Weblogism

CVS PostIt!

As I struggle every time I look for it, here is the command to recover an older version of a file:

cvs -Q update -p -r <em>revision filename </em>

“Chants would be a Fine Thing”

Read in today’s Guardian wrap:

The Wrap’s appetite for stories involving highly dubious scientific formulae is today satiated by the Times, which gives us the maths behind the perfect football chant.

It goes like this: “[C x I/A] + P (S + H) +T squared.”

The formula, dreamt up – sorry, we mean painstakingly worked out – by Rogan Taylor, director of the football industries group at the University of Liverpool, is explained thus: Contribution multiplied by Intensity divided by Aggression, added to Performance, multiplied by the sum of Spontaneity and Humour, added to Topicality squared.

The Wrap’s initial attempts at singing a new anthem in the office this morning ended without much success, but not before colleagues had kindly suggested the addition of some more colourful terms to spice up the magic formula.

CodeWorker or “Is There Any Other Way of Working?”

When I bought the French magazine called Login:, that was because of the big lizard on the cover. I’m fond of lizards, that’s probably why. But it’s another article which attracted my attention.

CodeWorker is a parsing tool as well as a source code generator. The article, pretty simple to understand, gave only a glimpse of the full power of the beast. I was really impressed. And the more I thought of it, the more I was considering using it on the project I am currently working on, for generating:

• DTOs;
• DAOs;
• managers and façades;
• Struts classes.

I only started this afternoon from examples and I did the first three items in the list above, generated from the SQL scripts creating the tables. Plainly speaking, the whole business tier is now virtually implemented. What was supposed to take at least 10 days only took less than 4 hours. Once the Struts classes are generated, there will be just a few blanks to fill in, a few methods to add and pages to decorate – still a dreadful jigsaw to my eyes, however. Simply amazing.

The applications of such a tool are just unlimited. Just think of a PHP website with Smarty; you write the scripts for handling CRUDs via Smarty with the proper CodeWorker templates as well as the SQL scripts – and you’re just ready to begin a project in excellent conditions.

Now, that being said, such a powerful tool has drawbacks: it is indeed very tough to master and it takes a while to get acquainted with the templating language. But all in all, it’s more than worth it. Certainly for me a brand new way of working; the fewer lines of code, the fewer mistakes I do and the better I feel.

Michael O’Leary: “Towards a Bloodbath”

Michael O’Leary must have been somewhat annoyed: 14% drop from last year’s €264-million profit. It must be said that the year has been particularly tough because of the war in Iraq and the increase of oil price. But apparently, everything’s going to get back to normal:

“We think there’s going to be an absolute bloodbath next winter and the lowest cost [airline] is going to win, and from our perspective we’re going to be the last man standing,” the company’s deputy chief executive, Michael Cawley, told Reuters.

How will they do that, you might wonder? Well, Michael O’Leary has the answer:

“Our view is that [fuel] prices will fall this winter, or next year,” he said, pointing out that the company would absorb higher oil prices by making cost savings in other areas.

Here’s my idea of what might happen: first of all, they might start to consider firing all those expensive pilots and hire instead learning-to-fly trainees, a bit like big football teams try some new young players on the pitch during great matches. They would therefore ensure that the next generation of pilots will be fit for flying. Now, that would be a bloodbath!

They should also decide to remove all those useless seats in the planes; they really take too much room – and are so uncomfortable that no one would notice… We could easily put an additional 20 people in a plane, couldn’t we?

Then, raising the price of coffee could be an excellent move forward. I mean… A cup is something like, what? €2.50? Well, 5.00 should do. Sterling, of course.

After all that, I can tell you, customers will rush out of the plane, bleeding beyond all expectations. And profits will be back to normal – a standard €250-€270 million.

Oh My God! There's a Blog Here!

I think I should therefore post onto it, what do you think?

Well, been busy those last few days – a bit of a change, isn’t it? I’m working on a J2EE project after I managed to escape the dreadful VAJ/Swing-like-but-not-quite-Swing project (ish). An interesting stuff where, at long last, I’ll be able to do clean things. Add some small lumps of Struts as well, just a cause, which I’m going to use in quite a decent manner – probably for the first time – and you get a projet where I might learn one thing or two.

I had prepared a post or two about Java Studio Creator, but didn’t have the time to quite deepen things. Since JSF is not that mature yet (sounds like a good euphemism), Struts was chosen on this project. But, time helping, next year, or the year after, we might decide to choose JSF with Java Studio Creator. But not just yet.

Hit by Sasser... Ehh No, Actually

Even though there is nothing funny about the situation which occurred here this morning (t’was mayhem), I must admit I was kind of jubilating. All the computers around me started to restart, hit by the ugly Sasser virus which spread at high speed. And as I always keep my PC up-to-date, I was relatively safe.

This is the result of an extremely stupid way of handling security in the vicinity. I complained a while ago that the antivirus updates were not regularly provided – in vain. I retaliated by connecting my antivirus to the vendor website so that it can do the updates itself. I also update my Windows via Windows update very often (something like every Monday I run it just to make sure I didn’t miss any security alert). Once again, I was accused of stealing too much bandwidth for my needs (!!!) and system administrators were thinking I was just being paranoid (!!!). They also thought I was a pain in the ass when I was requesting new stations with W2k and the already-installed updates – not just the plain version out of the box, ready to be attacked at any time. Therefore, you can imagine how pleased I was with myself when this morning those same people ended up struggling to stop the virus.

About JPEG Patent

Forgent has decided to sue 31 companies for the use of a compression algorithm in JPEG, according to Wired News. JPEG could therefore have the same fate as GIF format – even though the GIF patent expired on GIF Liberation Day. Apparently, Forgent and Sony have come to a $16 million agreement: not to mention that prices will go up.

I don’t know how used is this algorithm in JPEG format, but think of all the programs as well as devices which use it: digital camera, image-manipulation software, web sites, etc. If Gimp were to drop JPEG as they had done for GIF, they wouldn’t be much left to it…

The Porno Bus Scandal

Well, well, well… Sad what you would do to finance your parties…

99th Zen Garden

One has to be somewhat out of one’s mind to be willing to do this! Just brilliant. The CSS is somewhat hellish, with some li + li + li + li + li + li + li + li, #larchives li + li + li or some :before and :after along with content. Amazing.

I would have been tired before even starting thinking of doing such a thing…

Also, amongst the ones I missed, the one called “Deco” by Marc Trudel. Very elegant, I like the menu very much. I always find menus hard to do: they are either ugly or common. Marc’s solution is quite my idea of a nice menu.

Going for Opera 7.5b1

Firefox has been a real pain, lately. It is very slow, when you think of it – especially for my 6-year-old computer which strives for retirement. That’s why I was all the more interested by the message posted on Webgraphics tonight, dealing with all the turmoil which currently shakes the fast-moving universe of browsers. Especially with eye-catching remarks such as:

…and a speedup that makes it a very worthy opponent to Firefox.

It sure hits the spot. My current plan as I’ve just installed Opera 7.5b1 is to use it for a few days and tell you about my personal opinion – for all it’s worth, that is. I’ve already used Opera in the past, but the functionalities offered by Mozilla were, to me, far superior to Opera’s. And I still don’t know whether there is something similar to AdBlock in Opera, but I guess I’ll soon find out…

Not Far from Chaos

The security risk mentioned today on
hreflang="en" title="Forbes.com">Forbes web site is something close to a nightmare for the Internet if it were to happen: apparently, TCP has a flaw that might allow a hacker to reset a TCP faster than it normally does. The results would be:

…that Web transactions would fail to go through, Internet telephone calls would drop and Web sites wouldn’t fully download…

according to Mike Pilbeam from Cisco. Groovy, isn’t it?¶

San Seriffe Island

Back from holidays and I have to catch up on everything, after having relaxed so much. Here is some piece of information I missed – and I am really really late – and about which I read only today in my daily Irisa typography mailing-list digest: San Seriffe island was celebrating the 22nd anniversary of its discovery.

The Guardian’s article is 5 years old, was published on April 1st as you would expect. Excerpt from the message to the list (excerpted from somewhere else):

The success of this hoax was
largely responsible for the flood of April Fool’s Day jokes that appeared in
other papers in succeeding years. At the Guardian itself the island of San
Serriffe became a running gag in the years to follow. The island reappeared
on April Fool’s Day in 1978, 1980 and 1999. Moreover, each time it
reappeared the island had changed location. It began in the Indian Ocean,
moved to the South China Sea, and ended up in the North Atlantic

Another successful joke was Porchez announcing the closing down of Typofonderie. I wonder if he got a few bobs from it? ;-)¶

Interview With Myself (2)

Q. Hiya. As you’re about to go on holidays, I thought it was just about time for a second talk with you. Do you mind?

A. Not at all. Just keep an eye on the watch, my train won’t wait for me.

Q. Fair enough. Well, seb, how’s it going?

A. Better. I can’t really tell you what’s going on right now in my life – you know, I have to protect my privacy, that sort of things. But things are going fine. As you’ve just said, I’m about to go on holidays. Time to relax. To read.

Q. And how is Weblogism?

A. Not bad. Still developments going on, actually, so I don’t really have time to really write in here. But time will come. Anyway, there are quite a few people coming around, that’s good.

Q. Oh. I thought you’d said you didn’t look at statistics.

A. (embarrassed) Well… Eeeh, yes I do. But that’s too see how people found my site. I must admit “JBoss”, “getelementbyid” and “Vincent Connare” are quite successful. About Mr. Connare, funny how times have changed: popularity can now be measured only by looking at the number of times a name is typed in in Google… (he smiles)

Q. Who are you really, seb? What do you do?

A. I’m a J2EE consultant, even though I’m playing with Swing at the moment and worked with .Net for quite a while as well.

Q. So, why your interest in web design?

A. I’ve always been fascinated by typesetting. I’ve done my fair share of LaTeX in the past, even translating documents for the docfr project – I wonder how they get on, by the way. I’m also quite fond of typography and read books about it – Oh, man, remembering I’ve forgotten to put the picture of that book online. Web designing is just yet another way of expressing this passion. An easy way, that is.

Q. What about writing? Are you still doing a bit of that

A. I’m afraid I don’t. But you’re right, I should think of writing again. You’ll be the first informed should that happen.

Q. Delighted to hear that.

A. (nodding)

Q. What are the next steps for Weblogism?

A. First of all, I must finish that book-listing interface, which works fine but cannot be modified yet. I plan to put also a gallery online, write a few articles about web-designing, and then make a real site of this place – not only a blog. But I don’t see that happening any time soon. Too much to do with Le Sauna already.

Q. I think I’d better let you go and catch your train…

A. Thanks. See you soon, I guess.¶

Comments [2]

<em>Ce matin, un lapin...</em>

If you haven’t read the news today, a hunter was killed by a rabbit this morning. This rabbit was armed with a gun apparently snatched from an IRA dump. Reportage by Chantal Goya.¶

Arial and Helvetica

Tonight, as I wandering on the net for my regular night trip, I happened to type in Google (probably for the zillionth time) “Helvetica”. And decided I would quench my thirst for resources about Arial and Helvetica.

• First of all, a little game: you’re Helvetica and you have to “crush” Arial. A funny Flash animation. And the comments about it on kottke.org, which I have been reading for quite a while, now.
• Then, once you have wiped Arial away, you can decide to learn how to spot the differences between the two in How to Spot Arial and read their history.
• Now that you know everything about Helvetica and his naughty brother, go and test yourself in iliveonyourvisits.com

Now that you know everything about Arial and Helvetica, I think your last step will be to go there.¶