No surprise here, move along

So, according to Kevin at GiGaOm, the Samsung line is not seeing an upgrade to Android 4.0

That's precisely why I voted with my feet and chose an iPhone, despite Apple's closed and restrictive nature. Love developing on Android though ;-)

The same has and will continue to apply to the Windows Mobile offerings. I actually started my PDA usage on an IMate back in '04 and loved it, but upgrade was hardware vendor locked and later versions were dumbed down and smaller. Windows 8, lauded as it seems to be may well suffer the same fate

We shall see

What daddy wants

Hmm, I ponder my list

1. Laser Welding machine. Shark with lasers will do (it's just cool OK)
2. Laser pointer that doubles as a soldering iron (Thanks Tim)
3. Inline amp for electric guitar. The thing that goes between the guitar and and the headphones.
4. Flying lessons, or at least an introductory flight.
5. For Rob at EasyStore to get back to me with the quotes for crating, so we can get our stuff.
6. PX4
7. A holiday (A plane, PX4 and shark with laser would make it FUN)

Life

You get two types of rat-catcher coming to the fore when someone invents a better mouse/rat trap.

The one that says:

This is wonderful! It will reduce return visits, allowing me to see more customers and make more money!

This is the person that plays the "Piper" and removes the rats before too much damage is done and saves the apartment complex from being condemned.

Sadly, the more usual case is the person that says this:

This will kill my business because it will make me look less effective and my customers will wonder if they even need me. I must stop it!

This is the person that lets the apartment get condemned, often protesting loudly that it's not their fault. They are the ones who'll resort to political manipulation to try and kill, block or invalidate a product and preserve the status quo. Completely ignoring the value their customers may derive from them using the product.

They have clearly lost sight of the value proposition they represent to their customers. Better tools make you more effective and give your customers choices they may not have had otherwise. If you are blind to that, you will miss opportunities that could, quite frankly, change your life.

Is it not better to leave a trail of successful customers in your wake? So decide if you want to add value or not. If the answer is no, it is time to get the hell out of the kitchen!

SWT Handles giving you nightmares?

So I've been struggling with SWT Handle errors when launching Notes from Eclipse. Seems to be just my machine.

At first I thought the culprit was the MySQL Server running in the background and chomping 42k+ handles

Disabled the MySQL service and things worked for a while, but then the SWT handle errors returned and no matter what I did to the run configuration, I'd end up with either the handle error or a GPF

I was about to reinstal the accursed OS, when I got a chance to swap out the memory and that's worked, for now.

Putting MySQL server back in the mix still kills it, although that might be because I've dropped to 3Gig of memory.

Need to test the memory. Edit - It was the memory!

So in short, SWT handle errors seem to be a wee bit broad and pretty useless error message, so bear that in mind and check for other funky monkeys under the hood.

Picking up OSGI

Want to get up to speed on OSGI?

First, listen to Java Posse's podcast of an interview with the OSGI gurus.

Then go read this list of introductory articles and then this article for balance

Why start using OSGI? Because classpath hell just froze over (in J7)

If like me, you do this all in Eclipse and Notes, read mikkel's explanation of features

Ressurection

OK, time to fire this up again

Some really cool things have happened in the last year or two that have prompted a return.
I moved from SA to the US of A for a spot of technical and cultural exchange.

6 months in and loving it. The kids especially are really enjoying the sense of safety and security that comes from being able to ride their bikes in the street without worrying somebody will kill them for it.

That's not to say there's not been adjustments, there are many subtle and not so subtle ways that Americans do it differently. So from driving on the "Right" side of the road to figuring out where the best hardware store is, has been a glorious voyage of discovery.

Already feel more "connected" by not having my DSL die repeatedly (Telcom thou art not missed).

So, a new beginning on the personal and professional front (that's excluding all the hush hush stuff at work I'm not supposed to talk about but some others have leaked).

Just plain awfull (Holiday Rant)

Decided to go to the eBucks site today to register, and sincerely regret it.

Not only did I have to wait while each keyword list refreshes (I'm on a 1Mb+ line here), but the [Back] and [Next] navigation didn't retain information already captured. So when I had to use the [Back] to correct an earlier choice for Postal Address right at the end, I had to recapture everything.

The error depicted in the image was the last straw, and I gave up, muttering about a certain class of JSP developer being prime candidates for culling.

Idiot JSP developers aside, this sort of UI design was barely acceptable back in 1998 and definitely isn't in the new century.

Unfortunately this is just another sad case of a South African company falling short on the internet because management are just too short-sighted to see the cost-justification of proper UI Design. Yes I can see they got a graphic designer in, but it seems it ended there. Did they actually try using their site on anything other than their LAN?