the sunlight table…
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005… is a table that brings a piece of the outside world right onto your desktop using glass fibres. where can i order?
(found via spreeblick
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Archive for June, 2005
germish
Thursday, June 23rd, 2005germish […] describes language based on the German grammar that includes a jumble of English and pseudo-English idioms, or vice versa. (wikipedia)
so far to the ‘official’ definition, but there’s more to it. something that’s even more fun (pain), and that’s germans trying to pronounce english… here’s my list, compiled from a couple of weeks of IT lectures, 3 days of conference talks and a bit of everyday life in germany:
IT genglish
view - few
j2ee - g2ee
servlet - servley (kinda french)
applet - appley (french again)
jboss - gboss (the letter j is a hard one for a lot of people)
cisco - shisco (italian?!)
mime - mimee (after too much talking about apcheee)
tier - tyre (quote: “it’s english, so it’s prononced tyre” after the person had pronounced it correctly)
ejb - egb (nasty j again)
configure - confidgure
host - hosst (also a favourite of many)
ethernet - etternet
meta model - meeta model
thread - fred (”and then you kill the fred”)
everyday germish
push - pash
bidirectional - bedirectional
dynamics - denamics
verdict - werdict (noone ever explained the difference between the english ‘v’ and ‘w’ at school)
provide - prowide (same)
integrate - integuate
with - wiss (ouch, ‘th’ is another favourite)
three - will - vill
occur - oquor
three - swee, tree, free (”how much is that? free dollars”)
legacy - ledgacy
of course - of curse (my favourite)
module - model
create - crate
height - hate
content (as in the content of a web site) - content (as in happy)
additions welcome 
wingS is net generation Swing
Thursday, June 23rd, 2005just read an article in java mag’s issue 05/2005 about wingS. it’s basically yet another web framework that wants to hide the hassles of html/http/css from the java programmer.
what the article said and showed looked promising, though. the programming model is very similar to swing’s. there are SPanels, SButtons, SLabels, STextAreas, and you can add ActionListeners to them. not a single line of html, no HttpServletRequest - pretty cool so far. now i’ll have to decide which one i wanna give a shot on my next project, rails or wingS.
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new photos
Friday, June 17th, 2005
i have added new photos to nature, sgl training camp and cote d’azur trip (aka IT conference in the european silicon valley) …
ping pong programming
Wednesday, June 15th, 2005i’ve first heard about ping pong programming somewhere in the thoughtworks corner. it’s a kind of enhancement to pair programming, but first let’s remember what pair programming was actually about:
in XP, all production code is written in pairs. 2 people sit in front of the computer. one is the driver, she has control over the keyboard and writes a test or some code. the other asks questions about what is being written and comments on the work. roles are frequently switched. the result is a higher motivation, increased velocity and an overall improved code quality - 4 eyes see more than 2
now ping pong programming: it is basically pair programming with extended rules. instead of simply swapping roles from time to time the driver starts writing a test that fails. then hands the keyboard over to the other, who now has to get the test to pass, and then extend it so it fails again. switch back, make test pass, extend it, switch and so on. the result is a higher switching frequency. that way, no one keeps driving for too long. as the peers prepare the task of their respective opposite, they develop a kind of healthy competition - who can write simplest code, the most elegant test etc.
so far the theory, people who have tried it report that they wrote easier and clearer code, and generally had more fun than with just pair programming, where the frequent role switch is not enforced so sometimes one peer is driving for too long, which leads to frustration at the other side.
anyway, i’ll give it a try in the next couple of weeks, let’s see what it can do. more on this topic to come.
Tags:google summer of code
Tuesday, June 7th, 2005"The Summer of Code is Google’s program designed to introduce students to the world of open source software development.
This summer, don’t let your programming skills lie fallow. Use them for the greater good of open source software and computer science. Google will provide a $4500 award to each student who successfully completes a project by the end of the summer."
http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html
UPDATE: i have applied for a project at apache, i will implement mail searching for their java based mail server james - in case they take me i really hope they do…
scary 2014
Tuesday, June 7th, 2005there’s a pretty scary movie called epic available online. it presents its own version of the distribution/availability of information in the year 2014. (8 mins)
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