techno.blog("Dion")

It is fun to see people explore various rich UIs.

This is a Happy New Year greeting which is generated via Amazon Web Services. It even has books that I like on it :)

I also kinda like 10×10 which shows our news in a visual way (and grabs top news based on what people are searching on).

Not always practical, but fun.

Bruce Schneieir recently talked about British Pub Hours and Crime.

He has some really good points about the seperation of local power compared to central power.

It has always frustrated me that many areas of the US have very early closing hours, and that if you are in that town at closing time, all hell breaks lose. I think I would rather open up the hours so the rabble would spread out!

An email is sent to a couple of lists, and a few people.

What if you happen to be on some of those lists, and are one of the individuals.

Do you want 3 copies of the email?

I don’t! Why doesn’t my email client work out that it got 3 copies of the SAME email and just give me one.

I guess UNLESS i filter it differently, and I say that I want copies (pointers) from the various folders. Really the folders should be nice metadata anyway and just appear in the different views.

An email is sent to a couple of lists, and a few people.

What if you happen to be on some of those lists, and are one of the individuals.

Do you want 3 copies of the email?

I don’t! Why doesn’t my email client work out that it got 3 copies of the SAME email and just give me one.

I guess UNLESS i filter it differently, and I say that I want copies (pointers) from the various folders. Really the folders should be nice metadata anyway and just appear in the different views.

Graffito team and the Apache Portals PMC announced that Graffito, formerly known as JCMS, had completed its transition to the Apache Incubator.

This is good news. Hopefully they can pull off their aims:

The main objective of Graffito is to create a portal oriented content management system. It’s currently build on top of Apache Slide and the team also plans to support access to JCR content repositories through Jackrabbit. Graffito user interface is managed with a set of JSR-168 portlets that can be deployed in compatible portal systems such as Apache Jetspeed.

Home page: http://incubator.apache.org/graffito

I think the Mac Mini is an interesting stab at the more cost aware market which Apple always seems to pass by.

I mean, it it just so small you can carry it around with you! (not that it would do you that much good unless everywhere you go you have a monitor/keyboard/etc… but that is the case for many).

The $499 Mac mini has a 1.25-gigahertz PowerPC G4 processor, 256 megabytes of RAM, 40-gigabyte hard drive, combo DVD/CD-RW drive, ATI Radeon 9200 graphics processor with 32 megabytes of video memory, one FireWire port, two USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port and an internal modem. Internal adapters for WiFi and Bluetooth wireless networking are options available through Apple’s build-to-order online store. A step-up model at $599 has a 1.42-gigahertz G4 and 80-gigabyte hard drive, and is otherwise identical.

And then there is the iPod Shuffle. I am not really sure what to think about that one. Sure it is small, and cheaper at $99 bucks… but not really revolutionary. But, I may be the wrong market. I want an MP3 player which is that small, and have 200GB of space, and allows me to get online, and make calls, and ….

My biggest question for Apple right now:

WHERE IS MY JDK 1.5!

(and what about getting a damn G5 into a laptop already.)

Groovy is back in track with Java 5 now. Not only does beta 9 support USING Java 5 to run Groovy, but Jeremy has been busy making the parser grok Java 5 from the get go. GroovyAnnotations :)

Very dear users, and developers,

I’m pleased to announce the release of Groovy-1.0-beta-9.

You’ll be able to download it here:

http://groovy.codehaus.org/Download

The main goal of this release, after the recent beta-8, was to make Groovy JDK 1.5 compliant. Groovy should now run just fine under JDK 1.5, thanks to Russel’s hard work! If ever you encounter particular errors, don’t forget to report them in JIRA.

On other fronts, this release contains:

- new bug fixes,
- better error reporting (more meaninful exceptions, and less unreadable
stacktraces)
- improvements in the GroovyServlet which allow to generate binary content as well.

For more details, read the following release notes generated by JIRA:

Bugs:
[GROOVY-284] groovy script has issues on cygwin [GROOVY-477] ClassFormatError with Groovy Beta 5 and JDK 1.5 Beta 1 [GROOVY-514] ServletResponse#setContentType needs to be called before ServletResponse#getWriter [GROOVY-558] AnyClass.class and AnyClass.getClass() always return java.lang.Class.
[GROOVY-616] references to “.class” do not work if full qualified class name is used – will always evaluate to “java.lang.Class.class”
[GROOVY-660] Multi-threaded groovy: get java.lang.LinkageError:
duplicate class definition
[GROOVY-666] JDK 1.5 problem
[GROOVY-671] Groovy / Java Mismatch with simple class [GROOVY-683] Can’t assign to native types in Groovy Beans [GROOVY-686] GroovyServlet will crash if parameters are passed in HTTP Request [GROOVY-691] Duplicate class error with listen mode

Improvements:
[GROOVY-695] GroovyServlet web.xml mapping dependency removed and various refactorings [GROOVY-699] GroovyServlet: generate binary content

Thank you everybody for your great work and support. Special thanks go
to our new commiters: Jochen Theodorou, Russel Winder, Dierk Koenig, and
Scott Stirling. Welcome to you!

Enjoy this new release!

–
Guillaume Laforge
Groovy Project Manager
http://glaforge.free.fr/weblog

I enjoy T.V. shows from the US and the UK (among other places). What really blows my mind is how the utter tripe manages to make it across the ocean.

I know that 95% of T.V. is awful, so the odds are that some of it will mistakenly be moved over. Soap Operas in the US and painful, fake, and the long pauses really get me. Soap Operas in the UK are so depressing that you want to kill yourself.

However, there are some shows which really need to be seen all over. A show called Only Fools and Horses is a CLASSIC comedy from the UK. Why not show that instead of Benny Hill, Are you being served, or Monty Python (not that I don’t like Python.. just not every second).

The latest travestry which has me writing all of this, is a show on Comedy Central.

DISTRACTION: A Game Show

It is very bizarre. It comes from the UK, and it even looks like the host is the same.

How is it bizarre? Picture the techniques in which you have to ring the buzzer and get answers:

1. As a contestant you have to pee in a tin. When you STOP the buzzer goes off
2. As a contestant you have your hands tied behind you, and have to charge over to a large naked person who has the answers stuck to their body. You have to get them off with your teeth.

Why are we getting this? Why are we turning into Japan? :)

While sitting next to Mike Cannon-Brookes, he showed me Good Morning Silicon Valley.

He just mentioned it on his blog, and he is spot on. Since then I have subscribed, and it is great. It gives you good news, and is written so well. Great to have a bit of a laugh while you learn the goings on. Why does the media have to be so boring sometimes? We need more of this, and Jon Stewart, …

We don’t talk enough about toilets. At least that is what I heard on NPR a month ago when they reported on the first annual toilet convention. Everyone is trying to catch up with the Japanese. I would love to see their toilets here, and watch people try to work out which buttons to push. Especially funny when they hit the bidet button :)

I was confronted with a question surrounding a toilet myself recently. At a place in England, where a toilet brush normally lies, there was a plastic stick. No brush. I pondered its use, got a little worried for a second, and walked out.

I was watching T.V. later that night, and saw an advertisement for a NEW toilet duck which looked like the object I saw. It turns out that you use it to grab a disposable cleaning glove, use it to clean the bowl, and then flush it down.

Much more hygenic!