I think I found out about this new Java User Group from some website, maybe it was in Scottish Developers event list. Anyways, I am about to check it out because it might be a good way to get to know other developers and share Java related knowledge. Naturally I will post some comments after their first meeting - which happens to be tomorrow.

I was helping my mother to fix her mobile Internet connection yesterday evening. The problem was that Vodafone Mobile Connect application did not start. Its icon just kept bouncing and that was all. Updating to the latest version of VMC 2.08.05 did not help.

Most likely OS X 10.4 update broke something because I found some discussion pointing to that direction. Unfortunately I was not able to establish VNC connection this time so I had to do everything via chat. Eventually the problem was fixed by uninstalling Vodafone Mobile Connect application and also removing 'nova media' and 'Vodafone' folders from /Library/Application Support/. After that and installation of the latest version everything worked fine.

I have same feeling as being in the left-hand traffic for the first time. Everything seems to be normal but it just goes totally opposite. After some nervous times you learn to look right directions before crossing the street and if you don't then darwinism will take care of it.

My mind is boggling because I have been playing with OpenLaszlo after several months pause. Theoretically you can achieve impressive results with it without need to learn Flex/ActionScript. But with OpenLaszlo you end up writing spiced up JavaScript... Maybe I should bite the bullet and try out Flex as well.

After posting a bug report to Eclipse bugzilla I got some replies to it. It turned out that something got corrupted during my installation and I suspect it was due overheating hard drive. The machine I have been working on is a compact Dell XPS 210 desktop and I was shocked when I saw its hard drive temperature. It was 82 C degrees which is quite a lot for a desktop drive. Well, if you take a look at its internals you will see that it is not really a layout for a proper work station.

With some searching I found i8kutils which is meant for Dell laptop but I managed to force the case fan to run with full blast with it. This dropped temperature somewhere around 60. I have no clue how long that has been going on as the machine was used by other developers before me. SMART status was not showing any error so I hope the drive is still usable.

To solve the problem with crashing Eclipse I decided to try out reinstalling gnome packages. I basically did that to all installed gnome packages and surprisingly Eclipse was stable after that. And that took me only couple working days... apparently I have become system administrator in addition to my existing Java developer title.

I installed Kubuntu 7.1 aka Gutsy Gibbon on my workstation to replace Windows XP. Installation was not trouble free and it took some time to get it right. But problems did not stop. While being a Java developer I need to use Eclipse.

The combination of Eclipse 3.3 and Ubuntu 7.1 turned out to be really unstable. File search, long tree lists in navigator etc... They all cause Eclipse to crash. After searching around it seems that it is a known problem but there is no known solution - at least that would work on my machine...

I just came back home from BarCamp Scotland 2008 and I have to admit that I had a great day.

When I first heard the name I thought something about fighting your way from pub to another. Bar = place to drink, Camp = camping or Kampf = fight. But it turned out to be pretty nice way to share and present ideas and views.

I knew that I should present something there as that is part of the idea of a BarCamp. I ended up choosing Code Camp to be my topic because the names match a bit and I find idea of a Code Camp interesting. In case you do not know what Code Camp is about you might want to check this article about it. So, during the day I wrote couple slides, wrote my name on the time slot and enjoyed other presentations. (HyberNumbers, FusionCharts, Dave Murray-Rust's Multi-touch Table and
A.nnotate plus many more)

Before I had mine the previous presenter had his interesting presentation with plenty of questions coming from the audience and he exceeded his time a little bit but that was just perfect for me. I prepared to present my topic rather fast without explaining every detail and aspect so I knew that half an hour would be almost too much. I was a bit nervous as I did not talk about that topic too much previously but there were some good questions from audience so I was happy. And in any case, it was valuable practice for me.

Between the presentations and after the official event I had numerous discussions with different participants. Topics varied a lot and from those conversations I learnt dozens of small pieces of more or less valuable knowledge.

So, as a conclusion I can recommend this type of event to anyone who is interested in all kind of new ideas and concepts.