Java Thinking

I've installed WorldCommunityGrid on my media center , which is on 24*7 - may as well use that spare CPU time for good! I've been watching my ranking slowly get better, starting over 300,000 and now after 21 days of run time I'm ranked (by points) in the mid 200,000s. Along comes a friend of mine and in a very short time he's already broken through under 200,000! He has a quad core CPU (mine is a dual core), and I'm assuming thats the reason. I find it strange that developer PCs never seem to get updated unless someone new joins the team - and they only get a new computer if one doesn't exist already. I've never worked anywhere where they've had a policy to update developer machines regularly. I think I'd have a policy of updating them every 12 to 18 months if it was up to me. The older machines can filter down to less power users, or perhaps the developer PCs could be rented. I would love a clean machine with a clean OS every 18 months, and I can h

I finally got a new battery for my laptop - it only took 3 weeks rather than the estimated 6, so finally I'm back online - on the train. It's barely doing the job though, a new battery barely gets me to and from work - I obviously need to work closer to home! I'm running Ubuntu , Netbeans , Grails , and sometimes a 3G internet connection - so I guess it is working hard for what is sometimes more than a 2 hour round trip! It will be interesting to see how the new battery lasts. I'm also thinking about getting a new laptop at the end of the year - my current laptop is over 2 years old, so technology wise it's out of date. The DELL Adamo looks interesting, with a SSD disk - I'd love to see how much difference that makes, otherwise I'd probably get an Inspiron 13z - I'm mainly interested in the smaller lighter models since I'm so mobile. Its nice to see laptops coming without DVD drives now - who needs them? I found an interesting whitepaper on Agile

I've recently made updates to my grails plugins to ensure they work on Grails 1.3. I hadn't touched them for a while, so it took a bit of effort. I haven't had the opportunity to use Grails much lately, so I had to catch up on changes. One issue I have is that its impossible to know if anyone is actually using these plugins, and therefore are they worth maintaining? I recently stumbled across AgileRecord.com - The Magazine for Agile Developers and Agile Testers. This is a downloadable PDF magazine, I think it only requires registration. Very interesting read, I recommend checking it out. Another awesome read is "Scrum and XP from the Trenches" -  http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches - This describes how one team implemented agile and is a fantastic source of information. I've been playing with Joomla lately, and I'm liking it so far. There is a bit of a learning curve, because it has a different paradigm than Wordpress - while Wordp