Style is nothing, content is everything.

Quote

The average quality of the code on a project equals the quality of the code written by the second worst developer on the team.

Why ?

Because the rest of the team is too busy fixing bugs introduced by the worst developer on the team.

Eric Evans, SpringOne 2007

I was doing some work on Hudson's maven2 integration last night. It currently uses an old and unsupported version of the maven embedder. My aim was to 'upgrade' Hudson to use a more 'supported' embedder version, so the project can benefit from better maven2 build support. Those of you that don't know what the embedder is, read this mini guide as a starting point.

Getting the embedder to run inside your application is actually quite easy if you avoid the pitfall of using the old and unsupported 2.0.4 binaries. Instead, make sure to use the latest 2.1-SNAPSHOT all-in-one binary (at the time of this post it is called maven-embedder-2.1-20070830.163428-16-shaded.jar). Adding this jar to your Eclipse/IDEA project is all you need to do to get the example from the guide going.

In summary,

Create a new project in your IDE, add above all-in-one jar as a dependency.
Copy-paste the code from the mini guide.
Change the first line to point to a little sample maven2 project.

I also recommend having a look at the embedder integration tests for examples of how to do more non-trivial things with the embedder.

Eclipse 3.3 + Mac = crash ?

So I downloaded Eclipse 3.3 for Mac today, in an effort to upgrade my (aging) powerbook development environment. I haven't been doing much development lately, but got inspired by a cool OSS project I've been using lately. Their integrated maven2 support could do with a revamp me thinks, so I plan to have a deeper look at its integration layer and see if there is anything I can do to vamp it up a little (support for profiles, settings.xml etc - but I digress).

So after having tar-x-z-vf'ed the download package, I fire up Finder, double click the Eclipse logo and get presented with this instead of the new funky Europa splash screen:

No biggie me thinks. This is the most anticipated Eclipse release crashing on the most stable and expertly-used development platform, ergo Google must be full of helpful links right.

Not so.

Update:
Installing Release 5 of Java for Mac OS X 10.4 did the trick.

Indeed, looking at Eclipse's own readme.html (always the last place to look for any seasoned developer) I can see now:

Adium connection errors

If Adium has been failing for you lately with "Could not send; a connection error occurred.", look here and here. Rumour is that M$ tweaked their IM protocol, breaking all clients that rely on things like this to implement connectivity with their MSN servers.

There are a few workarounds for the moment, one being to disable cryptographic extensions, another one being to disable connectivity over HTTP to the MSN server. YMMV though from what i've gathered on some mailing lists. Your best bet is to wait until Pidgin incorporates the protocol change so that downstream clients like Adium will work again without change.

Toyota integrates iPod

Looks like we finally might be able to do away with all those CD cases in our car !

I'll hold off buying one though until I've read some real-life user feedback on this, as I'm not up to date at all with any of this high-tech car hifi widgetry !

OsterFelder 2007

Just like in 2004, I participated in the OsterFelder Berglauf again this year. This is such a great event that I'm really considering making it a yearly tradition with my good running buddy Thomas (he's the guy on the left, picture taken before the run - notice that I'm still smiling!).

For those of you that don't really know what a mountain run is I can explain this really simple in 2 steps:

Find a mountain similar to the one below (in Belgium this is actually the hardest part!)
Run to the top as fast as you can, sort of like me here:

I had planned to take my new TZ3 during the run and shoot some pictures along the way but decided against it shortly before the start. It's quite a hassle carrying the camera in-hand whilst running, I didn't have a special pouch for it. Also, people tend to throw away all ballast when low on energy and mental strength - didn't want to risk anything ;-)

I ended up finishing in 1h53m15s, a big improvement over my previous 2h16m25s! After the finish we still sat for an hour or so just to enjoy the view and superb weather.

You can find the complete Flickr photoset here.

The story of Mel

Pure nostalgy ahead !

Every developer will at some point in his career have to deal with an incarnation of Mel.
For those of you that haven't already: May The Force Be With You when you do finally meet him!