It’s official: After years of dithering, Sun is releasing Java SE and Java ME under the GPLv2. Not their own CDDL, not the MPL, but the GNU General Public License itself with all of it’s copyleft provisions. ZDNet UK have a good initial article on their move, which as they point out in particularly interesting in light of Novell’s recent pact with the devil.

Which means that in addition to being 100% open source itself, Alfresco can now run on a completely open source stack: Linux, Java and your open source RMDBS of choice. Hopefully this will make the whole process of installing on Linux a lot easier and will open a lot more doors, particularly in the public sector where increasingly using open source and open standards is a requirement. Today is a good day.

Thank you for taking the time to install four new shiny ticket machines at Ealing Broadway main line station last week. I had thought that you didn’t give two hoots about the plight of the unfortunate souls who like me have to queue up every morning at the single working machine in order to buy a ticket to get them to work – but although you never answered the nice letter I sent you on the topic back in August you obviously were listening after all.

Unfortunately, I missed the chaos that I imagine must have ensued whilst these works being carried out but I’m sure you will be glad that I did however witness the full-blown horror of humanity’s at best awkward interaction with touch-screen technology as I tried to get in to work this morning. No doubt you will be pleased to hear that that single long queue of people at the only working machine had gone, replaced instead by four huge queues going out the door, one from each machine. It really was fun watching the whole situation unfold in front of me as I stood in the fifth queue to buy my ticket off a real human being.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll try out this new-fangled technology myself. I’m not sure whether being stuck behind someone struggling to deal with the intricacies of Chip and PIN will be more or less fun than having someone who can’t understand why machine that won’t accept their twenty pound note in payment for a ticket costing less than ten pounds when it states quite clearly on the front of it that it doesn’t give more than ten pounds in change in front of you, but I look forward to finding out.

Don’t worry about writing back – it’s fine.

Warm regards,

Will.

Things that have been good this weekend:

• The slides! Although slightly short-lived. Next time we’ll book.
• Sorting through paperwork and other random stuff from the last four years of my life
• Wandering around Greenwich in the rain, and taking shelter in a small cafe called Pistachios, which turned out to be more gay than gay-friendly 🙂
• And miscelleneous things: Chicken jalfrezi, Sunday lunch, white wine, Cointreau over ice and the O.C.

And generally being in London.

They had carrier bags in 1930, right?

Highlights of this weekend’s activities in Leam have included the following:

• Picnics in Jephson Gardens
• Home-made canelloni and classy cocktails in Bar 44
• Falling out with a Tesco self-scan machine
• Much hilarious retro picture taking

Certainly worth the hot, uncomfortable and crowded trains to get there and back (silly engineering work!). Now I’m off to cook some dinner.

Today, the training began in earnest for the Nike 10K in October – not that I enjoy copying people, I just don’t like to be left out. 🙂

Despite not wanting this to be a “look how fit I am!” blog entry, I’ll skip right to the figures, which I’m bound to forget within a couple of days if I don’t record them now. So –

Total Distance = 6.4 km

Total time = 37:17 = 0.621 hours

Average Speed = 6.4 / 0.621 = 10.3 km/h

This brings back nasty memories of GCSE exams. Speed equals distance over time. Indeed.

And here’s the map:

OK, so now it’s really back again. Honest 🙂

I between migrating my company’s primary web site onto a non-broken server, this weekend’s activities have included a wander around the French market that’s been resident on the Green over the last few days and a token appearance at the Jazz enclosure in Walpole Park (next year, we’ll make a day of it). Perhaps not quite as impressive as last Sunday’s promming adventure, but it’s better than bumming around the flat.

Also, I’m now more than half-way though the Da Vinci Code. Thankfully. The single-threaded story and the lack of barely any background beyond the cobbled-together history behind it is starting to become a little tiresome. As is the relentless pace at which Dan Brown seems intent on telling the tale and his unapologetic yet frequent mis-spelling of the English language. Only two hundred more pages to go… 🙂

It’s back again.

Laurie – I’m really grateful to you for holding the reins for the last twelve months (scarily it’s almost a year exactly since I buggered off around the world and left Planet Afterlife to fend for itself). But it’s time I stated taking some responsibility myself, once again.

The feed list has been optimised and the design improved. Further changes are in the pipeline, too. But for the moment, it works :-).

…And a really crap blogger at the moment, too. But more on that again.

Tonight I got back from work slightly later than I’d intended yet again, almost walking on some post as I walked in the main door. Shuffling through it to make sure that nothing had arrived for me or the flatmates, something caught my attention. In amongst the numerous circulars and other crap that our neighbours seem to receive was a large brown envelope marked RETURN TO SENDER.

This was no ordinary envelope. It was strengthened by a peice of card which formed the back of the envelope, and printed on the paper front near the bottom, in red ink were the words Do Not Bend. Across the central portion, a smaller white pocket-style envelope had been affixed horizontally, presumably in order to allow the larger one to be reused. Hand-written across this space was the following address:

MAJOR GENERAL GEORGE CASEY
(OPERATION BAGHDAD)
THE PENTAGON
WASHINGTON DC
U.S.A.

Subsequent wikipedia-ing to satisfy my curiosity as to who this rather familiar-sounding gentleman was led me to an article on General George William Casey Jr. (note not a Major yet, it seems) who it transpires is in charge of the entire U.S. Army presence in Iraq.

So back to the envelope.

Bordering the address on the front of the envelope were various markings – both hand-written and stamped – indicating that this particular item of correspondence should be returned to where it came from. Three UK first class stamps had been attached on the top right, and thoroughly post-marked by the Royal Mail. This letter had obviously gone somewhere before being sent back.

The last two vital clues, which were roughly equal in size were to be found on the back of the envelope. The first contained the name and address of the sender – who I shall identify only as JE – in the form of a British Heart Foundation self-adhesive label. Obviously not meant for use on international post, the word ‘ENGLAND’ has been scrawled in the white space at the very bottom of the label, seemingly in the same pen used to write the recipient’s address. Second was a red stamp indicating the date on which the item had been received by the Pentagon as well as the date on which some check or other had been carried out upon it. Both dates were the same – 28-06-2006.

But despite passing its security check, it seems the message had failed to penetrate much further into the heart of the U.S. military bureaucracy before it was sent back unopened to the strange man that sent it, who LIVES IN OUR BLOCK OF FLATS. And there it lies still – at the bottom of the stairs by the front door.

Jeff Waugh on how Ubuntu got it’s name and avoided getting named after that funny station at the wrong end of the Picadilly Line.

Incidentally, Dapper rocks! It seems the team have really used the extra six week period at the end of the development cycle to really add a lot of polish to the OS. Whoever thought brown could be so preeety? 🙂