For those who are interested: I've uploaded some of my photos of Dublin to my Picasa account.
Friday, 21 December 2007
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
Travelling to Baile Átha Cliath
It's over. *sigh* But it has been the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Last weekend my wife and I traveled to Dublin, it has been my birthday gift for her. It was great, but by far too short. On Friday we flew with Ryanair and used the Aircoach for the transfer from the airport to the city. Out hotel has been the Lansdowne Hotel in the Pembroke Road south of the Grand Canal. It has been a good distance to the city, what's also reflected in the value of estates in our quarter - a row house costs about 2.5 to 3.5 million Euros.
We've done a mix of sightseeing and shopping. It has been fascinating looking at all the pubs on friday evening where so many guests are standing outside on the street and having so much fun. And it was astonishing to see how scantily dressed so many of them were, also many other people on the streets, even if it has been warmer as in Oldenburg. At 7 degrees I've seldom seen somebody wearing just a t-shirt, but in Dublin. Another funny thing has been the habit to walk and talk - using the mobile. Overall we get to know the people in Dublin to be very kindly even when having stress in their job or the streets are absolutely crowded due to the christmas shoppings. They've got an impressive easiness, espicially when crossing red traffic lights. *smile*
The town itself pleases through the diversified architecture. Very noble houses in the Georgian style, many of them with offices or shops in the basement, fascinating cathedrals and churches, parks, modern centres, markets, everything you want. We just didn't know where to look first, and we've only seen a fraction of it. So we'll surely come again for a longer visit to see more.
While we've been shopping Carmen doesn't found what she was looking for. The shops have been too stodged, the prices too high. Instead I've been able to find a nice thing for me. We've visited the Celtic Whiskey Shop in Dawson Street. Here we first found an Auchentoshan filled exactly on Carmens birthday. But 899.99 Euros is not in my typical price range. *giggle* But after that I talked to an employee and told him that I'm normally prefer Scotish malts. He immediately interrupted with "Ah, the better ones." So I asked him why he thinks so. He answered "Because I'm from Scotland." *smile* So he then gave me a malt with an almost Scotish flavour for tasting - the Connemara. That's a peated Irish single malt with a fair price. I'll write my tasting notes later.
The evenings we've been in the Den Bar in our hotel. The meals there are traditional and good and we've had several pints of Guinness - I love it. So we've been really sorry to leave Dublin on Sunday morning, flight plan is flight plan. But as written above the next time we'll stay longer.
We've done a mix of sightseeing and shopping. It has been fascinating looking at all the pubs on friday evening where so many guests are standing outside on the street and having so much fun. And it was astonishing to see how scantily dressed so many of them were, also many other people on the streets, even if it has been warmer as in Oldenburg. At 7 degrees I've seldom seen somebody wearing just a t-shirt, but in Dublin. Another funny thing has been the habit to walk and talk - using the mobile. Overall we get to know the people in Dublin to be very kindly even when having stress in their job or the streets are absolutely crowded due to the christmas shoppings. They've got an impressive easiness, espicially when crossing red traffic lights. *smile*
The town itself pleases through the diversified architecture. Very noble houses in the Georgian style, many of them with offices or shops in the basement, fascinating cathedrals and churches, parks, modern centres, markets, everything you want. We just didn't know where to look first, and we've only seen a fraction of it. So we'll surely come again for a longer visit to see more.
While we've been shopping Carmen doesn't found what she was looking for. The shops have been too stodged, the prices too high. Instead I've been able to find a nice thing for me. We've visited the Celtic Whiskey Shop in Dawson Street. Here we first found an Auchentoshan filled exactly on Carmens birthday. But 899.99 Euros is not in my typical price range. *giggle* But after that I talked to an employee and told him that I'm normally prefer Scotish malts. He immediately interrupted with "Ah, the better ones." So I asked him why he thinks so. He answered "Because I'm from Scotland." *smile* So he then gave me a malt with an almost Scotish flavour for tasting - the Connemara. That's a peated Irish single malt with a fair price. I'll write my tasting notes later.
The evenings we've been in the Den Bar in our hotel. The meals there are traditional and good and we've had several pints of Guinness - I love it. So we've been really sorry to leave Dublin on Sunday morning, flight plan is flight plan. But as written above the next time we'll stay longer.
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
New malts
Even if I didn't had the chance to take part in the last whisky tasting at Kottkamp in November there are some whisky news. The first one is that a colleague bought a cask of Arran - a bourbon cask, first fill - that will be bottled in 2017! Additionally he made share certificates for it, each valued with 5%, and sold them to interested members of our local whisky community. Needless to say that I've got mine. So we now have to celebrate a countdown party each year until we'll receive our about 11 bottles of finest straight single cask. I allready can't await it.
The second news is the 13th malt in my collection, a MacPhail's Christmas Malt. It's a nice 40% Speyside malt, with flavours of vanilla, fruits, and spice. The finish is warm and round and slightly smoky. Maybe it's not the greatest malt but it's a very good value for the money.
The second news is the 13th malt in my collection, a MacPhail's Christmas Malt. It's a nice 40% Speyside malt, with flavours of vanilla, fruits, and spice. The finish is warm and round and slightly smoky. Maybe it's not the greatest malt but it's a very good value for the money.Monday, 10 December 2007
No luck
Yesterday a friend of mine who's emigrated from Germany to Spain told me - via ICQ - that he's back home. Why that? His employer is a startup company with the very intelligent idea of automaticly scanning news for financial relevant information, analyze them, and use user defined rules to make stock orders - or sales - based on those information. Sounds great for me, espially due to the fact that this software has been written in Lisp. Unfortunately they've now got no more money and also no investor. So he had to leave Spain.
Now he'll concentrate on Genetic Programming, another real great topic. Right now it is a bit too high for me. I'm doing more standard design and implementation of scalable server architectures, that's my domain. But maybe someday I'm writing a self optimizing server using a genetic approach, who know. In any case I wish him more luck for his next job.
Now he'll concentrate on Genetic Programming, another real great topic. Right now it is a bit too high for me. I'm doing more standard design and implementation of scalable server architectures, that's my domain. But maybe someday I'm writing a self optimizing server using a genetic approach, who know. In any case I wish him more luck for his next job.
Travel arrangements
Next weekend my wife and I are traveling to Dublin. It has been my birthday present for her in November and now we'll do some sightseeing, shopping, and savour. Beside reading a guidebook and looking for information in the Internet I'm preparing our journey in my mobile phone. As you know I've bought a Nokia E61i. Additionally I've bought a GPS receiver - boys like gadgets *smile* - and installed Nokia Maps and Google Maps. Especially the Nokia software is really nice. It allows you to search for addresses and places, with a near area search for defined categories like museums, restaurants, bars, and many more. You can save those as orientation points and calculate routes. So we've got the right helper with us to find our destinations the best way. You'll read about it in my travel report.
Saturday, 1 December 2007
Looking back on November
November is over and it has been a very hard but also interesting month for me. I've been on several trainings around software engineering. Requirements engineering, tool training for the RE tool IRqA, management of software maintenance projects, agile project management, and CMMI. I've enjoyed every training because software engineering is a very important topic for me. I'm still impressed how many managers and developers ignore the huge amount of work that has to be done beside just coding. This is one of the reasons why today still 65% of all IT projects fail (Standish Group, CHAOS report 2006).
Beside my own trainings I'm preparing three presentations for the same subject in December and January. The first one next week will be about requirements engineering, the second one about software cost estimation. Both will be presented at my employer for my colleagues. The third one will be about software engineering in general and will be held for students at the FH Vechta. The content of those presentations is based on my collected material and own experience. I've decided to translate them into English, add more detailed informations and provide them here for download. Stay tuned, you'll read about it.
Beside all this work I've used my time to almost complete my Tideland Lightweight Message Bus. I'm currently adding more and more unit tests to be sure that everything is working as expected. So far it looks good. It seems that I've to add an anonymous read account to our subversion soon. *smile*
Last but not least I'm currently preparing a longer blog entry. It's about how my work with Erlang, Scheme, and SOA design is beginning to change my mind about object-orientation. I'm doing OOP now since about 20 years, a long time. Maybe it's time for a change now. But that's a different story.
Beside my own trainings I'm preparing three presentations for the same subject in December and January. The first one next week will be about requirements engineering, the second one about software cost estimation. Both will be presented at my employer for my colleagues. The third one will be about software engineering in general and will be held for students at the FH Vechta. The content of those presentations is based on my collected material and own experience. I've decided to translate them into English, add more detailed informations and provide them here for download. Stay tuned, you'll read about it.
Beside all this work I've used my time to almost complete my Tideland Lightweight Message Bus. I'm currently adding more and more unit tests to be sure that everything is working as expected. So far it looks good. It seems that I've to add an anonymous read account to our subversion soon. *smile*
Last but not least I'm currently preparing a longer blog entry. It's about how my work with Erlang, Scheme, and SOA design is beginning to change my mind about object-orientation. I'm doing OOP now since about 20 years, a long time. Maybe it's time for a change now. But that's a different story.
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