As Matthew already posted to the whole world (thanks :) ), I will be moving to another domain (my own one!) and Movable Type very soon. Currently I'm setting up everything and as soon as it works, I will inform you about the new location - but not any sooner as I don't want to show you those ugly "work in progress" pages.

9:06:49 PM    

Apache has a new top level project: The Apache Logging Service that you can find at logging.apache.org soon. The Apache board has passed the proposal. The intend of the project is to provide cross-language logging services for purposes of application debugging and auditing. The different log4* will be moving to the new location soon.

It will be interesting to see what this means to jakarta-commons-logging and the avalon logkit.

11:28:27 AM    

Yes, it's unbelievable but true! On the weekend a friend told me that he had found the book written by Matthew and myself in the edonkey p2p network!

Now, if you think of how many people seem to use this stuff (of course, I don't) and if you think even if only a small percentage of these people has downloaded the book, then you might get the picture of how much money Matthew and I have lost by this! So, in fact if everyone of those would have gone to a good and old book shop and have bought the book, well, guess what: we could now sit at the beach, a cocktail in one hand and in the other hand...a 20'' powerbook of course.

But unfortunately this dream has been ruined by some unscrupulous folks...sniff...there is no justice in this world anymore...sniff.sniff!

4:51:52 PM    

Yesterday I was brave enough and finally installed Panther on my Powerbook. As I did't have many personal stuff on the powerbook, I did the "windows way": backup of some data/files and to a clean install including formatting the hd.

Now, this went very smooth and was actually very fast. After I had put all four CDs into the powerbook - one after the other of course - I had installed everything and Panther was running. Nice.

But then I had to install all the updates that are already available. And this required three turnes every turn ending with a reboot! (So, believe it or not, somethimes you even have to reboot a Mac!)

Then I started to explore the applications, I wanted to test all the iLife applications (although they haven't changed of course for Panther, but you have to test anything after a OS upgrade, right?). So I started iPhoto, iTunes, iMovied and iDVD - iDVD? Where is it? It wasn't installed because it's not part of Panther! So what?

Of course, iDVD was included with my Powerbook and so it should be somewhere on the install DVD accompaigning my Powerbook. But searching on the DVD didn't reveal it. So, I just my all time friend Mr. Google and found the solution: you have to start the "reinstall" application from the Jaguar DVD and this will install you all the applications that are missing in Panther (like iDVD or e.g. the classic mode if you need it.) And actually this worked well and now I have everything up and running again. I hope next time, Apple is shipping a short notice about how to reinstall iDVD for convenience!

12:46:30 PM    

After one week staying in Las Vegas we drove to L.A. which was quiet a boring trip; it took us approx. 4,5 hours and we stopped at Calico, a well-known Ghost Town. Now, to be honest, we were really disappointed by Calico as we thought a Ghost Town is a gethering of buildings that have been left years ago, the wind blows through the empty streets etc. (I hope you get the picture) But Calico is an old west town that looks like a usual theme park with shops, restaurants etc. in every building :(

From there we went straight to Anaheim to the Sheraton which is really a very nice and calm hotel. They even have wireless for a ten dollar fee per day and - most important - they have a shuttle to the Disneyland resort! We stayed two days at Disneyland and it was fun, especially the California Screaming rollercoaster is great! But even better is "Soarin' over California" where you are suspended in the air and fly over california. They even add some odors, so you smeall the ocean etc. It's really nice but way too short. We discovered that the californian disneyland is a little bit different from the Orlando DisneyWorld and the Paris Disneyland. It's somehow - very hard to explain - not as much fun staying in California than in the other two theme parks. So, we think - if you can choose between visiting Disney in Anaheim and visiting them in Orlando or Paris, don't choose California.

From Anaheim we went to a hotel in north hollywood and visited the Universal Studios. Really interesting. They showed some "Making ofs", especially a lot about "The cat in the hat". The "Jurassic Park" ride is really cool. You slowly ride a river and than fall down very deep into the water which is really refreshing. Nice. The special about Backdraft where a whole hall is set on fire is impressing as well. And don't miss the studio tour!

Visiting hollywood and L.A. is not as interesting as it might sound. The beaches (Venice, Santa Monica) are nice, it's fun to live in Beverly Hills or somewhere at the coasts - but that's it - I think.

So, the last day - Thanks Giving - we drove to the Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park and that one is really great. Especially at Thanks Giving, when only a few people are attending, you don't have any queue at the attractions. We drove one rollercoaster after the other and our bodies really started to complain because of the intense forces each rollercoaster puts on you. So we decided to not do too much loopings anymore for the rest of the day. Anyways, they have a lot of wired rollercoasters and attractions there and we nearly tried all of them! It's really fine. If you're afraid of loopings then don't go there.

And this ended our way too short two weeks vacation to the states :( We really hope toget back to some of the nice places soon, so if you're located there and are interested in open source or cocoon or... then let me know!

11:12:45 PM    

Immediately after I got back from the states I installed the latest and greatest version of Eclipse, 3.0M5. Then I tried to start my latest version of Dywel and it failed! Also, the classpath was correctly set, some classes were not found. Hmm, I thought and tried an easier project, Cocoon with the same result. Classpath correct, but a class not found exception. I immediately switched back to M4 and everything was fine again and I could contined serious work :)

Now I hear from more and more people that they have the same problems with M5, so I really wonder why this is not covered by the many test cases they do before releasing a milestone. So, as I always say: "Testing is only for people that don't have self-confidence!" It doesn't help you at all :)

10:48:46 PM    

is really worth a visit! It is just a good two hour drive from Las Vegas (if you stick to the speed limit, of course), but be warned it's a real borring drive as it takes you a long time to drive through an annoying wide valley were really nothing is happening - we, europeans, are not used to such wide and open areas :) Anyways, after the drive you are presented by the breath taking appearance of Death Valley.

Fortunately, Ovidiu gave us many good tips so we could really see a lot of interesting things in the valley on just one day. We entered through Amargosa Valley und drove early in the morning to Zabriskie Point were you have a great overview. From there we went straight to Furnace Creek to pay the fee and then down to Badwater of course. A great part of the valley is below sea level and Badwater is the lowest elevation in the United States with 86 mtr below sea level!

From there we drove to the Natural Bridge canyon and started hiking there until we could see the natural bridge - really very interesting to see something like this in real nature. Back to the car and further on driving through the artists palette where you see the hills in different colours from green to red and many more. Incredible.

Then we drove to the Golden Canyon and hiked a little bit on the interpretive trail. Again, interesting. Unfortunately, we didn't have the right equipment for hiking with us - like good shoes etc. - so we only walked a little bit through the canyons. But when ever we have the chance to come back, we will go hiking there more!

One thing I really liked about Death Valley is the silence. You don't hear anything! There are now animals - apart from some no noise making creeping things - and there was nearly no wind and there weren't hundreds of tourists - so it was really silent. Great! And the temperature in November is ok, we had 23C - not comparable to the temperatures in summer when they hit 40C. Puh.

Then we drove on to see the sand dunes - again, simply amazing and then we drove through the Emigrant Canyon and back through the Mud Canyon as it was getting dark again.

Afterall a very interesting day, we saw a lot and we learnt a lot - and we drove a lot! Everything looks so close together in these deserts, but if you start driving and haven't reached anything after one hour driving, then you start to imagine how nig everything is there. Anyways, if ever an ApacheCon will take place in Las Vegas again - we will do some serious hiking there. Promised.

3:40:47 PM