Takes guts

A co-worker pointed me to Spring: A Developer's Notebook on amazon. Take a look at the first review, the one star one.

Saying something like that takes guts. I've got more respect for the author now.

Neat...

I was going to talk about the fact that you can now tie geo locations to a picture in flickr. More interesting (to me), someone linked to a photo tourism site that we (sort of) helped with by contributing pictures. Just check out the thank you page. Did I ever mention that I love getting credit for doing no "work"? No, well nevermind then...

Hahaha...

While doing some work for my dad (he said it had to be done in vb), I found a quote that I really liked because it reflects my feelings as well. ;-)

Working with dates in ASP/VBScript makes me want to bludgeon my skull with a blunt object. I've read all the articles and searched the internet for wisdom, but most documentation stops short of providing any real answer.

source

The quote is about dates, but I've been just about equally frustrated with everything I've done in it. I can't believe that people have built complex app's with vb!! Oie.

Spell check

Pretty soon spell check will be native to firefox 2, which I consider to be a good thing. And to the delight of anyone who reads this blog, now I have can install the SpellBound Dev plug-in and actually see what what's misspelled as I go. Awesome. I can hear everyone else's relief as well. ;-)

Unfortunately, it only tells me what is wrong, but not how to correct it (at this time). It looks like google will continue to be my fastest way to get suggested correct spellings.

Override and...

One thing that I really don't understand when people are creating a sub-class is why they would write code like:

public void myMethod(String name) {
super.myMethod(name);
}

Why bother to override a method (without changing it's visibility) and do nothing? I find it just clutters up the code and adds exactly nothing. This goes for constructors as well, which is where I see this type of code more often, especially when people write JUnit tests!

Does this make sense to anyone? Is there some secret that other people know that I'm missing by writing code that does nothing? This rant brought to you by reading someone else's code.

Maven... finally.

I've started to use Maven more the last week or 2 with MyEclipse. I don't have it totally setup yet as an external tool, but that'll come soon. Pretty good so far. I quite happy with it.

So far my only complaints are that I didn't understand how to use a jar that wasn't open source (or couldn't be put in a repo), but I found a helpful post on how to do it (hint: use the install:install-file target). Annnnyyyyways.. it's great being able to quickly have different lib's used in your project and then make a site that has all kinds of reporting on it.

My question about the RoR fanclub is that is there such a thing for that env as well? After a quick search I found a code coverage tool for RoR called rcov. I'd assume that since testing is built right into the framework that most of the "build" tools would be as well.

Not that I ever really wrote an ant script, but I don't think that I would ever use one if I can just use maven now. Finally, some convention over configuration in Java... baby steps.

Little Miss Sunshine

Just saw Little Miss Sunshine. Really good. Really funny. See it.

And that's all I have to say about that. ;-)

Making better coffee

At home I have a hand-me-down coffee maker with the feature set of "on and off". It makes coffee, which is exactly what I need it for. I did a quick search and on how to make better coffee and of course I got lots of hits like this one. Most of them say to use a french press and bottled water. Oh, and don't forget to use a specific grinder, measuring out your ingredients down to the gram. Oh, and have the water in a specific 5 degree range.

Riiiight. I like good coffee, but I also don't like doing a lot of work to get it. I know, that doesn't make much sense. I just don't want to become one of those crazy people that won't enjoy something unless it was make in a specific way... the way that I read it somewhere as being the "right way"... which would become "my way" with no really good reason.

I don't want to spend 500 $ for a coffee maker. I don't want one with "pods" that you have buy in order to make a cup. *sigh* At this point I'll just keep on playing around with the amount of water and (pre-ground! *gasp*!!) coffee to see if I can tweak things. Time for another cup. ;-)

Pretty happy about my degree

For all the pains that I went through for my degree, I think that it was really a smart choice for me. To have actually been trained in the field that I work in, I feel that I have a huge jump on people just with all the background knowledge that I have. And what courses provided me with this edge? Those are the ones that I was like "why are we talking this? I'll never actually need this in any job..."

That material isn't the stuff that most people would see directly on the job, but I feel that it really helps me understand why things are done in certain ways. Weird eh? All the stuff that I thought was a waste of my time has turned out to be my edge, my advantage. Go U of O.

Brown dot on my nose

Oie. Quite a few times while at work I have noticed a brown dot on my nose. Always in the same place. At first I thought it was mud that was kicked up from my bike ride in, but that's strange 'cause I have a shower after I get to work... Very weird.

I just figured it out: my travel mug that I use at work has a flip up lid. The part that was touching the opening for the coffee is now at the perfect place to come into contact with my face as I take a drink. Perhaps not an optimal design, ah well. Good thing is that it's a pretty tough mug and I like that fact that it's see-through. :-/

Soft tires? Tired Jim...

You know how they always say to improve your gas mileage (kilimeterage?) you should make sure that your tires are properly inflated? Ever wanted to bring this fact "home" to really understand it?

Just let some air out of your bike tire and bike around for a bit and you'll really understand how much an impact this has. It's not a small thing.

The back tire on my bike keeps on going soft. Not quite sure why yet since I just changed the tube (I had a staple through the tire). My next step will be to swap out the whole tire with my "spare" bike... If that fails? Well, I might actually have to go out and buy a couple of new tires.

Change ATM

I would really love to have a change ATM. You go up, swipe your card, and dump in a handful (or more) change. It sorts it, and adds the money to your account. All done. At this point I have a big pile of change and I don't feel like rolling it. *sigh* Ah well.

Update: Woa... I saw on Canada AM this morning how they are putting in machines just like I said. I found an easier to read story at Canada Business. At 9.8% fee, it's a bit steep, but cheaper than rolling your own and then going to the bank. And another weird thing? Aleks is sort-of right: we'll be able to do laundry (dry cleaning), banking and groceries all at the same place...

Freaky. Just like in Sphere... I just have to think about it, and it becomes true, even if it happened in the past!! The power, the ultimate power!!! Bwahahahahaha!!!

No evidence...

One thing that I was thinking about when I read about scientists recovering old texts is what would be left for future people to learn about the lives we're living right now. Out knowledge is being stored more and more in electronic format which is pretty fragile. No stone tablets for us. Our books are printed on paper with a high acid content and degrade very quickly compared to old paper which lasts (at least) 100's of years. (Ya, I read it somewhere... no proof on this blog).

What's likely going to be left? Environmental damage? Landfills with diapers, broken plastic toys and food wrappers? Probably just evidence of our own stupidity and not much else. Sad really.

Instead of being the Achilles' heel, maybe the thing that will actually save human knowledge will be the digitization revolution - all knowledge being at least in digital format. Redundant, distributed libraries so the loss of one building won't have such a huge impact. We'll have to see how things turn out with the digitization and the copyright laws. ;-)

Crapsticks

We were planning to go away for a family cottage weekend. However, the strong storms lately have taken out the power at the cottage and it will be too difficult on the cottage to have that many people there without power. Estimated time for the power to back on? Sunday night. :-(

I'm a bit sad. 1) I won't see some family that I really only see a couple of times a year (this is one of them) and 2) it's rare that we have the chance to get away to the cottage.

Dammit.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the food that I have bought.... at least it hasn't been too much so far... anyone know good things to do with 3 doz eggs? I'm thinking lots of egg salad and souffles... *sigh*. At least I have frozen the bacon (and I know that will be used without a problem). Oie.

It's all new again

One of the interesting things working with Java web apps is that the "best practices" keeps on changing. Frameworks that at one time are looked at as the shining example of doing things well turn into "old school" and clunky in a handful of years. The idea of "Enterprise" solutions get thrown out in favour of lighter, cleaner frameworks. Pattern overload gets turfed in favour of KISS. Vendor lock-in gets tossed for plugablility. Even the language is changing relatively quickly: they're on v6 beta 2 at the time of this writing and expecting to release it in the fall. There is always more to learn, better ways to do things. Status quo just means that you'll be left behind.

Keeping it neutral

One of the things that I feel that I have to work on is keeping things neutral and not losing my patience, even if I am frustrated. I don't think that it helps the situation in the long or short term. I know that I have not liked it in the past when people have lost their patience with me, and I don't want to become like that. I think that this will require more effort on my part.

And if it gets really bad? I guess I should just walk away for a couple of minutes and come back, but that's not always an option. :-(