There's probably no God

In London, like in the rest of the world, church is threatening us that we will go to hell if we don't believe in God, if we don't go to the church and give money to the church...
Professor Richard Dawkins (British Humanist Association) had a great idea: posters on buses saying "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"

The BHA planned only to raise £5,500, which was to be matched by Professor Dawkins, but it has now raised more than £36,000 of its own accord.
Now, this is freedom of speech.

read more here

the best job in the world

I was surprised yesterday evening to find 2 friends who didn't hear yet about the best job in the world.
In short:
- job for 6 months in Australia
- you have to take care of an island
- you must love taking photos and videos (not a master)
- you should be able to swim
- talk english
- blog about what you're doing there
- and be willing to receive 10.000 EUR monthly.

So, quit your job and apply. 27 days left. Go at http://www.islandreefjob.com/.

PS: I wish you goodluck reaching the server. :))

I'm applying.....

Flex integrated with Spring in Eclipse. Myth or reality?

One afternoon spent on integrating flex with spring and eclipse. Myth BUSTED.
Here are the steps you can follow:
1. use this site Using BlazeDS with Spring for figuring out how to make flex work with Spring on a server and make some samples work. You will discover a new buzz-word: BlazeDS. There are other tutorials too, but they forget an important thing: you must put .swf files on the server!!! (.swf is the bytecode of the .mxml files). If you are a flex novice and you don't want to lose 2hours for such a small important thing, use the mentioned tutorial. (note: the build.xml for compiling the .mxml files into .swf files has a mistake: points to the wrong flex_ant jar)
2. thinking of how will you do session-management? Well, there is no client-session in flex. Actually client-session is a hack. Read here.
3. I guess the next question is: what about security? the answer is here.
4. if you are happy that your samples are working and you understood the above blogs, go celebrate with champagne cause you reached dead-end. Now you must probably be releasing you need a flex-IDE. Adobe made Flex 3 SDK free; this means "in theory" you can use whatever IDE you want, even Eclipse. Well, guess again and read this: Flex 3 SDK + Eclipse: an encouraging union, especially these lines:

"Adobe does not ship the XML schema definition file with the “free” SDK. Read that line again. Yeah. I really was *incredibly* pissed off about that. This is basically a complete refusal to allow another application to understand anything in the flex realm." [by Leona]

Leona managed in the end to make it work with an old version of xsd 1.5. But it looks a whole lot of work to make eclipse the perfect IDE for flex. It's 2:34AM and not in the mood. And for what? So that I have to fully learn an entire new language: actionscript? Sorry, not my target right now. Just wanted to put live an idea and at this hour it sounds more easier with a drag-an-drop functionality ===> this means buy Flex Builder. 500$. Sorry, we an in economic crisis.

Conclusion:
- I only wanted to do something cool with images like PicLens. I've googled 2 mornings for time-to-time (from work) for an ajax solution, didn't find it. Must have been blind :) 5 minutes ago found this: http://www.dhteumeuleu.com/. Go to Gallery and pick Image FLow (diapo). Already subscribed to newsletter and donated 30$ dollars to Gerard Ferrandez. I think I should give more. So, I'm going with this solution. At least I know this will work; with flex I wasn't even sure how am I going to do that photo gallery. Founded a flex example on net (for 90$), but not sure was really what I wanted.

Maybe someday, not in the near future, I will get over my frustration and start again with flex (if it's still a buzzword)

Flex, Spring, BlazeDS mxmlc task not found

Here is the perfect tutorial for integrating Flex SDK (free) with Spring: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/articles/blazeds_spring.html

It's really helpful, just that the Mortgage example has a mistake in the build.xml:

should be


and not:


In which case you get an ant exception that mxmlc task does not exist.

PS: there are other nice tutorials but this is the best one especially if you are new in Flex (the other ones forgot to mention how to compile the mxml code in bytecode => swf files)

Win a Nintendo DS Lite

Just go to this site: http://thecelebritycafe.com/contests/nintendo_ds_lite.html and subscribe to it.

As simple as that you will get:
- newsletter about celebrites
- might win a DS

professor Laton puzzle 20 Unfriendly Neighbours

Solution: see photo attached.
The key is to draw the lines for A and C going through the bottom of the map.

professor Layton puzzle 5 Digital Digits

This is a tricky puzzle: Digital Digits (the one about clocks). The correct answer is: 34

You've figured out for sure:
01:11, 02:22, 03:33, 04:44, 05:55 and 10:00, 11:10, 11:11, 11:12, 11:13, 11:14, 11:15, 11:16, 11:17, 11:18, 11:19. => 16 combinations. And you have to count them twice as the puzzle asks you for all the combinations appearing during a day => 32 combinations.

The trick is that this is a 12-hour clock and "The indication of noon and midnight in the 12-hour system is disputed." (check Wikipedia). Looks like Layton's 12-hour clock displays the noun and midnight as being 12:00 and not 00:00 => 12:22 combination exists and appears twice.

32 + 2 (twice 12:22) = 34

Professor Layton: GECY NW puzzle

For the GECY NW puzzle from Professor Layton and the Curios City, here is the solution:
GECY NW = TEXT ME

OLD: Finally, I found the solution. But honestly it has no reason! Because if somebody does a typo, he will use the same pattern for the following mistake. If you type a lot of time using a keyword (which everybody does in this era) your hands work magically without you looking and if you miss one key with one button to the left than all the text is going to be one left-key mistake.

UPDATE: Brittany is right: looking carefully at the chocolate bits, you can find the answer:

- 1. missing chunk up letter G => (check keyboard the letter on top G) => T
- 2. no missing chunk on letter E => E
- 3. missing chunk left letter C => X
- 4. missing chunk left Y => T
... and so on ===> GECY NW = TEXT ME



This is awsome, Brittany!!! How long did it take you?

professor layton and the curios village

I don't like Nintendo games at all. Especially not those shooter games, those dress me up, color-me and how pretty I can jump through the grass fields games. Yacht! I've bought my DS Lite only for the Brain Age Training, but after 2 weeks I was totally, fully bored. There is nothing pleasent in receiving more difficult words to figure out and such a black-white front-end. I am a human from the TV era! I need color and not monochromatics.

It's my fully pleasure to announce the best game on DS: Proffesor Layton and the Curios Village: http://professorlaytonds.com/. It's really great:
- nice story (no monsters or crazy shooters)
- fully colored
- great usability (could improve): the long click though dialogs are substituted by cartoons movie with real actor voices. Bright idea! I hate when I have to read what one character is saying then click next, then read what the next character is saying and so on... It's waisting my time and I might get RSI... Bravo, Layton team!
- great game goal: solve as many puzzles as possible!!! Everybody has the human instinct to prove himself and to learn in the same time. Puzzles are a great solution for this.

There are a lot of puzzles on net, but nobody put them all together in such a nice story like Professor Layton team.

I'm looking forward to the next 2 games within the serie:
- "Professor Layton and The Devil's Box"
- "Professor Layton and The Final Time Journey"
Sadly, they are not in english yet :((

For The Devil's Box, the Japan-only "Level-5 Premium Silver/Gold" collections on Nintendo DS included an exclusive side-story, "Professor Layton and the Holiday in London" (レイトン教授とロンドンの休日, "Professor Layton and the Holiday in London"?) in addition to the actual game and another Level-5 game, Inazuma Eleven. The Holiday in London includes ten puzzles, some of which are from the first game, and a short storyline, set in Professor Layton's London office, in which he reminisces about his previous adventures around the world.

work-photos

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