The strange thing - NetBeans.

Ok, ok, I know, I know, this is not a description of my holidays and rafting things (I hope you are looking forward to it... ;)), but now I am in a hurry to read and pick up some new (for me) technology in J2EE (for what reason I will tell you in a month), so I haven't got much free time for translating my notes, but I will write some things here anyway (about professional stuff, of course). And anyway, I definitely will write my translated notes here, but... later. So, let's begin..

All the Sun's tutorials which I read on the http://java.sun.com are written for making examples on the NetBeans IDE. And I decided to try this IDE once again. I have done it once (about 2 years ago), but then my team, where I was working, decided to use Eclipse and I agreed. Anyway, I installed NetBeans 6.0 with GlassFish v2 and began to investigate what it is. The first thing I noticed was an unusal interface, but it is definitely because I have more than 3-year experience with Eclipse, and have a very strong boundage with it ;) The second thing was more unusual - All the projects I made with help of wizard (and afterwards I learn from documentation it is a feature of NetBeans) are Ant-based. It means that after project creation under project directory you will find not only the directories 'src', 'classes' and the files '.classpath' and '.project' (in mininal configuration, of course), but the 'build.xml' and the 'bp-project' directory with some '*.xml' and '*.properties' files. Ok, I am not afraid of using Ant and have good experience in it, and it also impresses me, BUT, WHY I could not change the settings for output folder in the project creation wizard? It freaks me out. I've tried to find these setting for many times but without success. Then I realized, that it definitely can be done in the 'project.properties' file directly. I did so (set the variable responsible for this folder in '/') and got the empty project folder by next clean/build action. Yep, this is my fault, I should have thought carefully about what the current directory contains and the 'src' folder too, I would have removed clearing this directory from Ant task, but WHY such simple thing should be done in such a complicated way? Then I read the documentation to find out how to make it easier. There I've picked out a suggestion to use the free-form project for that goal (I mean if you want to set custom folders), and NOT to edit manually the files generated by IDE in the 'bp-project' directory. But creation of the 'free-form' demands an existing 'build.xml'. I planned to take one which had been created by NetBeans. But... NetBeans said 'There is no valid build.xml' ;) After that I decided to stop my attempts to work with this IDE and return back to my usual one (Eclipse). I think this all is funny and shows that I need more education in Ant and NetBeans principals. But I still think that such an easy action as setting thw custom output folder shouldn't consume so much efforts and time and definitely should be somewhere in Project properties.

PS: I have registered and found request in Bug Tracker for NetBeans team to add functionality to manage this directory from wizard. This issue is closed with resolution 'Won't fix' and suggestion 'Use free-form project'. Sadness...  :( 

Rafting in the Caucasus (forewords)

More than one year ago I had (with Lana definitely) a fine trip to the Caucasus during may holidays. It was a water-hike, or rafting, as it is usually called. It was only the second time I hiked.

The first one was in Karelia, we rafted through great lakes 'Syamozero' and 'Vagatozero' and their sattelite-rivers. I felt in love with this kind of holiday from the first time and have never forgotten our evening campfires and conversations. At least that time (I mean when I was in the Caucasus) I decided to write my impressions in chronological order. Inspite of the jokes, which my hike-mates made on me, I was doing this, and by the end of this rafting I promised to publish these notes in my Live Journal. So, I am going to do this only NOW, unfortunately. Now - after I decided to do this and found my notes (only 3 days ago) in the pile of different stuff, I realised a couple of very unpleasant things:

1. The notes SHOULD be more detailed (inspite of lazy feelings which suddenly appear every evening when these notes should be written), because now, when my memory had totally forgotten all tiny details these notes seem to be very curtailed, obviously the last one.

2. I NEVER, NEVER should write in such drafts things like: "Don't forget to describe how we were playing volleybal at this beautifull camp after a long hard day of rafting", because now I DON'T remember what I meant by this.

:( There things were very dissapointing for me, but inspite of this I am going to restore (as much as I will be able to) my draft-notes and publish them here. I hope it will be pleasant for you, who read my blog (I hope someone does this) and for you, my dear hike-friends. For our last and future hikes and raftings! :) 

Great weekend

I haven't got such cheerful weekends as the last one for such a long time, and am going to tell you about this good day.


The day before (on saturday evening) I told Lana I wanted to spend next day skiing and skating, but she wasn't so excited as I expected. She whined to me that she didn't have skiing pants and always had freezing legs and (sorry) butt. I didn't want to have A frozen wife at next day and be responsible for her death  ;)  and... we started shopping. I don't have strong desire to describe this long and not very funny process, but at the end my honey left a huge sport-market 'Atemi' with  new skiing pants in the hand and shining smile. It was a good beginning...


In the Sunday morning (actually it was afternoon, but we had waken up about 3 hours before that ;)) we were standing in the ski rental center in the Victory park and were arguing about what type of skis to rent (plastic or wooden ones). We decided to rent the wooden (actually oldest) ones, assuming that this type will not be as slippery as the plastic one. From our first steps I realized we would not be as fast as I had expected. I am a novice in skiing and knew only a couple of step types, but Lana's even less experience than I have. Nevertheless, it was great, we were skiing throught a pine alley and then went out to the bushy forest with narrow skiing paths. Snow-cowered threes were powdering us with snow when we were skiing nearby. When I became bored with our slow-speed skiing, I ran forward from Lana and then, tired and statisfied, returned back to her. Then we drank hot tea from thermos and ate a chocolate bar with nuts. It was great! After that we returned the skid, paid the rent and met with Lana's parents (who came to ski in that park too). They brought us Lana's skates (which they had borrowed before) and we promised to visit them later in the evening.


After resting at home a while, we took our skates in backpacks and left to Lana's parents for dinner. Such visits had never been very interesting for me, we used to just sit at the table, eating and trying to talk with Lana's mom about something neutral (because my and her, we have very different points-of-view and mindsets, so this always caused very hot argues). But this time, all of sudden, was different. I should tell you it was a rather cold day (about minus 15-20 degrees or so, by celcius) and rather windy too. So after our skiing we were frozen and wanted to drink some hot tea ot something like that. Lana's parents were actually cold after their skiing too and her father decided to buy Russian national strong alcohol drink called 'Vodka'. Actually I DON'T like Vodka and DON'T drink this, but this time I decided to try. I remember about a very good method to ger warm (actually a very ancient Russian method) - tp drink Vodka mixed with black pepper . And so we did. After one tiny wine-glass pf Vodka with black pepper I felt myself better, warmer and cheerful. We were sitting, eating spaghetti with cutlets, making jokes on each other and chatting about all different thingd in the world. Actually it was my most relaxed evening spend with Lana's parents.


After that we went to central city stadium called 'Trud' to skate. We always tend to go there, because it is the biggest skating place in our  city and (pure fact) it has the smoothest ice. There we met with my aunt and our friend and skated together. I don't know why, but yesterday there were very few people. And at the end just 5 people were left! Lana and I, my aunt, Palex (our good friend) and some other guy. It was so romantic: the big empty stadium without light (actually there are no lights when there is no hokkey match) and only five of us. We skated for about 2 hours!


At night we were at home. Tired and happy. We had a shower and went to bed. It was a long and great weekend for me. I hope we will have more holidays like this one...  :) 

I always work on something by spinnig orbit. What does it mean? I am going to tell you... Like a sattelite I come closer to my goal and then go farther away. Sometimes I work hard on my goal and sometimes take same rest. And so now, putting off all my deal for professional development purpose I've taken a great interest in a very famous soap opera 'Babylon 5'.

I am watching 4-th season now (shame on me in Russian now, but I am going to do it then in English for improving my listening skill), though one week ago I didn't know about this soap opera at all. When I was watching the first season I found this movie a bit naive, but in the second season I changed my mind. I like science fiction, but I've never been keen on it. But this great universe, old races full of mistiries make me keen on it.

By this time I have been keen on only one soap opera - Friends (I think one day I will write about this great movie), but now I have one more addiction ;) I am pleased have these two soap operas in whole and withEnglish sound track. Also I wish to watch a couple of episodes from another great science fiction called 'Star Track'. Unfortunately nobody (from my friends I mean) has it.

Also I have a dream: to watch some day all episodes of soap opera from my childhood 'Due South' in English. And to remind myself how great the Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman - Constable Benton Fraser was for me...

Couple of weeks ago I decided to bring my CV up. I think it's a right time for thinking about my work experience and decide what's further. Now I am working on it and hope soon you can see it on this blog.

See you later, alligator! ;)