Sep 302010
 

Unexpected news from Oracle: SQL Developer Data Modeler is now a free product. The first editions where free with the sidenote that it was going to be a paid product. The previous release was present in Oracle Global Pricing list and was not cheap. Only the viewer was free. Now Oracle’s website has a note saying that the Datamodeler is a free product: Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler: Pricing FAQ. Unexpected, but welcome news.

Sep 262010
 

When I joined Facebook some time ago, I had nothing with the games being played on it. The strange wall and all it’s posts from others just felt alien compared to Hyves, where your page is yours own, and others can only comment on stuff or respect (like) them.

A couple of months ago, I was lured into FishWrangler (yep, pun intended), a simple (no Flash needed) fishing game, but with a very large and very active community. When getting the hang of it, I also accepted long standing requests for ZooWorld and FarmVille.

And here I am now, playing FishWrangler with 2 accounts, FarmVille with 2, ZooWorld with 2 and MafiaWars (very nice) on 1. Helping others when they are struggling with how the wall or a game works, and enjoying myself all the time. Well, okay, not all the time: accepting the zillionth Train Whistle for your collection when you already have a surplus of 30 is not always very entertaining, but overall, the games clear the mind and make a very good pastime.

Make sure you have (or make) a lot of FaceBook friends, they are key to the succes of most games. Have fun!

Sep 222010
 

Just found out the beta is no longer beta, PostgreSQL 9.0.0 has reached “release” status. Version 9 has native x64 Windows support, and per-column-triggers. Nice! Read the release notes for more information about the new version.

No info about a new version of PostGIS (yet).

Sep 182010
 

Yesterday (well, last night) I was driving home from Groningen to Barendrecht, and switched on Navigon for the first part of the road and to see at what time I would be home (the estimated arrival time). I had the Milestone hooked up on the car’s USB-port to charge it, and was driving home quite happily, listening to David Guetta’s party on SlamFM. Of course the stereo was on 22 (which I can tell you is considerably louder than is good for me).
At a certain junction on the highway I wanted to make sure I took the right (as oppossed to wrong) lane, and looked to my Milestone to see what Navigon showed. To my suprise, the Milestone was blank. Black. Switched off. I turned on the Milestone again, only to see the Motorola “M” after which it died again. WTF?! Putting the car on cruise-control, I opened the back of the phone, checked the battery, replaced it, only to find that the phone would not even show the “M” anymore… My Milestone just died! It was still more than an hour driving, so I could not check anything else than I already had checked.

At about 3am I was home, I hooked up the Milestone to the charger, and it immediately responded with the charging-battery-icon. Phee-ew! When I checked later this morning after I woke up, the phone was properly charged and in 100% working order. Pheeeee-eeew!

Lesson learned: having Bluetooth for the carkit and GPS and the screen on all the time means that USB-charging is not enough to compete with the battery-drain……..

Sep 132010
 

I just installed (well, unzipped) Minefield (non-branded Firefox) 4.0 beta for Windows x64, and must say: it rocks. Too early to give a definitive verdict, but sofar it looks better and really is x64. Which is nice, considering the memory usage of a typical Firefox session 😉

NoScripts works like a charm with the x64 version, I’ll have to test the rest of the plugins.

Update: Oh my, how could I forget? Adobe still lives in the previous century: there is no x64 Flashplayer…..

Sep 072010
 

The GeoServer team “released” GeoServer 2.1 beta, you can read about it on this page. Especially the WMS-cascading and SQL-layers sound very promising. But the icing on the cake perhaps are the WPS capabilities. I wonder if the commercial vendors are as enthusiastic about this release as I am…. 🙂

Sep 012010
 

Some people hack into resources of others. My wiki and my forums are almost constantly being hacked into, pages are altered, users are created, spam is left behind, etcetera, etcetera. That’s annoying.

I decided that the forums and the wiki will have to go. I hardly ever use them anyway. This is a message so you know where they went after they’re gone.