Pushing the envelope

Darren's take on Java, agile methods, cool open source stuff, interesting technologies and other random wanderings through the land of blog.
Updated: 02/02/2003; 17:16:38.
Places to go
Apache Jakarta Project
c2.com
ExtremeProgramming.org
OpenSymphony
XProgramming.com
XP Developer

People to see
Russell Beattie
Eugene Belyaev
Tony Bowden
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Jeff Duska
Paul Hammant
Scott Johnson
Brett Morgan
Rickard Öberg
James Strachan
Joe Walnes

Things to do

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That was the day
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  02 February 2003

Blog Moved

More or less moved to moveable type now. Find me at darrenhobbs.com. Apologies for the inconvenience, but I wanted a server-side app. for my blogging, so I had to grit my teeth and make the switch. Expect teething troubles for a while as I get used to it.

5:16:37 PM      comment []

  31 January 2003

Bracing

Woke up at 4 am today. My clock with built-in temperature gauge said it was 11 degrees celcius. In my bedroom. Still no hot water or heating. Bet you can't guess just how much I'm looking forward to showering this morning.

4:41:16 AM      comment []

  23 January 2003

Cold showers considered harmful

Went through the usual morning ritual of turning on the shower and sticking my hand in the stream to check the temperature, as we all do. In my case of course, it was in the forlorn hope that the water in the cold pipe had somehow been mystically heated to the perfect showering temperature, and was not, in fact, freezing. Still have no heating system. Probably won't have next week either.

I'd like to report that cold showers are actually quite invigorating, and remark on how quickly I got used to it, but who would I be kidding? Its interesting how things that were luxury items not 50 years ago are now considered essential. How many times have you said "I can't function without coffee" or something similar? Its just not true. Take it from someone whose entire body is numb with cold.

Also, the contortions promoted by the cold water, namely trying to wash one bit of myself at a time while keeping the rest of my body out of the flow had the effect, this morning, of causing my feet to slide out from under me towards the front of the bath, toppling me backwards. With surprising presence of mind, or a simple desire to see my own demise approaching, I managed to twist around mid-fall so my hands and arms hit the edge of the bath, and not my head. On balance, a positive result, ie. I am conscious and writing this with only minor bruises.

Have a nice day.


7:27:03 AM      comment []

  22 January 2003

A few of my favourite things

A quick-reference list of some of the tools I am using or plan to investigate further.

Combined price: zero. Combined worth: priceless.


9:49:51 PM      comment []

  21 January 2003

Useful stuff

Something useful I learned about at work today: SAPDB. Those nice folks at SAP have open-sourced their database code.

7:50:52 PM      comment []

  20 January 2003

First Day at ThoughtWorks

New job, first day, usual mix of excitement and curiosity. Possibly more so than for other jobs I've had, probably because I'm really enthused about working for ThoughtWorks.

Domestically, life could be better due to the complete failure of my central heating and hot water. Cold showers forecasted for this week. Mmm, nice.


10:22:37 PM      comment []

  18 January 2003

Robocode

Starting messing with Robocode earlier this week. Its fun, in a busman's holiday kind of way. The complexity of some of the publicly available robots is amazing. Its also a good way to learn about the behaviour of highly event-driven systems (ie. unpredictable).

10:18:21 PM      comment []

© Copyright 2003 Darren Hobbs