SCWCD - passed

Pretty much passed the Sun Certified Web Components Developer for Java Enterprise Edition 1.4 today. A little bit later than I had wanted to complete the exam, but completed nonetheless.

I guess I'll have access to another logo.

With this knowledge, I am now starting a little side project of my own called, i++. More to come.

Thanksgiving 2005

Just imported some photos from

The First Annual 4 Mosquitos Turkey Dinner

Check 'em out.

The items we had: 7-layer salad, spinach-artichoke dip, corn muffins, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, gravy, biscuits, turkey - not pictured: pumpkin cheesecake, apple pie, pumpkin cheesecake muffins, 6 bottles of sparkling grape juice

The 4 Mosquitos laughing at something/someone.

The homemade mashed potatoes were a hit.

Dealing with Difficult People/Speed Reading

I went to a seminar yesterday with some people that I work with entitled, 'Dealing with Difficult People'. Overall, it was a good experience - made me think and really want to make some changes and take action of the way that I am.

Something that the seminar leader was plugging for was speed reading - the Evelyn Wood Dynamic Reading program in particular. When mentioned, I thought it would be sweet to be able to read extremely fast - going from around 250 words per minute and 75% comprehension to 1000 wpm and 90% comprehension. The program costs $200.

I went online to read more about it and learn more about speed reading in general. Wikipedia is just great. I found out that the benefits of speed reading are unsubstantial. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Most people who read at 1000 wpm or more have around a 50% retention rate (this is a poor retention rate). According to Wikipedia, researchers in the area of speed reading do not recommend paying for expensive speed reading programs because the basic principals of speed reading are very simple and widely known.

Then, I found out about something that's just plain sweet - Wikibooks. A collection of free, online text-books editable by anyone. It just so happens that there is a wikibook on Speed Reading. This book has all the basic concepts for speed reading laid out as well as simple techniques and exercises to increase reading speed and comprehension.

I thought I could read like Superman - just flip through, page by page, memorizing the whole book. Maybe some day.

Experimenting with Flock

Just downloaded Flock, a new 'social browser'. It's still in development - the first page I tried to view crashed the browser - but it's pretty cool and basically functional.

It's considered a 'social browser' because it incorporates many popular social web services such as Flickr (photo sharing), Delicious (bookmark sharing), Technorati ("what's happening on the web right now"), blogs and news aggregation.

Flaming Almond

Toosh Brain eats a flaming almond while wearing a Google t-shirt, a sombrero and listening to Radiohead.

Who do you support?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire comes out next Friday, the 18th of November.

Amazon Bestsellers

Sometimes, I like to check out what's going on in the world by seeing what people are currently interested in. So, I go to Amazon.com and check out their top selling books.

Seeing this listing of books makes me think about the things that I am currently interested in and excites new interests. Many of the books on this list have Amazon's 'Search Inside' feature. This lets you actually read portions of the book and get a feel for whether you would like it or not. Pretty cool.

SCWCD

Today starts the intense journey into the world of Java Servlets and Java ServerPages. I hope to pass the Sun Certified Web Component Developer certification (SCWCD) exam within three weeks.

Feeling refreshed.

Did some thinking. Did some writing. Off to something new and different. Everyday.

Happy Diwali

Today is Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. A time to change for the better.

Card reading robot

For a special event for work, I built and programmed a LEGO Mindstorms robot used to fetch business cards.

The programming was done using leJOS, an open-source Java API developed specifically for the LEGO RCX.

Here are some pictures of the robot:

Initial post

Hello. I am a blog. My name is Crackerbox Palace. Pleased to meet you.