JAlbum

Now I have a digital camera I would like to put the images somewhere people can see them (family really). Ideally I would like to be able to upload them remotely to my computer, have it create thumbnails / gallery etc. by itself. I was going to play around with jpg metadata and maybe make a plug-in for Durham, but I'm pretty lazy (which can always be a problem). Then I did some searching and found a library for metadata extraction in java for digital pictures. Still too much work. They linked to something that looks really promising: JAlbum. It seems like it's a nice tool for the desktop and "it's a JavaBean" so I can put it in JBoss. ;-) Sometimes you just can't beat a little laziness...

Coverage tools (again)

A roving reader pointed out djUnit for doing testing and coverage at the same time in Eclipse. I tried it out at work for a couple of minutes on WSAD 5.1.2 but it didn't show any lines in the file. I suspect that it doesn't play nicely with WSAD (right now) since IBM has their own everything doing stuff. You couldn't even change what java version (to 1.4) the test server used without upgrading.

I'll play around with it later "when I have time". Before that I'm going to get JBoss running at home and play around with stuff by myself. It's all time though... there's about 1000 things that I want to do, but I think that I have time for only 2.5. *sigh* Ah well. I'll probably look back at myself in 10 years and wonder why I didn't do more with all my free time.

Chimeras

After reading a story about how far science is advancing and what all sorts of *wonderful* things that they are able to do to animals like mice, I couldn't help but think of The Secret of NIMH. How soon before things that are created in a lab, whether animals, bacteria / viruses, machines or something else, take over the world. I don't think that I'd want to be around for that.

Sure thing

Pretty soon I will have to deal with one of the things that is sure in this life: taxes. Before living at home my dad has always done it since he just bought sw and would plug in the numbers. Now I think that since I am a "owner of a business" I should be more involved. It would be a good idea anyways to keep a closer track of my money so I can kick myself in the ass if I am wasting it on anything.

But the thing is, I don't really want to deal with taxes. I guess that's me and just everyone else alive. Ah well. I'll probably pick up some sw soon so I can deal with this because it's more complicated than before. :-|

Stupid people

Why do some people treat work differently than home in the bathroom / cleanliness area? Why is it "okay" to make a gross mess at work and not clean it up? &@*%@*! People who make messes at work that they wouldn't make at home (or would clean it up if they did!) should be stuffed into a sack, dragged out back and beaten with a stick for a while. Or they can just do "bathroom duty" by cleaning up messes for a while. Grrr.... I just don't understand people sometimes...

Hotmail went bye-bye

Dammit. I didn't check my hotmail account enough and it was killed. I had to recreate it again, but I lost all my mail in it. I used to check it all the time with Outlook Express, but since I switched to Outlook, the version that I have can't check hotmail. *sigh* I just have to check it more I guess... blah. I hate checking things manually. That reminds me, I should check my uottawa alumni account so it doesn't go dead too... Oie.

Constant time test suite

One strange thing that I have come across lately is that our test suite at work seems to be running constant time. I have more than doubled the number of tests in our suite since I last wrote about it (I think) and it takes about the same amount of time. Humm... I've got a bottle neck somewhere. But it's a weird thing none the less. I just thought that it was funny: double the amount of work, and it still does it in the same amount of time -> it can do infinite amount of work in the same amount of time. Hummm, well maybe not.

Not funny

It's not funny to have a fire drill on one of the colder days of the year. But at least I could get my coat (unlike some people) and get over to TH. ;-)

Interesting

After following a story from slashdot and the article it linked to, I was interested by the third last paragraph:

However seductive the present might be, writing for the Web is writing for the ages, not just for the moment. (People who post stream-of-consciousness entries in their weblogs, for example, might want to consider that they're also writing for managers who might hire them in twenty years.)

Humm... interesting and scary at the same time. I don't think that I will change my "style" (i.e. brain dump), but it's something to ponder none the less.

Materials the new wave?

After reading articles about how they found a new plastic that is able to convert more solar energy to power (from slashdot of course) I keep on thinking that the "next wave" will be materials. By the time we die the clothes that we wear will be very different than the ones that we had when we were born. We already have clothes that are coffee resistant due to being treated on the nano level. In fact I am wearing some right now.

When will your whole outfit be a network? Pretty soon at this rate, and it'll be charged when you are in light, and cleaned with just water. They'll probably put RF tags in your socks so that you can find that missing left one. You're glasses will "paint" on your eye your daily plan and you'll interact with your "personal agent" just by thinking about it since your hat will be able to read you brain waves... cool stuff. Sci-fi stuff, but coming to a GAP near you soon...

Crazy weather

Did anyone see the weather for Thursday??? Plus nine in January! So much for skiing and skating! Everything will be a mess. *sigh*

Back on the run

This morning we went for a run... it was so good to run again. We went down my favourite path under the Queensway and along the Rideau river, but it was hard going 'cause it wasn't plowed at all. At one point we switched to a plowed path, but that quickly dumped onto a street that led to a station with a lot of road graders / plows, so that wasn't the best route. Got to figure out something better. It's much nicer now that the roads aren't so icy and nasty.

We went skating this weekend and I figured out something: it's not my skates, it's me. However I stand in my skates (we bought new ones that I have since returned) I seem to put weight on a pressure point and quickly start to feel nauseous. They cause me huge amounts of pain. Which sucks, because I think that I would love skating all the time. I enjoy it, but I can only do it for like 10 minutes which pisses off anyone who I go with 'cause they just start to get warmed up. *sigh*

So the plan now is to get cross country skis and just do that. I know that I can do that. The only problem is finding skis long enough since I am so tall. We'll see. Until then I'll just keep running at part of my routine so that I actually do it. I feel great today after my run... I'm so charged. ;-)

Hard to get back into a routine

I planned yesterday to go running today at lunch. I didn't bring anything into the office and just sat on my ass talking at lunch. *sigh* I find it very hard to change my routine in any way sometimes.

As I see people run by outside my heart just drops. I know that I can do it. I know that I should. I just have not. I know that I'd feel much better if I did too... Sometimes I just want to kick myself in my ass, but my leg doesn't really bend that way.

Happy Anniversary to me!

It's been one year since I have started work. Weird because it doesn't feel that long at all. I really felt that I have learned a ton in the last year and had some really great experience. A good way to start off a career.

What to build...

One thing that I want to do is build something with Java 5 (or 1.5...), but I had a hard time using a language if I don't actually have a purpose. I need to think of a small project that I can do, something simple.

One possible small app that I just thought of was something that I had to do in first year engineering. You had an island that had an oil slick somewhere on it. The "oil" defused based on what the concentration to every side of it (N,E,S,W). Depending on how "stable" you want to compute the contamination, you iterate for different amount of times.

Does anyone else know of something simple and easy to play around with?

Party like it's 2005

I'm back to work now it's 2005 and it's good to be back. I kind of wish that I was at home for another week, but that's another story. What have I been up to? Lots of family, lots of food. I was able to get together with some friends I have not seen in a while, so that was good. And to Laura's glee, I put up 20+ pictures and our window blind so our place now feels more "homey".

I also read The Da Vinci Code: Special Illustrated Edition which was well worth the extra money for the pictures. It was a really well written book that I just flew through. It's nice to read for fun again. I keep on wanting to set aside time to just read but it always feels hard. There is always more stuff to do, like seal up the windows. Ah well.