Setting up IntelliJ for AEM 6.1

I'm lucky enough to run my development on a MacBook Pro. I like the Terminal that's offered and after you get over using your thumb on the command key instead of your pinky on the Ctrl key, you're off and running! Here's how I set up IntelliJ for Mac.

If brew is your friend, cask is your bestie! Install both of these to set up your MacBook in minutes, all from the Terminal! It will set up and configure all the tools we need to set up IntelliJ. Here's the steps to install brew and cask, otherwise you can follow the details on each site.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

You'll have to enter your MacBook password for each and within a few minutes you're set up to start installing everything else. From the Terminal we can now search brew and cask to find the applications we need to install simply by running a search.

brew search enter-search-term...

First off the bat we need Java JDK 8 for AEM 6.1 so let's install Java 8 from the Terminal with Brew Cask.

brew cask install java

Now we want Apache Maven so that we can build our AEM Project. This one comes from Brew.

brew install maven

We might need GIT...

brew install git

And finally we want IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition...

brew cask install intellij-idea

Done! Now all our default software is installed!

Finally we need to install IntelliVault so that we can interact with the CRX repository. Open Eclipse then select Configure > Plugins > Browse Repositories... then type IntelliVault and install. IntelliJ will be restarted.

While this is restarting, we need to get a copy of FileVault. This comes as part of an AEM install located under <aem-install>/crx-quickstart/opt/filevault. Unzip filevault.zip.

After IntelliJ has restarted, navigate to Preferences > Other Settings > IntelliVault and update the following:

• Vault Directory: <unzipped-filevalut.zip-dir>/bin

Bicycle Motocross - The tribute to BMX Bandits

Corey Bohan, Mike 'Hucker' Clark and Leanna Curtis have teamed up with Red Bull to bring new school flavour to the 80s cult classic, BMX Bandits.

The movie screams 80's! They're all wearing 80's style race pants, helmets and gloves. Hucker is rocking his 80's moustache. The BMX bikes have lashings of chrome and are dressed with Skyway Tuff's, rear brakes and custom pad sets.

One of the cool features was Corey Bohan's BMX bike. Watching closely at the start you can see that it has a custom BOHAN BMX padset and BOHAN BMX decals made to look just like the 80's Mongoose decals.

Watch for the Redline and Haro in the final race scene!

How to Remove Yellowing from a BMX Seat

A lot of old school BMX products deteriorate with age. One of the common deterioration found to white BMX seats is yellowing. Here is a Kashimax Handler BMX seat from 1987 that is in perfect condition, except for the yellowing.

The yellowing is caused by mildew growing within the pores of the seat. The best way to remove this without using harsh chemicals and potentially damaging the seat is to leave it hanging in direct sunlight for a few weeks.

I left the seat above for 6 months hanging from my bedroom window where it received direct afternoon sunlight over summer. Here it is now!

The yellowing is completely gone and the seat looks brand new! This seat is going onto my TBC Cobra Quad build.

I hope this tip helps someone else out.

Cranks for the TBC Cobra Quad

I picked up the Tioga chainring and Tioga spider as part of the TBC Cobra Quad purchase. The frame colour was matched to the spider and it suited nicely.

The Takagi CR-MO cranks came on another BMX bike that I purchased. They were a bit rusted and still had bits of the original candy blue. I stripped what was left of the candy blue, citric acid bathed the cranks and gave them a hand polish to get them up to a nice survivor look.

Anlun Stem Saved for the TBC Cobra Quad

Picked up this Anlun Freestyle stem on a $40 BMX find that popped up chained outside the local train station with a for sale sign on it. The whole BMX bike was covered in white house paint. A quick strip and polish and it's come up a nice survivor look.

When I pulled the stem apart, there was problems with the quill staying inside the stem head. I bought a sharp centre punch and gave the knurling a few taps to expand the quill size and help it to fit snugly into the stem head. I added a little Loctite to make sure it stayed in place when I did ride it.

Developing Page Content in AEM for a Future Release - Launches

We've had a requirement that has come from a customer who has basically said...

Each region/section of the home page is modified by a different content owner. They make changes independently of each other and they would like to have their region/section published independently.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a page-centric content management system at its core. You build pages from templates and components. There are other CMS's, such as OpenText Web Experience Manager (WEM) that are content-centric. You build content items and assign them to channels and/or a template to build a page.

Our customer has been using a content-centric CMS for almost a decade and old habits die slow. There has been a huge push to get things working "like the old system".

When you dig to the root of this requirement, what they are really after is a way to efficiently develop the content on an activated page for a future release while still maintaining the production content. That's where AEM has offered Launches!

To create a Launch from the Touch UI console, navigate to any page within the Sites Menu, click on Create > Create Launch. There is no need to navigate to the page that you want to create a Launch for as you are forced to navigate to it through the Launch Wizard. Navigate through to your page and click Next.

There are two main options when creating a launch; to create the launch with existing content or to create a launch using a new template to replace the page.

If you create a launch using a new template, you are creating a new page with a new template that will replace the existing page. The final step you are asked to select the new template before you create the launch.

If you select to use existing content then you can select to exclude sub pages and/or inherit source page live data. By default sub pages are copied over as part of a launch. Check the exclude sub pages box if you do not want the sub pages to be included as part of a launch. Inheriting source page live data is a feature that allows you to treat the launch page in the same way as a Live Copy page. Checking this option allows the launch page to stay in sync with any changes made to the source/live page unless you cancel inheritance.

The References section shows you how many Launches are associated with a page. To work with the content within a Launch, select the page and click References > Launches > Launch Title > Go to the page. This will open up the Launch Page.

If you have select to inherit the source page live data, you will need to Cancel inheritance on any component you want to modify. If the page does not inherit the source page live data, you can just change the page at will.

Launches also allow you to create a Nested Launches (Launch within a Launch). This is a very powerful feature but can also become very complicated! The key thing is that inheritance works from the point where it has been cancelled or from the source page. Sub Launches are labelled as the Launch Title (Parent Launch Title).

To promote a Launch, select the page and click References > Launches > Launch Title > Promote launch. From here you can specify the Scope (to promote the full launch or just the page changes and sub pages) and you can specify the Target if this is a Nested Launch. After the promotion has run, you can publish the page changes.

To delete a Launch from the Touch UI console, navigate to Tools > Operations > Launches. This will take you back into the Classic UI console. From here you can select and delete a configured Launch.

Scouting out The Cove Dirt Jumps

I couldn't stand being cooped up inside the house for another rainy weekend so I decided to head out to have a look at a second set of legal dirt jumps that I was able to find a little bit of information on. The Castle Cover dirt jumps are significantly larger than The Grove.

There's two main jump lines at The Cove. The beginner line is more of an intermediate compared to those at The Grove and the expert line is insane! The expert line had 10 feet high kickers and into 12 feet high landings!

The trails are well worn down and they need a lot of work. I think this is a combination of the bad weather and rain that's been hitting Sydney the last month, people not respecting the trains and local trail locals having moved on to other things. There are still signs posted up asking riders to sweep and water the trails before riding and to cover the trails after use.

I'll be back here in the next few months helping out to dig, reshape and ride!

OOTB Forms VS AEM Forms

Adobe Experience Manager has two Forms products:

• Default (Out Of The Box) Forms - The very basic form components to build simple forms within a page; and
• Experience Manager Forms - Previously known as AEM Forms this is the full-blown, Lifecycle integrated Adaptive Forms suite. It's also an additional license cost!

The way the Adobe Doc's site has been reformatted makes it difficult to find any information. I'm posting this blog as an easy way for me to reference the documentation for each.

Default OOTB Forms

• Developing OOTB AEM 6.1 Forms
• Default AEM 6.1 Forms Components

Experience Manager Forms (The Paid Version)

• Experience Manager Forms marketing site
• AEM Forms 6.1 Help and Tutorials
• Getting Started with AEM Forms 6

BMXPO Sydney 2015 (Part 3)

Here's the final set of the photos taken from Sydney's BMXPO 2015 and the 1986 King of the Skate Parks Reunion. Enjoy!

BMXPO Sydney 2015 (Part 2)

Here's part two of the photos taken from Sydney's BMXPO 2015 and the 1986 King of the Skate Parks Reunion. Enjoy!