Just 2 photos I wanted to share with you. Above: 26 February 2004. Below: 23 March 2004. Do you see the difference?

Marc is asking me about my new job. Since he's the guy who hired me for my first job (regular readers should hear some bells ringing now -- "whiteboard" and "balloons"), I'll oblige.

First off, read the announcement, and, of course, my description of my ideal job. Add my personal view on time management, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it is all about.

My official title (I think, I've not yet seen any business cards) is "I.T. Architect". I'm working in the "Architecture & Support" departement of a Java end-user. And that title pretty much describes my job: to help in the architecture of applications, and to support developers when they encounter problems. Other aspects are code reviews (thank God for PMD), guidelines, setting up development environments, selecting frameworks, etc etc. In short, "be supportive".

What I like about it? Especially the short bursts in which everything happens. You get a problem, you help solving it (my most favorite input: to be the cardboard engineer), and you're done. Onto the next problem. No "if I code a little faster today, I will probably have another piece of functionality ready by the end of next month." I happen to like variation.

No rants then? Of course there are. It's incredible how car drivers treat bicycle riders. When starting at a traffic light, they pass you at 10cm next to your steering wheel, just to ... see you ride by on the queue at the next traffic light. Yes, they do get my finger then.

Oh, and yesterday, I fell. Bruised knee and elbow. Damn those wet tram rails.

Cathing up on Erik's linkblog, I noticed all the bickering about Groovy submitting to the JCP. Not having an opinion on the subject (other than: "Eh? How is Groovy an extension to Java?"), I wondered why nobody noticed what this really meant: Groovy considers the JCP to be a valid body to submit to. After all the bickering about how the JCP sucks, it struck me that such a guerillia movement is complying to it.

And the second after I had that thought, I saw Brian's comment, reminding me that I'm not that uniquely clever as I often think I am.

Ever had a full hard disk? And ever wanted a tool that told you what directories are the biggest, so you can start deleting there? And ever been frustrated because Windows didn't provide this? I know I've been. And now I've accidently found TreeSize. Another tiny victory!

Manageability - What is the best Java framework for Web development? Seems about right to me. I've used 2 of the three most popular ones, and am currently learning to use the third one. Ergo: in the near future, I'll know which is _the_ best one. I'll get back to you.

For the first time, I'm using Windows XP. And I've encountered a weird bug. In one specific font (MS Sans Serif), on one specific size (11 pt), the first letter of a paragraph is sometimes clipped partially. As an example, the first W of http://www.borland.com/janeva/ (when viewed with IE) is missing the upper part of its first leg. Google is numb on this. Do you have any experience with this?

Long time since the last blog. That, of course, has everything to do with my new job. A lot of new things to learn, and a lot of new people to get to know. So far, everything went good though. I even already worked a bit, between hopping from one training session to the next.

Having a member of the BeJUG steering committee as boss does have its advantages. I could already participate in the "Web Application workshop": one day of comparing the most hip and cool web application frameworks. Interesting to have everything digested into one day. Cocoon seems to finally make efforts to come out of its marketing isolation (yes people, perception is reality). Tapestry is becoming a mature platform, too.

Time to work today: 19 minutes. Average speed: 25 km/h. Max speed: 36 km/h. Yihaa!