Apparently I like fiddling with tools if they’re the right tools. I’m trying to get good syntax highlighting for Java and XML in DocBook running through Maven.

If I can get Doxia to do it, that’s great. Otherwise I’ll need to move to the DocBkx plugin, which is a lot more capable, but doesn’t integrate as well with the Maven site generated documentation.

Yes, I’ve done some coding and I’ve fixed some bugs, but this is a nice diversion.

My old college friend Ron Burk had an Ignite video go viral last year. This one probably won’t, but it’s still a good presentation. It’s called “Three Strange Definitions of Computer Programming”. He’s a good presenter, so you might find it interesting even if you’re not into programming.

His original Ignite presentation is “The Psychology of Incompetence”. It’s quite funny and everyone should watch it, especially programmers because it pokes fun at our industry.

I’ve spent a good deal of the morning dealing with issues between Eclipse (my IDE), Subversive (the subversion integration for Eclipse), and M2Eclipse (the Maven integration for Eclipse). (Subversion is a version control system.)

Gaah….

I have a friend who believes that “Crystal Blue Persuasion” is the worst song in the world. I don’t agree. It’s just boring, sort of like anything by Air Supply or Bread. (If I never hear “Diary” again it’ll be too soon.)

Denise thinks that maybe “Escape” (the Piña Colada Song) is the worst song ever.

I think maybe it’s “Having My Baby”.

Ideas? Suggestions? Criticism?

There was this recipe recently on Smitten Kitchen for a cauliflower and caramelized onion tart, which I made last night. It was wonderful!

It’s actually a cross between a tart and a quiche, because it has a custard filling.

Very yummy. It made leftovers.

So I’m at home with some sort of sore throat and runny nose, and I wanted some good food to both fill me up and to ease my sinuses.

I made Kathryn’s multicultural stir-fry. This time it was British-American-Asian.

I started out British by chopping a turnip into 1cm cubes and sweating them in a small pat of butter mixed with rather more olive oil, some salt, and some thyme. (Butter and turnips go well together.)

When the turnips were getting tender I added some minced shallots and pressed garlic and let it just begin to release their aromas, I added some leftover brown rice, turned the heat up, and began to stir fry the rice in the residual oil.

After a few minutes I went all asian and drizzled some Thai chili-garlic sauce over it and stirred it through. Then I cleared a spot in the center of my skillet and cracked an egg into it and pan-scrambled it. When the egg was not quite set, I stirred it into the rest of the mixture and let it finish.

I transferred the mixture to my plate and topped it with some grated cheddar cheese. (Cheddar and turnips go very well together.)

It was great, although very non-traditional in any culture’s cuisine. I mean, cheese in asian food? Stir-fry in British? In any case, it was American because I’m American.

The snow from a week ago had just about cleared off. Now we’re getting very large clusters of flakes coming down heavy and falling quickly. The streets and grounds are getting that white sheen again.

I thought we were through with this…

We released version 0.1.6.1 a few days ago. This has very few changes from the 0.1.6 release, the main one being that we are signing the jars and putting them on the Maven Central repository at http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/, in particular:

http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/seaglasslookandfeel/seaglasslookandfeel/

Future releases will be released to Central, and snapshots will be released to

http://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/com/seaglasslookandfeel/
seaglasslookandfeel/

Since we still don’t have full functionality, we may eventually get rid of our pre-0.1.6.1 versions on our makeshift repository, though the source will still be available for checkout.

So they announced the “iPad” today. (Insert menstrual joke here.)

It’s 10″ with a 9.7″ diagonal 1024×768 pixel 4×3 aspect ratio screen. They say it’s 1/2″ thick and about 1-1/2 pounds.

The OS is basically a slight evolution of the iPhone/iPod Touch OS. The prices run from $500 to $700 for versions without 3G and $130 more for 3G.

I’d say that the price point is pretty good, but I will not be getting one of these devices. It’s about 2 inches too big to easily fit in my purse, which means it’s not a device I can take everywhere. And I carry a fairly large Coach purse.

And the bezel on it is huge. What’s up with that? If the bezel were rather smaller and the screen were about an inch smaller it would probably fit. My Kindle 2 fits. Anything larger would likely not fit.

I’m afraid the keyboard isn’t going to be touch-typeable, because there’s no tactile feedback for the home row. It does have Bluetooth keyboard support, as well as an external keyboard/mount that will probably make extensive typing tasks manageable, and maybe the keyboard is fine for on-the-go usage.

Aside from the size of the bezel and the physical “Home” key, this is pretty much what I was expecting from Apple. I like the iBook app, at least what I’ve seen, and I think ePub is the way to go.

The big surprise for me was that they’re putting their own processor into it. I figured it would be a standard ARM, but they’ve developed an ARM compatible processor which they’re calling the Apple A4. It’s a 1GHz chip and they say it gets great battery life. We’ll see.

I think I’ll stick with my laptop, Kindle, and iPhone combo. It satisfies almost all my needs, except for mobile computing on the go. My laptop is 17″ and is a pain to take on planes.

The snow we got Christmas Evening is finally beginning to melt. I can see grass in my back yard. My front yard (north side, sloping downhill) is still covered.

Kittie TV is back on, and my two cats are excited. They’ve been bored not having the bird channel on in the back yard.

I see chickadees and mourning doves. And a jay. I heard the flicker, earlier, but didn’t see him.

I await the rabbit and squirrel channels, as do the cats.