Joshua van Aalst’s blog

I just got an automated outgoing call from Vodafone

“Hi i’m Lara,

I’ve recently noticed that you’ve called us at Vodafone and i’d like to help you further.”

The call then went something along the lines of…

Press 1 if your call was answered appropriately
Press 2 if you have futher enquirines
…
Press 0 to hear these options again

What the?

They didn’t say “Press the red end call button to make me go away”.

The only response that call has had on me is to consider cancelling my contract. What a waste of my time and an invasion of privacy.

It’s almost as bad as the internet provider Exetel’s automated technical support number:

“Hi you’ve called Exetel technical support. For all technical support enquiries please email us at support@exetel.com.au”

Up until now ridiculous queues for bakeries have been reserved for places like the Magnolia bakery in New York, where people queue for hours in the freezing cold to buy a cup cake.

That was then! This is now….

The Bourke St Bakery in Sydney’s Surry Hills is changing all that. It’s selection of pastries, muffins and cookies is amazing and they taste delightful. Not your typical Bakers Delight or Brumbies bakeries where the pasteries taste fatty and the bread can taste stale.

The efffect has been so intoxicating on the population of Surry Hills you can now find almost hour long queues outside at all hours of the day.

Check it out. It’s at the corner of Bourke and Devonshire st.

The Sutton City Holden courtesey bus pulled up besides me…. it was a Toyota. wtf?

Over the past decade new end user computing technologies have progressively slowed. Their have been fewer and fewer increases in CPU Ghz and increases in RAM that only matched the increase in it’s requirements by modern software applications. The only major improvement in technology has been the move to multiple (’dual’, ‘quad’) core CPUs. Realistically though most of the average end user applications do not take advantage or require continuous multi processing.

In a move that has completely shocked the industry Dell has released it’s new 13inch laptop XPS M1330.

What makes it so special?

Solid State Hard Drive

The XPS M1330 is the first laptop to offer the new Solid State hard drive technology. Solid State is a hard drive where the storage is stored on flash memory rather than a mechanical device. Solid State hard drives are much much faster in every way than traditional hard drives. As the hard drive is the root cause of slowness in almost every application a performance benefit here will be seen in almost every part of computer useage… when starting the computer, starting applications and running multiple applications at the same time (the page file is faster to access). Not only the above but the drive is also more shock resistant than traditional mechanical drives. Their is a great article on the specifics improvements of the Solid State hard drive here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_disk

LED display

The XPS M1330 is also one of the first laptops to offer a LED display. Over the last decade every laptop has had a TFT display. What is the benefit of this new type of display? It’s thinner and brighter than the traditional TFT displays which means you need less power to get the same level of brightness.

Centrino Pro CPU

The XPS M1330 is also one of the first laptops to sport the new Centrino Pro CPU/chipset. This is the successor to the current Core 2 Duo. The Centrino Pro has a large cache, faster Front Side Bus and more instructions than it’s predecessor. In english? It’s faster.

More of everything

In addition to the above technology breakthroughs the XPS M1330 also sports 4gig of Ram and Wirless N networking.

So what’s the end product like?

With massive improvements in power saving and component size the Dell XPS M1330 weighs only 1.7kg and is the thinnest, lightest and fastest in it’s class. Far far faster than the Mac Book Pro or any other currently available laptop.

What is the community’s response to the new laptop?

For one of the first times in the history of a new product release the Dell XPS M1330 has received rave reviews from every review site on the net. Just search for “Dell xps m1330 reviews”. The only negative feedback I found was that their was a 2 month wait on the laptop due to the ridiculous amounts of back orders!!

Basically BUY THIS LAPTOP!!

Some exciting news on the Tennille front….

1) She is coming back to do WanteD with Gavin.

With both Gavin and Tennille working on WanteD I believe we will see some amazing improvements in this event. Both promoters complement each other well and your regular Thursday night will be bigger and better than ever before.

If you don’t know what WanteD is then check out: WanteD

2) She may be doing some bigger events in the near future.

Keep checking www.joshandfriends.com.au as we are hoping that some new big Trance events might be coming your way shortly.

Cheers,
Josh

Just a quick heads up….

If you are using the above combination and you get the error

“detached entity passed to persist”

This could mean that you are getting a new entity manager not the one in your transaction.

Make sure you do NOT call getEntityManager() but just use entityManager as an instance variable.

Java EE5 will inject the correct entity manager for you to use!

Hope that helps,
Josh

Sorry haven’t written for a while as I am having trouble inserting html code examples BUT something rather cool is the Ferengi rules of acquisition from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Yes I am aware that Star Trek and cool can not be used in a sentence together… anyway check these out!

1. Once you have their money … never give it back.
3. Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.
6. Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.
6. A man is only worth the sum of his possessions. (From Enterprise, episode “Acquisition”; sloppy script-writing, as rule 6 (see above) was already given in DS9)
7. Keep your ears open.
8. Small print leads to large risk.
9. Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
10. Greed is eternal.
13. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.
16. A deal is a deal … until a better one comes along.
17. A contract is a contract is a contract (but only between Ferengi).
18. A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all.
19. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
21. Never place friendship above profit.
22. A wise man can hear profit in the wind.
23. Nothing is more important than your health–except for your money.
27. There’s nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman.
31. Never make fun of a Ferengi’s mother … insult something he cares about instead.
33. It never hurts to suck up to the boss.
34. Peace is good for business.
35. War is good for business.
40. She can touch your lobes but never your latinum.
41. Profit is its own reward.
44. Never confuse wisdom with luck.
45. Expand, or die.
47. Don’t trust a man wearing a better suit than your own.
48. The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
52. Never ask when you can take.
57. Good customers are as rare as latinum — treasure them.
58. There is no substitute for success.
59. Free advice is seldom cheap.
60. Keep your lies consistent.
62. The riskier the road, the greater the profit.
65. Win or lose, there’s always Hyperian beetle snuff.
75. Home is where the heart is … but the stars are made of latinum.
76. Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
79. Beware of the Vulcan greed for knowledge.
82. The flimsier the product, the higher the price.
85. Never let the competition know what you’re thinking.
89. Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits.
94. Females and finances don’t mix.
97. Enough … is never enough.
99. Trust is the biggest liability of all.
102. Nature decays, but latinum lasts forever.
103. Sleep can interfere with profit. (DS9 season 2, episode 7 - “Rules of Acquisition”)
104. Faith moves mountains … of inventory.
106. There is no honour in poverty.
109. Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.
111. Treat people in your debt like family … exploit them.
112. Never have sex with the boss’s sister.
113. Always have sex with the boss.
117. You can’t free a fish from water.
121. Everything is for sale, even friendship.
123. Even a blind man can recognize the glow of latinum.
139. Wives serve, brothers inherit.
141. Only fools pay retail.
144. There’s nothing wrong with charity … as long as it winds up in your pocket.
162. Even in the worst of times someone turns a profit.
177. Know your enemies … but do business with them always.
181. Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.
189. Let others keep their reputation. You keep their money.
192. Never cheat a Klingon … unless you’re sure you can get away with it.
194. It’s always good business to know about new customers before they walk in the door.
202. The justification for profit is profit.
203. New customers are like razortoothed grubworms. They can be succulent, but sometimes they can bite back.
211. Employees are rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them.
214. Never begin a negotiation on an empty stomach.
218. Always know what you’re buying.
223. Beware the man who doesn’t make time for oo-mox.
229. Latinum lasts longer than lust.
236. You can’t buy fate.
239. Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
242. More is good … all is better.
255. A wife is a luxury … a smart accountant is a necessity.
261. A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.
263. Never allow doubt to tarnish your love of latinum.
266. When in doubt, lie.
284. Deep down everyone’s a Ferengi.
285. No good deed ever goes unpunished.
286. [Quark’s rule] When Morn leaves, it’s all over.

Thanks to: www.sjtrek.com/trek/rules/ for the list