Yep, Just saw hot cross buns at Woolworths, Carindale. Woolworths is letting seasons clash! On New Years Eve, it seems preparation is already being made for Easter.

A vid on making a whiteboard with a Wii remote and light emitting pens. The technique can even be used to turn a laptop screen into a tablet.

More Wii projects and software: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

Note: I don’t actually have a wii! Maybe I should get one???

I’ve spent the last couple of days getting re-acquainted with the likes of Java mainly to prevent a total shock to the system when I start my new job in a few days. I’m coming back to Java after a 6 month programming day job break - I still played around with Java but spent evenings mostly working with either Python (for Machine Learning) or Ruby on Rails (for web stuff). Admittedly coming back to a compiled language is quite a shock to the system. I thought I’d look at Maven as an alternate to just getting Eclipse to compile and package projects for me (partly inspired by The F5 Key Is Not a Build Process blog post from Coding Horror).

So far I am impressed:

• Compile a project
  mvn compile
• Package my web app
  mvn package
• Run unit tests
  mvn test
• Skip tests but package anyway
  mvn package -Dmaven.test.skip=true

… and then I was just about to set up Eclipse to handle the dependencies myself when I discovered the Maven Eclipse plugin. The Maven Eclipse plugin generates the .classpath and .project files from the pom.xml file.

1. Close Eclipse, if you have it running.
2. Tell Eclipse where your Maven 2 repository resides:mvn eclipse:add-maven-repo -Declipse.workspace=”Insert path to your workspace”

   Note: This actually sets the org.eclipse.jdt.core.classpathVariables.M2_REPO variable in the Eclipse prefs file.

3. Change to your project directory (in your workspace). Generate the Eclipse project files:mvn eclipse:eclipse

In conclusion my initial dealings with Maven 2 have been quite pleasant so I think I will be sticking with it for a while.

I sadly encountered the XML Situps pic about a year and a half ago - It was funny but I could not laugh! You see I was knee deep in the middle of porting content from a proprietary (Coldfusion based LMS) to Blackboard via their IMS-CP format (a zip make up of a manifest/hierarchy and xml files for each tool/content type used in the course/unit). I still recall trying to port a Quiz with multiple choice questions to the IMS-QTI spec. Would you believe it if I told you that a single multiple choice question represented in the IMS-QTI xml format takes up 150 lines? Probably not!!!!!

So now I still think this is funny and I can finally laugh out loud: XML Situps!

In a year that lacked ‘groundbreaking’ five things stuck out for me:

• Just how many times can Timberland scream Yeah/Hey over tracks?
  Um — I guess its too late to apologize now!
• Delta Goodrem’s video for “In This Life”
  This is really the ‘chairs of the world’ music vid. Delta just sits on different chairs. A big thanks to the casting director/decorator.
• Great Songwords/Lyrics! (where ! equals NOT)
  Excerpt from “Kiss Kiss” by Chris Brown:

  I’m a country boy from Tappahannock
  Va is where I reside so shawty understand it
  And I know I just turned 18
  And I get a little mannish
  And you see this bandanna hanging
  That means I’m like a bandit (like a bandit, bandit)

• We got High School Musical 2
  I can’t really comment on this - but they kept breaking into song and dancing. Celine my cousin (she is 9) loved it, made me watch it, make me buy merchandise for her. … and I believe 3 is on its way in 2008. Next year I predict the rise of Hannah Montana (aka Mylie Cyrus) - which is like yay if you like Country music, but what if you don’t!!!
• The Veronica’s released a clothing line
  Yep — Its sold at Target or rather all sold out at Target. More popular than their CD and again Celine has many clothes from this range.

…. and I am just upset that 2007 had no new Madonna material released.

Well the n of the best lists from Smashing Magazine were certainly a highlight for me during 2007. My favs included:

• Data Visualization: Modern Approaches
  I have a growing interest in visualization and social network analysis. I think I spent a day just exploring all the examples.
• 80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding
  I still have not had a chance to use AJAX in a project!!! Maybe in 2008!!!
• User Experience Of The Future
  One word - inspirational!
• 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
  RandomSyntax is in need of a new theme?
• 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
  Wow - a visual site map (diagram drawn with just CSS!!!

…. and the Edu Blog Winners are …..

Sadly I don’t subscribe to feeds from any of the winners, but that may change soon.

I know — Its just a graph, but still a cool visualization technique. Timeplot, from the same group that brought us Timeline, allows time based events to be overlayed on time series data. A great way to visualize trends and events. It comes complete with a step by step tutorial.

The concept is quite similar to Google Trends, but this time you get to supply the data and events.

Xmas is almost upon us. Just in time for Xmas comes this instructional vid (delivered via YouTube), that promises to teach you how to gift wrap your gifts using 3 times the required amount of paper and way too much tape. …And yes it does include a speedy un-wrapping technique as well.

Watching a very interesting documentary - NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell. Wow — I had no idea that Disco, Rap and Punk were all brewing in NY in 1977 — talk about a single year having such major cultural impact. Anyway somebody being interviewed in the doco, quoted Andy Warhol - “Art is anything you can get away with!”.  So I extend this to mean, “Programming is anything you can get away with”. Therefor Art = Programming and Programming = Art. And from that I conclude that Programming != Science, most definitely.

Anyway NY77 comes highly recommended - go watch it.