It is never a bad idea to make sure data is save. So I added an X-Raid system protected by an UPS to my home data center. Just to make sure the protection is universal I added an extra layer of guards to the setup.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all of you!

Our boxing day will start of as "Chinese Boxing" day, commonly also known as Wushu. About a year ago I signed Anthony and Ernest up for a Wushu class at our community center. When filling in the form Ernest challenged me: "Daddy what is it about that role model thing?". He got me there. So I asked the lady attending to us what the age limit for the lessons would be. "Seven and above" was her answer. I smiled: "OK, sign me up". She was puzzled: "But sir, they are all children!". I replied: "I'm a child at heart, so I'll be fine". So I ended up with 15 short ones and a teacher half my age. With a big smile I greeted him: "Lao she hao". Lao in Chinese means "old". The course turned out to be great fun and after a while more parents and finally unrelated adults joined in, so we are a fully mixed troupe now.
So far our training was limited to once a week on Sunday evening 7:30-9:30pm (yep, I don't travel on Sundays anymore). Today we are leaving for our first training camp. Two and a half days end to end training in technique, strength, endurance and fun. The goalpost is set.

We all love gMail (more or less) almost as much as Domino (and there is a Sparkle in the near future). So how about this:


Thanks Bruce - and yes also available in English.

Mental Note to self:

If you write something like:

NotesStream.write(someStringInside)

the compiler will not warn you, that you shall not provide String where Byte is needed. But the runtime will take care of you! It will terminate the execution of your subroutine (not the entire script, just the subroutine) without error message, because you shall not write String where Byte is needed and before you commit this blunder again the routine terminates. And don't get me started on Streams, Transformers and character sets. . With this little hickups Blizz is progressing.

Lance has a good time in Singapore (OK, that thing about running in the morning is on his " learning-the-hard-way" list)
When discussing Project Blizz we realized, that we needed to discuss execution sequences. While all the modern tools ( MyEclipseIDE, RAD etc.) provide drawing tools, they are not suitable in a discussion where the flow changes rapidly. Nothing can beat a white board there, as long as the team is in one place. Since Nithi had to return to India we had to look for something else. Luckily I found Sequence. This little gem translates pseudo code into sequence diagrams as you type. So instead of fiddling around with layout (I'm not on a Mac), one can just type some lines of text and get a diagram in an instant. Our pattern for processing Domino stuff through the Websphere layer looks like this:

ServletOrTag.getResult {
 stuffRenderer.render(configName, parameters) -> OutputStream {
  configFetcher.fetch(configName) -> configObject;
  stuffTransformer.setSession(dxp2Session);
  stuffTransformer.transform(configObject, parameters) -> OutputStream {
   stuffFilter.setSession(dxp2Session);
   stuffFilter.filter(configObject,parameters) -> OutputStream {
    stuffFetcher.setSession(dxp2Session);
    stuffFetcher.fetch(configObject,parameters) -> OutputStream;
   }
  }
 }
}

And Sequence turns that into this:

The Blog upgrade went smooth. Replace the design, open the database, say yes to the "Upgrade to V3" question, copy the layouts and update the configuration. I only hit one problem: ADSL. Uploading is much slower that downloading, so all the update/upgrades are only trickling back to the server (I had about 200k hit documents still in the database). So it might be a while before I will look for a new layout.

I'll be upgrading to Blogsphere V3. I push it to the test: just replace the design and see what is happening. Blog service might be disrupted. stw

The 3rd of Clarke's laws states:
" Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
(While Ponder Stibbons of DiskWorld fame muses "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. ").

Catching up on my blog reading I found a sinister addenum to Occam's razor and its cousin Hanlon's razor( "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."):

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. "

(via raganwald'07)

Lance is joining me in Singapore Monday 13th December 2007. Welcome!

To prove or disprove popularity statistics have been a preferred medium of choice for millennia. Depending on the samples you take you will get different results. Looking at world wide market figures, Firefox gets 17.4%, 36% or 12.72%. The picture on this little blog is quite different:



Firefox share on page views rose in the second half of this year from 36.70% to 44.36%. This is a 20.9% increase in just 6 month. At the same time Internet Explorers share shrank from 57.97% to 50.63% which is a 12.7% reduction. Given that the geekiest readers never hit this site but use the RSS feed I find it quite remarkable. The second half of 2007 also saw the arrival of some mobile browsers hitting the site.