Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:58:00 GMT | no comments
Alfresco is a new but promising open source document management system. It is Java based and supports many of the latest standards including the JSR-170 file access API, the JSF tag based interface, the Spring framework, JSR-168 portlets and WebDAV file transfers.
While Alfresco is still young and lacks some functionality, it is well architected and shows a lot of promise. Here is some information about its architecture.
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Posted in Tech Tips
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:11:00 GMT | 1 comment
A lot of people think it is a little weird that I put so much personal stuff in my web site and blog and I can understand their point. However, here are some reasons why I do this.
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Posted in Random Thoughts, All About Me
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:43:00 GMT | no comments
Has anyone noticed a significant gap in these postings? During the winter months, I hardly posted anything. I did spend a lot of time using Ruby on Rails to develop the Tri-Cities Baseball web site, but wasn’t able to write much.
I am guessing that there are two causes of this: less sun and less activity.
I am definitely affected by the lack of sun. Even in the summer, when it is cloudy all day, I get depressed. This happened even last summer when we spent a day south of Santa Cruz. Even though the day before I was feeling fine, I got more and more depressed as the day wore on when the sun refused to come out.
Another reason for these winter blues is probably also I don’t exercise much in the winter. I like outdoor sports: mountain biking and surfing especially, but these are hard to do in the winter.
Last year, I was pretty depressed during the winter months too. This was the period where I really wasn’t enjoying my job, and ending up quitting on April 1st.
Now that Spring is trying to make an appearance, I am posting a lot more. This is probably a good indicator that I am feeling better and my right brain is waking up from its slumber and starting to actually work again.
Posted in All About Me
Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 10 Apr 2006 17:55:00 GMT | no comments
Marx was right; he was just 150 years to early.
In the Communist Manifesto published in 1848, he outlined the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” as the next step in society’s development.
Of course we have seen how this principle has failed miserably when applied to anything that is resource limited. Who would work hard growing food if others would just take it all away? This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union during the grain crisis of 1928 when the Politiburo set too low a price for grain and, when not enough was sold at this price, they seized what they needed. The next year, the peasant farmers engaged in massive hiding of grain which resulted in an agricultural collapse.
However the situation changes greatly when dealing with software. Since distributing software over the Internet costs essentially nothing, making software available to whoever needs it doesn’t take anything away from the creator. So open source software is the perfect embodiment of this communist principle: those that are able to contribute do, and those that need it can take it at will.
Marx also envisioned a stateless society where there was no central power exerting control over its citizens. This is another stark parallel to open source.
So while the ideals of communism have not been successfully applied to society, many of these principles can be vividly seen in the open source software movement.
Posted in Random Thoughts
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 14:31:00 GMT | 3 comments
So what is the “college experience”?
This was a topic on this week’s O.C. that got me thinking that maybe some people had a much better experience in college than I did. Without going into too many details, here are some of the highlights of my Berkeley experience:
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Posted in Random Thoughts, All About Me
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:42:00 GMT | 1 comment
Suzanne and I enjoy finding and drinking good wines, and especially when we can find a great wine under $20, or better yet, under $15. However we often will drink a wine and then forget if we liked it or not, so we are going to blog about some of the wines we liked.
The first wine is a Synergy 2002 from Richardson Vineyard which is a blend of 66% Syrah, 15% Merlot, 13% Zinfandel and 6% Cabernet. Overall, we really enjoyed this wine. It had a nice overall complexity with some earthy tones. The one drawback was that it was a little to acidic for drinking by itself, which is how we usually drink wines.
This wine received a gold medal at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition
We bought this wine at the Wine Club, but they don’t have it on their web site anymore. Wine.com and BevMo also do not have it
The only place I could find it on the web was at The Cellar Door restaurant. However, Wine Club sometimes has some wines in stock that don’t show up on their web site, so check out their store and grab a bottle or two if you see it.
4 out of 5 stars
Posted in Wine and Whiskey
Posted by Max Dunn
Sun, 12 Feb 2006 18:25:00 GMT | 1 comment
None of us are right all the time. Even the smartest person is probably right only half the time. But the only people that are truly foolish are those that don’t know this, and think they are always right.
Posted in Random Thoughts
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 10 Jan 2006 06:50:00 GMT | no comments
HDTV (High Definition TV) is so cool, once you see it, you will never want to go back to regular TV. It is like the difference between listening to a weak radio station in the car that has a lot of static, and listening to a crystal-clear CD.
Watching Lost in HDTV, you can see the pores on the actors faces (luckily, there are some nice looking faces you don’t mind seeing close up) and the scenes of the ocean and jungle makes you feel like you are there in Hawaii with them (whoops, I mean some uncharted island) feeling the ocean breezes and tropical humidity.
We don’t watch any non-HD shows—it just isn’t the same. Conversely, there are some shows we watch just because they look gorgeous in HDTV, that we wouldn’t normally watch (like Las Vegas).
The kicker is that we don’t need to pay for cable to get HDTV; we just put on antenna on the roof and get all the local stations for free!
Now setting up an HDTV system is a little complicated, so here is some information on how to do it.
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Posted in Tech Tips
Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 26 Dec 2005 19:35:00 GMT | 1 comment
I haven’t written much in this blog about what our family is up to. So here is a Christmas letter Suzanne wrote to fill in the details.
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Posted in All About Me
Posted by Max Dunn
Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:13:00 GMT | no comments
Here is an article that discusses how the advent of ad-free TV on video iPod is terrifying advertisers:
This provides support for my theory that the video iPod, PVRs and TV-on-demand will cause major and fundamental shifts in the way companies do advertising.
For years, advertisers have kept their heads in the sand when confronted with the reality that many viewers are simply not watching TV commercials. However, these new technologies will force them to confront reality when people start paying for their TV to be ad-free.
And where will companies put their billions of advertising dollars once TV is no longer a viable way of delivering their message? Why, the Internet of course!
It is already starting to happen. If you read your news on [CNN](http://www.cnn.com/) or [USAToday](http://www.usatoday.com/) you will see ads in many strategic places. And unlike TV, they can track exactly what you see and click on, or even force you to view the ad before showing an article or video clip. This provides a way to customize and target the advertising message that was never possible on TV.
Ads work. That is why billions of dollars are spent on advertising every year. And when TV is no longer a viable way to promote those ads, those dollars will shift, mainly to the Internet, causing a huge upheaval and tremendous opportunites for those Internet companies that can capture these ad revenue.
Posted in Random Thoughts