Alef Arendsen

I just came back from SpringOne. We had a great show again this year in Antwerp. We had about 400 attendees and about 30 highly technical session, from about just about the same number of people from SpringSource.

The second day (today) had a bit of a SpringSource Application Platform focus. So far the introduction of the Application Platform is going really well. People are very enthusiastic about it, especially when they see how much the provisioning features already offered through OSGi and the enhancements we’ve made and by the tooling help remove complexity when developing.

I’m sure this thing is going to have a great future.

Other than that, I had a blast speaking with everybody again. Not just my colleagues, but also the community members. It’s always very nice to talk to the people actually using the technologies we provide in anger. Thanks guys, for making this a success!

I just arrived back home. I’m going to have to do a bunch of laundry and get myself ready for tomorrow night. I’m driving to Italy tomorrow to start doing some construction on the house there early next week. I’m actually leaving Utrecht around 5′ish or 6′ish and will probably be on the road when the Dutch match is on…

Questa sera i olandesi hanno dato una grande schiaffone agli italiani. Okay, that’s enough Italian for now. I won’t repeat the other stuff I learnt tonight. After I asked an Italian friend of mine (by text message): ‘come stai? ’, he responded by saying ‘come con tre dita nel ….’. I think Italians will probably be able to fill in the rest of the sentence .

Anyway, for those not in the know, the Dutch soccer team beat the Italian team tonight with 3 to 0. This is a great victory, as first of all, the Italian are the ruling world champion and second, it was 30 years ago since the Dutch soccer last won from the Italian. Now, of course (as always) we keep our feet on the ground in Holland and are all saying that we still have another two matches to go before we have survived the ‘group of death’ (with France and Romania being the other two teams).

I have a few workers dropping by at my house next week (a tubista, a muratore and an elettricista). If any Italian are listening in. What should I bring to ease the pain and to convince them they should still work for me (they have do do a lot of stuff next week, such as finishing the installation of the electricity, installing hot water and so on)? Anything slightly more original than a bottle of limoncello will do. It’s in the North of Italy (Valle d’Aosta).

Update: wow, the amount of press is amazing, and not just that, the headlines are great:

• Dutch thrash aging Italians (International Herald Tribune)
• Italy humbled in Euro shocker (Melbourne Herald Sun)
• Orange crush Italy in Group of Death opener (London Free Press)
• Rampant Netherlands crush sorry Italy (CNN International)
• Italy peeled like Oranges (Goal.com)
• First blood to Dutch in Group of Death (The Herald)
• Dutch masterclass sinks Italy as France only draw (Earthtimes)

Ah, and about that off side thing, let’s quote from the source:

“If a defending player steps behind his own goal line in order to place an opponent in an offside position, the referee shall allow play to continue and caution the defender for deliberately leaving the field of play without the referee’s permission when the ball is next out of play.”

I finally finished reading One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding. It’s about a lawyer ending up on a tropical island where he comes across a native tribe. Some of the tribespeople have lost legs, arms or are otherwise disabled because of mines, left by American and the lawyer is there to start getting the tribespeople compensating. The tribe didn’t ask for compensation and it’s not clear whose doing it is to send the lawyer there and arrange for compensation. The book starts off quite funny, but along the way it’s all more of the same I think. Not highly recommended…

Then on to some other books. A friend of mine works in a shop selling books for kids and since my nephew and niece are celebrating their birthday tomorrow I dropped by to get some books. Unfortunately Geertruide wasn’t there, so I had to phone here up to get some advice. She told me first of all to read the Gruffola. This book is simply great. It’s about a mouse, an owl, a snake a fox and the gruffalo.

The second book I got for my niece is a priceless one. It’s ‘written’ by Thé Tjong-Khing. The book is titled ‘Where is the Cake’ (’Waar is de Taart’ in Dutch). In the book, a cake gets stolen en then a hunt begins for the two animals that stole th cake. The great thing about this book is that it doesn’t have any words at all, it’s just drawings. Along the way, a lot of stuff happens in the drawings, and that’s what makes the book very special I think.

For my nephew I bought ‘De grote kleine kapitein’ (literally translated as the big small captain), about a boy setting sail with a boat he built himself. Fun stuff for Mas, who’s spending most of his holidays on the boat of his daddy (my brother).

In the meantime, some music to finish the day with (the ones via Last.FM are in the recommendations in my profile).

• Death in Vega – Hands Around My Throat (via Last.FM
• Ian Dury – Spasticus Autisticus (via YouTube)
• MGMT – Time to Pretend (via Last.FM). It’s the song the movie ‘21′ starts off with

Last Friday May 23rd, we had another Java Meetup. Since a lot of people will be going on holidays across Holland in the next three months, I figured I might as well start announcing the date for the next Java Meetup right now.

So September 12th it is. The location for now will remain the same: the Jaren in Amsterdam. Please review previous posts for directions and/or other info.

See you then!