Bruno F. Souza's Blog

December 2006 Archives

Late Holiday Picture

I enjoy submitting pictures of Duke for the yearly java.net "Holiday Pictures" article. But this year, I missed the deadline, and when I noticed, the article was already up. Oh well, maybe next year...

But then, I received a gorgeous onyx Penguin as a Christmas gift from my cousin and godchild, Clara.

Even late, I just had to post this nice family shot that Duke, Juggy and Tux made me take in front of the Christmas tree. They look great together, and with the full OpenJDK due in just a few months, I think 2007 will be the year those guys become inseparable friends.

That 2007 be a year that we can work together, bringing a better world to all. And if what we do don't look like much, that at least we have fun doing our best, and that we can open the way so others can follow and build on what we did.

My best wishes to you and your family.

5 things you don't know... and probably don't care!

I've been tagged by Simon, and then I discovered that those old snail-mail-chains, that turned into e-mail-chains, seem to evolve again, into blog-chains. I remember being part of a mail-chain that would send postcards to people on it. That was fun, and I did get several post cards from around the world. Then, somebody though about doing this with money, and spoiled the fun...

Well, what exactly should I say here that is of minimal interest? Here are five things about me that you probably don't care too much to learn:

• I never wrote a book! I did have a small essay about Open Source Java included in the great "Open Sources 2.0" book. The funny part is that I think my article is the only one in the whole book that is not mentioned in the Introduction. Oh, you didn't read it either? That's ok! How about that for a well hidden secret?
• I am a (very, very bad) pre-amateur ventriloquist. I don't think anyone ever saw me perform, so, that's probably in the category of untold secrets... If you are also curious on how this ancient, and very fun, form of art works, there are a lot of resources out there. It is actually a nice illusion, and yep, you too can learn it!
• One of my main interest is religion: I like to study and to discuss. It's probably the second genre in my book collection. This is an interesting theme that most people either shy away from, simply does not like to mention, or think that there is no room for discussion. I'm particularly found of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas. How can anyone resist studying such extraordinary subject once you learn about her eyes?
• I have two beautiful daughters. Lara, the youngest one, is already 6 years old. Well, this is a secret only because my personal web site is so outdated, that most people still think that Juliana (that has already turned 8) is still a 2-years old baby! Now you know how good I am in creating HTML pages! That's two secrets in one go!
• I'm also a long time player of Role Playing Games. So old in fact, that I still play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in the World of Greyhawk (the level of excitement for this is so high that this EBay offer for a Greyhawk book received ZERO bids, and it was less then US$ 2!). I never got used to the advances that computer brought to this form of gaming. I hear that the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games -- they have increasing fancy names these days) are pretty fun, but I still like the thrill of using paper and dices... Maybe this is why I don't find too many people interested in playing!

Oh well, that's not too bad. I don't think it was particularly interesting to anyone either, but I now inflict the damage in the next pour souls: Danese, Roman, Michael and Geir, you're tagged!

Update: this tag-game is going around the blogosphere for a few weeks now. It started by Jeff Pulver, and went trough 28 other bloggers before reaching me. And I got it wrong: the idea was to tag 5 other bloggers... So, to correct my error, let me add Tim and Claudio. Oh, that makes 6... Well, one more won't hurt: hopping to start a Portuguese branch of the game, I tag Mario. You're all it!

Update: following Simon's lead, I started linking to the answers. Italic names above already joined the game.

JDK 6 is here! And Javapolis and JavaOne are just around the corner...

I have just listened to Laurie Tolson talk about OpenJDK and now Mark Reinhold is talking about JDK 6. This is the official announcement of JDK 6, here in London. Since this morning, you can download the final version of the new version of the Java Platform.

Interesting times we are right now. In the last few weeks, we had the announcement of NetBeans 5.5, then Sun announced OpenJDK and now JDK 6 is out. I remember when all those announcements happened around JavaOne. I have to note that the JDK announcement happened in Europe, right before Javapolis.

Actually, this is the reason why I'm on this part of the world. Tonight I'll fly to Belgium, where starts today the Javapolis event. Javapolis is way up in the list of the most important Java events in the world, and with the organization of BeJUG, it is a Java Users Group event. Cool.

Talking about Java events, this week is the last week to submit papers to JavaOne! Have you submitted yours? Don't miss the chance, join together with other developers from your local JUG, discuss ideas and review each other's submission. Submissions are more and more elaborated, and the task to choose then is harder every year. So, don't leave for the last minute, and do not send a half-though submissions. Make sure your presentation is something your peers would like to go see when they read it. That will help you get there!

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