Bye bye Blogger.com

This weblog is not used anymore, please go to http://blog.leenarts.net for my new blog.

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No more posts will be appearing here anymore.

For those who have subscribed to the feed on this blog here, don't change a thing.
It's a feedburner feed and I reconfigured that one to my new blog.

Commenting has also been disabled on this blog, if you have something to tell me, please do so on my new blog: http://blog.leenarts.net

Why wont they come back again...

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I just checked my visitor logs today. And there's this handy little graph showing the visitors a day, in a month. Here's the latest monthly graph:
Image courtesy of http://www.sitemeter.com


You can imagine that I thought: "What the heck is up with that?" After checking my referrals logs it was obvious. Something I put on Joel Spolsky's discussion forum. Readers of my blog now what I mean.

Now, as you can see, that's a freaking weird graph. It was caused by a certain event. The thing that bugs me the most is the actual subject for this spike. I'd rather had it because of another blog posting. Because the visitors in this spike just won't stick I'm affraid. Simply because it was not a regular kind of entry for this blog.

I'm of sulking now, trying to think up ways to get people to "stick".

Weird stuff with Eclipse...

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Or: How to get your users pissed unhappy.

Simple: Hack to span an Eclipse RCP screen accross more than one monitor. Don't ask me why, it wasn't my idea. I've just seen this in code somewhere.

Here's how it works:

Mess up the Window.getInitialSize() so it takes all your screen real estate into acount, you've got two displays 1200 pixels wide? Ok, then we make the initial size's width 2400. Don't forget to mutilate alter the Window.constrainShellSize() method accordingly, else Eclipse will act up a bit. (How naughty.)

Now comes the best part. make sure you filter any occurences of SWT.RESIZE when Window.setShellStyle(int newShellStyle) gets called. Yes I said filter. Imagine some gullable developer passing by who thinks restricting window resizing is an excelent end-user screw.

Did I mention that all this was achieved by some aspectj crosscutting??

In the end, it works, sort of. Maximizing is disabled and resizing is disabled. So you end up with a huge piece of crap window plastered all over your screen real estate. You see, users are just dumb people. Letting them decide how to set their window sizes can only result in trouble. Well, atleast that seems to be the idea.

I hope you all got the point that I think the above is an "excellent" idea. (No, ofcourse I don't think the above is a good idea.)

Goofing around with Google

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Just cruising the internet a bit while watching some soccer (TOG vs FRA). Not much up here. Busy setting up a brand new truly awesome blog somewhere else. ;)

I came accross this little piece of work. I have lifehacker in my news reader, because every so often something funny/sweet/really handy comes along.

Lifehacker informs us of a book available for free. Free as in free beer. Take a peek at http://www.55fun.com/ for the PDF version. You can just download it. And it's not truly amazing, but it's very welcome as a substitute to a very dull soccer match.

I know this is not my regular kind of blog entry, but hey. It's weekend. :P

Naked Conversations

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Not the most recent book, but I had this one lying around for a few months now and finaly I had some time last week to read it.

You blog?
You read this.

This book was recommended to me and it was definatly worth the read. Very insightfully written and full of examples on how the mechanisms of bloggin work according to Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

Basicly it's a crash course into company blogging. The reasons to do it are explained, the effects of blogging compared to traditional media and marketing. And the do's and don'ts of corporate blogging.

I could elaborate on how much I liked this book, it comes down to the fact that this is one of the few books I'd absolutely recommend if you have anything to do with blogging.

For more details on the book, do a google search or check a site like Amazon.

I'm actually thinking of doing an in-company presentation based on this book. Just to evangalize blogging a bit. The do's and don'ts are set forth in this books are true indeed.

Plagiarism is a bad thing

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Today, something strange happened.

Yesterday an anonymous person has entered a comment on my blog stating that Wiebe was actively commiting plagiarism, on his own, now offline blog.

This situation made me having to make a very difficult discision. I believe in the power of changing and influencing your own world by acting. On the other hand, selling someone out is just plain lame. The option I chose was by seeking advice from the community. I posted the evidence submitted on my blog and asked what to do. In hindsight probably a rather shortsighted action on my part. I should have given Wiebe a chance to correct his ways.

Anyway, things seemed to get a life on its own. And before I knew it there was a lot of harsh criticism. But most of it was actually correct and justified. Wiebe now has taken offline his blog and it seems he posted this as an apology:

Dear visitors,

I was surprised to see all your reactions on the stories I had posted on my blog. And yes it is correct that I posted some articles I copied from others sites. The reason is not to rip and take the credit for the stories, but to share the expertise. So I sincerely apologize to the autors of the articles, it won’t happen again. The articles are deleted from the blog.

It might not have been the best choice, but it was made with only the best intentions. The thing that dissappoints me about you so called collegues is the remarks about me as a professional. Everyone makes mistakes, but to make this about my qualities is a sad thing to do. I’ve been wrong and I didn’t have the right to use the articles this way. Just as well as you don’t have the right to attack my qualities, or me as a person

So again I would like to say sorry.

To the critics I would like to say:

think twice about the way you open your mouth, there are real people behind the screen!

Personally I think Wiebe should have thought about the people behind the screens before commiting the plagiarism. Also I think that the community effect should suffice and everybody should get off of Wiebe's back. And death threats are never correct. ;)

To me this whole issue is now resolved. I can imagine that when I ever meet Wiebe in real life again he will not be all warm en friendly to me. But, considering the situation, I only did what I thought was best. And I hope that more people act upon plagiarism in a way like I did. But maybe give the person commiting the plagiarism a chance before inadvertently rowling up a lynch mob.

J-Spring 2006: Well, they're improving everytime...

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Last week I went to the J-Spring. I must say that the NL-JUG runs a tight ship when it comes o conferences. Which is a good thing. I've seen that girl with the 5 minute sign like a million times. Overall the entire conference was a solid excercize. Only complaint that I have is the length of the sessions. Most sessions lasted only 45 minutes. Now that's very little time for a technical presentation. One of the noticable effect was the feeling that a lot of speakers were rushing they're talk.

For an impression on the sessions themselves, check my colleague Peter's blog entry/article.