About a week and a half ago, February 16th, Justyna and I got engaged! It happened in a hotel, just after sunset at the seaside, it was very romantic :)
(Old picture, and I look a bit weird — but Justyna likes this picture)
Because Justyna is Polish we will probably do two weddings. The civil wedding end of November (hopefully) in Schiedam (the Netherlands, where we live) and the church wedding maybe in June next year in Koszalin, Poland (where Justyna is from).
We’re very happy :)
Personal
27
Feb 08
Engaged!
28
Jan 08
Apple a bit Needy?
Last Saturday we went to Saturn, a huge electronics store in Rotterdam, to buy Justyna an iPod. Incidentally, this is the kind of shopping that I like, much better than acting as a clothes hanger for three hours in a row.
She got an iPod nano 4GB with a “cute” pink leather “jacket”. Great. When we got home we set it up. It’s always fun to see how people who are not that much involved in IT that much see things and what they notice. Of course the setup went smooth, you can leave that to Apple. What disturbed her, however, was Apple’s pushing of (1) registering her iPod which included giving her name, address, phone number and work industry and after that (2) pushing her to get a iTunes Music Store account, which means more information plus yet another user name and password. Even though she will most probably never buy any song there. Or, as she put it, “I don’t want a stupid Apple ID!”
We decided to break off the registration procedure. But now, every time you plugin the device, it will ask to register and then, every time you plug in the device, you have to click “Later”. We’ll see how long she will be able to resist.
11
Jan 08
Ordered Presentation Zen, the Book
Presentation Zen has been one of my favorite blogs for a while now. And the nice thing about blogs is that if you have enough of an audience, it’s a great opportunity for a publisher to get the author to write a book. That’s what happened to Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen and his book is out now. I pre-ordered the book and according to Amazon it has shipped now. Looking forward to it!
24
Dec 07
Jungle Disk Plus
I’m a long-time user of JungleDisk,the software that allows you to access your Amazon S3 space as if it were a hard drive. During their beta period were free, but now they charge a small amount. They keep improving their software and truly are committed to offer a multi-platform solution. They now offer a version in which you can mount your JungleDisk using fuse right into your file system under Linux. It’s still a beta, but it works well. As part of “Jungle Disk Plus” (their monthly subscription option — free for the first year) they now also give you web-based access to your files, which is very convenient.
11
Dec 07
Anyone Having Trouble with Gmail?
Anybody seeing this as often as I do when going to Gmail?
For the past week now I see this every so often. Kind of annoying, especially when there’s an email you want to read. The “basic HTML view” usually works though, but it’s not the same.
5
Oct 07
Rectification: Forced Linux
Only minutes after my post about some advantages I found about Linux over Mac I already started receiving comments that OS X does, in fact, have all the features I mentioned. In Finder, if you start typing a name, it will go to that file or folder (this, apparently, even works in iTunes — I was so sure I tried that and was always frustrated that it didn’t work, but it does), and you can, indeed, set the exact path where you want to save any file.
Anyway, I’m back in OS X now. Parallels works again with networking and I’m compiling my stuff inside a virtual machine. It’s not perfect, but it works. The reason for the switch back to Mac OS X was that it was easier to get my new 24″ Dell screen and new Mighty Mouse to work there. I have an extended desktop now. One laptop screen (13″ 1280×800) and a 24″ TFT monitor (24″ 1900×1200). It’s amazing. So much more room for my Emacs ;)
(Click for larger version)
The wireless mighty mouse I got is ok. I have to get used to it a bit. The scrolling works nicely, I can left- and right-click now. The buttons on the side (the squeezing) is something I don’t use. You really have to squeeze for it to respond. But all in all, it’s not as bad as I heard people say.
6
Aug 07
One of Those Moments
An hour ago I had to think of a poem I once read for my English studies. The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. I don’t know why I had to think of that. Maybe it was because it was briefly cited in Dead Poets Society, which I saw again a few nights ago. But still, I don’t know what made me think of this poem.
Then I started to read in my Google Reader and I found this. I guess it was my sixth sense at work.
11
Jul 07
Armagetron
I’m not a gamer, not even close to it. But today and yesterday I have been playing Armagetron Advanced a lot. It’s a simple 3D open source game that runs on Windows, Linux and the Mac (yay!) based on the Tron movie. What I like about it that it’s live action and in essence very simple. You can play quite well by simply using two keys (one to go to the left and one to the right). You can play it locally or on the internet. I just won my first game online, wooh! ;)
You can give it a try for free here: Armagetron Advanced website. Recommended!
4
Jul 07
GTTSE and GWT
I’m here at the GTTSE ’07, the Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering summer school which I participate in to get started in the area of transformational techniques which an important part of model-driven engineering, which is what I will be doing my Ph.D. on.
There’s quite a few interesting people walking around here. Yesterday I had a chat with Scott Blum of Google, who works on GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and gave an implementation on their Java to Javascript compiler and all the optimizations they are doing there. We talked, among other things, about why Google develops a framework to basically make it easier to compete with them. The reason for that is that Google wants to convince more companies and people to build web applications, when companies do that (hopefully using GWT and a slew of Google tools, like the Google APIs) the playing field is leveled. Which application is used no longer depends on who gets the best software distribution deals, like which software is pre-installed on Dell desktops, but instead everybody gets a fair shot at getting using them — on the web. That also means that it is easier for Google, or anybody else, to compete.
GWT is not something that was developed in-house, originally. It was developed by a company that already worked on Java to Javascript compilation and AJAX before Google Maps and the AJAX term was coined. Quickly thereafter the company was bought into Google and now they’re working with about 14 people (if I remember correctly) on it in Atlanta. GWT is not currently used for any of the big products that they run, but it is considered for some new projects and some projects are actually being developed with it now. The focus, however, for the GWT team has been mostly at advocating it to the outside world rather than to Google internally.
I find the GWT project very interesting. They do a lot of the annoying, difficult work that you would otherwise have to do yourself. The Java to Javascript compiler is quite amazing, they do a lot of clever optimizations that can make your Javascript code a lot smaller than it would otherwise be (for example by removing all classes and methods and other pieces of code from libraries that are not used).