Surprising Things

Life is full of surprises. Most are good though a few are not. Imagine my surprise to learn that my blogs are used to teach science to grade school children. I kid you not. I was trying to figure out the cause of the huge spike in the page views for my blog and discovered that a large number of referrals were coming from an online grade 6 science curriculum. The subject matter is "Interactions Between Living Things and Their Environment" and my posting titled Predation, Parasitism, Commensalism, and Mutualism in the Garden and in the Community apparently fits right in. The pond is starting to thaw and the robins are back, so I'll soon have more good stories and pretty pictures for the children.


It's better than "Where the Wild Things Are" around here! In fact, speaking of wild things and surprises, check out this video of the fox I shot just last week.

Given that I'm not at EclipseCon, you might be surprised to know that my stupid modeling talk has not been canceled. Peter has been staying at my place since the beginning of February and I spent a lot of that time convincing him of just how unbearably stupid modeling really is. Ruby really liked to make him feel comfortable while I droned on and on and on.


As a result of this long indoctrination period, Peter is fully prepared to pontificate about the excruciating obtuseness of modeling to a wider audience. I'm sure you'll enjoy being both enlightened and entertained.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

I'm very glad to be reelected to the Eclipse Board. It is a privilege to serve and an honor to get this vote of confidence from my peers.

Of course anything that promotes the use of models to drive software development is good, so I'm thrilled that Microsoft has created the M Specification Community, I'm honored to be involved as a charter member, and I'm flattered to be characterized as a key open source leader.

The Bad

I won't be able to make it to EclipseCon this year for the ugliest of personal reasons.

The Ugly

The grim reaper stalks my home to claim someone dear.


Thanks to all the people in the Eclipse community who have been so understanding and supportive during this most difficult period of my life, especially Peter and Mitch.

On Being a Scapegoat

I've already blogged about the security problems caused by CDO and worse still, how CDO brought the world to its collective financial knees, but apparently the problems with modeling aren't isolated to that trouble making CDO component. Not at all! The problem seems to be a general Eclipse Modeling Framework shortcoming. It must be a fact because I just read about Microsoft's March Security Bulletin where the article makes it clear that "The problem stems from the way that the operating system parses and displays Windows Metafile- and Eclipse Modeling Framework-formatted image files." If that doesn't make your icicles shiver, nothing will!


Every community needs a scapegoat, so I say we pick on EMF. After all, if you have a really bad design, you can always blame EMF for generating it that way. Not only that, if you have really bad algorithms that perform poorly, you can always blame EMF for being bloated and slow. I've even heard that EMF isn't thread safe! Nothing distracts better than a scapegoat and EMF is really the ultimate scapegoat. If I'm reelected to the Eclipse board---you only have until Friday to vote for me---I promise to get to the bottom of this type of problem and root out the causes whomever they may be. No one will be safe from my careful scrutiny. We will reinstate public flogging to maintain order and discipline. Clearly I'm the no-nonsense candidate of choice.

The itemis Cloudsmith Eclipse Foundation Summit

There was an itemis Cloudsmith Eclipse Foundation Summit at my place yesterday. Bjorn was the first dignitary to arrive and of course hooking into my high speed wireless network was the first priority.


Mitch Sonies arrived shortly before lunch so after hooking into the network we were ready for a meal.


We had a great many interesting discussions followed by some of my fine cooking for dinner. Too bad you weren't here.

Kim Horne: Diva of Design

My office is graced by Kim Horne's original artistic master piece "Bumblebee Pollinates Lupine." She was inspired by one of my photos. I had her watercolor framed just this last week and now I've put in right above my monitor as a graphic reminder of the talented and generous people in the Eclipse community:


Ruby is in complete agreement that Kim Horne is truly a goddess of design. I'm eyeing Kim's latest creation with great fondness; it was also inspired by one of my photos. It's much nicer than the "Spider's Web" water color that you can see in the picture above.


I wonder if she'd be willing to part with it...

Wild Thoughts

I learned last week that Amazon sales rankings are quite different for each country, so I was on the hunt for some interesting statistics about the second edition of the EMF book. These statistics change faster than underwear, so one needs to do a little screen grabbing to capture the moment. Apparently the EMF book was exceedingly popular in France on Saturday with these number one rankings:


By the time I clicked on the overall ranking in English books, I noticed that the EMF book was more popular than my favorite children's book!


I hope the EMF book isn't being used to lull children to sleep. Oh well, enough self promotion; it seems a little rampant these days. You might have noticed that the board elections have begun and that I'm a candidate. Of course I'm very busy digging up dirt to smear the other candidates because I believe we need a little more controversy and divisiveness in our close knit community. Not only that, there's nothing that improves one's relative stature quite as much as degrading the stature of others. You have to get up awfully early in the morning to fool scheming political hack like me!


I think Doug Gaff is particularly electable given that he's done such an excellent job for the committer community over the last year. I'd definitely vote for him, if I wasn't so completely self centered. He'll certainly need a lot of attention in my smear campaign. Speaking of highly electable people, I sure hope Mike Taylor is reelected as a sustaining members representative. His recent e4 survey is just one example of his proactive efforts to help the Eclipse community. I'm glad I don't need to smear him to get ahead.

The itemis EclipseSource Summit

There was an itemis EclipseSource Summit at my house these past few days. Peter has been here since last Friday.


As with all important summits, the security for the dignitaries was tight, complete with trained guard dogs. Unfortunately one of them has grown inordinately fond of Chris, who arrived Wednesday, and has lost her killer instinct.


Jeff arrived last night, so I made one of my gourmet dinners for everyone. We had many stimulating conversations. Too bad you weren't here.


That being said, not everyone found the conversations equally stimulating.

Even with all the excitement this week, I found a bit of time to make a diagram of the e4 application model.


It's been a busy week.