my2cents

Here’s an idea for your one-good-deed-per-day program: tell Mozilla on every channel to reverse their idiotic and suicidal rapid release process.

Why not start by commenting the chairperson’s personal blog post: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/08/25/rapid-release-process

I wish the big wings at Mozilla realized that it’s not just the enterprise folks who care about stability (releases & API).
Simple question: what do you think counts more for the average non-enterprise Firefox/Thunderbird user
a) a few new features every month thereby loosing a few add-ons because fewer and fewer add-on devs want to release that quickly (they all devote their *spare* time, get it?)
b) a batch of new features every 9 months which had given add-on devs ample time to prepare

Isn’t really a question, is it?

Firefox isn’t so great because it’s Firefox from Mozilla but because of the ecosystem around it. Go out and piss off those who built the ecosystem and it’s gonna die.

I don’t have a Twitter account and I enjoy every minute I don’t waste with it. Seriously what’s the point? Right, instead of being bored you tweet.

TEDxZurich published a Storify report(?) with a selection of tweets about the event. The sheer absence of meaning in them is seriously mind boggling. To me this once again proves how empty the whole social media shizzle is.

Attended my first TED today – TEDxZurich. It was a blast! Many speakers really did have something to say, they didn’t just talk and waste everybody’s time. Given their brilliance I felt truly insignificant.

I have yet to make a difference in life.

…not really learning DOT because it’s so simple – at least in its most basic form. I don’t understand why it took me so long to finally sit down and understand how the input for Graphviz works. What a glorious day today…

You want to learn DOT, too? Wonderful, for a quick-start try this online editor with preview: http://graphviz-dev.appspot.com/

I can listen to Tori Amos’ “’97 Bonnie And Clyde” any time day or night it gives me the creeps – always.

• youtube.com video
• lyrics

Creating a DDL in the Maven build with the hibernate3-maven-plugin fails if you explicitly configure an array of javax.persistence.CascadeType values in your JPA annotations. The stacktrace is similar to

javax.persistence.PersistenceException: [PersistenceUnit: spontacts] Unable to configure EntityManagerFactory
	at org.hibernate.ejb.Ejb3Configuration.configure(Ejb3Configuration.java:265)
	at org.codehaus.mojo.hibernate3.configuration.JPAComponentConfiguration.createConfiguration(JPAComponentConfiguration.java:28)
...
Caused by: java.lang.ArrayStoreException: sun.reflect.annotation.EnumConstantNotPresentExceptionProxy
	at sun.reflect.annotation.AnnotationParser.parseEnumArray(AnnotationParser.java:673)
	at sun.reflect.annotation.AnnotationParser.parseArray(AnnotationParser.java:462)

Once I realized what the actual cause is, the fix was simple. Turns out that the CascadeType is not in the classpath when Maven runs the hbm2ddl goal. Hence you need to add a dependency to JPA to the hibernate3-maven-plugin:

<plugin>
	<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
	<artifactId>hibernate3-maven-plugin</artifactId>
	<dependencies>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.hibernate.javax.persistence</groupId>
			<artifactId>hibernate-jpa-2.0-api</artifactId>
			<version>1.0.0.Final</version>
		</dependency>
	</dependencies>
	<executions>
		...
	</executions>
	<configuration>
		...
	</configuration>
</plugin>

A solution to this exception in a different context was posted here: http://javahowto.blogspot.com/2008/10/solve-javalangarraystoreexception.html

I was shocked when I realized how skinny Steve Jobs has become. The below picture from WWDC 2011 is seriously scary. He seems to walk on toothpick legs; just skin an bones. I’m worried, truly worried.

Steve Jobs at WWDC 2011, Jesus Christ is he skinny

I’m pleased to announce that the first version of my jQuery highlight plugin that supports a lenient mode was released today.

It normalizes or unaccents text before the highlight pattern is applied (sort of). So, it’s a quite a bit more advanced and versatile than plugins that are simply case-insensitive.

Go check it out, there’s a demo included!

Yesterday I found the below ad attached to the reeling of a ferry in Switzerland.

A biker's perfect day

Well, what can I say…the story speaks for itself, doesn’t it? It is certainly told from a male perspective. But hey, so what? My wife actually noticed the ad first and she thought it very cool, too.

However, it’s obvious that the ad isn’t directed at the extremely sportive and competitive bikers. Why so? Well, there are several indications:

1. The guy gets up after sun rise.
2. He takes the easy tour and rides downhill.
3. Then he doesn’t ride around the lake of Zurich but takes the shortcut across the lake instead (FHM -> Fähre Horgen-Meilen?).
4. Instead of stretching his muscles he goes girl-hunting while on the ferry.
5. Then instead of going to bed early in the evening to be well-rested for the next day he gets laid.

Fine with me. Wouldn’t we (men) all like to be the guy in the story? See…

Disclaimer: I ride a PRICE bike myself.