Notes from the session on Swing and Threads. Unchecked etc.

Notes from the Scott McNealy Keynote. May have errors etc…

Notes from the “Using NetBeans for Rich Desktop Clients” session. *Very* little content in this session, most disappointing.

Notes on the java desktop track overview session. Warning: completely unchecked, full of typos and may not make sense. Will review eventually.

Had the keynote by Jonathan Swartz (spelling is wrong, deal with it :P) this morning. Very marketing oriented but interesting none-the-less. He predicts that the car industry will be the next place Java technology really takes off (mobile phones being the current boom) and he’s quite probably right but I think it will take a long time for those features to filter down into the general populace rather than just being in BMW’s. Some interesting stuff in the followups as well on Java 1.5 or as it’s now to be called Java 5.0. Firstly obviously the numbering change is interesting and long overdue. It’s good to have Java use a more standard numbering scheme. It has just occurred to me however that it will break a lot of code (including some of ours) which looks for Java 1.4 and above. Code that checks for it like: javaVersion.startsWith(“1.4”) is stuffed but so is code that parses each number and then only checks that the second digit is greater than 3 (which is the trap we fall into from time to time). Oh well, serves people right for writing sloppy code. I think I’m finally interested in using Java 5.0 now too. Not sure why exactly, but seeing some of the code examples using the new features just seems to clean up code a lot. There was other interesting stuff too but I need to head off to another session.

Got some first pictures of the San Francisco trip to show off. More images in the full version…

“On one occasion, Ms. (Lisa) Foster (Thompson’s court reporter for 15 years), saw Judge Thompson holding his penis up and shaving underneath it with a disposable razor while on the bench,” the petition reads. Say no more, say no more! Via Reuters Oddly Enough.

Well I’ve spent the past four hours sorting through the sessions for JavaOne and picking out the things I’d like to attend. I’m beginning to think I should have just stayed on the Australian timezone as I have BOF sessions until 11:30pm or midnight every night. That’s before I factor in trying to catch up with Apache people and other groups at informal events. There are a few events in my schedule that I’ll probably wind up missing depending on how interesting the discussions I happen to be in at the time are and how much time I want to spend just wandering around the various pods. I expect that I’ll wind up wanting to spend quite a lot of time out of sessions but at this stage I haven’t scheduled for that as I figure it’s easier to just do it on the fly depending on what’s happening. If you want to see what my current plan is, here’s the vcs file. Of course it’s almost a guarantee that at least something in there will change. It’s all very desktop, xml and performance related with just a dash of eclipse and netbeans stuff as we may be creating a new product based on one of those in the future.

I’m currently sitting in the StarBucks just down the road from my hotel happily surfing the web with T-Mobile. Pretty cool. Shame my hotel didn’t wind up having internet but I think I prefer taking a walk down the road and sitting in starbucks that sitting in my little hotel room all the time anyway. Most of today was spent touring around San Francisco, I seem to have brought good weather over from Australia as it was a perfect day – clear blue skys, sunny and no fog. Got a good view of the Golden Gate bridge, the city and Alcatraz then spent some time down at Pier 93. Enjoyed clam chowder in sourdough bread bowl for dinner. That was quite nice though I don’t typically like seafood.

Seriously, catch the bus. Flying in or around America is no longer a feasible proposition. There are thousands of people milling around the front entrance trying to work out which queue to get in and where the hell the end of that queue is. Then there’s a few hundred police, customs officials and various other authority figures milling around looking for anyone who looks suspicious (which is everyone if you ask me). Then to try and sort out all the mess is one guy in a red coat with hundreds of confused potential passengers crowding around him asking where to go. It’s absolutely insane. Then when you finally get through to the security check, the metal detector is so sensitive it goes off when noone’s walking through it. So if you do have to catch a plane in America, here’s my survival guide: 1. Wear thongs. If you wear shoes you’ll just have to take them off anyway. 2. Follow the signs that say “first class” then get into whatever line is shortest. They’ll either check you in out of pity or tell you which is the right line to get into. 3. Arrive early. Really early. I’m also pretty unimpressed with the whole process. At 7am I got off a Qantas Boeing 747 400, went through customs, walked over to the next terminal, checked-in, came through security and at 9am finally reach my departure gate. I turn around to look out the window and see the exact same 747 400 no more than 100 yards away. Seriously weird. Other than that I’m having a ball wandering around the airport. There’s 2 starbucks within sight of each other (I always thought people were exaggerating when they told me that) and a Burger King which is kind of thrilling for an Australian because we have Hungry Jacks and everytime you mention it some smart alec always comments about how it’s really “Burger King” but they were paid by McDonalds to change the name overseas. I know that still won’t make much sense but I get a kick out of seeing a real Burger King anyway. Oh, and there’s an actual shoe shine guy too! I thought they were just in Law and Order…. This guys pretty upmarket though with comfy chairs and a shirt with “Marvin’s Shoe Shine” on the back. For now though I’ve got to run off and make sure I’m actually at the right gate.

Sun Thing Looking out the window at the moment I can see a glimpse of orange light indicating the sun is somewhere low on the horizon. I just can’t decide if it’s sun rise or sun set. It’s 10:30PM in Los Angeles and 3:30PM in Brisbane, I’m somewhere in between so I guess it must be a sun set. The trouble is I’ll arrive in Los Angeles at 7am so there’d need to be a sun rise in there somewhere and I get the impression this might be it. I guess it’s both then. UPDATE: It turned out to be a sunset as it then became dark and later there was a sunrise and it became bright again.

You have to be insane I’ve been happily sitting around on the only chair in this airport that’s anywhere near a powerpoint happily passing time, airport security has set up a barricade just next to me and are prechecking passports and boarding passes before people get to the boarding gate. I swear the entire plane is full of primary school children from the US who are here on some young ambassador program. There’s probably 20 kids for every adult with them and watching them frantically trying to hand out passports and boarding passes looks like utter chaos. It’s also amusing trying to watch the security guards sort out the mess caused by kids swapping boarding passes so that they can sit next to their friends. I guess this is the reason you have to turn up to the airport so early these days… As I type this another mob of children from what appears to be a different group is going through the same process. I’d really hate to be on that flight…