JavaGu(i)(y)

Endless love..

About 18 years ago I met the girl of my dreams. Too bad she still is. She is the kind of person that makes this world a better place. If you want to meet God, meet her. She makes me feel at home. She is everything that mankind should be. Just a small step for her to arise above the daily problems that she still faces. If you didn't get it already : she is not my wife or girlfriend. My love for her is so unselfish, that at every oportunity I get to tell her how I think about her, I don't do that. That has one reason (and if you really think about it two reasons) The first is that if someone is in a relationship, I don't interfere in any way. If she asks me about the relationship (eg Is it really that bad?), than I cannot answer that, since it may impose that I said what I said was for my own benefit. The second (if I am really honest) is that telling her could end up in a "nice, but...". Maybe it's time to tell her..

2002 : a year to forget?

According to time a year takes every year about the same time to pass. Mentally however it may seem longer or shorter. This year was shorter. Just a shortlist of what passed my eyes in 2002..

Non java stuff

- Politics got a lot less meaningfull. All the egos in The Hague made a huge mess that was noticable, when normally you don't see the mess untill you need to pay up to the government because they made up something stupid. For example I pay 380 Euro a month to be health insured (no dentals included), although most people in my position pay a max of 50 Euro. I really love the government, they don't have a goal and if they have it is to make peoples life worse. - World politics (or is it US politcs??) are based on fear again. A cheer for progress!! The worst thread in the world is the US atm. What the heck can you expect from a country that says that weapons are the most important right that people have. A cheer for freedom, even if it is at the expense of others. Don't get me wrong I love the US. Hope the US will grow up and have a good look internally. Everyone they are fighting right now, have been helped by the US to get in that position. Enough now about the US, I still want to get into the country. - The stock exchange is more like a legal casino. It's not worth the news they spend on it, especially if the figures where it is based on, is made up. The only stock that is interesting is your own companies stock. FYI I don't own any stock of any kind. Since money doesn't dissapear, econmically it's still going great. Curious who has the lost money now. People losing there pension because of it, is a big downside. I will luckily never be affected by this, since I don't have a pension plan and will never get one, when allowed. By the time I can enjoy my pension I will already live happily in real freedom, unbound to the things we currently see.

Java stuff

- Got into programming swing this year. This upset me so much, that I started nyx. A project that should make my life a lot easier on the gui development front (and hope will help other people too!). A lot of work needs to be done to get to the goals I set in my mind (Really need to update the site..). - Became a commiter on apache (commons) and just gained committer access to gump and met some great people. - Organized the ETC (European Turbine Conference) in Teteringen, because Jason van Zyl came to Holland. Organizing it was hard and not really my "thing", but it ended up great for me and I really loved to see some faces behind the names. My cat says hi to you Jason :)

Personal stuff

- I picked up sailing again, the plans for my trip around the world using a sailing boat (already wanted to make a trip around the world), started from this.

Just removed feedreader

Read on some log that there was a feedreader available, which could notify you of any new entries in logs. Today I got a warning from windows saying I am running low on resources. To my suprise feedreader was at 60 Mb! it's leaking all over the place in my opinion.. No feedreader is worth 60 Megs of my memory. A nice try though and I like the idea. For now I think I will just use javablogs to keep up-to-date :)

Going Dutch ?

In reaction to camarons entry on going dutch

Some advice: Make friends with someone who has a boat. It's a lot easier.

My father bought a Westerly Centaur last year this is the picture : Here we are on the Grevelingen Lake (the biggest salt water lake in the world). When I was a kid, my father started with a dufour 1800 (yep, 20 foot smaller than the one Cameron has :).

And will save you many years of pain and torturous living.

You probably missed my log Selling my house And besides that, I just don't need much space to live in. (see my current house). I just use 2 rooms : my computer room and bed room, which is about the same a 40 foot boat gives me. The one that is going to have less space, is my cat Baahmi (photo made at preperations for the dutch Sinterklaas party on december 5th I created a sailing boat for my brother)

My current goal is to buy a hood 40 that is for sale (it's an extended hood 38), which is completely ready for a trip around the world (just missing heating)

Dutch Cruising Association

Just joined the Dutch Cruising Association. My first step towards meeting some people that actually have a sailing boat. I already have a nice flag ("geuzevlag" in dutch), to hang into my boat and a nice sticker to put on the back of my boat
(can someone enlighten me on English sailing terms pleasssse).
Since I need to hang that flag somewhere, I hope my next step is actually buying a boat. Also have to pick up some studying, so I am licensed for some things I don't have yet (like a sailingboat, and the equipment on there that need licensing).

GasMask for pets?

Just heard that someone created gas masks for pets. It gives you just about 5 minutes to kill your pet yourself, since it will run out of oxygen at that time. Happy slaying!

Missed Christmas mass in church

ho ho ho

Christmas is here once again

Everybody in the world : enjoy christmas. Not that anybody is reading this, but hey, at least I tried to wish something this year :) Since I am sure I am gonna read this : Thank you martin and don't eat to much :) I always eat too much Martin, you always do. One luck though : I am not a fat bastard like Santa is.. Not yet Martin, although you are a bastard already, but still doing less on the fat part than mr ho ho ho. Santa wins on being a commercial success though (thanx Coca Cola), hope coca cola wants to make up me next time.. Christmas tends to be a family dinner and if I didn't eat everthing the second christmas day (yeah we have 2 days of christmas) we eat leftovers and play cards. Since the euro conversion playing cards can become expensive though. Inflation seems to hit our christmas get-together too. If you are one of the few that actually reads this and your are not me : Hope you have 2 christmasdays too and have an inflation free christmas :) For all you christmas experts out there : When in heaven (better as "the hell") is boxing day and does it involve a person named Mike Tyson (if not, does it involve beating up people ?) I just love my christmasy thoughts for all you christmassy people ;)

Masters of the far east

I encounter a lot of surprises when I tell people I am a programmer (to make it easier for some people I just say "nerd") during a discussion about life and my very "devine" (hard to describe in english) look on it. Though this combination is not very uncommon under us "techies". (bob comes to mind see his homepage of his company werken.com)
Just a must read for all you esoteric techies : Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East (dutch title : Meesters van het verre oosten), by Baird T Spalding (btw the link doesn't link to the exact same version of the book that I have..)
It's my new bible and it opened my eyes ago when I went living in Isla Margarita (Venezuela) a couple of years ago.
Nifty detail : My grandfather bought the first print of this book before 1972. He was way ahead of his time and already let go of the things we were told to value so much.

maven plugin for eclipse

Just got a link to the new version of eclipse 2.1 and what it is capable of. Finally multiple build directories are possible, on which maven relies heavily. Probably time for me to upgrade and have a fresh start on the maven ide project on sourceforge

Swing StyledDocument

The styledDocument stuff in swing sucks bigtime. My goal is to process xml and show xml in a human readable format (a lot of them are just plain html tags though). Looking at the jdk code doesn't give me any conclusion of how it should work (besides the fact it can take up to 4 megs to load the htmleditor and therefore a lot of time and renders it unusable by default). Also the overdesign is killing, which makes eg the htmleditor completely unreadable. And I am not even starting on the memory leaks of the styled editors. I am letting that crap go now and I am going to implement everything myself, instead of depending on any code (besides interfaces) from sun. I want something I can get working pretty easily, not something I don't why it is working or not working. A rant from a slightly sick Martin

Save the dolphins

Finally an invention that makes sense and is based on something good.. A lot of fisherman shoot (or use dynamite!) on dolphins when they fishing and encouter dolphins that are hunting for fish around or in the nets. A (dutch) guy, thought that there must be a way to trick the dolphins, so that their sonar system doesn't pick up that there is fish in the surroundings of the net. After a couple of years research he made a little applyance that can be attached to the net and keeps dolphins away! It only costs 50 Euro, so much less than dynamite and bullets and a lot friendlier to our swimming brothers :)

Selling my house

Selling your house is hard. I have to answer all kind of questions that I don't understand what they are about (I have cvs running at home though!). Why sell my house then.. I want to buy a sailing boat and live on that. Start preparing for my trip around the world and saving a lot of money (and travel cost). Just found a an harbour near Amsterdam (Monickendam) that actually has the ability to have a phoneline on my boat.. I Wonder if I can move my adsl connection with that :) (too bad my servers go down when I am sailing...). Also have to start looking at ways to generate some money during my trip.. Current plans are visiting Canada, US, Caribbean, Australia, India, Southern Europe (and that all as long as possible). I am programming like the wind soon :)

This should be a java log

Since this should be a java log I have created a new one, for non java mindspins. This blog is called "Is Martin nuts or are we?". Make your decision about that.. I think I am perfectly (in)sane ;) Whoops time for my medication...

We need to ban time!

Time is there to stress out people. Laws are there to limit creativity. I know of only one law that doesn't : Make a law that forbids time being used in any way. It will be messy at first, but eventually it will make life a lot easier and better. One advantage of banning time : you are never late for an appointment, since no one knows who is late :) If you disregard time you and others will eventually learn to know where to be at the right moment. Time ban will also clear up a lot of issues : today in Holland is today, but in Australia today can be tomorrow. No wonder people are getting nuts all over the world (I was already nuts, so no need for me to getting it..) If you really want to use the word time, then there are three forms : was, now, going to be was is not now and going to be will never be now was is not anymore, so has no meaning and what never will be now has no meaning either, so actually now is the only thing that matters in our pretty world, called earth.

Spam

I don't want a bigger penis!! I don't want a US mortgage !! (stop decreasing interest rates Greenspan, since your decisions generate spam) I don't want US healthCare !! I don't want marketing (I'm not Bill..) I don't want discounted cigarettes !! (although I smoke, but hard to get anywhere else than in Holland) I don't want insurance on my life !! (who wants that anyway, since if you are dead, how the hell do you spend the money and why do they call it life insurance anyway ? Do they insure that I will always live??) I want to receive a mail from the women of my dreams asking me out on a date though, but yeah that is something I don't consider to be spam...

IRC server package

Thinking about making a java irc server implementation, which will implement rfc 2810, rfc 2812, rfc 2811 and rfc 2813. Had a look at ircd today and I don't like the fact that configuring stuff is through compilation and I like to be in control. Don't know if I write my own server platform though (very lightweight) or just use avalon or plexus.
Just figured out the name : jinser
j = java
i = irc
n = don't have a clue, but it sounds a lot better with an n
ser = server

If you have an better idea, let me know..

Hmm my first entry :)

On request of bob, I will not speak about rss, aop, ide compared to ide and .net versus java. Why not ? I like bob :)