Sony Ericsson V800
It’s been a few months since I moved away from a P800 to a V800. I wanted a handset that had good enough PIM functions, that would sync with my Mac, had the usual range of bands for roaming, but compared to the P800 I wanted something I could use while walking (it turns out I can’t use the P800’s stylus and move at the same time).
The Register gave it a positive review, and I think it’s fair. The battery life is a little suspect, it’s a little larger than it should be, but what can you expect of an early generation 3G handset?
Persistence options
When it comes to writing an application that uses a relational database (and that’s pretty much all of them, for me), I like to use a tool that hides the details of the database I’m using, and reduces the tedium and error involved in mapping code to database structures. For me, that was JDO - a Java standard that has a great open source implementation in terms of Jpox.
The goal of picking a persistence framework is, amongst other things, to end up using one that isn’t going to be obsolete. This is, of course, impossible. Sooner or later everything becomes obsolete. With JDO going into a version 2 specification process, having gained plenty of vendor and open source support, and also being well thought-out to start with, it looked like a good horse to back. But no.
Making software development a little bit more reliable
How I thought about software in 2004.
DTDs and XML Catalogs
From my current perspective as a developer who has to process XML documents and store them in a database, DTDs mostly just cause me pain. In working out some of the issues I now know that half of the problem was a misunderstanding about DTDs. The other half of the problem was solved by learning about XML catalogs and how to us them with JAXP (Xerces, in fact) and Java (JDK 1.4). These are my notes on the experience.
Outsourced component development
Commissioning a Java applet via internet auction, in 1999.
