Giving Jar Unveiled at the Hatching

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Erik Gillespie

Last week I pitched Giving Jar at the Hatching, a local startup contest to encourage entrepreneurship in the Lansing area. I didn't win the judge vote but I got a ton of applause and support from the audience.

I walked away feeling like Giving Jar needs to happen and I'm determined to give it my all to see that it does.

Performance Playground - Jackson vs. Protocol Buffers, Part 2

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Erik Gillespie

In my previous article comparing the performance of FasterXML's Jackson JSON serializer and Google's Protocol Buffers, I concluded that the difference in speed is very small.

Wow was I wrong!

Stateless Authentication with Spring Security and JWT

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Erik Gillespie

As part of my lifelong study of REST APIs I have been learning more about avoiding shared state between the client and server. This week in particular I have been learning about stateless authentication and attempting to implement it in a skeleton Java app based on my Jersey on Google AppEngine tutorial.

I've decided to use Spring Security and JWT to pull it off.

New Business Idea - Contribution Jars

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Erik Gillespie

You have probably heard of a swear jar. If you're a software developer then maybe you've worked somewhere that you put a buck in a box each time you break the nightly build. In either situation, when the jar or box is full you take that money and do something good with it like go on a vacation or buy your team donuts.

I'm considering building an app that offers up a virtual swear jar so you can gain all the benefits of the coin jar without having to carry around a bunch of coins.

The New Digs

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Erik Gillespie

Last week I signed a coworking agreement at the NEO Center in Lansing, Michigan. Check out these new digs!