Category: life

  • Keynote Trends

    Keynote was great. These things are really about getting excitement about the technology going, and it certainly succeeded. The big news really is JavaFX at the moment. The runtime will start to be distributed via the Java 6 Update 10 (J6u10 from here) formerly spoken of as the consumer JRE. Having given Flex a good…

  • Twittering JavaOne

    If anyone’s interested, you can follow my exploits on via Twitter on jakekorab.

  • Heard on United 955 to SFO

    Pilot: “Passengers on the left hand side of the plane, if you take a look out the window you will see a great view of the Golden Gate bridge and the Bay Area. Passengers on the right hand side of the plane, thank you for flying with United Airlines.”

  • Slapped in a Dark Tunnel at an Interview

    The interview cycle is in full swing. I came across a post on Contractor UK about tricky questions posed by interviewers, which I think are just jaw-dropping. Someone needs to have a reality check and stop taking themselves so seriously. I have nothing against difficult, even impossible, questions in an interview situations. Most of the…

  • Hiring Great Developers

    Dr. Dobb’s journal has listed a great article on what it takes to identify great developers. Being in the market myself, and sitting on the other side of the fence it is interesting as to just how far this is removed from the norm. A few interesting tips? “Tell programmers in advance (at least a…

  • Finding IT contracts in London

    Over the last couple of years, I developed quite a strong professional network in Dublin, which was working quite well in getting contract IT work. With the recent move to London, I have found that I may now have to fall back onto more traditional forms of hunting for contracts, i.e. through agents and job…

  • How to start your career in programming

    I have been meaning to jot down my thoughts on this one for a while, but when I saw this article on First Steps into IT, I figured that there was no better time. Programming is a tough career to get into. When I was getting into the industry for the first time I was…

  • Why my resume will no longer be in Word format

    Another contract cycle approaches and the question of the CV/resume has once again reared it’s head. The job boards are full of agency ads with instructions that resumes be submitted in MS Word format only. Often when I have turned up to an interview, I have encountered printouts of my resume with my contact details…

  • Extreme Kites

    It is really fantastic when you get great service these days. I bought a bag for my kite board a couple of weeks ago from Extreme Kites in the UK, for an upcoming trip to Australia. Mike from the shop had a problem getting the right size bag in on time, and after finding out…

  • Oooh yeah, that’s better.

    I finally took the plunge and switched over to this new domain (nice, isn’t it?) running on WordPress. I can’t believe how easy it was. The initial setup was magic. Download WordPress. Set up a database, add a user, upload the zip file and extract, fire up the domain in a browser. The first page…