Flight of the Conchords

Yes, Sacha and Chris already blogged about it... But i had to do it too, i keep listening to those two guys since i read Sachas' blog.
The Kiwi guys (New Zealanders) are very funny plus it's very pleasant to listen. So I just want to add my favorite one here:



If you can't listen to it here is an extract from the lyrics:

Girl tonight we’re gonna make love
You know how I know?
Because it’s Wednesday
And Wednesday night is the night that we usually make love
Tuesday night is the night that we usually go to your mother’s place and I teach
her how to use the video machine again
[...]
You turn to me and say something sexy like, “I might go to bed. I’ve got work in
the morning.”
I know what you’re trying to say, baby.
You’re trying to say “Aww, yeah. It’s business time.”
[...]
The next thing you know we’re in the bathroom brushing our teeth
That’s all part of it, that’s foreplay.
Foreplay is very important in love making
Then you go sort out the recycling
Which isn’t part of the foreplay, but it’s still very important
That’s not foreplay, but it’s still very important.
[...]

I let you listen to all of it.
Since i got addicted it also interfered with my work:
See the commit message for this one...

French fries with one spoon of oil...

So i felt for the overpriced Tefal Actifry, the promise of this product is to make crispy, tasty fries with only one spoon of oil. (The green stuff which quite a big spoon in fact)

Well call me stupid, but i tried twice and changing some settings (thinner fries, more time, even more oil) but i could never reach the crispy state for my fries :(
They are about as crispy as Mc Donald's fries...

I will try again, i'm not the kind of guy to give up on French fries (I'm French damn it !).

At least compared to some restaurants' bad fries, i have the satisfaction to eat 'healthy fries' and that makes a big difference !

Ant vs Maven - Conclusion

So at the end if i had to create a new big project i would probably give a try to Ivy + Ant, since Ivy since to solve the library dependency issues while ant is still my favorite tool since it lets me do what i want without any hurdle.

On the other hand, for portletswap sample portlets, i decided to go with Maven. The reason is that Maven seems better understood by 'new' developers. And 'ant' files need a little bit of time to spend on if you want to understand how they work. Since the purpose of those portlets is to show how to write a simple one i didn't want to add complexity when reading the source package of the samples.

Sorry for the lame conclusion but unfortunately i could not give a winner as i originally thought in writing this series... I guess it totally depends on the needs and there is no universal solution. There is always a trade-off between simplicity and flexibility...

A good Universal remote control

I was looking for a way to simplify the access to the different features of my home cinema. I knew the answer would be in a universal remote control, the problem is to find the correct one...
I was lucky enough to see the Logitech Harmony by a friend, and he could only tell me good things about it.
I wanted to give it a try and went ahead buying their cheapest model, the Harmony 525.
Man, this remote is cool, it comes with a Windows and Mac software (no Linux unfortunately) that lets you program it.
Now i can ditch my four remotes (Amplifier, TiVO-like, TV and DVD) and keep this unique one, but that wouldn't be fitting my needs if the remote was only simulating those one by one.
The good stuff about this remote is that you program "Activities" like "watching TV". Here is what i need to do to watch TV (lot of people have the same use case):

1. Switch on the TV
2. Switch on the TiVO
3. Change the TV channel to the correct one

When i want to "watch a DVD" i need to:

1. Switch on the TV (if it's not already on)
2. Eventually switch off the TiVO since i don't need it
3. Switch on the DVD
4. Change the TV channel
5. Switch on the Amplifier
6. Switch the Amplifier to the DVD input

A lot of operations made easy by the harmony. The remote keeps in memory a state of your devices (what is on, what is off, on which channel or input it was last and so on) and send IR signals accordingly. It works great as long as you are not playing with original remotes or directly on the devices. (Fortunately, the remote comes with a "Help" action to let you re-synchronize this stuff after your kids/wife forgot to use the shiny new remote).

Overall i have a great experience with that remote, i had to tweak it, since my TV (A Sagem LCD TV) has a way to select a channel a bit different from most TVs.

Also something to notice is that their forum is very active and you can also contact support by phone or email (I sent them an email for the problem i had, they replied me to call them to do some tests, i worked-around my issue in the meantime and didn't call).

Go Harmony, go !

Ant vs Maven - Round 3

Not only you need some documentation to start but also to use as reference as you get more familiarized with the build mechanism.

Round three: Documentation
Both ant and maven, have good starting guides available on the web (here for ant, here and here for maven).

When you got started, you need more. That's where it gets nasty... Maybe i'm just dumb but this is mostly what i found for Maven documentation: http://maven.apache.org/guides/index.html and that was not enough for me to really build my environment fast enough.
Those chapters have a lot of XML descriptors but very few explanations, again Maven suppose that there are only a common list of scenarios and explain you those. If you need more or something a bit different you are on your own. Then went to check the sourcecode (Where is Waldo ? It took me a while to find the repository).
There is a free book available, it seems good but cannot unfortunately replace a reference guide.

On the ant side, the doc is explicit enough, of course the work to document ant is much simpler than documenting Maven since each task is clearly distinct from any other task and do minimal things. So i just keep looking at the descriptions of the tasks and can achieve what i want in a minimal amount of time.

That's a definitive +1 for ant... Even though it worths more than 1 point.

Maven 2 - Ant 2