Java Thinking

Right now, I'm trying out EasyPeasy on my laptop - an Ubuntu Netbook based edition optimized for low power consumption and pre-installed with propriety codecs and software. I thought I'd try it out hoping to get more battery life, and also to take the netbook interface for a drive. I figure its got some attractive qualities - it differs in the way you access the system menus and opens applications full screen.

Know of any companies in Sydney that engage in REAL agile projects - properly? Let me know, I'm interested! I had a javascript drop-down menu that youtube video interferred with - when the menu dropped down, the youtube object covered it! I found the answer here -  http://geekswithblogs.net/steveclements/archive/2007/03/03/107839.aspx - where the solution is simple: Add nested element to object tag: <param name="wmode" value="transparent"/> And attribute to embed tag: wmode="transparent" Spending too much time travelling to and from work makes me appreciate the idea of telecommuting. I've noticed that Canonical (Ubuntu) advertises home based jobs, but all companies I know are strongly against it - and although they don't advertise the fact , it is an unspoken policy. Right now, I probably don't have the best home for accommodating telecommunting, but I did come across the OfficePod the other day - a brilliant idea, your office ...

I've noticed a bunch of websites that just don't pay any attention to detail. Little things: banking sites that don't remember your settings (i.e. for exporting statements) and you have to set them every time you export, for every account log forms you fill it to register, and when you fail validation (like getting the CAPTCHA wrong), some parts of your form are now blank and you have to fill them in again (or you get to the bottom where they ask you to accept the terms and conditions, and when you view them it navigates away from the form you are on) paying for things online is still very difficult! It took me almost an hour to pay for an extension I bought the other day - very confusing paypal process, which I haven't fully researched to know what is going on Maybe these are symptoms of trying to do too much - and never doing anything very well? The banking site in question never seems to change, so perhaps they just aren't in a position where they can make ...

Looking for some icons? Check out the fantastic work available @ webtoolkit4.me - there are some really good icon sets. I'm always trying to find better ways of doing things and find incredible resistance to even the simplest of improvements - things that I would consider no-brainers end up subjected to business cases and long winded "evaluations of all the options". Well, the Pragmatic Programmers have released a book that might be exactly what I need: Driving Technical Change "Finding cool languages, tools, or development techniques is easy—new ones are popping up every day. Convincing co-workers to adopt them is the hard part. The problem is political, and in political fights, logic doesn’t win for logic’s sake. Hard evidence of a superior solution is not enough. But that reality can be tough for programmers to overcome." Myself and a co-worker have a keen interest in developing our agile skills, and would also like to infect the rest of the team with our en...

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...