Video: Tali's First Drive

Follow the link to see the video on the full screen.

For more videos, check out my YouTube channel

Web Album: In Da Pool

In Da Pool

Avri Gilad Blog

Personal blog of Avri (אברי גלעד). Heavy, deep, interesting?

http://avri.cafe.themarker.com

Keep your phone silent at work!

Yep, this is the message!

I started new cause at facebook. Join me or leave without cellular reception forever! At all times, not just at work!

Social Netwoks

Strangely, all happen quite close to each other. I started to check facebook application, someone remind me about the odnoklasniki.ru site and at my work they did a brawn bag lecture about Second Life and like worlds. I've decided to give it a chance so if you like socializing with me, I'm there and hope there will be enough time to play with it.

Web Album: Still warm November, 2007

Still warm November

Video: Nir and Einat going to the first day at school

Better late than never, I publish taken a year ago but only now edited: Nir and Einat going to the first day at school, September 2006.



For more videos, check out my YouTube channel

Album: October Swims

Check out this new web album!

Office 2007: Change to multi-line layout

I love the Office invention with 'arrange by conversation' view which provides canonical arrangement of the correspondence.

Today it suddenly disappeared or changed its looks. The reason was due to increase of the screen resolution in doc station, so the multi-line layout changed to single-line. I spent some time trying to solve it myself, but go figure these wonders… Eventually, googling with "Office 2007 arrange by" lead me to the next tip:

~~~~~~
Multi-line layout is only available in a table view type.

1. On the View menu, point to Arrange By, and then click Custom.
2. Click Other Settings.
3. Under Other Options, do one of the following:
   • To always use multi-line layout, select Always use multi-line layout.

     If this option is unavailable, clear the Use multi-line layout in widths smaller than n characters check box, and then select Always use multi-line layout.

• To specify the width at which Microsoft Outlook switches to single-line layout to show more fields, select the Use multi-line layout in widths smaller than n characters check box, and then type the number you want for n.

Source: Microsoft Online,
see also: Arrange by Conversation on the same site

When September Ends...

New mini-album is published on picasaweb with the additional quite successful photographs to close up the September-2007 collection. Our daughters are growing up, aren’t they? Sweeeet!

When September Ends...

Eclipse Forms: Rich UI for the Rich Client

This article By Dejan Glozic, IBM Canada Ltd.

will take you from baby steps to advanced topics of the rich user interface experience of Eclipse Forms.

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Forms/article.html

 

Why API design matters

Don’t matter if you are a software developer, program manager or software architect you have to know the basics and what goes wrong when the basics went wrong. Make yourself a note to read the overview of infoq.com of recently published article by Michi Henning about API design; an article that analyzes the aspects of good and bad and the effects APIs can have on the productivity.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/08/why-api-design-matters

Hottest August-September 2007

New album is published on picasaweb with the collection of most successful photographs of our family during August-September, 2007

Hottest August-September 2007

GDT

Action management method, GTD. Could this help more than the time management course I did few years ago?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

 

Kirill's Blogs

Interesting blogs of one of my colleagues Kirill Grouchnikov (kirillcool)

http://www.pushing-pixels.org/

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/kirillcool/

I still didn’t understood why he needs two and why some post are the same and some are not, but I’m trying… Let me know if you have an idea.

Media Chart (Week 2007/35)

My ranking of some shows/events/journalists and everything else.

Use the Media Chart tag for the list of all related updates or press the names to get the specific related latest updates per subject.

Not all the subject reviews are posted yet, I want to write about everyone to explain why he/she/they have honored their rank in my charts.

BEST:

	Name	Home base	External links
↑	"60 Minutes"	CBS	EN
↑	Andy Rooney	CBS, "60 Minutes"	EN
↑	TOP GEAR	BBC	EN1, EN2
↑	"תיק תקשורת"	Israeli Educational TV	HE
↑	Ehud Yaary	Channel 2 News, Israel (HE)	HE
↑	Avri Gilad	Channel 2 (HE, EN), Galei Zahal (HE)	EN, HE
↑	"מונית הכסף" Cashcab	Channel 2 (HE, EN)	HE

WORST:

	Name	Home base	External links
↓	"לרדת בגדול" Biggest Looser	Channel 10, Israel (HE)	HE
↓	Dana Weise	Channel 2 News, Israel (HE)	HE
↓	Rina Mazliah	Channel 2 News, Israel (HE)	HE
↓	Amnon Levi	Channel 10, Israel (HE)	HE

WATCH LIST:

	Name	Home base	External links
↔	Yair Garbuz	Various	HE
↔	Roni Daniel	Channel 2 News, Israel (HE)	HE

Updates are coming!

העיתון של בועז מושקוביץ

I definitely need to read this resource. Seems to me at the first look a little bit too "right", but need to check more… also the links from that site to similar resources.

http://www.global-report.net/boazm/

WOW!

Impressive new technique to resize an image without altering the overall impression. Don’t just spot the first few seconds, see further to learn how it works.

http://francisoud.blogspot.com/2007/08/impressive-image-reduction-technique.html

Media Chart – The Rules

The chart rules are:

1. This is my opinion and this blog is the place I’ve chose to express it.
2. Visitor can express his/her own opinion by adding a comment to the related post. You can join me or try to convince me that I’m wrong, or whatever you want (see next rule).
3. Since this is my blog, I’ll monitor, from time to time, visitors’ comments and in case of my extreme disagreement with the content it is possible that I’ll remove a visitor comment. In this case I’ll try to ask the person who left the comment to post it somewhere else and I’ll consider leaving only the link to that place.

Media Chart – Kick off

I’m starting new project that will be published in this blog named “Media Chart” or “מצעד תקשורת” in Hebrew.

The concept is to have a place to express my personal opinion about different media elements such as: TV shows, writers, reporters, journalists, news shows, news papers, books etc. I think that the media knows how to criticize almost everything but itself. This is the situation now in Israel and I guess not only here (I like watching and comparing news from US, UK and Russia, yes, I speak Russian too). Well, the problem is probably interests. All have different interests and the media is not an exception. I don’t believe they can manage by themselves, so here we are, writing critique on the journalist, making good examples shine, asking for stopping real-tv shows where people loose wait by crying out for another sandwich after the gym (you can guess what will be in the Worst List, right?).

“Why here? There are regulators, forums, talk-backs etc. What’s new?” – Valid question. First of all, let’s discuss it. For now, I didn’t find any site that provides one central place to put a visitor opinion about a media or “a mediator”. Second, about the means: propose different alternatives, I’m open for your ideas!

The best way I think I can start this, is by organizing several charts: Best List, Worst List and Watch List (this one is for the topics I’m still not sure about). The subjects in the charts will be linked to the sources of the neutral information about them or official sites. I hope, I will find enough time and provide exact explanation why I put each and everyone in the place it belongs in my charts. The visitors of this site are invited to comment with their own opinion about the subjects so, you can influence my opinion and the place will be changed or even moved to the opposite chart. I’m not denying also another possibility that I’ll simply change my mind and move items across the charts. Again, I’ll try to explain why it’s happening.

When can JMX notifications be lost?

The JMX Best Practices guide says notifications can sometimes be lost. Why is that? When might it happen? Some answers.

 

By Eamonn McManus which is the technical lead of the JMX team at Sun Microsystems. As such he heads the technical work on JSR 255 (JMX API 2.0) and JSR 262 (Web Services Connector for JMX Agents).

 

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/emcmanus/archive/2007/08/when_can_jmx_no.html

 

Java call stack - from HTTP upto JDBC as a picture

Call stack (including PDF printable picture) and huge but interesting talback log discussing the Java manners.

http://ptrthomas.wordpress.com/2006/06/06/java-call-stack-from-http-upto-jdbc-as-a-picture

ראיון עם בועז בערוץ 10

ראיון עם בועז בערוץ 10 על דברי ברק ה"נלחם בתופעת ההשתמטות מצה"ל "
http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=504213&pid=1

Introduction to Eclipse Plugin Architecture

Nice post with introduction to Eclipse Plugin Architecture

Includes examples for veiw, menu, preferences etc.

 

http://www.javabeat.net/articles/eclipse/2007/07/eclipse-plugin-architecture/

The best photos of July

Lattest album.
Home, sweet home.

The best photos of July

Family albums - quick recap

Well, in case you don't know, I'm photography and filming enthusiast. Since late 90’s I started to take more and more stills pictures and home made movies. Well, not movies but I do have several DVDs with my family vacation trips, events etc. The photograph collection is already huge and lately I started to use Picasa Web Albums to share the best once with my relatives and friends. If you are reading this blog, probably you one of them :-) so, to make it easier for you I’ll post the links to the albums at the blog as well.
Just for the recap, here are the previously posted albums, you can click on the thumbnails to view the album...

Tali, First Year

Einat, Nir & Tali

Tali' First Birthday

Yael & Tali, June 2007

Look and feel change in Office 2007

I find where Microsoft hides the look and feel change of Outlook 2007! If you don't want to read all the next bla-bla you can skip until the instructions block and find how to do the change.

But first thing, first...

Since its introduction I like using Windows XP look and feel except one problem – the blue default color scheme. It was just too colorful for me and I started immediately to look for alternatives. No, Windows platform is a given in my place, no alternatives here. I looked for a neutral and still modern look for my working station. Surprisingly quick enough I was found just everything I asked for: Silver scheme was there from the beginning and simple configuration via Control Panel > Display > Appearance > Color Scheme – is almost everything I change from the default installation (except maybe the annoying task grouping…)

Screen shot of the Windows XP Silver Color Scheme

Years, this setting was sufficient until our IT decided to upgrade to Office 2007. Of course, I liked the opportunity to play with the new toy and also I heard before about the enormous effort invested in the usability of that version. On the other hand, I'm heavy Office user these days and basically without my corporate e-mail and Word I can cover very little of my work responsibilities. After a week or two of struggle I decided that the adaptation is unavoidable and I have to learn to use this Office sooner or letter and better is sooner. With almost religious trust in the IT guys I started the upgrade and today after several months I think this was good decision. Better productivity, nice environment, sexy look. Sexy look, hmmm… well, no, not perfect.

One again the default color scheme! I don't know how Microsoft make these defaults, maybe they use psychologist advice for targeting some special group or segment? For my taste, and I see it also in some others, these colorful fancy themes sweet more a teenager then a corporate user. Make it nice, but make it less clamorous. The focus of user should be on the presented content and not on the fames, buttons, icons and other UI controls surrounding and embedded in the content.

But, no worry, I know the solution, right? Well, this is true, but unfortunately the first program from the Office 2007 I started to use was Outlook. Yes, the Outlook default color scheme was blue so I've opened the Options tab and started to look for the place where I'll be able to change it to something more acceptable. After endless overview of all the tabs and sub-options and advice settings and again and again I failed to find it! RTFM attempt, search the help didn't bring the desired result either.

Then it's just hit me: what if I check for the Word options? What if this will affect all the Office programs? I don't know how this idea reached my mind, I don't know how this idea reached the mind of Microsoft engineers, but here is the result of my research:

INSTRUCTIONS:

To change the color scheme of all Office 2007 programs you can open Word file > Office Button > Word Options > Popular Tab > Color Scheme. This change will affect also color scheme of Outlook. I'm advising to choose 'Silver' which looks very nice with XP silver color scheme.

Screen shot of the Office 2007 Silver Color Scheme

Configuring Beyond Compare for Excel files

The simple way to compare MS Excel (xls) and even MS Excel 2007 (xlsx) files using Beyond Compare 2.

First of all, you need installation of MS Excel and Beyond Compare. This tip is prepared and tested with BC version 2.4
The comparison of excel files is possible due to additional viewer rules. The catalog of such rules could be found at the official home site of Beyond Compare (http://www.scootersoftware.com/) >> Download >> Miscellaneous Downloads >> Additional Rules definitions (for BC 2.1 and later) or just use the following direct link http://www.scootersoftware.com/download.php?c=kb_morerules. The page has many different rules definitions and you may find interest in other rules posted there.
Download the next rule definition. From its description you can guess the way it’s working. For more details you can see the readme file inside the downloaded zip.
MS Excel, 14-Sep-2006 v1.0.3, Download 2kb

Installation instructions:
1) Extract all files in MSExcel.zip into: C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2
TIP: If you want to be able comparing Excel 2007 files (*.xlsx) you need to modify the original rule definition by adding new extension for the same handling:
a) Make a copy of C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2\MSExcel\MSExcel.xml file and name it MSExcel2007.xml
b) Open the file MSExcel2007.xml with any text editor and modify the next line to include *.xlsx string
The line before the change includes: "*.xls"
The line after the change should include: "*.xls;*.xlsx"
2) Run Beyond Compare and from the "Tools" menu select "Import Settings...".

3) In "Select import file", enter the name of the rules file:
C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2\MSExcel\MSExcel.xml (or, if you prepared, MSExel2007.xml)
Click "Next". In the "Pick rules to import" list, "MS Excel" and "MS Excel Formulas" should be checked. Click "Next" again, then click "Finish" to import the rules.

Use:
1) Whenever you load a pair of XLS files in the file viewer Beyond Compare will now display a comparison of the text.

2) To compare formulas in cells, select ToolsPick RulesMS Excel Formulas.

ראיון בועז בתכנית הבוקר

http://www.reshet.tv/video.aspx?video_id=3901

What is a Software Architect?

Nice post by Ray King.

What is a Software Architect?

http://kingtaipan.blogspot.com/2007/07/there-seem-to-be-more-and-more.html

I liked the most: “The nature of the role of Architect is that he has influence but no power, so he needs to work to keep his influence and to bring people along willingly.”

Chris Aniszczyk Blog

Excellent blog by Chris Aniszczyk, basically on Eclipse and Java development.

mea-bloga.blogspot.com

מספר רעיונות לעתיד

נושאים על פיתוח תוכנה, JAVA, Eclipse

ביקורת טלוויזיה, בעיקר דעה אישית על הבעת דעות אישיות של אנשי טלוויזיה וחמור מכך אנשי חדשות. מראיינים המפגזים בשאלות מבלי להקשיב ושאר החוצפה בתקשורת. למען הסר ספק: החוצפה של אנשי תקשרת

פעם ראשונה בעברית

טוב, הגיע הזמן לנסות לכתוב בשפת הקודש. במידה וזה יצליח לא תישאר לי שום ברירה ואהיה חייב להמשיך ולכתוב בה...