It ain't half hot mum

Rajastan, India. Crikey it's hot. Curries, grinding poverty, people with polio, hideous dancing bears, litter, polution, looney drivers, beggars and tiger beer. All in a day for the world's formost tiger technology economy.

Taj mahal was good tho. Had a "Lady di" picture done.

21st century here we come.

Monkey-Programmer-Boy: The Great Escape

So after being incarcerated for months by the Lotusscript Nazis and interrogated by the Hooded Claw, Monkey-Programmer-Boy finally gets his motorbike over the fence. Where next for our intrepid hero? Well India now you mention it. Off to see my mad sister Barb who has gone on a mid-life-crisis-round-the-world-trip.

Next stop Delhi. If anyone's job has gone to India, let me know and I'll have a look for it.

IN YOUR SHOPS NOW!

SUZI QUATTRO

Mrs Spuggy said she was going to get herself a pair of Converse Allstars. I happened to mention that I would like some too. She said this would not be a good idea, because when I put them on I would look like "Suzi Quattro's boyfriend".

I havn't been so insulted since our old childminder asked if i'd "had a kebab" ... when I hadn't.

Brothers and Sisters

Others may post articles about @dialogbox
or their problems with CSS,
but I have just one thing to say
I want everybody to kick up some noise.
I wanna hear some revolution out there, brothers
I wanna hear a little revolution.
Brothers and sisters, the time has come
For each and every one of you to decide
Whether you are gonna be the problem,
Or whether you are gonna be the solution.
You must choose, brothers, you must choose.
It takes 5 seconds, 5 seconds of decision.
Five seconds to realize that it's time to move.
It's time to get down with it.
Brothers, it's time to testify and I want to know,
Are you ready to testify?
Are you ready

The Lost Carry-on

So after all that it turns out we were all just starring in a lost carry-on film and not doing the IT stuff at all. I am obviously a young Bernard Cribbens, Billy Bob will have certainly been played by Barbara Windsor and of course Salty is Sid James. But who else?

J2ME: Mobile phone love snags my jeans

Most mobile phone manufacturers provide APIs that enable you to access some of the phone's features that would normally be outside the vanilla JVM. I was particularly interested in the nokiaUI vibrate() function as I had decided to create a mobile phone vibrator and become a mobile millionaire. Trouble is, as is ususal with any of my schemes, the bloke at Purring Kitty had already thought of it.

If you check out his site he has done quite a comprehensive job. What is more interesting is the delivery method. In the UK you are able to text "Go Purring Kitty" to a number and have a text message sent to you with the WAP address of the application; click on the address and the application will install over the air. This service is provided by Bango and ultimately results in a charge being made to your mobile phone bill, of which I imagine, the software's author gets a cut. This is a great little model.

One thing I did notice was that Purring Kitty dosn't work with the Nokia Communicator, wonder why? <Coughs>.

Country roads take me home

So, the move to the country looms. It was Mrs Spuggy's idea, she is in charge of important decisions like moving house and new human beings; leaving the "red or white wine" decisions to me. She was brought up in the county and so is able to identify different flora and forna. I on the other hand, am a died-in-the-wool townie and wouldn't know a crested grebe from a cheese and pickle sandwich. Having ruminated about this I decided that I had picked up at least one discernable skill in my townie upbringing: identifying makes of cigarettes.

I typed the following off the top of my head:

Lambert & Butler, Malboro, Malboro lights, Silk Cut, Embassy No 1, Embassy No 6, Embassy Regal, Capstan Full Stength, Moores, John Player Special, John Player Reds and Blues, Winston, Peter Styvessant, Dunhill, Superkings, Sobrani Russian, Sobrani Cocktail, Golden Virginia, Old Holborn, Lucky Strikes umm and those horrible menthol ones.

Just like birdwatching, I reckon I could stand quite a way back from the shop counter and still name most of them. The strange thing is I am not really a smoker. I occasionally cadge one of Billy-Bobs but havn't really smoked since my twenties. All the above cigarette identifying skill was picked up in my teens. Why is it then that I can't remember any chemistry?

LOTUSSCRIPT: Shall we use pod 3 father?

BLOGGER: The devil will make work for idle hands

So I have used one of Blogger's default templates. It's kind of orange and so in an idle moment I thought maybe I'd change it. The Blogger templates are all CSS driven so this should be pretty easy. Then I thought, why not look out the window for a bit or perhaps day dream about playing for Newcastle United; read the travel section of the newspaper which I never read; play "Love in Vain" on the guitar and sing in loud screechy voice until the kids complain; it's endless really. See how difficult it is to get these web projects off the ground.

Anyhow, to cut a long story short (way too late Richard) I thought I'd have a look at the other templates. I didn't like any of them but did do a double take on some of the sample text in the "Bluebird" template, see what I mean.

And the moral of the story is: "Never put off till tomorrow, what you can put off till the day after tomorrow".

UML: A thousand words no less.

Over the years I have been trying to incorporate more formal method and notation into what I do. I am a lazy, procrastinating son of a bitch, so this has not always been a success. My goal is to produce my own repeatable "method" for software development, incorporating my favourite bits from books and techniques I have met along the way.

I am quite keen on some of the diagrams in UML, some of them are of little use in a Notes environment but I often use Use Case and State Diagrams. On Monday I will be involved in the workshops for a new workflow system. To get the requirements down and tease out any inconsistencies I plan to guide the users through constructing a State Diagram so we can, in real time, capture the workflow, roles and reader/authors.

Up till now I have had to rely on scribbling this stuff down or using Visio but today I discovered Gentleware's Poseidon software. It is Java based, so loads a bit slowly, but after that it's great. No honest, it really is rather good. Whip up a class diagram and generate the Java classes, groovy. What's more the community edition is free. Have a look.

THE JOY OF FOLDING

Out doing a bit of business up town. As usual I went on m'folding bike, Lucille. Riding a folding bicycle is easy once you have overcome the panicky feeling that you have borrowed your sister's bike and everyone is looking at you.

Here is a quick travelogue taken on my Sony Mobile and bluetoothed on to PC and blog:

From left to right:

1. Arrive at Paddington followed by gentle cycle thru hyde park.


2. Wwwwoo scary cycle thru Hyde Park Corner chased by National Express Coach from Wolverhampton.


3. Buckingham Palace, Queen not in as usual, must be out getting cigarettes.


4. Down the Mall to Admiralty arch.


5. Across Trafalger square.


6. Piccadilly Circus.


7. Quick cup of coffee with m'cycling fixed-geared-uber-chum, Spiney Norman


8. Lucille going into Green Park Tube.


9. Lucille waiting for the tube at Green Park. Back to Cheese International for more computer fun.

Fold to live, live to fold.

J2EE: Java Server Faces

Java Server Faces Technology claims to enable us to take a visual approach to developing J2EE apps, it all sounds rather interesting. Here is a thread of articles about them in Websphere - from developer works. When I was typing this entry I made the typo: Java Server Faeces; is this a worry?

SHY GUY SEEKS FUN AND FROLICS

Shy Monkey-Programmer-Boy, 30 Something, Portal-Curious, WLTM experienced J2EE couples or singles, can accomodate. No Timewasters or Lotusscript.