The resolution for me was to:

• Use maven jar:jar to build the jar
• Use dependency:copy-dependencies to get the jars in one place
• Clean out the multiple versions of the jars to avoid conflicts (yes…)
• Invoke on the command line using ‘java -cp lib/*: my.class.name’

This worked, and it’s easy to update just the code jar. I can’t believe it’s so painful to try and create a jar with dependencies that worked using maven assembly:assembly. Maybe I missed a better solution, but this one worked.

One ride was all it took to get it back.

Highly recommended, and available from NYPL.

Special thanks to David Koosis for the great recommendation to read this.

There are a few things I really don’t like about it (the iPad) including:

• Closed, closed, closed. You mostly have to talk to it through iTunes, you can’t just mount it and copy to it, you can’t put an app you wrote onto it, etc. It’s a peripheral, folks. It’s a fat-a** iPod. Pricey, too.
• There’s no USB port, which is a big clue.
• It’s all about one app at a time. Halting between them bugs me. My Android phone does better.

Now for the good, since I’m finally starting to find things I genuinely like about it:

• It’s a really nice reader for PDFs and e-books. I just read some Winnie-the-Pooh to my daughter at bedside and it was a pleasure. Bright, self-lit, crisp images in full color, wonderful.
• The battery life is nice and long, depending on usage of course.
• Now that I am using Dropbox+GoodReader, I have a reasonable way to get PDFs from my laptop onto it for reading, and that’s really nice. Stuffing tons of reading material in there makes sense and I love that unlike my bag it doesn’t get thicker or heavier.
• Showing pictures to friends is pretty fantastic, too. Even once they get over the ooh-ahh reaction.
• Having quick/easy access to email and web seems to fill a little niche, too, around the house.
• And I do love the touch interface, just for the simplicity of pointing at what you want. Beats keyboard+mouse for several classes of activities.

So now I guess I’m just waiting to get to the point where I’ll feel comfortable whipping it out on the subway. At which point, I will be really happy to have my mail to browse, the morning Times to look through, and some tech PDFs to read. It’s enough to make me start buying my O’Reilly’s in e-form, and finally stop piling up once-read 3-month half-life tech tracts.

Alright, I am finding some things to like about it. But it’s not a general-purpose computer and I wish that it was more of one. It does feel pretty futuristic, though.

The guards were pretty friendly once it was clear that I had no bad intentions. “Don’t pull them out,” was all they said with a half-smile and disappeared again.

So much for curiosity. Fwiw, the Genius did manage to get the reluctant DVD to eject with the help of a mysterious “white stick” he used to rearrange a few things inside the slot.

“Can I get one of those in case this happens again?” I asked.

You can guess the answer.

Guess I’ll find out the hard way the next time I get on a plane.

So I tried out RingCentral, thanks to this great FaxCompare site. I was immediately thrilled to find a decent native Mac app client for their service, and it worked perfectly. Notifications are clear and fast (MyFax seemed sluggish) and I’ve had no problems yet. Best of all? I can send faxes with PDF attachments from Mail.app, no problem.

So if you’re on a Mac, looking for a reasonably-priced internet fax service — I’m happy so far.

That’s my clavicle and its new best friend. For what it’s worth, I hate it. Definitely better than having those bones shifting around, but I really don’t like this.

Matheson, ca 1720, stated if a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning.

My immediate thought was that if a programmer has lived eighty then he’s probably spent sixty holding some combination of the control and arrow keys.