As I have mentioned in an earlier entry, I recently purchased a new Longines analog, mechanical watch to replace my ageing Seiko Actura Kinetic Auto Relay. The Seiko is a great watch, and I have had it since 2004 I think.

But I got tired due to the weight of it - it is a hefty 160g. Contrast this with the meagre 72g of the Longines:

I am weird, ok? Usually I do not like to gather stuff. I get irritated and get rid of things I do not use. However when it comes to things digital, I am the opposite. Especially with data. Not many people I know of still have ALL the email they have EVER sent / received. I do. Except for my university email account (which was under Novell Netware), I still have all email ever sent and received. Well, ok - exclude free email accounts which I used from time to time to accomplish some devious goal or another. So I recently purchased MailSteward Pro and imported everything I have on me - all my emails since 1997-06-10:

From 1997-06-10 thru 2011-04-03
Total Number of emails in date range: 193,685
Number of emails with attachments:    35,086
Number of emails with tags:           0
Number of mailboxes:                  259
By Year: 
1997:  128
1998:  1,229 
1999:  1,423 
2000:  1,259 
2001:  5,117 
2002:  5,202 
2003:  6,867 
2004:  13,550 
2005:  19,573 
2006:  26,200 
2007:  25,455 
2008:  22,982 
2009:  17,770 
2010:  37,089 
2011:  9,841

Impressive? I am one of the few people to receive fewer emails as time goes on, except for some blunder in 2010. Seems like I was doing something right.

I have developed an application in JBoss Seam 2.2.1.Final using RichFaces 3.3.3.Final. Some parts of the code make heavy use of a4j calls, i.e. Ajax calls. This works very well under most browsers. Unfortunately when IE9 was released two weeks ago, it refused to work with my application. I would click on certain links and nothing would happen. Or I'd get blank pages back.

Eventually I traced the issue to a known bug in the Sarissa.js file that is used by RichFaces for XML and DOM parsing. This file in RichFaces 3.3.3.Final is not compatible with IE9.

A couple of changes to the file made it work for me on my site however. The attached file can be used in your project and just reference it so that it overrides the built in one.

Anyone who knows me would know I have a knack for innovation, for technology and for fine craftsmanship. I recently replaced my awesome but too heavy Seiko Arctura Kinetic Auto Relay with a Longines Automatic. Going from kinetic (which is a mechanically powered quartz system) to automatic (purely mechanical) is in a sense like downgrading from a purely accuracy perspective, but there is something about a watch that is purely mechanical that is hard to describe. It ties in with an old tradition of extremely precise craftsmanship where the variance in the gravity of the earth affects the accuracy of the mechanical movements, and some watches even compensates for this mechanically. Truly amazing.

But today I saw this. Apart from the amazing advertisement, this watch is just beyond insane.

I went to a local pet shop in the area and found three racks full of these "bonsai" fish... People who know me know I do not care if a person is placed in such a small container. People are not my favourite living creature... But to place an animal like this, a fish, in a bowl containing less water than you drink in a can of soda, is just plain cruel.

People doing this defend their position by claiming these fish are not very mobile or active, therefore they are fine. But I disagree. Without being an expert on the subject, it is just plain common sense that this is wrong. A fish is like any system, it has inputs and outputs. Inputs being food and seawater, outputs being detritus (waste food) and ammonia expelled through the gills. Detritus breaks down into ammonia and nitrites, eventually nitrates. Coupled with the ammonia expelled through the gills, these accumulate in the tiny bowls. That means water parameters will go bad quickly, as ammonia and nitrites are toxic to fish. Without daily water changes (possibly more frequently) these fish will be unhealthy and unhappy.