Circle of Three

I've been having some problems managing my daughter abigail so now I am currently staying at child care with her ... full time!!!
What's so painful is that I am paying her fees, yet am not actually getting out.

We spoke with the community nurse and it seems that since we spent the last 8 weeks on holidays with her, she now knows what she's missing - both parents 24 x 7!!!

So this means we basically have to "wean" her off her dependency off us. What the childcare centre will do is get a full time assistant to look after her, this is what is called a "circle of three" - the child, the parent and the carer.
We three play together and she get's used to us both. Then one of us ( me I hope :-) can leave so she still has that comfort of a regular adult with her.

Fortunately, the NSW government will help fund 100hrs of this persons time. All we need is a doctors referral or a letter from the community & health service at camperdown.

wish me luck!

Flash Wankers

Today I was sent a "free 14 day trial of AFR access" (http://www.members.afraccess.com/) which is written in...

fLasHhh

What a pile of shit. Their web site doesn't size correctly (it's a single flash file that is only about 5cm high under mozilla) and only really works under Internet Explorer 6 upwards. Fools. They lose my business.

Why do I rant so much about flash wankers?

It's all about choice. And usability. And accessibility (especially if you run a text-voice browser for blind people, or run a non-graphic browser like linx or elinks, or use a tool like plucker to download to your PDA). And who HATES those ^(*^(^%((%*& animations??
(see a good rant: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html and web sites that suck and
How Flashy websites turn off customers )

What about those stupid splash pages? I want info not infotainment when I want to purchase or spend my internet bucks! Even worse is the epilesy (and vomit) background music and animations. YETCHHH BARF!!!

To me, flash can be used correctly to enhance a website, but alternative navigation MUST exist (see ??W3?? UN?? guidelines).
Some graphic designers are egotistical wankers who use this as a platform to show how "clever" or "artistic" they are.
Not on my $$$ thank you very much.

More on open-source ESB's

Note that most of these posts are old news (last year)
More on the integration between synapse, servicemix and celtix.:
Open-source projects intertwine for integration
http://news.com.com/2102-7344_3-5844789.html?tag=st.util.print

Open source's next frontier
http://news.com.com/Open+sources+next+frontier/2100-7344_3-5460334.html

and an opinion from a vendor (Capeclear)
Open Source and the ESB!
http://www.capeclear.com/annrai/archives/2005/08/open_source_and.html

Apache Synapse vs Apache Servicemix

Lately I've been wondering about the conflict between Apache Synapse and Apache Servicemix (part of Geronimo).

Here's an article that claims they are complementary..

How does ServiceMix compare to Synapse?
http://goopen.org/confluence/display/SM/How+does+ServiceMix+compare+to+Synapse

basically says Synapse is WS-*/Soap centric, and Servicemix is far more open (I agree - ESB is more like a generic connect-all bus, and SOAP/ws-* is just another transport).

On the other hand, the creators of Synapse claim that Synapse is an ESB??

Apache Synapse - The ESB that kills the ESB
http://www.us.apachecon.com/html/sessions.html#WE2

Oh well, at least the teams are getting together to get some commonality.
News: ServiceMix, Apache Synapse and Celtix Teaming Up (Sep. 02, 2005)
http://today.java.net/pub/n/ServiceMixSynapseCeltix

This just confuses the consumer and helps microsoft...

Can The Cockroaches Survive a Nuclear Option?

A fascinating article about how the federal government took over the states autonomy by fair means and foul.

Even more interesting was the potential civil war between NSW and the federal government in 1930's (Lang vs Lyons) which went as far as the commonwealth government organising the military to take over state buildings (with the NSW police arming up to oppose it).
The governor of NSW instead sacked Lang, resolving the conflict.

Still, I wonder whether NSW, in combination with the other states, could start secessionist movements to force the federal government to be fairer?

Spring + Hibernate EJB3, POJO + JDBC?

Spring + Hibernate EJB3, POJO + JDBC?

All Hail, The Return To Java EE Standards!

Yakov Fain slags Spring and Hibernate as tangled wire, and claims EJB 3.0 (Java EE 1.5) resolves the issue of THE standard to use.

All-in-One Guides: SOA Implementation

Good summary of SOA guides - this isn't a single guide as such, but links to techtarget's WS and SOA reports/whitepapers etc

Rethink on mirror trusts helps planning

FAMILY succession planning has been made clearer and easier following a rethink by the Australian Tax Office.

A June tax ruling has broadened the possibilities under which certain assets transferred between trusts would be exempt from capital gains tax.

It is now possible for parents to set up "mirror" trusts to transfer assets that would normally be subject to capital gains tax - namely property (land and buildings) and shares (in private and public companies) - to nominated beneficiaries.

Basically this is about how to transferring assets from a trust without incurring CGT.

upgraded to beta blogger

Well, it seems that I have upgraded to Blogger beta. The template editor is nice, much easier than the old CSS method, but you can still update the HTML template so that is good.
So this is a test of the email functionality

Unlock phone

A swedish/danish website that generates the unlocking password for many brands of phone
eg: nokia, given IMEI and network operator.

Travelling with my own phone

You could buy a OneRoam SIM card. This is estonian, and doesn't expire (you get a +372-xxxx-xxxx phone number). Some countrys let you receive calls free too. Rates are not the best, but hey, just for travelling