June 15th, 2010 by Ludovic
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Last Thursday I left my keys at home. Luckily my flatmate was in when I got back. On Saturday I got my car washed. Only after handing over the keys I realised I left my wallet at home. And of course I had no money on me. I had to walk all the way back home and took the bus to pick up my car. Not exactly how I envisioned spending my Saturday morning. Now I’m waiting for the bus to go to work. For the second time this morning! Once in front of the building I noticed I forgot my badge. Wonderful!
Is this what happens when you get old?
June 12th, 2010 by Ludovic
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This cynical expression is something we use very often in France. When I think of it it reminds me of one day back a number of years ago. Back then I was looking after children as a summer job. I was spending my days playing with kids on the beach. It was awesome..but I digress. One day I was playing with this 6 year old boy. Paul his name was. By mistake he hit me in the face. He looked at me and very coolly said: “C’est la vie!”. I was a bit surprised to hear that from a 6 year old kid but the memory has stuck with me since then and it always makes me smile.
For various reasons things have been quite challenging recently. Not least of all my troubles sleeping. Without going into details “that’s life” is an expression which has been quite a lot in my vocabulary in the last couple of months. I guess it’s a way to say that we don’t control events in life. You just have to take things as they come. It’s also a way to avoid feeling sorry for myself. Life’s tough. You just to have to deal with it.
So, yeah, c’est la vie! Things always get better…eventually.
May 24th, 2010 by Ludovic
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For as long as I can remember, expect for a couple of periods, I’ve always had difficulties sleeping. It materialises in different ways but the end result remains the same: I’m exhausted. It used to be manageable but recently I’ve been really struggling. The worst is when I lie down in my bed for hours unable to find sleep. This happened to me last night. In addition to the heat of the last few days I guess I have a few things on my mind too. I only managed to sleep at around 5am (and I’m supposed to get up at 6am!). Most other days I would manage to fall asleep early but I would have agitated nights and I would wake up several times during the night. On weekends I would go to bed later and still wake at 6am or 7am. I’m really tired of being tired! It’s a real pain. But I’m at a loss as to how sort it out.
I just want to sleep! I didn’t think it was a lot to ask.
March 12th, 2010 by Ludovic
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End of week 2 at the new job. I forgot how challenging it was to settle in in a new work culture and environment. It takes quite a lot of energy and effort to fit in and learn all that needs to be learned. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining. One of the reasons I wanted a change of scenery was because I was looking for new challenges and new things to learn. I simply didn’t remember how it felt to start a new job.
The good news is that I’m going away on business next week. I’m looking forward to that. And after a few more weeks I’ll get more of a handle on the environment and will start feeling more at home.
At least for now, I’m glad it’s the weekend.
February 23rd, 2010 by Ludovic
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Photo not factual!
I have been considering buying a car for a few months now. For one reason or another I kept delaying it. Money was of course one of the key reasons. That said I was not looking at very cheap cars. But after much internal debate here I am, the owner of a car, for the first time! Today I bought the road tax and sorted out the insurance (ouch!). All in all it is not cheap to own a car but it gives one such a feeling of freedom. I was so frustrated at relying on public transport to do my grocery shopping that I, in fact, wasn’t doing it. Now I can bring myself to going to the shopping center to get food. I am also looking forward to going outside of London on weekend trips. I haven’t been to Scotland yet. Definitely one destination high on my list.
February 8th, 2010 by Ludovic
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As mentioned in my previous post, I have been considering moving on from my current job for a little while. And I realised now was probably the right time for such a move. After looking for a few months I have found a new position. I am really excited about the opportunity to learn about and discover a new work environment and I think this move will be a great experience. However, it will be sad to say goodbye to the people I have been working with for several years. Only a few weeks to go.
January 22nd, 2010 by Ludovic
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It is easy to find yourself in a comfortable situation when you have been in the same place for a while. You are used to how things work and you don’t need to make much effort anymore. Comfort and stability are nice but they can lead to complacency. And in any technology-focussed environment – or any fast-changing environment for that matter – it can then lead you to becoming obsolete. So the question I ask myself is when is it the right time to move on?
I have been working in the same company for over four years now. I have tremendously enjoyed the first three years. The last one has been more challenging. Having considered my options I am faced with two choices:
- Stay and possibly take on a different role.
- Or move on and take on a new challenge altogether.
When I have to make important decisions I always try weighing the pros and cons of each option against the other ones. In this particular instance there are a few reasons why I should stay, not least of all being that I have had the chance to progress so much during my time there. This, however, is balance out by the fact that I don’t feel I am learning so much anymore. And if I don’t get intellectually challenged I lose motivation. Lack of motivation can too lead you to complacency. Plus, as one of my friends says, a change is a good as a break. And I could use a break right about now.
So, when is it time to move on? Well, if you are lucky enough to have options – which is a luxury in these difficult times – and you have become a bit too comfortable it is probably time to look for a new challenge. That is the line of reasoning I have followed up to now in my career and it has so far always worked out. So with that in mind I know what I have to do.
January 13th, 2010 by Ludovic
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Today, Fabric3 announced the general availability of their latest SCA implementation. Although I have heard the term before I have never taken the time to read further on the subject so this morning I decided to change that. This introduction to SCA by David Chappel does a good job at providing an overview of what Service Component Architecture is about.
In essence there is nothing revolutionary about SCA. In my view, it is an effort to standardise how services and their interactions are defined in a technology-agnostic manner. Anyone who has been developing enterpise applications using the Spring Framework or OSGi should be pretty familiar the concepts in SCA.
At the core of SCA are Services. Services are implementated using Components. Components can be composed (Composites) to provide more refined behaviours. All of these components and compositions of components live within a Domain. Interactions between these services are expressed as References. The actual communication between components is left to the responsibily of Bindings, thus isolating the business logic from the underlying remoting technology. The SCA runtime is responsible for dependency injections so services need not concern themselves with locating dependencies. Finally, the use of annotations and xml configurations mean that services/components can be implemented as simple objects.
Besides Fabric3, there’s another open-source SCA implemention from Apache called Tuscani.
I’m quite curious to see how practical/useful this architecture is. Hopefully I’ll find the time to experiment with one of these implementations.
January 12th, 2010 by Ludovic
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This morning I was waiting for the bus on my way to work (rather later than usual) and a lady in a her late 40s or early 50s (by my own estimation) arrived seconds later. She started talking to me very naturally, which in large cities like London is not that usual. Within minutes she had already told me she had been diagnosed with cancer over a year ago and was on her way to the hospital to most likely be told she needed another major surgery.
I felt very sorry for this seemingly very nice lady. It never is easy to go through these sorts of situation. Thankfully she has relatives living near by to help her along the way. I was also amazed at her ability to talk about a very personal topic to a complete stranger with such ease. I suppose she was anxious before going to the hospital and needed to talk about it.
At the end of our bus journey we both wished each other good luck and went our separate ways.
When I feel sorry for myself because things are tough and don’t always work out Life has a way to remind me that, in fact, all these little annoyances are not important. On the contrary, I am lucky to be in my situation. Not everyone can say the same.
December 23rd, 2009 by Ludovic
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Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
- Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.
- Frederick Brooks
The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.
- Bjarne Stroustrup
The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.
- C.A.R. Hoare
