Month: December 2004

For those of you who don’t know, my father killed himself when I was 8 years old. All I have left of him are his silver cufflinks and the vague echoes of his genes. Nothing else.

I was giving Jon a hug today before leaving for work and it hit me that I don’t remember my dad ever doing this. Also, how precious these slight, transient moments are: without them life would be so empty.

Jon had pulled a mattress from the bed and bent it into a “tent”. Then he put a blanket over it and slept on the floor underneath it. Bless. He has no idea how precious he is to me, just as well really.

I wished him a happy unbirthday and then had to explain what an unbirthday was.

Every day I come to love Rosie and the kids even more than I did the day before. I cannot understand how my father managed to do what he did. Ultimately depression is intensely selfish, and his letter said he felt it was for the best. What an idiot. If you are thinking like he was get help! Do it now, this life is so precious and you only have this one.

As a Buddhist I beleive in reincarnation. However, the teachings imply that what is reincarnated is very subtle. The analogy is that the lives have dependencies like one brick upon another, or a flame at one time of day and another. It sounds almost like a point of view is what keeps going, subject to the karma it accumulated in the life it led. This makes fleeting moments of happiness and caring even more precious and the human existence even more fragile.

Buddha said: the end of all gathering is dispersion; the end of all building is ruin; the end of all meeting is parting; the end of all birth is death.

This makes this little life, this litte flash in the void, even more precious. So hold onto it! Not to mention the numerous hells that you end up in if you suicide – you feel bad now, just wait! There are dozens of them, apparently.

Blessings all

I’ve redone my novel and change things a little, have a look if your interested

Should have gone to bed early and done all kinds of useful things but who the hell can be bothered with that kind of stuff? Off to bed now, 11:30 pm. Got a big day tomorrow.

Gaudete

NOTE: This link won’t work any more, sorry (Oct 2010)

This is a weird one. If you have a free-format project and add to the class path using the class path wizard beware that you add either directories or .jar files. I was picking up all of the files in the JBOSS tomcat directory and also, inadvertently, picked up a couple of XML config files.

It let me add them to the class path and then choked on restarting the IDE and sat there trying to treat the files with the .XML extension as directories, getting an error and going into an infinite loop. I will report this to the netbeans development team.

The only way to fix it is to edit the project.xml file by hand.

In response to this:

Hi Philip,

I’ve just been working with Oracle’s XML DB for 10g. It does functionally exactly what you say IBM are thinking about. You appear to be ill-informed and have bought the IBM FUD. You should be more careful about what you say if you want to put yourself up as an opinion former. Maybe you should qualify your comments better?

Also IBM’s database certainly used to be 3 (or more?) different code bases depending upon which platform it was running on. Each had a different set of bugs and features. I think the whole thing was branded to appear to be one product, but it wasn’t. Which one of their multiple code bases are they talking about? All of them? In which decade?

Have a look at http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/xml/xmldb/index.html. I suggest you get a 10g database installed and work through the examples. Unless you’re too posh to actually use something before you form an opinion?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an Oracle fan, but what you describe is what I’ve been working with for a while and not news. Not even that big a deal.

Regards

Francis Fish

I’ve been using Java for about 5 years, but not heavily. I know the language reasonably well and have decided that I will get certified in the next few weeks. I took a test (for 1.2) from a training book I bought and got around 60% without a lot of study. The pass is something like 51%. With some study I should get there reasonably comfortably. I think this would be good for my CV and open some doors, although people want to talk to me anyway.

I’m much more interested in doing the Certified Developer exam, because it’s a proper project, but they insist on doing the Certified Programmer first. I am really interested in the System Architect but it looks like a hell of a lot of work and I’ve got other things to keep me busy at the moment. One of the guys from Adis had this qualification and now only works about half the year and is better off than when he was working for them, so I think it’s worth pursuing, just not right now.

Using my Safari Account (detailed in last blog) I’ve got access some 1.4 certification books that I can give back when I’ve finished with them.

Of course, I’m still working on my struts project as well because I have to keep the boredom at bay somehow. Making good progress with it.

Only problem is: tonight I need to fill in my tax return on-line so I’ll have to hold back on the exitement, no, I’m not being sarcastic, I enjoy what I do when I’m allowed to do it.

Current Short-term Life Goals:

1. Build my internet marketing business.
2. Get struts project finished
3. Get Certified
4. Look at Oracle Certification as well (not so bothered, if Oracle themselves wouldn’t fund it when I was an employee how much use is it?)

All of this has to happen within the next month or so. If you don’t put a date on things they won’t happen.

Back to the exitement of another day writing technical specs – I just can’t wait.