Monday February 21, 2005

General

Another last entry! Okay, quick back track. I've decided to move my blog to JRoller for obvious reasons. See ya!

(2005-02-21 02:00:40.0) Permalink

Sunday February 20, 2005

General

Last entry from a Sun Java Developer My last day with access to Sun and blogs.sun.com will be on Tuesday 22nd February so this will probably be my last entry.

I've really enjoyed working for Sun and it upsets me having to leave. I suppose for now I won't be able to fulfill one of my ambitions of actually working in the JDK teams. Being at Sun allowed me to extend my Java and J2EE experience to over 8 years and bring my Unix experience to over 15 years. For the last year my team has all been remote, I am in the UK and they were nearly all in the Bay area. That made an interesting working day. Prior to my 3 years at Sun I was with Lutris Technologies Inc for 2 years working on and with both the Enhydra and Enhydra Enterprise. Before that my time (nearly 10 years) was spent with the Santa Cruz Operation Inc (SCOC not SCOX!) in numerous roles.

Whatever new opportunities I pursue I will still be in the Java zone as I just love working with Java. I don't suppose my next employer will be a Californian based technology company, given that all my jobs since graduating have it might even feel a little strange.

Thanks all to who stumbled across my blog. I was never in the top 10 of blogs.sun.com but I have been top of the "grahamm" Google search, that surprised and pleased me. I'm going to continue with "grahamm's blog" over at Blog Drive. I hope you visit my new blog, there is a contact form there if anyone wants to contact me. Also thanks to the rest of blogs.sun.com, it was great being part of this community.

Thanks again and goodbye,

Graham

(2005-02-20 04:25:00.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Films & TV

CSI:NY episode 3 Well I saw my second CSI:NY last night (missed last weeks). The lack of colour is getting very annoying. I keep wanting to adjust my television to compensate. What stops me is when the adverts come on it looks like I'm tripping on something with the riot of over bright colours. Also the story seemed very slow and weak. I hope it gets better.

(2005-02-20 03:32:40.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Monday February 07, 2005

Gadgets

PMR446 (personal mobile radio) I had yesterday afternoon off as vacation, so I decided to go into Maplins in Stevenage. For those who don't know Maplins it is essentially a electrical gadget shop. I love it, I could spend so much money in there it is frightening.

Well this time I picked up a couple of PMR446 walkie talkies as I might have a need for some in the summer (nothing like being ready!). PMR446 is a European wide standard for personal mobile radios on 446Mhz. Well it is nearly Europe wide, I think Monaco don't include themself. The radios have 8 individual channels with 38 additional "sub-channels". This just means that your radio on one of the eight channels will ignore any sub-channel it doesn't recognise. You still share the primary channel with everyone else.

They are suppose to give about 2-3 kilometres. I haven't had a chance to try them out yet over any distance. It says buildings and land relief make a difference so I'm not expecting anything exceptional. A kilometre would be nice.

Well I tried them out on Saturday night as it was time for a Chinese take-away (not had one for ages and ages). So I treked down to the high street and tried to raise Jo who was still at home. Yes they worked, a bit crackly but I could hear every word. The distance isn't that far, probably half a mile, but that is down a hill and through lots of buildings, over an electrified railway and into the car. I was too self conscious to do it on the street.

(2005-02-07 10:30:00.0) Permalink

Wednesday February 02, 2005

Films & TV

CSI observations Last night (Channel) five ran the Miam/NY crossover episode again in readiness for Saturday. With Vegas running just before something became apparent about the way the three settings were filmed in daylight. Vegas had a yellow/white glow, Miami a yellow/orange glow and NY a grey colourless appearance. In fact in the first scene with both David Caruso and Garu Sinise, Caruso is in the background bathed in what looks like sun light, and Sinise in the foreground in a grey cold colourless light. Of course this may have been coincidence as I haven't seen any CSI:NY yet only the crossover. I will wait and see...

(2005-02-02 02:23:12.0) Permalink

Java

Makefiles are satan's contribution to software Probably a bit harsh but one of the places I always have trouble is with Makefiles. Regardless of whether I'm building Java or C I normally fall foul of something (Note: I use Apache Ant for all my own personal projects).

My current pet peeve is with Makefiles and jar files. The part of a source tree I am working in generates lots of class files and a handful of jar files. However the ability of the makefiles to correctly rebuild the jar files after I have touched some source appears to be random. This means on occasions when I'm testing changes I find I'm still using old code. This so wastes my time.

(2005-02-02 01:59:28.0) Permalink Comments [3]