This is a continuation of the ideas from “Is Kotlin the New Java?”. What is Lombok? For those of you who are not familiar, Project Lombok is a build tool for the Java programming language, which adds nifty capabilities that many Java developers feel they sorely lack. Some of the more vanilla features include: “Getter” and “Setter” generators “ToString” and “EqualsAndHashCode” generators “Data” and “Value” class generators Automatic resource cleanup Not-Null assertions Builder class generators Constructor helpers of various sorts There’s also a few more exotic features (which I personally have not seen developers) use in the wild, but which no doubt someone is using, including suppressing checked exceptions, lazy fields, magic “val” keyword, delegation, “with"ers, util and helper classes. ...

• programming
• java
• kotlin

Lately I’ve been getting questions from a few family members and colleagues about which cameras (or kinds of cameras) they should consider getting. Generally, I get this question from folks with relatively recent smartphones (e.g. iPhone 6S+) who believe that they may be able to take better photographs with a better, standalone camera. (I mostly get this question from parents of young kids, but I’ve also gotten it once or twice from people interested in vacation photos or lifestyle photography. ...

• photography

In addition to my aforementioned impulsive purchase of the Fujifilm Instax SP-2 smartphone printer (for printing mementos from social occasions), I also impulsively purchased the Fujifilm TCL-X100 II teleconversion lens for my Fujifilm X100T camera. This was something I was thinking about for a while about a week, and although I hesitated quite a bit in the store, I ended up pulling the trigger on it. The Fuji TCL-X100 II conveter lens is an engineering marvel, and when attached to the camera, looks quite convincingly part of the original body. ...

• photography

A little over a week ago, I went out and picked up the Fujifilm Instax SP-2 (smartphone) printer from B&H to bring to a friend’s wedding. Though this was a bit of an impulse purchase, I had my eye on this printer for a couple of weeks, and thought I would get good use out of it going into Thanksgiving Weekend. It’s kind of like a Polaroid for the 21st century, except you know (more or less) what your pics will turn out like before printing. ...

• photography

Call me a crotchety old (young) man if you will. In fact, I can scarcely recognize myself from the days of yore. When I was in school, I was constantly tinkering with my Android phones (the “HTC Thunderbolt” and “HTC Droid DNA”, respectively). I would flash all sorts of ROMs, trying to squeeze extra performance or battery life out of apps. I was thrilled to be able to find all sorts of sketchy apps which wouldn’t cost a dime out of pocket, but which would pop up all sorts of little ads. ...

• technology