Simply the truth

Here I would like to put a copy of a post read from Navegapolis (Spanish), but contains a link to a video with an speaking of Ken Schwaber.

Si tienes un equipo de ingenieros excelentes, que utilizan excelentes herramientas, trabajan con prácticas de ingeniería correctas, comprenden perfectamente el negocio del cliente, disponen de los recursos que necesitan y no se les interrumpe en su trabajo... Puedes trabajar con scrum: tendrás un incremento de software al final de cada iteración.

De todas formas, scrum también funciona con idiotas. Puedes tener un grupo de idiotas, no hace falta ni que hayan ido a la escuela, ni que sepan de informática o de ingeniería del software. Un grupo que se odien entre ellos, no comprendan el negocio del cliente y trabajen con herramientas traperas... también produciran incrementos periódicos... de mierda.

Está bien, porque sabes lo que tendrás al final de cada iteración.

Visual words definition

Today I know the existence of this amazing page: Visuwords.
I think it is one of the most original things I can see in many time.

Eastwood Charts

Today, via Dave Gilbert's blog, I know the existence of Eastwood Charts.

If you know about Google Chart API, Eastwood are the same thing but based in the powerful JFreeChart library. Here is a comparison.



The interesting part of Eastwood is it can be used as a servlet installed on your own server and thus you don't need to send your data to Google.

Remove too much files...

Sometimes (in Linux) if you try to delete all files in a directory (that contains a lot files) you get an:

> rm -rf * 
Argument list too long

Via DZone I found this tip to avoid this problem. Basically it used find command to get the list of interested files and remove it one by one.

JAXB for KML

Yesterday, I take a look at KML 2.2 specification.
To avoid create a million of classes to parse XML (KML) documents I put on my hands JAXB. After a while to resolve a duplicate element name (due to case insensitive in JAXB), finally I get a bunch of classes representing the KML element types.

After a couple of little test it seems is all right and now I need to spend some time (that I haven't) to integrate KML2.2 support into Balloon ;)

Design Patterns

Today I would like to point to this post Design Patterns - Command Pattern.
Via DZone I can see David Cumps is written a series of post about design patterns.
Very interesting for all programmers.

Curious ?

My new guitar

I am an aficionado guitar player from 16 and yesterday my wife made me a gift... a new guitar :)

This is the old celebrity guitar:


And this is the new Cort one:

A classic of rock...

Wow !!! I was taking a look at YouTube's videos and found this jewel, the classic sound Paranoid from Black Sabbath:

Using SyntaxHighlighter on Blogger

If you want to use syntaxhighlighter on blogger to beautifully your code remember to take a look here to set the blogger mode enable:

dp.SyntaxHighlighter.BloggerMode();
dp.SyntaxHighlighter.HighlightAll('code');

R2D2 Translator

I have just received an email from a friend with an amazing feature: the R2D2 translator.

If you are a friki, freak, nerd or geek (like me?) probably this like you a lot.

A quieter theme for the eyes

I found this post (via DZone) pointing to a new NetBeans editor color theme, called Aloha, that is more quiet, not as highlighted as the default but similar to norway today theme.

A file format repository

Today, via Black Byte I found wosit.

The Wosit slogan is The programmer's file and data resources. It contains a lot of file format specifications categorized on different areas: music, GIS, image, etc.

Probably you can read many of these file formats through a library but if you are who program the library you are welcome to take a look.

Not another bubble

I found this video referenced in the Emilian blog, but don't worry we are not living another bubble.

Meta Tracker

MetaTracker is a powerful desktop-neutral first class object database, tag/metadata database, search tool and indexer...
To install on Ubuntu see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MetaTracker

Basically, Tracker indexes the content of your home directory allowing to search content like documents or music.

Open Clip Art Library is on !!!

After some months changing the hosting and interface OpenClipArt Library are on fire one more time.
I love it.

Visual diff

Today, via the Core Dump neighbor I found meld.
I usually work with NetBeans or Eclipse. Both needs you have open one or more projects to compare its files. I was looking for a tool like the 'diff' command line tool but more user friendly.

I think meld is it (and it is included as a package in Ubuntu).

New methodologies

Here is a link to some new methodologies definitions. I think those are more closely to the reality than XP, AUP, RUP, TDD, etc.
In my case the last being applied is the ADD, I think it will be present for a long time :( because there are many Mr. A.

Communication, that great stranger

The most significant single factor is "communication"...
The most effective communication is person-to-person, face-to-face, as with two people at the whiteboard.

Alistair A.R. Cockburn Humans and Technology

El péndulo de Foucault

El fenómeno se desarrolla con calma; es inevitable, irresistible ... Viéndolo nacer y crecer, nos damos cuenta de que no está en la mano del observador acelerarlo o frenarlo ... Todo el mundo, en su presencia ... se queda pensativo y callado durante unos instantes y por lo general se va con una sensación más apremiante e intensa de nuestra incesante movilidad en el espacio.

Jean-Barnard-Léon Foucault

(Extraido de Historias de la ciencia)