wahlau's online hut

i was watching the tv a few days ago, and saw this interesting not-so-new news - Tom Tom, the leading navigation system company released a new product/system end of last year. The system is able to process traffic jam information, based on the anonymous mobile phone information collected in different base stations. The press release can be read here.

how do you feel when you are still up at 4am in the morning, working on things you never feel will finish nor end, just because you cannot sleep 4 hours ago?

Well the chips/biscuits do taste pretty nice, so that is a plus :) else, i am hoping to retire earlier today from work - did manage to review another chapter of writing for my student, while did some reading and now figuring out what to do next.

perhaps should go back to bed ;) 

while settling somethings for a student, i came across the java swingx project... and basically i saw some nice demo and example done by Joshua and his colleagues. What really caught my attention is the Aerith demonstration. It has really nice interface and "bling-bling" (if you would like to call it), so produced desktop applications have more eye catching effects, and most important of all, better usability. Sometimes we think such stuffs are just eye candy, without realising they do provide an elevated user-friendliness or intuitive level.

If you have time, go give swingx a try. There are even nightly builds of these libraries, and i believe we can learn a lot from their source code and examples.

While considering how i should play around with the Nokia Internet Tablet, James triggered off a discussion in the mailing list. And it brought me to an idea which i have thought of long ago - why not just boot from the memory cards and do all sorts of tests on it? And thanks to the helpful community, help came in right away. So it was time to get my hands dirty.

if you have never learn anything about Mark and his vision on Ubiquitous Computing , read the following scenario suggested by him:

Sal awakens: she smells coffee. A few minutes ago her alarm clock,
alerted by her restless rolling before waking, had quietly asked
"coffee?", and she had mumbled "yes." "Yes" and "no" are the only words
it knows.

as some of you knew, we were away during the weekend in Santander, Spain. It was a nice breakaway, though we hoped for more sunny weather. So our initial dive plan had to be cancelled due to rough sea, and instead of diving, we spent time lazing around and relax. it was good, nevertheless.