alpha, beta, gamma, loves you, delta

We all know the various software development cycles. Alpha used to be mostly for internal testing. Beta represented versions released to the wider public for the purpose of real world testing. Nobody dared call their version Gamma out of fear that people would confuse that with their Gamma Phi Beta sorority. So most stuck to Beta, using enumerations to denote post-Beta releases like Beta I (or 1), Beta II (or 2) etc. Then Microsoft figured that an operating system was entitled to a brand new concept of post-Beta test cycles and, that system being Windows, they probably were right. So they started issuing what they euphemistically called Release Candidate versions to the public. Of course, you could always find some very peculiar versioning conventions if you looked hard enough, like Knuth's TeX ever approaching Pi numbers. By the time open source software became de facto, and releases were mostly Web Server software updates, Release Candidate sounded too formal and rigorous, so Gamma became the new Beta II. Now Flickr calls one of its recent releases "LOVES YOU", instead of Delta, Gamma II, Super/Post Candidate Release I, signalling a new era of version naming standard. Who knows what the next release will be? WILL MARRY YOU perhaps.

trendalyzer

Google recently acquired the Sweden-based Gapminder, the "non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development", makers of the amazing Trendalyzer®. Not many people have heard of them up until now, but the visualization and real-time interaction possibilities are just mind blowing. Have a look at this demo. Now I know what you must be thinking: how can I have something like that in my webapp? I'm afraid you'll have to resort to good old jfree chart.

get humanized

I recently came across Humanized, a company that tries to bring the command line to the common man, by exposing operating system or application operations as simple commands, that can be typed at any time. For example, by holding down [Ctrl] and typing "open with" or a part of it, it will automatically open whatever has been selected with the application of your choice. This is part their Enso Launcher application, the other one being Enso Words. Enso Words lets you do all kind of things you would normally do from within a word processor through the humanized command line, from spell checking to word counting. A pleasant change.

Microsoft/AOL giveaway

Not really. This is an old internet hoax, dating back in 2004, claiming that Microsoft and AOL are running a tracked email test paying people for participating, urging them to forward a silly . Now, why am I making such a fuss NOW, many years after this hoax first appeared? Because there are gullible people out there that keep circulating these phony messages believe or not, and they did send it to me!!!!
Well, sorry folks, but there aint no free lunch yet. Now get back to work.

random pin generation

Automatical random PIN generation has been all the more common now, especially in mobile applications. There is a very good utility around by Stephen Ostermiller, that lets you generate random sequences of arbitrary length and arbitrary alphabets. You can download the latest Ostermiller Utils from http://ostermiller.org/utils/ostermillerutils_1_06_00.jar and then use it directly from command line (java -classpath utils.jar com.Ostermiller.util.RandPass), or more commonly through your Java application:

String pass = new RandPass(new char[]{'A','B','C'}).getPass(8)

happy tree friends

The Happy Tree Friends are cute little cartoon animals that get themselves into dire situations, always ending up in mayhem. Created by Kenn Navarro and Rhode Montijo, their short horrible stories can be watched on www.happytreefriends.com or on G4 videogame tv. Unbelievably insane and funny. Highly recommended to comic lovers.

despair inc.

This is only one of the many demotivators, pictures with a funny, pessimistic and subversive tagline that can be found in Despair Inc.. There's loads of demotivators that you can also buy as calendars, posters and even mugs including: "IDIOCY: Never understimate the power of stupid people in large groups", "BLAME: The secret to success is knowing who to blame for your failures." or "DREAMS: Dreams are like rainbows. Only idiots chase them.". Even the site itself is full of witticisms, e.g. Where did you hear about us? (leave blank if answer is "the voices".). Dr E.L. Kresten the founder of Despair Inc., the man who registered the :-( emoticon, has released a highly acclaimed book The Art of Demotivation. Definitely worth reading.

web developer plugin

Web Developer plugin by Chris Pederick for Firefox just got better. Released on December 31, 2005 version 1.0 is fully compatible with Firefox 1.5 and brings a host of new goodies. Here are some that I found very handy:

• Positioning information by means of a ruler and line guides.
• Ability to edit the source.
• Outline of all images, including background.
• View document size.
• Added viewport options so that you always know what fits in 800x600, 1024x768 etc.

If you work with Firefox, Flock or Mozilla and you still haven't heard of it, go get it now!

bug in Tomcat 5.0.16

I discovered that the reason my sessionDestroyed() handler is called twice is, for a change, not due to my rauceus programming but because of the Tomcat version (5.0.16) I was using. The standard sessions manager expires timed out sessions twice, once when checking whether they have expired and again when, well, is on the job. Of course I'm sure you're not using that old a Tomcat version but just in case. See bugzilla issues 25234 and 27273 for more info. There's actually at least a couple more duplicate issues there.

What happened to the Opencola?

I wasn't aware that the Opencola softdrink formula was just a marketing promotion to support the OpenCola company's open source product. Apparently the Toronto based company fell victim to its own promotion: no one really remembers or even knows that OpenCola actually wrote software. The GNU licensed open cola formula was removed from public availability as of October 31, 2002. Back then though, open cola was even consumed at student parties and sold over the internet. Now the only thing you can buy from the opencola.com domain seems to be cheap bedding...