67° 51′ 0″ N / 20° 13′ 0″ E

This means we are above the polar circle, in an eternally frozen country, where the summer is full of light, and the winter is darkness.

I came here to participate in an adventure run called Fjallevan Classic. Its a trek along Kungsledan, a famous long distance trek that was used for centuries by the kings tax collectors, when they came to gather goods from the Lap people for the king far away in Stockholm. Its 110 kilometers with backpack and tent, and its on time.

I came here, because I dreamt of this run since the first time I heard about it. My kids told me:

- Mamma, go for gold!

This means, that I have to walk the trek in less than 72 hours.

When I am getting ready in the start area, I wonder what I am doing here. I like my mountains with silence, contemplation. But what is this, a crowd of people, 200 trekkers preparing to walk, and that is only the second start group. During the next 3 days, 2000 trekkers will pass trough the start area, and fill up the beautiful trail like a colorful slowly moving snake.

But this feeling of regret only lasted the first couple of hours. Soon the trek was really fantastic.

I liked the challenge – see how fast you can walk a specific distance, carrying everything you need to survive with you into the mountains – food, gas, tent …
The high North is insanely beautiful, the sky is so clear, absolutely no civilization, and these fantastic shapes of mountains and valleys, lakes blinking like jewels.
It was a hard trek for me – at moments I felt like crying – my feet hurt from blisters, and I had too put on so many compeeds, that there was no room for the foot left in my shoes. And I really, really hated my shoes the last 30 kilometers, and decided it was time to let them go on retirement after 10+ years of service (at the time of this writing I am the happy owner of a new pair of Meindl boots).

When the walking was too hard, the road too long and lonely, I discovered that it always helps to remember to breathe, and walk with the breath. One step at a time, and you eventually get everywhere.

Repeating like a mantra:
- This is your dream, you wanted to do this, and you can do this. Right now, you are living your dream.
I was alone, I wanted to do this challenge alone,  so I had to talk to myself in my head, too keep walking when every stone at the side of the road looked so comfy to rest on.
It taught me something about, that I am  the only one person responsible for realizing my dreams, sometimes it can be hard, but with enough motivation I can do it. But I am also the only person responsible for not realizing my dreams, if I stop motivating myself, nobody will reach my goals for me.

When I arrived at the goal, the official time was 53 hours. As I approached the target, I was surprised to see people clapping at me. Such a warm, happy feeling overwhelmed me, tears fled on my face, I must have walked the last few steps on air. They gave me a drink, and a golden medal, and I knew I have made it!

The night comes, a folk music band comes and start playing lively A big festive party, everybody clad in hiking gear, pocketed trousers, fleece shirts, people hang around the tents and the goal area, clapping everybody in. The music is faster and faster, soon people are dancing, whirling, jumping. I am dancing on the table, I am dancing with a boy, and another, and another, it start raining trough the whole in the roof, but we dont mind, we keep dancing  too the wild, crazy folk music.

- Why are you so happy? –  I asked Krister, my new friend.

- I am on a drug. The Fjallrevan Classic drug – he replied.

Who would believe that this lapp-kota was full of tired wanderers, that had the weariness from 110 km trekking trough rough terrain in their legs?

What a different mountain experience.

I am 34 years old. I have never ever been on a real interrail trip, with sleeping bag and foam matress slowly rolling and rocking trough Europe. Each year a new summer comes, the train stations fill up with young people with big backpacks and even bigger dreams.

Each summer I was dreaming of going too. But I couldnt, cirumstances were never auspicious.  At some point the young people stopped looking at me as “young”, and together with this change in perception the dream faded slowly away.

Until this summer. 2010.

On my daily commute to work, I have been passing a poster every morning “F*ck the plane, go Interrail“.

Power of marketing?

I bought an Interrail ticket. The best kind – one month of continuous travel – total freedom, no restrictions. And one for my 15 year old son as well, whom I managed to convince to go with his old mamma on a holiday, that involves changing lots of trains.

This is how a magic adventure started, that took us from Scandinavia to the Orient, and back, filled all senses, and left an impression of Europe as a single landscape, interconnected by culture, languages, family ties, rail roads, power lines, long black stretches of asphalt and fields of corn and wheat and sunflowers.

We went as far as we could go – to Istanbul in Turkey – and then came all the way back to the North.

It was a trip of many discoveries …

In search of European Longdistance Walking Path E3

I have a special love for long roads and paths that wind, spanning its own reality, leading a wanderer trough villages and cities, trough space and trough time, in a series of arrivals and departures, on a journey that quickly becomes internal as well as external. A couple of years ago walking the Camino de Santiago left a strong imprint on my mind and my feet. Where can I have more walking magic?

The European Union has a webpage, with so called Longdistance Walking Paths. I found one called E3. I dont know why I fell in love with it.

Maybe it was the one with blank spots on the map? Maybe because it starts in Istanbul – the easternmost possible corner of Europe, and runs across culture, countries and history, all the way to Santiago de Compostella in Spain, the westernmost corner of our continent.

Maybe as a preparation to walk this fantastic route one day, I had this romantic idea of tracking down the eastern (blank, uncharted) part of E3 by train, and spending a few days here, a few days there, hiking the most scenic parts.

The E3 goes roughly like this:

• Turkey – Bulgaria – Romania – Hungary – Slovakia – Poland – Germany – France – Spain.

Given a non-existent amount of information, like a map of Europe with a winding line, no travel accounts, blogs or description, I thought we can just go along the winding line, and try to find a path. Having choosen thecountries, I did a little bit of planning by looking for nice Couchsurfing hosts in each of these countries. And I thought that you can always buy a better map, ask people around, and hear more about the trail once in a given country.

How do you pick whom to meet of the thousands and thousands of possibilities? You dont pick, just trust that you will meet exactly whom you are supposed to meet:

David, an active himalayist from Budapest, that happened to be gone, but left os directions to his yurt.

Georgi, a construction engineer from Bulgaria, that dreams of standing on the highest point of each european country.

Kubilay, a security engineer from Turkey, that understands how to link psychology with the war on terror and information security into a bunch of cool new ideas.

Let me admit it at once. We didn’t find the E3. But we found so much else, that it didnt matter. E3 is for walking, anyway.

Hungary

I was really struck by the beauty of Budapest Keleti, the Eastern train station. Like a temple of progress, like a belief in a better future, created by steel, rail, and working hands. 9am, crawling out of a delayed sleeper train, sweaty and weary by 48 hours of travel.

The day before I was sipping a Mojito toes buried in the sand of a river-beach-bar in Eastern Berlin, close to the Gallery and whats left of the Berlin Wall.

The day before that I was sipping a capuccino at Nyhavn, a historic port  in Copenhagen, trying to get a hectic work week to disappear, and tune into the concept of holiday and adventure.

First things first. Money, bathroom, luggage store, food.

Beautifull secession architecture, the Fos, termal bath.

Stroll around, look at how Buda and Pest mirror each other.

What kind of money do we need here?

We follow the classic route of the Orient Express.

Ours is worn down and shabby, but we are rolling.

Hungary.  Serbia. Bulgaria. Turkey.

In 36 hours of travel, from leaving Budapest until arriving in Istanbul, we go in and out of the European Union. The language is changing from hungarian to serbian to bulgarian to turkish. Money is changing from Forinth to Dinars to Levi to Lira.

I have to write the exchange rates down on a piece of paper.

Istambul

East meets west over a small glass cup filled with çay.

Bosphorus is spanned by several bridges, and criss crossed by ferries, that carry people from one shore to another.

Haga Sophia and the minarets of the Blue Mosque on one shore, the Galanga tower on the other, a breath of fresh air in the dusty warm city.

We are met on the station by our Couchsurfing host, Kubilay, and he looks nice, and I dont know that he will be such a fantastic friend, such a wonderful addition to my life.

He drives us trough the city, we pass the famous bridge, and we are in Asia. I am a little disappointed, its not allowed to walk there, and stand with one foot on each continent, its a highway with dense traffic, no room for romantic pedestrians.

We are in our hosts spacious apartment, where we are met by Ozan, the house mate, and we drink a cup of çay, looking a bit surprised at each other, still strangers.

But soon we arent strangers anymore, and even trough the boys are busy with work during the day, the nights are ours and fill quickly with laughter, and joy, and sheer happiness. A few days later I discover,  that what I thought a cliche is so true, and happened to us –  we were picked up from the stations by a stranger, when we left, it hurt because we were leaving a friend.

Our hosts give us directions, and everyday we go exploring this vibrant city, with its eternal clash of culture. The turkish flag is so proud, it is waving in the wind from every imaginable importan position, the red background and the moon. The city is crowded, the traffic jams are traditional, every word and concept has a deeper meaning.

Our hosts play a traditional turkish instrument called baglama, and my son is soon hooked into learning a simple tune. We learn lots of concepts about nazar, intuition, soul – and about hospitality. The words are so complicated, almost nothing is recognizable from other languages I know, and I have a hard time sticking a few courtesities to my brain.

But we have patient teachers. We leave after having stayed longer than originally planned, and with a brand new baglama strapped to the backpack.

Definitely the most amazing thing about Turkey is its people.

Bulgaria – enchanted by the mountains

We are in Devin. Rodopi mountains are lush green, full of herbs, birds, bees, smells.

Farming is done with the power of back and hand, horse carriages move with dignity up the winding mountain roads.  We go exploring into the wild country side, discover a termal swimming pool, and get lost on a pretty easy trail. When we climb up to the top, we see the country around us, we are pretty high, its wild, isolated. Range after range of mountains spans the horizon, everthing covered by green vegetation, and far far away gray-violet shapes mark the tallest mountains in Bulgaria.

Georgi, such a beautiful human being, full of dreams and determination is here in the little town of Devin to build a dam. We laugh that its a long flashmob, a thousand men came, spent 5 years building a dam, and will soon go away.

Learning, sharing, giving. That is what Couchsurfing is about.

Istambul take two

Back to civilization after a wonderfull time spent in the mountains. We bumble with bus from Bansko to Sofia, find the Central Train Station, and have a long look at the list of train departures, in all directions, everything written in the cyrillic alphabet.

We can go there. Or there. Or there. We had plans of going to Romania, we have left Istanbul.

At least we tried to leave, because we find out that we have to go back to our new turkish friends. An invisible power is pulling us back, and soon we are in the little glass booth that sells international seat reservations. Friendship has its demands.

The woman has such an unintersted face when she tells me, that I cant go to turkey because  I am a woman, and the train has only reservations left for men.

- No problem.

No, no, you cant go.

- But I want to go to Istanbul.

Cant, cant be done. Only for men.

The feminist inside me wakes up. This is gender discrimination! We are inside the European Union, where my right to free movement is restricted because of gender. I decide to tell this unparticipating lady, that I want to report the incident to the police.

- Little english, little english.

But in the end she produces a ticket. I can go – my son is a bit worried.

- Mamma, maybe you have to wear a fake moustache? Otherwise everybody can see that you are a lady.

We roll trough Bulgaria, a full moon is accompanying us, spilling a flood of white light on the corn fields, the roads, the power lines.

Everything is so connected, we move along lines planned by others, new roads built on old ones, for thousands of years people have moved on this road, like a river.

The ceremony of getting the right stamp in the passport at the Bulgarian – Turkish border is repeating itself, just as entertaining and surreal as the previous time.

And in the morning we are back in Istanbul, the city-desert full of houses, the horizon cut into pieces with tall minarets from all directions.

Back together with our two new friends, more sightseeing, more museums.

A full moon is shining for us on our night walks.

There is more of the singing, playing, laughing, nagre, rake – turkish people know how to enjoy life.

All the way back

I am talking with one of the room mates in the sleeper, a middle aged lawyer from Argentina, and I discover that 1o minutes, talking non-fluently in spanish, you can drill down to core of thing, the essence of life, and purpose in life. We are like naked to each other, and seeing the reflection of oneself in the eyes of the other brings a new clarity to the understanding.

We are talking about love, about divorcing, about integrity.

The Argentinians leave us in Sofia, the train is running late, we cant leave it to power shop some food supplies, so we ask them to do a favor, and they come back from the food run with new supplies of chips and ice tea.

The next new friends in the sleeper room is a couple thats romantically in love, two jewish-russian-american college students reunited after a year of studying abroad and self-realization. We make lists of countries we should love and hate, its a competition, the couple with the longest hate list will loose the game.

- Germany, Russia, Gypsies, …

- Aussies, Mexicans, …

Time flows, we pass a border, stamping game, passport control, and the dicrete 3 men in suits, that slip a bunch of money into the pocket of the controller. Its the only compartment that doesnt get a thorough check.

We have left the European Union, and rolled into Serbia.

The trail is winding trough mountains, high faces rise on both sides and shadow the sun. Its grey rocks, emptiness, a hard land to live in, a hard land to fight for.

The train pulls into the station of Nis. Serbian railways havent discovered the concept of a restaurant car, but they will change the engine, and we have a little less than 10 minutes to make a food run. With a loudly beating heart and using hand gestures and a mix of polish/english we make a quick order of two gigantic hamburgers with freshly grilled meat the size of my plate at home. I forget that I am semi-vegetarian, and enjoy the sight. Breathless from running back we are at the coach just in time for departure.

We keep rolling, the sun is lower and lower, the turkish train conductor pays us a lot of small visits, he gives us tea, and fruit, we show each other family pictures and talk in a mixture of sign language, and the few turkish words, that we managed to learn.

The train creeps trough Serbia, and is unbelievably sloooow, but we learn from the turkish conductor, that this is a record trip, we are only a couple of hours late, and not the usual 18. Its dark outside when we finally pull in to the station in Belgrade.

- Train to Budapest?

- It left 3 hours ago!

- When is the next one?

- Tomorrow!

We have to admit it, we are stuck here in Belgrade.

A couple of desperate phone calls isnt enough to arrange an emergency-couch, and we decline the conductors kind offer of letting us sleep in the train. Instead,  we check in for the night in the youth hostel thats just opposite the train station. 6 Euro for a dorm bed and  hot shower after such a long train ride – thats gooood value.

Smiles come back on the tired faces, and stay there until we discover lice in our hair – the seats were suspiciously looking in the sleeper from previous night.

So we have to find a pharmacy-after-dark, and a restaurant, and try to find the main walking street, and also do some sightseeing, now that we are here.

So strange to be in a city that has been at war not so long ago, now its vibrant and modern, full og highrise building, glam shops, fashion and open air cafes.

Back in the hotel we improvize some lice-extermination attack with plastic bags and a chemical potion that has a very acid smell, and gives tears in the eyes just from bein near it. My son goes to sleep, but I cant resist the tempation of joining a happy party of people sitting on the balcony, overlooking the roofs of Belgrade, sipping wine.

They are so amazed, that I am here just by coincident, moving on the very next morning.

Warszawa Rising

After 48 hours of hardcore train travel, we arrive in Warsaw Central. We have an unmovable deadline with history, that my son doesn’t want to miss.

Its August 1.

A day full of emotions in the city of Warsaw.

The anniversary of the Warszawa Rising.

During II World War, in 1944, when the russian red army was camping on the left hand bank of the Vistuala river, a desperate military action started in Warsaw. For 63 days thousands of young boys and girls participated in a desperate effort to liberate the city, and threw out the german oppressor. Really not armed with weapons, but with songs and love for the homeland. The new untrained soldiers were beaten, shot, deported. The city was burned down to the ground, the population carried away on trains to unknown destinations. Unbelievable loss of life, of everything that was beautiful. Warszawa has been rebuilt, but the old one is gone forever.

We go together to the military cemetery, Powazki, to participate in the memorial.

Exactly at 1700 the traffic stops, and every driver in the city makes a long noise with the car horn. The infernal sounds go on and on, everyone knows, that  it was exactly at this hour 61 years ago, that the fightings started.

- We are proud that you dared.

-We remember you, that you died fighting for our freedom.

-You didn’t win – but we admire your courage.

Red-white flags, red-white flowers, red-white ribbons.

A sea of solemn faces, in deep thoughts.

North, north, north

Next day comes, and I am going further north.

From Warszawa to Berlin, we pass fields of wheat, and small villages, I pass the time practicing my few japanese words with three wonderfull ladies that were in Poland to play Chopin. Japanese love Chopin.

In Berlin i try to buy a ticket for the sleeper train to Sweden, but there are none left. I ask the train conductor, but he says there are none left. I decide to stick around the train anyway, because I have set my mind on going to Sweden. Another woman with a backpack looks like she is doing the same thing. Combined magic of two determined female travelers works, and the train masters hushes us into the train. I share the tiny cubicle with Margita, she is returning home from a circuit of Mont Blanc.

We discuss the different sizes of our backpacks, compare shoes and blisters, what a fabulous meeting on platform 26 in Berlin Hauptbahnhoff. When we wake up, we are in Sweden.

I have to switch trains in Lund, a hurried hug to Margita, and I have 1 hours to drink a cappucino, and see the famous Lund cathedral.

Cathedrals are so inspiring – this effort of thousands of uneducated people, that made them dream and transcend from stones and mortar into a world of timeless beauty.

Next train goes to Stockholm. Like the last frontier of civilization, Stockholm is the city where I always spend time between trains running around for last minute shopping – fuel for the mountain stove, new trekking socks.

The next train, from Stockholm to Kiruna is full of people dressed for the fields, backpacks, boots, light in their eyes.

I share the appartment with 3 old friends, they invite me to their meal of cheese, pears, bread and wine. We make mixed english-swedish conversation, and go north, north, north.

Sweden is full of woods, unending stretches of dark green woods.

The sky is different, higher, lighter, the air is cooler. It doesnt really get dark that night. I lay in my berth, and I think that its time to get ready for the next challenge.

A challenge of a 110 km adventure run in Lapland, a frozen country above the polar circle, the Fjellrevan Classic 2010.

The interrail ticket is due to expire. End of one adventure, a new one is beginning. But thats the next story …

Mother, brothers, sister, kids, husband …

Highlighst from the 3 weeks: 

Fabulous villa on Phuket

Aikido, wild elephant, snorkelling, driving around on scooters

Sea kayaking in Phang Nga bay

Rock climbin in Railey, and the coolest beach

Ko Lanta – diving, muslims, quiet, getting lost, elephants

Ko Hai – picture perfect paradise, and incredibly friendly owner

My favorite Computer Science book publisher, the Pragmatic Programmers, have launched a Write-the-book-you-always-thought-you-will-write-in-a-month-competition.

Well – I had this plan for quite som time – that I will write a book for them. Well, several books actually.

Now, it looks like I have to do it – I am taking up the challenge of PragProWriMo!

User Driven

In my professional career, which covers from research work at a university trough consultancy work and participating in various agile teams, trough the role as Architect in govermental standartization projects I had to work with actual users. Even more, it was not enough just to work with them, or deliver software that will easy their life … Oh, no, no we had to extract their clever user-like-ness into proper project requirements to finish with software that really roars. The belief is that the user actually have to participate in the design, conceptual work, innovation.

Contrast this with the error 404 error – you know, the one that sits 40 cm from the screen. Or what about the stability antipattern discovered by Michael Nygaard called, well … users [?].

Or what about … ?

I have managed to learn how to handle this important engagement successfully – and even have fun doing it.

So – my book will be about Users

Stay tuned.

For me, JAOO is the event of the year in the danish software development community.

Last year the buzz was all about functional programming. This years buzz?

Somewhere between cloud computing and self-improvement, combined with pessimistic note

Shu-ha-ri

The best talk was Keith Braithwaters “Techniques That Still Work no Matter How Hard We Try to Forget Them”. He calls himself Old School – old enough to have seen 2 of the 7-year cycles in software development.

Much to peoples amusement, Keith started by announcing, that if IT was a person, It would be diagnosed with
•  ADHD
•  Retrograde amnesia
•  OCD

Things we got right? Nobody has never been as productive as in Smaltalk. 21 years ago. And still is.

There was once a thing called System Analysis … Anyway, somethings wrong with the UML diagrams.

Instead, we should look into how Engineers model:

• Models are useful for what they leave out
• Faster, cheaper than building a prototype
• Models Answer Questions – more quickly and easily than the real thing would

UML diagrams dont adhere to any of these principles …

Architecture Visualization

Michele Lanza , from University of Lugano, Switzerland had a fantastic talk about architecture visualization. Code is text – but we are visual beings. The proper visualization tool should enable us to tell the stories behind the software.

We all know that we should build habitable systems, and that the patterns movement comes from (urban) architecture. CodeCity is the “Habitable” metaphor on stereoids – software packages are converted into cities, classes into buildings, with one floor pr method.

Organizational patterns

This was my moment of enlightenment. I attended the tutorial by Gertrud&Cope about “Fine tuning Scrum”. As well as we have software architecture patterns, deployment patterns, concurrency patterns and … dating patterns, organizations have patterns as well.

Pick a set of them – organize them into a pattern language – and you have Scrum.

Pick another set – and you have XP.

Pick another …

This explains why the thing works – there are patterns underneath.

This made me thinking how this connects to the goals of Enterprise Architecture …

Deliberate practice

Mary Popkins had a fantastic lecture about how we can transform principles of deliberate practice, into the context of software development.

Malcolm Gladwell quotes the 10.000 rule in his book “Success Factors”, and Mary quotes the same research.

10000 hour rule

Any talent which follows deliberate practice for 10.000 hours becomes a Master.

Therefore, we should strive to nurture environments, that let our talents develop under deliberate practice. This requires:

• Find a teacher / mentor
• Practice repeatedly
• Obtain immediate feedback
• Focus on pushing the limits
• Practice regularly & intensely

But distributed agile – whats that? After having met the dutch-indian company Xebia at JAOO 2008, which claims to have mastered the tricks and secrets of Distributed Agile Development, so that a team can be distributed around the globe, and still experience this very special atmosphere of hyperproductivity, I was intrigued and determined to find out.

Co-location

I happened to bump into the Indian Holi Holiday while co-locating

This should be obvious – you need  in the beginning of a project to see  each other in the eyes, the team has to be formed – thats called co-location.

We have a small project, 3 developers in total, so I buy a ticket to Delhi, and get a business visa in the passport.

The first thing that strikes me is the long office hours.

Second experience is the xtreme service.  For a poor european, used to ‘self-service’ the indian way of delivering service feels overwhelming. I counted over 100 people employed, just to make my morning commute to the office painless.

Third experience is a quiet yoga studio, with drop in-classes all the evenings.

I am thrilled to meet the team, we have been conversating a couple of times previously via Skype – it is such a heart warming feeling finally to meet them. After day 1 we have a good overview of the architecture, have filled walls, whiteboard and glasspanes with the mandatory UML diagrams, updated the electronic backlog and are ready to start work.

People are smiling, engaged, inquisitive. I am surprised by their level of proactiveness, and intelligent inquiries, foreseeing possible problems weeks in advance.

The team spirit starts to soar – yes, we can do it.

XP over the wire

All good, we have been co-located, but the whole idea behind distributed agile is … well, distributed.

Back in Denmark, days are passing by in a productive buzz.

I see a message blinking from Sunil. He is stuck and needs help on some configuration issue. We exchange code snippets back and forth, after a few minutes the problem is solved. Next day he has generalized the solution, and helped unstuck me.

Skype chat is on all the time when we work.

Each morning we have a video session on Skype to get updates, and plan next days work. The time difference gives the Indians a head start on the days tasks.

After a couple of days we discover, that we have accelerated development speed, and actually surpassed the sprints goals.

You wouldn’t be able to tell from velocity charts, that this team has been distributed.

Learnings

• Things take time.
• Accommodate for Sprint 0
• Set up good facilities for Skype calls … yes, Skype makes it possible
• Try!

It looks like the theme of today is going to be clouds. I have spent the week on cloud computing, dreaming in the clouds and word … (yes, you guessed it!) clouds …

MathMagicians do their first jump into the cloud

I have been looking around after a good solution for setting up tests servers in a painfree way. I found a great one!

Its called slicehosting.

Basically, you rent a virtual server – it lives somewhere in the cloud, fighting for CPU time on a real machine with a bunch of ther servers. The IP adress is real enough – you are the root and totally in charge – and the financial commitments are kind of ridiculously low – you can pay 20 usd/month for the smallest slice – no strings attached.

I think this is a perfert setup for small it-companies that would like to deliver great software, and need the infrastructure of version control, continuous integration, and testservers. In this way, you don’t have to invest a lot of money, can always expand and upgrade your slices as you go on.

Incredible – but its working. I feel it like if the world just changed.

Beaaaaaaautifull Word Clouds

Wordcloud generated by wordle for this blog.

I was searching the internet for a flex component to generate nice looking wordclouds. I am working on a prototype version of a job search engine – and among other tricks – we will use word clouds to categorize job offers. I stumbled upon a site, that takes a text or URL as input – and generates the most beautiful wordclouds. They have designed a layout algorithm, that utilizes the space in a way, that is aesthetically very pleasing.  Unfortunately, the wordle guys didn’t leak out the algorithm – I spent half of the night trying to compute a simple heuristic for doing similar things in Flex … I don’t think its actually needed by the project, but who can resist this beauty of words?

Wordle layouts the size of the word to be proportional to the frequency – I also spent some time wondering about other functions than linear for reflecting the frequency. I believe a normal distribution will also look quite nice.

All the computations reminded me of an old Calculus 101 problem:

Given a rectangle composed of other rectangles, each of which has at least one side of rational length, proove that the big rectangle also has at least one side of rational lengt.

My head in the clouds

I spent my previous weekend at what must be called the most cozy Java Conference in the world. Hanging out at the beautifull Hindsgavl Castle with the danish JUG (Javagruppen) at the annual conference was an amazing experience. We weren’t so many – mingled together and had lots of fun. I enjoyed Bruce Eckels “Hybridizing Java” talks – and was even lucky to get a copy of his book – with a sweet cartoon dedication. Neal Ford impressed me with his talk where he compared Ruby an Grails  – so similar and so fiercely hostile to each other. My own talk was about both DCI and Scala – and I decided afterwards that just one of the themes would be enough for a talk.   All to soon the conference was over, I was picked up by my family, and we enjoyed a stroll in the castle park.

Hindsgavl Castle - the place for the annual Danish JUG Conference

While I was at the conference, I got confirmed an exciting opportunity  – I have been hired by ITU to teach a course called Saas …  the short hand Saas does not stand for Software as a service … but it could.

It is a part time position, which suits me perfectly! I can still commit myself to all kind of exciting stuff in my company, and once a week I will be  doing my best to impress young, sensitive minds …  Since I stopped teaching at SDU, I have been missing the academia life, and – I am looking so much forward to teach my new students everything important there is to know about system design and security … actually I have always wanted to be given the opportunity to put my fingerprint on a course, that will teach about good software design. What happens with the .java file between the editor and a webapplications with real users. What good quality is, why that gives us good security, and what goals we as programmers should strive to achieve. Of course inspired by my favourite computer science book – Pragmatic Programmer.

Anyway – I will be spending some time in the clouds, trying to design the perfect course plan.

New Year is here, smoke calming down after a couple of nights of excessess with fireworks (and some other stuff too).

I think tonight, the sky will be clear, and the air fresh again.

After lazying around with my family during the Christmas Break, its time to actually work again.

Preparing lecture for  JG.DKs annual conference

I am preparing my lecture for the Danish Java Groups Annual Conference, it will be held at Hindsgavl Castle on my Island (=Funen) in Denmark. The program is here.

My talk will be about a new language – Scala – which is bytecode compactible with Java, and runs smoothly on the JVM. I claim that Scala is going to give us back Object Oriented progamming – without having to do some of the awkward workarounds, that java is forcing us to do.

Out of the host of new languages that run on the JVM, like JRuby, Groovy and Jython – I really think Scala stands out.

What is so special about Scala?

It is a functional language. It is an object oriented language. It is a type strong language – exactly like Java.

It has traits – an ability to add methods to an interface – a language feature that we have been missing since

It is pure and well designed. Invented by Martin Odersky – who designed the Java generics.

Eventually, Java 7 or 8 will be patched with closures, and traits. But those will be patches. I am right now reading a book by Odersky, Spoon and Venners – Programming in Scala – highly recommendable.

Your hello world in Scala

Curious?

Lets try Scala out.

First, lets get the convenient Eclipse plugin (you need Eclipse 3.4 + to make it work) from its update site:

http://www.scala-lang.org/scala-eclipse-plugin

Select New>Scala Project.

This gives you a … Scala project.

Now in the src folder, add a Scala Application (runnable):package application

object HelloWorld extends Application with FirstTrait{
override def main(args: Array[String]) {
println(“Hello, world from Scala!”)
println(“From trait ” + greet(“world”))
for(arg<-args)
print(arg+” “)

println(main(null))
}
}

Make your first trait:package application

trait FirstTrait {

def greet(name:String):String = “Hello “+name

}

Run the application (Run > Scala Application), to see the output:

Hello, world from Scala!
Now – hello from trait Hello world

Thats it – hello world in Scala.

Screenshot from Eclipse: Hello World in Scala

For about one year, I have been working as an independent software consultant – primary helping out with enterprise architecture, java coding and teaching from time to time.

I was tired of the somewhat headless mode you are in when you work on your own as an it-consultant. Committed to projects, no time to look forward, no idea whats next, to put it short – no strategy.

I felt like I have hit a performance wall – you can’t sell your time more than 120% – so once I have done that, there is no growth – and thats kind of boring.

The company has outgrown the basement

Instead of being a one-woman-company, I decided to take a step forward: I have decided to move out from my basement into a start-up hotel, Stjerneskibet in Odense. From that moments things have been happening fast … we are 4 people now – in an office that I rented last month – thinking its only for myself (=crowded!).

I thought – I should be able to do it better. There must be a service I can sell, instead of selling myself as a person. I thought for some time about what MathMagicians should be doing.

One again I am busy writing a business plan …

What are MathMagicians going to do?

We are in the process of making a great agile java consultancy house in Odense – committed to help with doing Web 2.0 enterprise projects.

We want to help companies focus on their processes – apply agile methods to improve communication and efficiency – help them make their software easier, funnier, faster.

We can help with software architecture – from providing ping-pong with the architect in charge, trough making a roadmap of future changes, and how to get there, to throwing a task-force into battle, that can help to become test-driven, by washing away old project sins, setting up a testharness – and following up to make sure

We can help make them ready for outsourcing – and supply MathMagicians from around the world to help get the job done – on time.

We call these services: Future Insurance, Rent-an-Architect, yourEman.

Have you bought your future insurance?

- So what are MathMagicians going to do?

- We will sell future-insurances!

- We will try to infest you with the Test Bug

- We will help making offshore development a success story.

PS. We had some press coverage today (in danish)