recently...

1 caught so far the biggest fish  in my life(with my friends help)

2 ate the very first strawberry grown by my self

3 still suffering from my crappy car.

Glue

http://code.google.com/p/sw-toolkit/

changing is scary

sometimes i think life needs changing, and I deserve something better. However I am lazy, too lazy too do anyting besids thinking, I lay on my couch and just watch some silly movies to kill my time, that situation makes me sad and comfortable
Recently work is not going very well, or let's say I feel that my career is not going anywhere, coding pointlessly, just day by day, boring and painful. A friend will leave the team soon, I just checked the Seek, lots of interesting and promising positions for Java developer, but I still hesitate or may be too scared to really make a move. Life is so confusing, I guess I really need a mentor to teach me what is the right thing for me.

about smartGWT

After working hard on a GIS project with SmartGWT for nearly half a year, I think I should write a review for smartGWT.

"I think SmartGWT has a ton of great widgets, but but but there is a HUGE price. Create a simple SmartGWT based project and watch how many files get loaded by your page. That, I think, is totally against the ideals of something like GWT. While SmartGWT may be a pretty good option for people on a deadline, if you want raw performance, stay away from it. The number of HTTP requests will simply kill your application."
I have to agree with that. The nice widgets smartgwt provides come with a huge price, the unzipped size of the js files are about 3m, and the rendering speed is just OK. sometime we should try out best to improve the compatibility and can't decide what client should do, namely a slow network or a crappy IE6, that is just normal.
While GWT is so promising about flexibility and compatibility , smartgwt as a wrapper can quickly help us to create some deadline project, but it limits our capability to implement our own widgets and communication framework. The performance won't be the best and the application won't be compatible with mobile devices. which I think are very important nowadays.
In terms of the data binding feature in smartGWT pro version, I am not interested at all. Binding page to domain model with XML, It's never a good idea based on my experience. Firstly you have to learn how to use the XML syntax to do the job, secondly application is not always about database and requirements can be various, not to mention the table relationship can be very complicated. So the project using data binding idea always ends up with a lot of tweaking code and workarounds.

confusion

Watched a discussion on tv about cancer treatment, a doctor said: what he wants is knowing he is doing the right thing.
That's so true isn't it. we hope the best and we know life is not always perfect. life is complicated, sometimes we are confused, we stop and linger, because we want to know, are we doing the right thing?

pool and rich

Yesterday I watched a documentary about a huge city in Africa, and some "poor" people, from my point of view. They work in dump site as scavengers and built a kind of city on that dump site with restaurants and bars... which look entirely different from what we know. A guy working in dump site at day time and doing some show after work. He has a dream to be a rapper and get rich, he does try his best, working hard to buy some clothes so he can look good when making some show on street to gain some reputation. He believes his future will be better, so he works so hard every minute for his dream. In his song he says that he is rich, and has a lot of money full of his pocket.. and has a nice photo with notes in hand( that photo is supposed to be used as the CD cover). Very touching.

But damn, their life is miserable and probably that guy's dream will never come true. human life is always a struggling. That's why Buddha believes that life is pain and everything is just illusion. We're struggling to avoid danger, to chase something we believe will make us happy, to prove we are important and try to have some purpose. However after all those emotional story happening, what's the point? And what exactly the reason we are here?

recently I just did my annual review, bought a house, moved home, and some things happened, I would say life is just amazing and we all need to look forward and keep moving on.

started learning QT again, it is a really neat framework, the signal and slot design is so handy. In java, we normally use listener or handler, I can not tell which way is better since I am not a pro in c++, but what I can tell is, with QT, I can create a nice desktop App with a lot of nice functions easily, and it got webkit, which is clearly a better solution than other java solutions I know.
Again, I am still a java developer, so I just quickly went through the application level tutorial and won't go deep into C++. So what's next? I am creating a mini browser. I am working on a web project which will have a windows like UI, with this mini browser(without any decoration) , the combination will grant end user the best experience. and it will support functions like minimize to system tray, auto starts when windows starts, etc.
I just solved a issue about web page painting. My projects normally work for government department. government likes reports right? Painting functionality is crucial for them. the solution is simple, with less than 10 lines code about QPrintPreviewDialog and QWebPage::printRequested, now the inner js can call windows.print() as usual.

installed linux mint on my laptop. looks good. and after changed the sound driver, everything is working perfect.

the sound issue is a little bit tricky. using the default alas, the sound effect is just terrible. As a professional consultant I can't stand that.

However after changing to oss, the chrome native html5 stop working so my new extension can't pronounce word for me. need to figure out some way to solve that.
update: problem solved, installed libasound2-plugins, now the sound quality is as good as under windows
nice!

by the way, linux Mint is a nice distribution, i will recommend this. the interface is quite neat and it has those rmvb, mp3 codecs as default. which is handy.

TDD CI and PP, Yes I say they are craps

http://www.underdevelopment.eu/2009/08/29/why-i-think-test-driven-development-suck/

can't agree more

While CI has some kind of benefit, TDD and PP are totally bullshit. I would like to ask why we want to test while we are just gluing API together or changing CSS. What exactly do you think is worth to test. be practical man.

by the way, I love Scala, it works well as a Servlet, don't prefer lift though.

for pair programming:

If a problem is so trivial that two people sitting in front of a computer chattering away at each other can solve it, then it should be the part of the project that is outsourced, preferably offshore where the cost of doing trivial work is lower

After Chrismas we went to the great ocean road for the first time as a adventure. The road was built by soilders from war II, most of it is on mountain, sounds cool, right.

we departed on 5, the plan was to see the 12 apostles. However because the concerns about fuel and time, after we arrived prince town which acturelly is quite close to there, we decide to leave the best for the next time then drove back.

After M1 and 100, passed couples of small towns, we found the Great Ocean Road was so beautiful, one side is beach and sea, and another side is always beautiful mountain. the road is so tricky so the driver was my friend not me, but next time I would like to show my skills if my friends are comfortable with that, haha.

On the way back, we chose to pass though the forest, we were kind of lost until we found a shop and given a Map, what a nice guy. I've met so many nice people after I came Australia, God bless them.

And the last 2 pictures are about another story, look at my lovely car!

time flys

As a matter of fact, I am 31 years old. Feeling tired and pointless, I look at the crappy room, crappy computer, crappy me, and the crappy life. I feel so bored. What are all those about, what's the purpose of life and what the future will hold? I don't know too much about the future, what I do know in the future I will die.

Everybody dies. Everything will be gone. We will become nothing and nothing will be meaningful for us.

I wished I could change this, or figure out someway to release that fear, to kill that kind of desperate feeling. All the efforts are in vain, nothing we can do to stop time, to stop dying, to stop being nothing.

We are getting there, so what we do tonight? Are those things worth being taken seriously? probably not. Maybe I am already dead. I am so smart, I used 20 years to think something maybe most of people will never be concerned about for the whole life, turns out I still can't figure out why I am here, and there is no way to escape.