So, as of the publishing date of this piece, Solitude will have been around and active for six years. It seems like a long time. Going back and looking over the first few entries is, as one might expect, cringe-inducing.

There’s the very first post (which promised the now long-defunct main VKPS site would be back soon – HA!) and first real update about Geolocation (which hasn’t really done much of any use, though we’ll see if Geode changes that), and the first film review (for The Tuxedo), and even the first first recipe (I remember how bad that omlette was, it was all shell).

Even though my post rate has dropped over the years, I hope that Solitude or a successor will still be here in another six years, to give me pleasant memories to wince over.

If you write applications or websites using Java, you’ve probably needed to export some data to Excel at some point or other. It’s pretty well accepted that the best library for this is the invaluable POI. It provides a neat wrapper over most Excel functionality. It lets you create or reference a spreadsheet (an HSSFWorkbook in POI terms), and then gives you object abstractations for just about any way you might want to manipulate that. Cell styles, formulas, drawing shapes… I won’t go into everything but the cook book is a pretty good starting point for any work you might be doing.

The one thing that’s always bothered me about POI is that it’s pretty low-level, you have to manage absolutely every aspect of what you’re doing. Now it’s great to be able to access that kind of power, but an abstraction over the top would be good.

That’s where jXLS comes in. It builds on top of POI to provide a templating approach to writing new Excel documents, a decent abstraction for most purposes.

Rather than managing everything from what can quickly become fairly complex Java code, you create a template excel file that contains placeholders for where your data should appear. It’s smart enough to be able to intelligently expand a collection of beans and create a new row for each one. That can reduce your boilerplate code significantly.

Downsides? The documentation isn’t the best, and the expression language for some of the more advanced uses is JEXL, which is pretty horrible. Those, however, aren’t major concerns. You’ll rarely need either in depth and, if in doubt, you can always drop down to the POI APIs anyway.

Now, it’s not to be used in all circumstances, there are still situations that are a little beyond it, but it’s an extremely good 80/20 API (you get 80% of the use cases made easy, and the other 20% are still possible). Definitely worth a look.

After failing dismally in the early parts of last year, I’m going to be giving twittering Film Fight another chance (on my twitter feed). For anyone who didn’t see it last year, I’ll be writing film reviews before the later (and often delayed) monthly Film Fights with little snippets on twitter. Often this gives a slightly different perspective of the film, with less time for memory and external bias to change what I thought of the film.

I’m tempted to update twitter and not refer back to it for the film fight, so I can do a comparision of what I thought immediately and what I’m thinking now. We’ll see if that ever actually happens.

If you want to read the 2009 reviews but not the rest of my Twitter (which is occassionally more personal than Solitude), then use the Film Fight ’09 Twitter Search page.

Let’s hope I get a little further into this year than last.

As has become tradition (see last year), it’s time for the best of 2008 awards here at sunny Solitude:

• Best album of 2008 – I was struggling to come up with anything for this, mostly because I can’t really remember what I’ve gotten this year. Thankfully, my last.fm profile is handy for these things, once you mine past all the great older stuff I’ve been listening to. I think the best new album I got from this year is “West Texas” by Sleepercar. Formed as a side-project to Sparta, Jim Ward makes Alt. Rock and Country sit tidily, side by side. A pleasant listen.
• Saddest band break-up of 2008 – It’s been a bad year for fans of modern rock, having lost the joint winners of this award. Reuben and Hell is for Heroes have both called it a day. Both bands were known for excellent live performances, solid albums and a great ethic. They’ll be sadly missed.
• Most disappointing no-show album of 2008 – Overdue by quite some time, “Pandemonium Duke”, is the second album by Marmaduke Duke (made up of Biffy Clyro and Sucioperro members). We heard the first sampler well over 18 months ago and this record has been sitting on the shelves for quite some time. The plus side is that it now looks to be moving (first single is due out in February) and on a major label. Good times ahead for the Duke.
• Best use of William Fichtner 2008 – While it would be easy to pick his ongoing role as Alex Mahone in Prison Break as his best use, I think we can do better. In the opening sequence for The Dark Knight, the joker and his goons rob a bank that is run by gangsters. The branch manager comes out wielding a shotgun and generally kicking ass. Who was it? Yeah, William Fichtner. Take that, Prison Break.
• Best novel I read this year – I’m going to stretch this category a little (but only as far as others have before) and say the best novel I read this year was Watchmen. A densely plotted, well-imagined, gripping story covering so many themes and narratives that weave around each other so tightly that there’s no way to just mention a part. An incredible read.

And that’s it for 2008. Hope we have as much fun making up the 2009 awards, and you all have a good year. Keep your eyes peeled for Fichtner though, he’s hard to spot.

As always my caveat from previous years still apply: Film Fight is a knock-out tournament and, as such, will only select my favourite film. It makes no guarantees about any other place.

First up, notable non-finalists of the year:

• Dan in Real Life
• Sweeney Todd
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
• Cloverfield
• Juno
• Persepolis
• The Mist
• Wall-E
• Pineapple Express
• The Wave
• Burn After Reading

This year the twelve finalists are:

• January: No Country for Old Men
• February: There Will be Blood
• March: Semi-pro
• April: Funny Games
• May: Cashback
• June: The Escapist
• July: The Dark Knight
• August: Step Brothers
• September: Taken
• October: Redbelt
• November: The Changeling
• December: umm, nothing.

Last year it was difficult to pick the absolute winner, but all in all it’s been a pretty weak year for cinema. 3 of the finalists got in because it was simply a quiet month, though several others had some pretty decent competition. I liked No Country for Old Men; it deserves a special nod and certainly walks away with the silver medal. Javier Bourdem and Josh Brolin were both fantastic to watch.

However, the winner of Film Fight 2008 is… There Will Be Blood. It’s an incredible story, well told, and perfectly acted. Daniel Day Lewis deserved his Oscar win for the oil man who by sheer force of will makes his way to the top, and by his crippling insecurity makes it back to the bottom. A classic.