I’ve been getting some good responses to my performance evaluation of embedded databases (see the comments on the article, JavaLobby thread, JoelOnSoftware thread and a thread on TheServerSide). After noticing that I was using HSQLDB with geographical information, David Blasby emailed me about his project, Spatial DB in a Box. This project adds OpenGIS spatial [...]

Don’t worry… it’ll be gone soon. As Prince Charles said: Will it the take the complete dodo-like disappearance of this noble-winged creature to bring us to our senses? We were lucky enough to see these huge graceful birds in New Zealand, both near Dunedin (where HRH was) and off the coast off Kaikoura (where I [...]

There’s an interesting thread which I kicked off on JoelOnSoftware’s forum about a slightly bizarre UI feature in Excel: You have to SHIFT-Click on the Edit menu to make the “Copy Picture…” item appear. Weird…

I’ve finally published my article comparing the performance of three pure-Java, embedded databases and MySQL. Summary: HSQLDB is ridiculously fast and it will be replacing MySQL in my simulation. I’ve submitted links to the article at TheServerSide and JavaLobby, so there might be some interesting discussions there (or there might not, we’ll see if anyone [...]

Using MoinMoin to keep track of research notes and references as part of my PhD.

If you’re a tourist visiting Dublin, read this. Oh, so true.

A simplistic look at the performance of several embedded Java databases

All this talk of axe sharpening got me thinking about distractions in general. I felt it might be a good idea to invent a distraction operator. I’m not quite sure what this operator should look like but, for the moment, I’m going to use ¬. x ¬ y means that x is a distraction from [...]

God, that James Gosling bloke is smart: the big problem with “axe sharpening” is that it’s recursive, in a Xeno’s paradox kinda way: You spend the first two thirds of the time allotted to accomplishing a task actually working on the tool. But working on the tool is itself a task that involves tools: to [...]

James Gosling reflects on the tool building that becomes part of everyday tasks and quotes Abraham Lincoln as saying “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.“. mmm… well, I need to move my simulation away from a client-server database (currently MySQL) and towards [...]