Of course … Shouldn’t all sites be found by google? Isn’t that the problem? Anyhow… I went on and used google fonts at first. Great stuff, although I could do the same in photoshop, I like the fact that search engines can better handle the content. Especially the font previewer is great. Good Work Google.

So I thought about great. What next. A nice Slideshow would be great. reading this post I got a great overview of the good slideshows for jquery. After looking through the examples I came across 2 that achieved exactly what I wanted. nivo-slider just plain rocks. It is configurable, and fast. And it does what it is supposed to do. It shuffles Images in a fancy way.  I used pirobox Extended for a little gallery that is displayed on explanatory pages.

So whenever you have a new Task at hand, check the net, if someone has already achieved and implemented what you need. It saves you a ton of time…

What do I mean by that? Well it is rather easy. I am confronted with co-workers, that do not think like programmers do. Everything we talk about is reduced to the things they know. Not to the potentials that we could achieve. When I explain them what is really possible, they pretend that they understand what I am saying, but in fact they don’t.

Even worse, they talk bad about the idea, because it means big change for them. Even when I tell them, that a SOA would ease their everyday job…

On top of all, we have a consultant, who was there before I took over the apartment, and he wants to stick to the crap he thought of before. He knows nothing about standards and BPEL, instead he implemented his own “Workflow Engine” which has NOTHING to do with a real Workflow Engine.

The hard part is getting the idea across. How to explain, that using an Application Server will cost us money for the licensing, etc.

I have come to the conclusion, that it is important to emphasize on the good things. Have good arguments ready for people that do not think like you do, and that do not want any change.

Get the management on your side. Point out that this is an open standard. It allows you to integrate all those applications, you bought over the years, even the complete legacy ones. The possibilities by using BPEL and a Business Rules Engine are so great, that it is worth all the money. Make sure you get the global message across, and explain why it is important to stop thinking about one single application rather than the system in general.

When you do all that, I believe you will come to the same conclusion as me, and think SOA all the way.

Other than that, I come to realize, that some people have it worse than me. Although I am working pretty long hours at the moment, I saw something very interesting, when I arrived at 6 am the other day, to do some administration tasks on customer systems.

Not very far, we have a fast-food-takeaway. Not something like McD or BK or anything like that. No, something typically german. In Germany we call it Imbissbude. And at 6 am in the morning, it was open, and would have sold fast food. That being not so spectacular, I was working late the other day, and at 9 pm I drove by the same place. And it was still open.

That still being not very interesting, I saw that it was the same woman trying to make a living selling food. She stood in there more than 15 hrs each day. Probably smelling like a deep fryer, and the smell would likely take a year to come finally off. She does that, because nowadays in germany live is hard. There is no golden west anymore. Probably a globalization side effect.

To make her life better I went to eat there. She was from Russia. She said that she came here not so long ago and although it is difficult to learn the language, and the culture, life is much much better than it was in Russia. Hard to believe but true, at least for her.

Sometimes it is good to look around yourself. See how others are living, and maybe you will find, that your life is not so miserable. At least I can say, my 4 kids are healthy, I am building a house, I can buy food for the family, what more can you ask for. Think about it.

Then I bought a Mac Book Pro. Not that that made me a better designer, but I got a hold of itunes. While on Windows I always hated itunes, because I believed it was to overbloated for just listening to music. On the Mac I got a hold of the podcast section and in there I found a Podcast named CSS Tricks. The site is run by Chris Coyier, and that guy is looking at CSS from the right perspective. He is a genius when it comes to understand what to tackle with CSS and when there are other tools that do a better job i.e. jquery.

So if you are a programmer, and want to find out more about how CSS can help your web application, and you are sick of table based Layouts, and forms, then go and check CSS Tricks out. And if yet you still don’t know what CSS based Design Principles can do for you, you should definately go and check CSS Zen Garden out.

housebuilding 2009

At the moment I am building a now house for me and my family.

Despite all the fear I have because all the money that is spent, and the fact I placed my signature under the contracts, I am amazed on how quick the house was built. It was like Lego for adults.

But see for yourself.

Hopefully I will be able to provide visitors with some information about my everyday work, the solutions I found to work best at that time, and maybe someone will be just in the same position I was. Finding a solution to a problem they have at hand.

That is when I will be happy.

So far so good, Let us get it on.

Buddy