Rain cuts the place we tread,
A sparkling fountain for us
With no fountain boy but me
To balance on my palms
The water from a street of clouds.
We sail a boat upon the path,
Paddle with leaves
Down an ecstatic line of light,
Watching, not too aware
To make our senses take too much,
The unrolled waves
So starred with gravel,
The living vessels of the garden
Drifting in easy time
(Dylan Thomas)
Even though I still cannot enjoy all the subtleties of the accents in the English language, I really enjoy them, especially the ones in Ireland (no need to say that from North to South, they are really different). I have just found this treasure on the BBC website: Voices, a kind of audio encyclopedia of the accents across the UK. From Leith to Swansea, from Ballymena to London, you can listen to all sorts of accents and voices: this is really an enjoyable website!
I found this amazing project: NASA World Wind, showing maps taken by satellites in a great little Java application based upon JOGL.
I first struggled a bit with JOGL, getting the following error:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no jogl in java.library.path
I tried setting the -Djava.library.path, putting the .so libraries in the $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext, etc., to no avail. So I tried my luck and just put them in $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/i386, with the other native libraries. And it worked. Oh, well, sometimes, just a bit of inspiration…
And so, J2EE is about to become Java 5 EE (originally J2EE 5.0, originally J2EE 1.5): the JSR 244 has indeed passed the public review ballot. TSS describes what is on the menu:
- Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0
- Servlet 2.4
- JavaServer Pages (JSP) 2.1
- Java Message Service (JMS) 1.1
- Java Transaction API (JTA) 1.0
- JavaMail 1.3
- JavaBeans Activation Framework 1.1
- J2EE Connector Architecture 1.5
- Web Services for J2EE 1.1
- Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC) 1.1
- Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0
- Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0
- SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ) 1.3
- Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) 1.0
- Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition Management API 1.0
- Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition Deployment API 1.1
- Java Authorization Service Provider Contract for Containers 1.0
- Debugging Support for Other Languages (JSR-45)
- Standard Tag Library for JavaServer Pages (JSTL) 1.1
- Web Services Metadata for the Java Platform 1.0
- JavaServer Faces 1.2 Requirements
- Common Annotations for the Java Platform 1.0
- Streaming API for XML (StAX) 1.0
- Java Persistence API 1.0
I already ache for the poor developers who will have to include all that in the application servers to comply with the new standard. Not to mention all the people who will have to go through all the documents to make sure J2EE does not appear anymore (even though the aforementioned specs make extensive use of the old term).
It makes me also think: “Geez, I don’t even know half of the gooeys.” Thank God, we’re developers, and not pilots forced to retrain.
Also, in the news, the launch of a project on SourceForge intending to develop plugins for the excellent Portlet-based CMS JCMS by Jalios. Having worked with that product, I find it very good and I can only hail the initiative!
I’m reading Leonardo da Vinci: the Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl at the moment. The cover says: If you read one book with da Vinci in its title, make it this one (Observer). Darn true! It is a fascinating book about a fascinating artist.
As I’m dead busy enjoying the sun in Dublin – which is something quite rare, lately – drinking (sensibly) Guinness, here is yet another good link about types, from pictograms to fonts on screen: Evolution of type. I apologise to my guests who have to wait whilst I’m browsing those typographic sites…
Posted on the Irisa typography list, a link to a BBC Radio 4 programme entitled “From Arial to Wide Latin” – I truly wonder how come I didn’t spot that programme myself. If I have time in the next few days, I’ll make a transcript in French.
As Maven is undergoing “major surgery” (the Alpha 3 has been released in June), it is probably time for me to look deeper into the subject… This article gives an overview of Maven’s new features.
It took no less than 3 months but we’re finally back online. This is a very long story but at the end, just when we decided to go for another ISP and cancelled our “subscription” (you cannot really call that a subscription when you get nothing in return), the phone number automagically changed and the connection was activated. It is still a mystery to whomever listens to that story (there might actually be people triggering all that, after all…), but it is quite a relief, to say the least.
Times have been pretty busy, as you can imagine. Amongst things of interest, I lost my camera; this therefore ruined my plans for the summer… When I get a spanking new one, I’ll tell a bit more… But for the moment, you’ll just have to wait, I’m afraid!
Apart from that, not much. Two links of interest for those interested in typography: one which I have briefly mentionned in my last post, typeFORUM for the ß articles, and, also in German (I’m trying to get my German back), TypeOff, Offenbach’s group for Typography. The site is quite good and has many snapshots of signs in the street. I love it.
In the same vein, I also came across fawny.org in the most unusual manner: I was crawling a few sites with Nutch when I saw this site being fetched. I particularly like Joe’s weblog, with lots of street pictures. /Un régal !/¶
All in all it’s been a pretty busy first month, trying to get new habits, trying to get used to my new company and to their product. The whole is rather complicated and rather big, but the technologies involved are quite challenging (so is the business!). I am doing better for the moment, since I have managed to solve the problems I was fcing on my own, which I consider to be quite an achievement.
Anyway, very little time, but I am going to try to catch up with all the craic!
It’s been a while since we’ve decided to turn away from Eircom to embrace
the newcomer, Smart Telecom. In a perfect and ideal world, everything should have
sorted out in 4 or 5 working days. That’s called France for you, guys. But here,
in Ireland, it seems as if everything is done with half the speed. I don’t know
if that’s the drawback of having tried to escape Paris’ stress, but it sure is
a very frustrating pace. Anyway, the migration from Eircom to Smart Telecom forces
us to change our phone number, but also to wait for an undefinite time.
What really gets on my nerves is the lack of feedback. Our phone
line is not working anymore and our guess is the transfer to Smart is on its
way. But:
Even though I still have no connection at home for the moment since we are
patiently waiting for Smart Telecom to give us any sign of life, I managed
to spot one or two interesting articles whilst eating my dessert at work.
The ß-lovers (even the non-German ones) will love this
link:
two PDF documents present the history of the
ß ligature from the beginning of the 20th century on. Unfortunately, my German is not
what it used to be: I am afraid I won’t dare to attempt any translation. But those documents
are worth a reading.
About the EU constitution referendum in France: the debate that went on le sauna was very heated between the Non and the Oui supporters, but also quite interesting. I recommend anyone taking any interest in that matter to give it some reading.
I’ve been looking at Nutch
for the last 6 months because I think it’s a great project that deserves some time. I have followed the
list (proposed a fix, even)
and plan to be involved some more. Anyway, I hadn’t realised until this week that there was a French community
around Nutch, called Frutch. Fair
play to them.
Following all the turmoil after the ASF announced they were starting the Harmony project, whose aim is to implement an Open-Source JVM, I subscribed to the list – and the discussions are very interesting, even though rather complicated for the newbie. But their idea is to analyse the pros and cons of existing VM to decide what’s to take… and what’s to leave aside.
One of the good places to follow the discussions is Nick Lothian’s Harmony blog.
But Gerrard sooo dived.
Here we go! I now live in Dublin, roysh: I arrived here last Friday after an hectic week trying to sort everything out before leaving France. Since then, I have basically been taking it easy, settling in. I start tomorrow in my new position and am really looking forward to it.
As you would expect, the weather has been somewhat changing in the last few days, but I must admit I quite enjoyed having today off. Anyway, it’s been a month since I last posted here: it’s been a busy month, trying to plan everything before leaving but also working hard in my former project. It’s been somewhat stressful but now, as the sea is just a few miles away, I feel grand. It certainly is a big change…