Torsten Curdt’s weblog

Finally both parts of my article on Apache Jakarta Commons appeared in the german Javamagazin. It is supposed to give a brief overview of all the valueable components hosted by this Apache project. The second part also goes a bit more into detail explaining the basics about commons cli, logging and configuration. It gives a little skeleton that can be used for future applications.

Unfortunately only the first one is online.

Although I liked my Canon Powershot A60 it was just a bit too big. It also did not come with a rechargable battery …which can sometimes also be good! If you are on the road it’s way easier to buy some batteries than recharging. But for the general day-to-day use I personally prefer a Li-Io rechargeable battery.
It was really hard to decide which camera to pick. You find so many different ratings all with different results. If you look at places where people talk about their experience and give a little review you get everything from “it’s crap don’t buy it” to “I love it”.
So since I was really happy with the user handling of Canon and also do know quite some people that are really happy with their IXUS …I did also go for the Canon IXUS 430. So far I am pretty happy with it.

Last week I finally took a first step into the world of Apple. As a little reward for the busy times lately I got myself a 40GB iPod. Sweeeeet! This little but expensive toy is just amazing.

Right away I started organizing my mp3s. This little windows program was very handy. After I got all(!) my mp3s on this little thingy I was happy. I used it a couple of days …until it just stopped working :-( My iPod was just frozen! As described in the FAQ I tried to reset it. The reset worked well …but my iPod refused to boot. No Apple logo – nothing. Just some very quiet clicking sounds. Even letting the battery run out did not help to resurrect my new little toy. I had to get it replaced.

I am a bit suspicious… on both of my iPods there was already music on it. The second one was even named after a person. Maybe I did not get a new one? Really strange!

Anyway, I am hoping the second one will last much(!) longer….

I’ve been really busy these days. No time for blogging, not much time for code contributions. Well, for a reason… Besides I have been busy on my new job I’ve also been writing about Apache Jakarta Commons lately.

Last week the javamagazin released the first part of my article and a book review in their 07 issue. This not being enough I joined some authors writing a book about Jakarta Commons. I am really glad we are 4 authors. It has been a lot of work and it’s pretty obvious you don’t write books for the money. We just passed the first version to the publisher. So probably still some more work coming up. But it’s supposed to be in the stores in the 3rd quarter this year. ..but you can already pre-order it at amazon :-)

Unfortunately it’s all in german. Sometimes I wished I was writing it in english. Writing about computer related things feels much easier in english.

Seems like I am not the only one being hit by blog spammers. What a surprise ;) Andrew and Matthew are also sick wasting time on deleting comments from their blogs. But instead of disabling comments all together I installed a plugin that blocks at least automated bots. You have to enter a number shown on a picture in order to get the comment posted. This really helped to reduced my blog comment spam.

Update:
It did not only reduce…. I did not get a single spam comment within two months. (*knock on wood*) That’s really great!