Almost there

In less than 2 weeks I will be heading to Tokyo for an amazing trip across East-Asia. It now feels so close. My girlfriend and I started talking about such a trip probably over a year ago. Now that it is almost upon us I am very exiting. I don't know about you but over the years I've had so many projects and ideas that crossed my mind but which never really materialised that it already feels like we accomplished something. And I need to give a lot of credits to my girlfriend because she did a lot of research to plan this trip.

Now let's the fun begin...well, very soon :)

The Gang of Four

The Gang of Four was originally coined after a group of Communist Party of China leaders. More recently it was the name given to 4 people involved with writing a book on Software Design Patterns which became a sort of classic in software design. But to me it makes me think of three of my friends and I. We met a few years back while working in the same place and got on very well straight away. Nowadays we all have moved on but always manage to get together fairly regularly. I just went out for dinner with them tonight and as usual it was nice to catch up a bit.

Javascript

These days I am working on a javascript library and I'd like to share my pain. Javascript is pretty powerful - just look at all the ajax sites such as netvibes - and the barrier to entry is fairly low but boy it's a pain to develop. And when I mean develop, I mean get something to a production-ready state and maintain. This scripting language - that by the way has nothing to do with Java - is so flexible that your code always behaves in ways you wouldn't expect. To be honest, I definitely prefer strongly-typed languages. It may seem a bit more overwhelming at first but it is much easier in the long run.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

Tonight I decided to watch again Hurricane Carter. Although I quite like the movie, I'm not going to discuss it here. What I found very interesting was that when I checked online about this guy's "real" story I found out is that it's not as clear cut as what the movie depicts. Not very surprising I hear you say, it's Hollywood. I know but I was quite surprised to see that some people truly believe he's guilty: see here and here.
It always amazes me to see how many different interpretations can be given to a set of events. To some, he is somebody who never really achieved anything and has been lying all along about the events that took place in the 1966 murders. To others (as depicted in the movie), he is an innocent man who was never offered a fair trial. Well, in any case this is not very good for the justice system as it either released a triple murderer or convicted an innocent man.

Match Point

This is not really the kind of movie I usually watch. I'm not sure why but most of the stories about people having an affair or the likes don't interest me so much. Nevertheless I decided to give this one a try. To be honest, I didn't really know the story when I bought it :p. Upon starting the movie I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was directed by Woody Allen. The bulk of the story evolves around the somewhat overlooked importance of luck in one's life. I quite agree with that statement. I too think chance plays a big part in life, at least in mine. Although the main plot - lust that is - has been explored over and over, the casting gives it quite a fresh look. And the last part of the movie is very interesting. I found myself very tense. Don't worry, I won't spoil the surprise. I recommend you see it for yourself.
And while we're at it, I also suggest once in a while you pick a movie whose story you don't know. Who knows, you could be lucky!

Manage your bookmarks

If, like me, you are using firefox on more than one machine you might want to check out foxmarks. They provide an add-on for synchronizing your bookmarks with a server. You need to install to add-on (on all machines), create an account and upload your bookmarks to the server and you're good to go. I've been using it for a few days and found it very useful.

Rocky Balboa

I just finished watching Rocky Balboa and to be honest it's not as bad as I anticipated. Mind you, it's not the film of the year either. For starter, there's only one fight (the final sequence). That's quite a relief because I didn't fancy looking at Stallone on a ring for 2 hours - no offence but he's a bit too old for that now. Then, the story is more focused on the characters than the boxing (a bit more depth in the story doesn't hurt). However, it has a kind of hard-to-beleive feeling to it. I can't really pin-point the exact reasons but it just sounds a bit off. The final fight is not bad though.
Not sure I'll recommend it but it wasn't so bad for a Monday evening movie.

Frustrating day

Today has been quite frustrating at work. We're working on an update of our application servers and trying to get our apps running on the new version. We've already spent a considerable amount of time on it but there's one remaining issue that we can't seem able to tackle. I spent the entire day on this issue and haven't made any progress whatsoever. Very frustrating indeed.
But hey, that's life! So I just went home and watched a movie - as usual my girlfirend would tell you :p -.

PS:for the record, that's not me on the picture

Life without her

Well, it's been almost a week since my girlfriend left the country and I can now fully appreciate the importance she has in my life. Not that I didn't know it before but it just highlights what our relationship means to me. I can talk on the phone with her a lot but it's not the same as holding her hand or lying back next to her. And waking up next to her in the morning is a great pleasure of mine. Another one is laughing with her, which I'm happy to say happens a lot.
My way of dealing with her absence it to keep myself busy with work or watching 24 (a really cool series by the way) so I don't think about it. But I agree that's not very good. I guess I need time to adapt to the situation and maybe things will be a little easier. I know it's quite difficult for her too. I'm now really looking forward to travelling next month so I can be with her.

New flatmates

Yesterday my flatmates announced me that they are all leaving the flat I'm sharing with them. One of them is moving with her boyfriend while the others bought a place not too far from here. Tonight we had people coming to visit the place and we already picked somebody to replace the girl leaving. It's just amazingly fast. I guess the flat is quite nice and the location is good too but we got something like 15 or 20 calls and the ad was only put a few hours ago. That is quite remarkable. And to make the matter a little bit more interesting I'll be away when the new flatmates will move in. It's going to be quite interesting to come back to London after 4 weeks in Asia to a house full of strangers. The beauty of London I guess.

Blogging in the night

It's quite funny that I always add posts to my blog late at night. One reason could be that I'm always quite busy during the day at work so I get only free time in the evening. But even during the week-end I don't blog much during the day. It could also be that the evening, just before going to bed is naturally a time for reflection. It is for me at least. I guess it's a period when you can take the time to think...hmm... (<- this is me thinking :)

Changes at work

Up to now I've been kind of a one-man team working on mobile-related technologies with also some server-side involvements. It is not to say that I've been working alone. I need to interact a lot with people. It has been quite nice to be honest, a real feeling of ownership of my work. Plus, I always had a chance to work on my own stuff. I guess from a management viewpoint it could look like a loss of productivity but in effect the things I was doing for myself were always somehow related to my work. And besides, I believe that looking at what is happening in the industry helps me being a well-rounded engineer. I am lucky enough to have a manager who recognizes that fact.
Now, because of business requirements the mobile-related projects are quite low priority. Other areas need more attentions so I'll be much more involved on the middleware front. This is quite exiting an opportunity for me to learn technologies I am not too familiar with. Furthermore, maybe from a career angle, it is also beneficial to complement my kills set with these new technologies. Anyways, changes are always welcome!

The end is near

My girlfriend is about to leave the country and don't think I realize how different life is going to be without her around. You see, Connie and I live quite close to each other so we spend a lot of our free time together. Moreover, she has resigned from her job a few weeks ago so we got to spend almost all of our free time - mine at least - together. But this is all going to stop on Saturday when flies to Hong Kong. I'm very happy for her to have a chance to change her life and career but the first few weeks are going to be quite difficult I'm afraid. The bright side (there's always one, no?) is that I will be traveling to Asia with her next month. So we'll be apart for about a month, then together for another month. After that, who knows. We'll try and figure out something. Let's be positive :)