I just found out but Sang has been teaching a series of 1-day free training sessions on JavaFX, MySQL and GlassFish. The full list is at his JavaPassion Site but by now there are only 3 days left, so check it out and signup if you are interested and available. • June 24th, Atlanta, GA • June 25th, Raleigh, NC • June 26th, Cleveland, OH

It's a shame that engineers don't like free stuff. If they did, Sakthi's tip about the upcoming JRuby Hack Day would be perfect. Experts from Sun and Joyent will show how to develop and deploy JRuby applications on GlassFish (to get some impressive performance and scalability results [1, 2, 3]). A catered dinner and open bar will also be provided. But I'm sure none of you would be interested in getting all of that for free. So you won't need details like the time (August 8), location (Axis Cafe in San Francisco), or registration page (hurry to guarantee your spot). Like I said--it's a real shame. ;)

Sang is doing another of his free online courses. This time is Java EE with Passion! The course covers quite a bit of material, with more emphasis on the Web Tier area, but some of the new Java EE 5 APIs are also covered. This course is conducted by email; check What is like to take this course. Coincidentally, the new, in-depth, course on Java EE 5 from Sun is also available; I'll describe it in an entry tomorrow morning.