I’ve been playing with Google Web Toolkit for the past few days, what an incredible piece of software! Anyone who’s done any web development knows how many pieces of technology are involved in making a reasonably attractive web site. This toolkit takes the whole thing to the next level. Rather than worrying about HTML, CSS,…

I’ve had about enough of comment spam. Aside from handling 50-100 spam at work, another 5-10 on my personal account, now I also have to deal with an onslaught of comment spam in my blog. Setting up filters wasn’t enough, there was still too much getting through. Not like I get a lot of hits…

My first open source project has graduated from the incubation stage to full project status today! Read all about it here. The project exists primarily to support the code for an article I wrote a while back, integrating CruiseControl with WebLogic’s compilers.

Caught this in a startup log on one of my HPUX systems: Starting ISEE hpservices mad daemon. ………………………….. OK Should I be worried?

Yes you too can have fun at work. Recipe for fun is: Ingredients 1 beatup old car, the more beatup the better. 2 scruffy guys with hoodies 7 police cruisers loaded with policemen 2 undercover police cars with appropriately dressed policemen. The more they look like the scruffy guys the better. 1 building with a…

No, not us. Amy & Kevin however are having triplets. A quote from their site, quoting Mark Twain: “Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain’t any real difference between triplets and an insurrection.” Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

The past election’s campaign caused my children to ask why the red and blue signs were all over our neighbourhood. We explained that we were voting for the next government, and the blue sign on our lawn meant we were supporting the Conservatives. After the Conservatives won a minority government on Monday, we told them…

There is always an official way, a prescribed way, or a “proper” way to get something done. But when the resources simply aren’t available to do something the proper way, improvisation is the key, and usually poorer countries are far better at it than the wealthier nations. Have a look at these pictures. Noone in…

I don’t travel too much, but this site (flightcomm) is pretty cool. Most airline sites only tell you whether a flight is delayed or not. This site shows you a map of exactly where the plane is at any given moment, including height and airspeed, all based on FAA radar. Very cool stuff.

I took Mikaela (age 3) for walk a few nights ago, and she noted that the moon, of which only half was visible, was “broken”. She wondered when it would be fixed again? And last night she recited a Franklin book to me, almost word-for-word. I guess Mikaela didn’t inherit my sieve-like memory!

I have another blog out there, over at BEA’s dev2dev site. This blog will be for all WebLogic and Java posts. I haven’t posted too many of those here, but hope to have a few more over there. I’ve run into two seperate forms of writer’s block lately. The first came after I received BEA’s…

I’ve always been a big airplane fan. Like most kids I dreamed of joining the Air Force (American of course, I wanted to fly A-10’s), but my rather limited eyesite made the dream stay just that. But I can still tell you what kind of fighter jet just flew by based on its silhouette. One…

This guy took the time to read the Windows End User License Agreement (that annoying window with all the legalese that pops up when you install any Microsoft product) and found that using any Java code can cause death. I guess all Microsoft products are so stable that they can be used in applications like…

I spend an inordinate amount of time using Firefox, both at work and at home. (No it’s not wasted time, most of my work involves online information.) My biggest beef with Firefox 1.5 was the incredibly slow and CPU-consuming performance when hitting a page that included Flash objects. Then I found Flashblock. It blocks all…

We went to see the latest Disney creation this weekend, the first movie (of seven?) of the Chronicles of Narnia. Yes, I know, Prince Caspian is the first book, and there were other (awful) movies. This is the first good one. The movie was incredible, and very true to the book, I didn’t find any…

Now this guy (WMV file) has way, way too much time (and money) on his hands. I bet he drives his neighbours crazy.

Last weekend found us in Ottawa, visiting my brother Brian and his lovely wife Alanna. Their little guy Lucas was a bit shy at first, and was completely stunned by the amount of noise our three kids could make. Then to top it off, he couldn’t even sleep in his own bed, which his parents…

Remember the stories about the fire department rescuing cats in trees? This gentlemen had to be rescued after getting stuck 40 feet up the mast of his sailboat.

After having declared my undying love for the Googlebar in Firefox, I upgraded to Firefox 1.5 RC1 (released yesterday) and found that the googlebar doesn’t work. After some quick reading I found an enterprising fellow who figured out how to hack it. So here’s the instructions in more detail: Download the google toolbar XPI file…

According to this site, my blog is worth $25,968.84!!! So, it’s hereby for-sale for exactly that amount. Reasonable offers will be considered. Any takers? My blog is worth $25,968.84.How much is your blog worth?