Adam Bien's Weblog
What Is www.sun.com/ponytails/ ?
An interesting URL: http://www.sun.com/ponytails. It gets resolved to: http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/. Now the question - why ponytail? :-)
Posted at 12:51PM Mar 06, 2010 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[4]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
Sun + Oracle = Snorcle?
The new Sun + Oracle logo was revealed. Somehow aquarium / oracun and sparky related :-)
Posted at 09:06PM Jan 22, 2010 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[1]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
A Nice WebStart-able (Java) Image Viewer
Ekspos is a nice, free image viewer written in Java. WebStart install is available as well.
Posted at 05:44PM Jan 02, 2010 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[4]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
The Perfect Christmas Gift - From The Strategic Perspective
Roomba is an autonomous vacuum-cleaning robot - it cleans all rooms, then returns back to the docking station for charging. It works remarkably well - even cats love it. You can just give it as christmas gift to your mother, girlfriend or wife, without mentioning it real capabilities :-).
Although it comes with a remote control and it is fun to observe it - the fun part starts after reading the Hacking Roomba: ExtremeTech book. A hint: you should not order both at the same time, otherwise your girlfriend / wife *will* become suspicious.
You could pimp-up your vacuum cleaner with WI-FI, Bluetooth, even Linux etc.
The only problem is to find useful use cases for hacking it. Some ideas:
- Vacuum-cleaning robot swarm :-)
- Peer-To-Peer communication between Roombas. Having a certain Roomba density one could even built an alternative ad-hoc network :-)
- Roomba has a remote control, so after equipping it with a web cam, it becomes a perfect spy toy / drone.
- ...any other ideas?
Posted at 04:26PM Dec 22, 2009 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[10]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
What Is JavaOne? (it is not the conference, but compatible)
A nice homepage - it explains what JavaOne actually is. You can even buy one.
Posted at 12:00PM Oct 11, 2009 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[2]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
Geek Funeral In A SPARCStation
After a serious refactoring, a SPARCStation was (re)used for a geek funeral (see picture). I'm just wondering what a serious iphone / nano geek will do...
Posted at 10:03AM Oct 03, 2009 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[1]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
You Should Start With This IT-Interview Question
What does the number 42 mean for you?
The funniest answer I got so far was: "I heard about that already"
You can directly google for 42 and will get the correct answer. Interesting: if you search for "Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything", you will get an interesting reaction from google (a small calculator).
Posted at 09:48AM Aug 22, 2009 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[5]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
Java The Most Popular Language - ActionScript Is Followed By Fortran And Cobol
Java is the most popular language in July. ActionScript (22) is tightly followed by Fortran and COBOL (what a nice neighborhood :-)). Scala is actually doing well (32) and Java FX Script (44) seems to be more popular than Groovy (47) - what really surprised me. An excerpt from the index:
21 Objective-C 22 ActionScript 23 Fortran 24 COBOL 32 Scala 44 JavaFX Script 47 Groovy
Posted at 10:21AM Aug 02, 2009 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[2]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
Most Popular, Free, Multiplayer Game ...Is An Applet
The registration is fast - not even an email-address is required. After choosing your username and password (it takes about 20 seconds), you can immediately start to play runescape. Runescape is applet-based and runs directly in a browser. Even more interesting: runescape was designed with self-created Java tools what is remarkable. I tried it on a mac - everything worked perfectly. Enjoy your weekend! :-)
Posted at 11:10AM Aug 01, 2009 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[1]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices
Was Michael Jackson A Java Developer With JSON Expertise?
Probably not. Although there is a nice and fast XML / JSON parser with the name Jackson. It is especially useful for fast XML parsing and JSON processing with JAXB support. ...and one of the developers first name is Mike :-).
Now let see, whether Glassfish v2.1 behind this blog will be able to handle the load, and whether this post will make into the top five :-).
Posted at 11:36AM Jul 14, 2009 by Adam Bien in Fun | Kommentare[4]
[my tweets]
Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices

