February 24, 2004
Eclipse Forms!
The Eclipse Forms project has just been released offering a new HTML style look and feel for SWT widgets. Nice stuff :)
February 23, 2004
Surfing in Phillip Island!
Shelly Beach, sunday afternoon
Wollamai Beach, sunday afternoon
Arrived back late last night from a weekend trip with a mate of mine to Phillip Island in southern Victoria. Phillip Island, known for it's Fairy Penguins and Motorcycle Grand Prix track is also blessed with many excellent surf beaches! (map)
On Saturday we toured various beaches such as Wollamai, Smiths, Shelly's, Cat Bay, Flynn, etc, checking the conditions. It was amazing for me to see how different the surf conditions were around the island. Wollamai for example, was totally out of control, with a large swell pounding the bay into wild white water. Smiths Beach was better, and there was even a surf competition on while we were there which was great to watch.
After checking Shelly's though, we settled there. Shelly Beach is a protected from the ocean wind by a point wrapping around the bay. The swell comes around the point and into the bay - over the weekend it was one of the cleanest surf spots on the island. Swell size was around 5/6ft although it changed with the tide. Had some excellent rides there.
Sunday we visited the same beach to find a swarm of people there, Cat Bay was also pumping, but since it was a left break we surfed Shelly's again to get some more right hand breaks in. :)
Looking forward to getting some more surfs in before heading back to Germany!
February 19, 2004
Debian apt-get & XFree4.3!
This morning I did my usual, daily apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade on my Debian Sid system, and was greeted with the news that XFree86 4.3 has finally made it into 'unstable'. XFree86 4.3 has been in an 'experimental' apt repository for a while now, but now it's great to finally see it move into 'unstable', and on it's way to 'testing' and finally 'stable' (for those non-Debian folk out there, 'experimental', 'unstable', 'testing', etc are all names of package repositories).
Debian's APT system totally rocks the planet. It's so easy to upgrade a system's packages the latest stand with only a few simple commands, even while the system is running.
On a side note, it looks like Debian has joined the list of Linux distributions that are refusing to distribute XFree86 4.4, alongside Mandrake, RedHat, and others due to the recent XFree86 license change. I hope this gets sorted out soon, as it's only hurting the open source and free software community.
February 16, 2004
Eclipse M7 available!
Eclipse M7 has been released, download it here.
Several new features are in this release like:
* Improved exception discovery (select an exception in a 'throws' clause and the methods throwing that exception will be highlighted in that method) (screenshot)
* Interfaces in package type hierarchy (screenshot)
* Improved GUI (more work in progress from M6) (screenshot)
Plus lots more described here
February 15, 2004
Wakeboarding Weekend!
Just arrived back from a wakeboarding weekend away in Tocumal, which is a town north of Melbourne just along the Victorian, New South Wales border on the Murray River.
Went up friday night with Mark, a good mate of mine from work, and met up with some of his friends when we arrived. Accomodation was easy - camping under the stars along the riverside.
I've never wakeboarded before, but after watching the others I noticed several similarities between it and Surfing, and when I had a go on saturday it only took a few tries before I was able to stand up and start having some fun, I really enjoyed being able to surf the wake of the boat :)
Mark also had his Zodiac out in the river which was heaps of fun, especially when making jumps off the wakes of other boats! :)
Camping out by the river was really fun as well, we had 40 degree weather both on Saturday and Sunday, and had all sorts of interesting experiences, like dodging falling branches off trees, having Kangaroos coming into the camp at night, midnight swims to cooll off, and lots more :)
I'm totally exhausted now after being towed along behind a boat for the weekend, especially my arms from holding the toe rope, but it was a terrific weekend, and looking forward to getting up there again soon!
February 09, 2004
Surfing Weekend!
Just returned last night from a weekend of surfing along the Torquay coastline which was awesome! A good friend of mine Jeff competed in a triathalon in Portarlington on sunday morning, so Jeff, Michael and I drove down to Torquay saturday afternoon for a surf beforehand, stayed overnight in Portarlington and went for another session all day sunday.
Conditions were good, the swell was around 4-6 feet saturday, and 3-5 feet on sunday. Wind was slightly onshore but mostly light, so we had almost glassy conditions which made paddling really easy.
I caught lots of waves and are sunburnt red like a lobster today from it all! but totally stoked about getting back into the water :)
There was one wave in particular that was I really fond of - about 5 feet in size. I caught it with only a few paddle strokes and stood up to take the drop, with only my toes touching the board as I flew down the face of the wave. At the bottom made a sharp right turn back onto the face and surfed along the break into shore. One of those moments which eternally paints a smile onto your face :)