Sylvain Wallez


Random musings of a busy geek

Eclipse Maven plugin: counterproductive

When I started working on a new project a few months ago, we decided to use Maven 2 as we were to use lots of open source projects. I only used Ant previously, and it seemed Maven would help me to manage all the dependencies, direct and indirect. Sure, your ...


Using MacOS X fonts with OpenOffice on a MacBook Pro

After more than 15 years using Microsoft Office (I started with Word 1.0 on a Macintosh SE), I decided to live without it on my new MacBook Pro. NeoOffice, the OpenOffice port that uses the Mac's graphical system is not yet available for Intel Macs, so I installed ...


Google SketchUp

A few days ago, Google has released SketchUp, an amazing 3D-modelling application that allows you to build a nice representation of your house in no time. SketchUp was developed by a company Google bought 2 months ago. This is certainly cool, but the question is why... Why did Google bought ...


MacBook has arrived!

Yeah! I've been using a new shiny MacBook Pro since last Thursday. And, well... it's so common to say that now: it's fast! It's very fast! I opted for the 2GHz CPU, with 2 Gb of RAM and a speedy 7200 rpm 100 Gb hard drive ...


A new chair for Cocoon

After being the Cocoon PMC chair for nearly two years, following Stefano and Steven, it was time for someone else to wear this hat. There were 3 excellent candidates, and the community voted Reinhard Pötz as the new chair! Contragulations, Reinhard! I'm sure you'll do a good job!


Free Maven 2 book

Just when I was contemplating ditching Maven 2 for my current project because of too much undocumented black magic, its developers release a free book, "Better Builds with Maven". We'll see if this helps me to understand the magic :-)


Accessible maps

A List Apart has an interesting article explaining how to build web pages containing highly graphical maps while still being accessible to the visually impaired. Lots of CSS trickery, but the result is there and is nice, when Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps are definitely not accessible. Now have a ...


JBQ, alias "John Banana Qwerty"

My dear colleague Jean-Baptiste enters the blogosphere. Welcome J-B! The name of his blog, "John Banana Qwerty", has a story behind it: a few months ago, someone from the US called us in search for Cocoon support. Jean-Baptiste answered, and wanted to spell his email-address, . He didn't knew ...


JBoss: is it worth 350 M$?

So RedHat acquires JBoss. I actually don't really care, but what's really surprising me is the amount: 350 million dollars and 70 more under certain conditions. What assets does JBoss have that justify this amount? Some publicly-available source code that anybody can fork? A bunch of talented developers ...


Ajax: beware of crap (again)

A few months ago I've been pointing out an article showing "how easy it is to add Ajax to your app", actually containing lots of pitfalls and guiding readers to "solutions" that will lead them to pull their hairs rather sooner than later. This happens again, with "Implementing Mutual ...