December 2008Today we went to Aqualibi so we could walk in swimsuit all day even if it's freezing outside !
Recently I had a problem on my home computers. We couldn't connect to www.google.com anymore. A ping didn't work, a nslookup didn't work, a tracert didn't work. All other sites were ok. I searched the Internet (using google.be ;-)) and many people had the same problem. It seems to be a strange DNS problem. For those people, here is a temporary solution. Edit your Windows Hosts file (in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc) and add this line at the end: 216.239.59.147 www.google.com This way you tell your computer directly where to find Google.com. Note this solution will no longer work if Google.com changes its IP Address. After that I could again read my gmail, my Google Calendar, my Google Notebook and Blogger. Strange problem... I would like to know the real issue behind it. Today we did some mountain bike in Kasterlee/Herentals on the Montain Bike Routes of the Bloso. I could not blog for several days because I couldn't connect to www.google.com due to very stange dns problems. Whatever, I would like to wish you the best for this end of the year. I hope your holydays are filled with happiness and good cheer ! Very soon I will send you my Best Wishes with my Best Shots 2008. I have seen that guy (Roxorloops) at Devoxx. What he does is amazing ! Last week (Dec 8-12 2008), there was Devoxx (formely known as JavaPolis) in the Metropolis in Antwerp. The fair usually welcomes 2000 developers for technical conferences on Java, PHP, JavaFX, Scala, Ruby on Rails... IBM invests on this event and this year Robin Mulkers proposed to demonstrate IBM's technology leadership with a real use case of one of the hottest technologies: RFID. The project was exlained in the keynote (see some photos here below) Furthermore, it's a usefull use case for the Devoxx Organization : All participants receivedan RFID badge. Those badges were tracked so that one could for example see which sessions were the most popular. Or participants could leave their name at the booths by letting the hostess scan their badge to participate to games or request for more information. At IBM, we call this innovation that matters ! PS : Devoxx is one of the best events that I know. The organization is really great. You have free WiFi, you can take drinks directly from the fridge, speackers are accessible, topics are cool... Everything is in place to have a great Developer experience ! Dimanche 7 décembre, nous étions invités par IBM au Cirque Bouglione pour la Saint-Nicolas. N'hésitez plus, allez-y. Je vous le recommande : Le spectacle est vraiment bon. In the past I had already designed goal trees using UML. Today I have developed several diagrams for one of my customers : goal trees, project lists, opportunities, initiatives, execution strategies.... I have put it all in one huge diagram, that I have called a mind map. So I have effectively been developing a mind map using a UML Modeling tool. I can't show you because it's confidential but I find it quiet interesting and I will do it more and more. You can try it at home... This weekend I took some time to have a look at Ubuntu. I find Windows Vista is very slow and I wanted to know how Linux would run on my machine (Acer Aspire 5315, Intel Celeron 1.7 Ghz). I downloaded a CDRom from Ubuntu's website. You can boot from that CDRom and run Linux without making any changes to your machine. Directly, I was convinced by the performance : Linux is much more reactive. When applications are slow, the OS isn't and that makes all the difference. There are however some things that make me realize it would cost me time if I would completely switch to Ubuntu :
This Sunday (Nov 30, 2008) we were at the Lotto Arena in Antwerp for the last concert of Natalia's Glamorous Tour. It's the 4th time I see Natalia in concert. The first time was ok. The second time I was disappointed. The third time was ok but I still found she was shouting instead of singing. This time was ... exceptional : 1. She was singing and not shouting: real emotions could flow instead of a mass of decibels. 2. There was a real dance floor : Natalia and the dancers provided a superior experience. 3. There were nice surprises like singing Prince and the appearance of Stam van Samang. So it was an excellent concert this time !!   |
