What would you do if your boss give you one week for self-education?

Let’s suppose following scenario:

You are somewhat experienced Java Developer working on a very sophisticated project in the science sector. You create very, very complicated module using very, very time-consuming algorithm which can not be multithreaded. And when you are ready, tests with small data portions went fine, your boss comes to your desk and clicks big, red button on your monitor to proudly start the whole process. Of course nothing bad happens, you just can observe growing CPU and memory usage. Your team expect that those calculation will take about one week to finish and give you results which are indispensable for you next tasks. It’s JIRA blocker status and until it finishes, you had nothing to do. Your boss asks you to visit him in his room and sais:

- Tom, you did a great job with this module. Everything seems to run smoothly and I can not wait to see the results! We must wait one week and it’s a spare time which I would like you to use for you self-education and self-development. What you are going to do and learn?

Of course we don’t know whether this boss is going to pay Tom for this time or not :) But it’s not the case. Tom now has a problem: 40 hours of free time which he can spend on any technology/methodology/language/etc he wants to learn and this opportunity comes to him so unexpectedly that he can not make up his mind.

Please help him! What would YOU do with these 40 hours? :)

PS: As I am migrating my blog to my own domain, a few posts in the future will be published in both places to allow You, reader, to change address and rss smoothly :)

New blog address: http://tomaszdziurko.pl
New RSS link: http://www.tomaszdziurko.pl/feed

Zmiana silnika bloga i przenosiny na własną domenę

Drodzy czytelnicy.

Zdecydowałem się przenieść bloga na silnik Wordpressa, który daje dużo większe możliwości i znacznie większą elastyczność w dostosowaniu strony do moich wymagań. A skoro powiedziałem A to trzeba było powiedzieć i B, więc blog w nowej postaci jest dostępny na mojej własnej, brandowanej moim nazwiskiem domenie :)

Zapraszam serdecznie do odwiedzania bloga pod nowym adresem http://tomaszdziurko.pl, a korzystających z RSS'ów proszę o przepięcie się na http://www.tomaszdziurko.pl/feed.

Oczywiście będę wdzięczny za wszelkie uwagi odnośnie wyglądu i działania nowego bloga.

Do zobaczenia w nowej lokalizacji :)

Pana Fowlera niemiłe wspomnienia z Polski

Przeglądając dzisiaj mojego RSS-a natrafiłem na post Chada Fowlera, autora między innymi książki "The Passionate Programmer". Pan Fowler zbiera w nim kilkanaście porad jak dobrze przygotować się do podróży, aby uniknąć niemiłych niespodzianek. W całym poście nie byłoby nic specjalnego i wartego wspomnienia, gdyby nie to, że w jednej z tych porad możemy przeczytać:

Always keep a spare set of clothes in your carry-on luggage if you’re checking bags. I don’t do this one, but I should. I spent several days freezing in the winter in Poland a couple of years ago because not only did I not have extra clothes in my carry-on but I checked my coat to avoid having to lug it around on the flights. Big mistake. Polish Air lost my suitcase and didn’t get it to me until nearly the end of the trip.

:-)

Książka Czysty kod (Clean code) w promocji o 30% taniej tylko dziś w Helionie

Ten postał został przeniesiony na mojego nowego bloga i można go znaleźć tutaj.

Gdzie Java nie tylko w polskiej trawie piszczy?

Ten postał został przeniesiony na mojego nowego bloga i można go znaleźć tutaj.

Światowy Dzień Książki i promocja Helionu

Ten postał został przeniesiony na mojego nowego bloga i można go znaleźć tutaj.

SCJP to certyfikowany programista Java, a SCJD?

Ten postał został przeniesiony na mojego nowego bloga i można go znaleźć tutaj.

Protect your balls, man!

In spite of title, this post is about really, really serious thing.

We all (ok, probably almost all) have laptops and use them in many places, of course to spend time as effectively as possible. Everyday I see people using their laptops in train, bus, on a bench in the park and, most often, in bed. In all those cases laptop lies on their laps.

This is so common that we don't realize this is WRONG AND DANGEROUS!

Medicine researches state that drivers, especially truck and bus drivers more frequently have problems to become fathers. Their sperm isn't in best condition because of their work.
"What the heck I have in common with truck drivers?!" you could ask. The answer is simpler than you think. We all work for serveral hours in sitting position and this is not good for our sperm.

Male balls (testiculars) are placed outside body for one reason: better cooling. High temperature causes damage to sperm cells making them incapable of doing their job properly. If you are using laptop on your laps everyday for some time, your sperm don't have possibility to recover. Sometimes this state could become irreversible and as a result your wife or girlfriend will never be happy mummy.

How can you prevent this horrible scenario?
If you really can't live without working with computer on your laps there are some ways to make you and your balls much safer.

1. Put a large book between laps and laptop.
Pros:
- the cheapest solution
- it's not heavy if book is large but thin
- small, easy to carry

Cons:
- instability, when you move your laptop also moves.
- no place for mouse

2. board made of isolating material
Pros:
- lighter than book
- small, easy to carry

Cons:
- not so cheap
- instability
- no place for mouse

3. notebook/laptop coolers (example 1, example 2)
Pros:
- they cool laptop and help to exchange air between your laps and laptop.

Cons:
- price
- not all are lightweight and easy to carry
- some are cheap but some are really expensive (Zalman for example)
- instability
- no place for mouse

4. small table for laptop (example 1, example 2, example 3)
Pros:
- perfect to use in bed or sofa
- stable, laptop lies on the table not on your laps
- some of them have place for mouse

Cons:
- price
- large size
- rather impossible to use them in train


Summary
As you can see there are many ways to protect our balls from heat and ensure safety of our future parenthood. Some of these solutions won't cost you anything except a little effort so I think they are worth trying.

getBlog().addLanguage(Locale.ENGLISH), was: getBlog().setLanguage(Locale.ENGLISH);

After a while when I was blogging in Polish, my native language, I decided to make an attempt to switch completely to English, "esperanto of IT world". Main factors which lead me to this decision were:
- feeling that my English language skills are becoming more and more rusty, especially in areas not closely connected with IT and technical language. I know that writing new posts will take more time, but I think it's worth the effort.
- need to be more involved in filling Internet with useful programming stuff and solutions. No one could deny that posts in English are really more helpful than those in other languages. This is even more true if we take into consideration only IT world, when English is language of all information we need and consume everyday: tutorials, documentation, most actual books, etc.
- some voices from Web: post by Paul Szulc in Polish and another convincing post by Jeff Atwood. They both pointed out some good reasons why we all should blog about IT in one, unified language.

In spare time I will translate some old posts from Polish and update page content to conform to "English only" rule :)

So from now on only English posts here. I am eager to read your opinions about this change so feel free to post them in comments :) Also impressions about new blog template from http://www.zenplate.blogspot.com/ are welcome.

UPDATE (two weeks later): I was thinking about formula of this blog and some doubts appeared in my head. Do I really have content which is unique in whole Internet? Recently I thought so, but when I was preparing post in English about book "Effective Java", I found that many, many other people already wrote about similar things and enthusiasm about my post almost disappeared. So what now? I think that most of my post will be in Polish, because I don't want them to duplicate other content from the Web. Moreover writing in Polish will allow me to share some more personal opinions and experiences from programming and my live in general than if I was writing in English. Of course some posts that in my opinion are more unique or interesting will be translated to English.
I apologize for the confusion and my earlier rash decision. I hope it won't happen again :)

Java i Chuck Norris na wesoło

Dzisiaj podczas przeglądania newsów na DZone.com trafiłem na artykuł z żartami o Chucku Norrisie w kontekście programowania w Javie.

Poniżej te, które najbardziej przypadły mi do gustu :)

Chuck Norris can make a class that is both abstract and final.
Chuck Norris demonstrated the meaning of Float.POSITIVE_INFINITY by counting to it, twice.
A synchronize doesn’t protect against Chuck Norris, if he wants the object, he takes it.
Code runs faster when Chuck Norris watches it.
If you get a ChuckNorrisException you’ll probably die.
Java visibility levels are public, default, protected, private and “protected by Chuck Norris”, don’t try to access a field with this last modifier!!
Garbage collector only runs on Chuck Norris code to collect the bodies.
Chuck Norris can do multiple inheritance in Java.
Chuck Norris extends God.
Chuck Norris codes generics since 1.3.

Dla zainteresowanych całość do przeczytania tutaj.

O wyglądzie bloga słów kilka

Od kilku wieczorów próbuję zmienić trochę wygląd mojego bloga. Aktualny szablon jest tymczasowy, bo po pierwsze nie do końca mi się podoba, a po drugie jest dość standardowy. Przez "standardowy" rozumiem również (poza tym, że jest standardowo dostarczany przez Google'a ;) ) także jego popularność wśród Javowych bloggerów. Tylko wśród blogów, które regularnie czytam, korzysta z niego Jacek Laskowski - Notatnik Projektanta Java EE, Paweł Zubkiewicz - Java programmer's blog oraz IT Researches. I wcale im się nie dziwię :), bo z szablonów, które są do wyboru na starcie blogowania właśnie ten wydaje się najlepszy do prowadzenia merytorycznego bloga. Czytelna kolorystyka i układ, a dodatkowo duża szerokość, dzięki czemu dłuższe wypowiedzi nie ciągną się przesadnie w dół to niewątpliwe zalety tego szablonu. A ja głównie tylko dlatego, że nie do końca trafia w mój gust estetyczny szukam jakiegoś zamiennika o podobnych parametrach. Niestety póki co bezskutecznie.

Swoją drogą podoba mi się wyglą bloga Splatch's devblog, jest przejrzysty i szeroki, a ja właśnie czegoś w takich klimatach szukam.

Inną rzeczą, która zajęła mi na początku trochę czasu było estetyczne wyświetlanie kodów źródłowych w moich postach. Użyłem SyntaxHighlightera, a ostatnio zastanawiałem się nawet nad opisaniem mojej walki z tym narzędziem na blogu. Uprzedzili mnie inni polscy blogowicze: Maciej Zbrzezny oraz Paweł Zubkiewicz, więc nie będę wymyślał koła i zainteresowanych odsyłam pod podane linki.