="name" class="java.lang.String"/>
  <columnHeader>
    <band height="31" splitType="Stretch">
      <staticText>
        <reportElement x="0" y="0" width="100" height="20"/>
        <text><![CDATA[NAME]]></text>
      </staticText>
    </band>
  </columnHeader>
  <detail>
    <band height="24" splitType="Stretch">
      <textField>
        <reportElement x="0" y="0" width="100" height="20"/>
        <textElement/>
        <textFieldExpression class="java.lang.String"><![CDATA[$F{name}]]></textFieldExpression>
      </textField>
    </band>
  </detail>
</jasperReport>

sample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/reports/customerReportList.jasper
You have different options to compile this file, in my case jasperreports-maven-plugin from mojo.codehaus.org
sample/pom.xml

...
  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>jasperreports-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
      <sourceDirectory>src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/reports</sourceDirectory>
      <outputDirectory>src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/reports</outputDirectory>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>compile-reports</goal>
        </goals>
      </execution>
    </executions>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>jasperreports</groupId>
        <artifactId>jasperreports</artifactId>
        <version>3.5.3</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.log4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>com.springsource.org.apache.log4j</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.15</version>
      </dependency>                    
     </dependencies>
  </plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

sample/src/main/java/com/company/sample/web/CustomerController.java

package com.company.sample.web;

import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.data.JRBeanCollectionDataSource;

import org.springframework.roo.addon.web.mvc.controller.RooWebScaffold;
import com.company.sample.domain.Customer;

import org.springframework.ui.ModelMap;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;

@RooWebScaffold(path = "customer", automaticallyMaintainView = true, formBackingObject = Customer.class)
@RequestMapping("/customer/**")
@Controller
public class CustomerController {

 @RequestMapping(value ="/customer/report/pdf", method = RequestMethod.GET)
 public String fireReport(ModelMap modelMap) {
  JRBeanCollectionDataSource jrDataSource = new JRBeanCollectionDataSource(Customer.findAllCustomers(),false);
  modelMap.put("customerReportList", jrDataSource);
  return "customerReportList";
 }
}

That's all, add some customers and check 'http://localhost:8080/sample/customer/report/pdf' .

What else?
I also tried to get multiple report format + changing report name at runtime:
sample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/spring/webmvc-config.xml

<beans ...>
...
  <bean id="jasperReportsMultiFormatView" name="jasperReportsMultiFormatViewBean"
class="com.company.sample.web.report.CustomJasperReportsMultiFormatView">

    <!-- The value _rep_name_ will be replaced with the report name -->
    <property name="contentDispositionMappings">
      <props>
        <prop key="html">attachment; filename=_rep_name_.html</prop>
        <prop key="pdf">attachment; filename=_rep_name_.pdf</prop>
        <prop key="xls">attachment; filename=_rep_name_.xls</prop>
        <prop key="csv">attachment; filename=_rep_name_.csv</prop>
      </props>
    </property>
  </bean>
</beans>

sample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/views.properties

customerReportList.(class)=com.company.sample.web.report.CustomJasperReportsMultiFormatView

sample/src/main/java/com/company/sample/web/report/CustomJasperReportsMultiFormatView.java

package com.company.sample.web.report;

import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Properties;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperPrint;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.jasperreports.JasperReportsMultiFormatView;

/**
 * This calss override renderReport() method for replace report name .
 */
public class CustomJasperReportsMultiFormatView extends JasperReportsMultiFormatView {

 protected void renderReport(JasperPrint populatedReport, Map model, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
        super.renderReport(populatedReport,model,response);
        
        // replace content disposition header filename with the report names.
        Properties contentDispositions = this.getContentDispositionMappings();
        
        Enumeration enumContDispKeys = contentDispositions.keys();
        // iterate over all disposition mappings and replace the word _rep_name_ with the reportName
        while(enumContDispKeys.hasMoreElements()){
            Object contDispKey = enumContDispKeys.nextElement();
            // check whether string before cast.
            if(contDispKey instanceof String){
                // get the disposition string
                String dispositionStr = contentDispositions.getProperty((String)contDispKey);
                // set the new value in the properties
                contentDispositions.setProperty((String)contDispKey,dispositionStr.replace("_rep_name_",populatedReport.getName()));
            }
        }
    }
}

I found the above code from this post . But I got no success to change report name.I also moved super.renderReport(..) to the bottom of method but there was no difference. Maybe it is not working because of my jasperreports version, If you find the problem please let me know, thanks.

And finally sample/src/main/java/com/company/sample/web/CustomerController.java

 @RequestMapping(value ="/customer/report/{format}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
 public String fireReport(ModelMap modelMap, @PathVariable("format") String format) {
  JRBeanCollectionDataSource jrDataSource = new JRBeanCollectionDataSource(Customer.findAllCustomers(),false);
  modelMap.put("customerReportList", jrDataSource);
  modelMap.put("format", format);
  return "customerReportList";
 }

Now you could see different formats like this:
http://localhost:8080/sample/customer/report/pdf
http://localhost:8080/sample/customer/report/csv
http://localhost:8080/sample/customer/report/html
http://localhost:8080/sample/customer/report/xls

Note: for xls format we need to add below dependency to pom.xml

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.poi</groupId>
  <artifactId>poi</artifactId>
  <version>3.2-FINAL</version>
</dependency>

What last?
Spring-Roo is awesome ;-) give it a try and join it's community. I really had a good time with Roo in my recent project. Actually reading Roo's forum and Roo's twittes are my favorite reads now! :-)
I could feel Roo's potential, for example look at this post and what we have done in step two , All of these could be done with Roo add-ons in the near future. If you want to make that happen sooner please vote for this issue : https://jira.springsource.org/browse/ROO-228.

Hopefully this will help you to integrate jasperreports to your Spring-Roo based project. If you have any suggestions to make these configurations better, please let me know.

Donate Blood

2009-09-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

Today I went to one blood donor center near to my place . It was my first time in Australia . They give me 2 forms : 1_personal information 2_questions about health background.

I answered most of questions and I left two questions without answer because I was not sure about answers. After that I had a interview with a doctor (one nice lady) , she check some questions with me and help me to answer those two questions . To make story short , I was alright with all questions expect one , and that one was: did you have contact with blood of somebody else ?, and my answer was Yes!! how did happened !? , well we were playing rugby in lismore and one guy get hurt and he washed his blood with one bottle of water . I did not have contact with that guy but my mistake was I washed my tooth protection with water of that bottle !oops! I know, I saw that after washing ! I feel Ok because that guy was their best player :-)

The doctor told me it could be risky if they take my blood and I have to wait until 27 Nov 2009.
At the end I like to add donating blood is a nice thing to do and is a sign of thinking about other people not only yourself!
I read this some where : only one in 30 donate blood but one in 3 will need blood in their lifetime . hope more people became motivated to donate blood ... thanks for reading.

August 2009 - Move out, Rugby, Assignments

2009-08-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

Move out :
I move out to the new house on 11th august . At first i was a little bit sad but after passing a week I understand, that was good and necessary action for me. Now i am living with two Chinese friends . They can cook good and I can wash the dishes !:-) We sharing our budget and result for me is less budget than before.

Rugby :
Last week we traveled to Lismore (Southern Cross University (main campus)) for playing rugby with their team . They win the game ! :-( but we had lot of fun ! :-) for example after game there was a party : free food , free drinks and happy people. Next day in the bus was another enjoyable time for us (drinks + funny friends). After arriving to Coffs Harbour we went to the pub (Green house) then we had drinks+playing billiard . Finally we had party in campus's accommodation (drinks and dancing!) . In summery I could say Australian drinks a lot ! ;-)

Assignments :
I am studying BIT in SCU .Assignments could be divide to two groups , group 1 writing , group 2 coding . Group 2 are easier for me and takes less time + enjoyment ! :-) . On the other hand Group 1 is a little bit of pain for me! ;-)
anyway I realize that, you can do the perfect things if you could enjoy from it.

my foot ! football and hospital

2009-08-04T00:05:00.000-07:00

Did you see the picture ? :-)
This happened one week ago , Now I am much better ! ;-)

Last Monday when we were playing indoor soccer , I turned fast but my foot didn't ! ;-) and I went to hospital at 19:30. I like to thank all of myFirends [Wayne, Jack, Poya, Matthew, Alex and Phil] because of their support by coming to hospital.

Doctor took picture (x-ray) from my leg and good news was nothing was broken ! and he recommend me to walk as soon as possible , then I start walking from there to the car . we left around 20:30 . (one of my friends said , we were lucky , some people have to wait for long time, even until midnight)
They charge me $A140.00 (include $70.00 x-ray) . I have medibank insurance and They will give me back some money , probably after three week.
First night was the hardest part for me , I couldn't sleep and continuously pain.

I am happy after one week I could walk and riding my bicycle to school .
And I have two options 1. lose some weight 2.don't play soccer anymore . I will choose option 1 :-)

Facebook Privacy issues

2009-07-14T05:05:00.000-07:00

I think some sentences on Facebook Privacy page looks better in bold format!, such as:

You post User Content (as defined in the Facebook Terms of Use) on the Site at your own risk. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information.Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site.You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.
Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.

Facebook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties...

This video on youtube is about criticism of facebook (data mining) .

Also this video is worth to watch : Facebook Killed the Private Life

Google code

2009-06-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

I like to thank Google because of Google code service . I am happy with free subversion server. You have to chose one of open source license for your code. In my case Apache license version 2 .

I start first with Appfuse-gwt project , Appfuse (open source-java-web-maven!) is a great project and GWT (ajax-java-client!) is a great project.
I am very intersted on Appfuse and I worked with GWT recently , curently there is no module for GWT in Appfuse , then i decide to have a try . finally it comes up with very basic setting, it is only Hello World ! (I wish i had time for work on this more)

Second project is jijws , this one is PHP project (simple online shoping) and it was one of my project when i was student around 2 years ago . Now we (me & wayne) are working on this project for selling it to one car dealer .

I like to write more on my blog but finding time for writing is the hardest part and after 1 or 2 days is even harder to write something about the past ! ;-)

Happy time for our world :-)

Nana Glen & pretzels !

2009-05-24T03:20:00.000-07:00

I was in Nana Glen today , and we(me & Annette) were invited to Edi property . They cooked pretzels bread there together . watching them during make bread was very interesting , they were all from Germany and the quality of there work was fantastic ! ;-) now pretzels with butter are my favorite taste . Green is the color all around , big trees and beautiful houses creates very great views there. some roads were closed because of huge amount of rain in last night. Actually we experience flooded-in 5 weeks ago !(Coffs Harbour 2009). And this time Lismore was in trouble . anyway driving time was enjoyable and i like to remmber and save these moments.

Annette's Birthday

2009-05-12T05:58:00.000-07:00

Annette is my mother homestay family in Australia ! she came to Australia from East Germany with her husband(Ludwig) in 1971 . They didn't had any children and Ludwig past away 2 years ago . You may think Annette should be unhappy and alone woman , but she is not ! I am surprise with her lifestyle , she is happy and very active ,she use to walk every day for 1 hour and she is always busy with doing something, so we(me & phil(chinese guy)) have good foods + clean house . Today was her birthday (66 years old)she received many phone calls from her family and friends , and also many gifts . Tonight we (me & Annette & Ghozi) were in sawtell RSL club for dinner and after that we played billiard , it was my first time which i played real billiard (not in computer !:-)) , we had fun and i think i put more balls into gate more than others!, and at end Annette played on chance machines and she win $A20.00 and Ghozi lose $A2.00.
Also Annette had membership card which because of her birthday we had some especial service, thanks RSL club.

at the end, I like to say congratulations & happy birthday Annette . :-)

2009-03-27T03:04:00.000-07:00

I arrived to the Sydney on 12March2009 & to Coffs Harbour on 13March2009

look at my budget , you may have same (from 13March to 27March):

QANTAS E-TICKET________________$A338.70
NOTE : $A100 because of Friday! & $A30 for booking fee! , i found that a little late !:-) try Virgin Blue instead of QANTAS!
COFFEE DEAL (Large)____________$A6.95
TBus______________________________$A5.50
NOTE : from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2
GILLETTE Spray__________________$A7.95
KORJO Multi Reverse Twin Pack__$A19.99
NOTE : power switcher to 3 pin(Australia Electricity)
RUGGERS CARGO SHRT__________$A19.95
PEARS PERKG____________________$A3.48
OFR MENS FOOT__________________$A10.00
ORAL-B T/PST 135G________________$A3.58
PEANUTS-375G NOBBY____________$A2.98
HEAD & SHLDRS SPOO____________$A9.96
MEMOREX 10PK DVD-R___________$A6.82
OPTUS (phone card)______________$A30.00
NOTE : expires on 60 days
Bus_______________________________$A2.20
NOTE : with student card
PEBCCR2 BRAUN Personal_______$A25.00
M/CARE TOE CLIPPERS___________$A7.65
RUGGER DRILL SHORT___________$A12.24
CDR BLANK_______________________$A1.50
AUSCREEN SPF___________________$A3.80
NOTE: cheap protection for sunscreen !
PEARS WILLIAM BARTLE PERKG_$A3.54
Internet Access___________________$A61.50
NOTE: $61.50 for one week is expensive !
Good dinner for 2 person_________$A33.00
Not bad dinner for 1 person______$A10.00
Drinking (not alcholic)____________$A23.71
NOTE :from $A1 up to $A10
Ragbi shoes______________________$A125.00
Wireless hub_____________________$A90.00
TOTAL______________around______$A1000.00

*I choice Home stay accommodation and i think it cost is around $A189 per week.

I am sure next week is for me cheaper ! :-)

Playing Ragbi (First Time)

2009-03-19T02:16:00.000-07:00

Yes , today i played Ragbi for the first time ! at first i didn't have any idea about what they are doing ! and what should i do ! :-)
The good things was they were Australian which means they are friendly and happy for answering you and helping you to find the way.

Yes , they explained hole the game to me during the game ! ;-)
Then we have some practices which in my opinion was serious training because 3 guys gets a little hurt on leg , shoulder and noise ,
seems a little serious yeah ? :-)

I enjoyed from playing, hole the time and if my body was more ready then surly my enjoyable time was more . Also last part of practice was very wonderful , one player should carry the ball by running and when he became stopped with defenders , then we should support him until one another player takes the ball and this process has continue very fast some times and created amazing moment for me , and I like to say thank you very much for these moments.

today was 19March2009 and i was in CHEC (Coffs Harbour Education Campus) at Australia .

p.s. currently i am in English language center which means my English will became better soon!:-)