Recently I had to make my JBoss Seam web application support both English and Georgian. Naturally their character set is not to be found in ASCII, so I had to rely on JBoss Seam and Java's support for UTF-8.

Just performing the normal steps did not work for me though. I needed to convert my messages resource bundle to ASCII - using either the mentioned native2ascii tool which is part of the JDK, or in my case, Changing this in IntelliJ Idea:

I developed a very well oiled JBoss Seam application, which has been working great. However my client today told me they could not save anything. Curious, I investigated.

It seems like none of my conversation states are being remembered. Needless to say, in a Seam application this wreaks havoc.

By applying simple deductive reasoning, I tracked the problem down to this recent addition:

As I promised a while ago, here are some photos of our first and second snow falls this season.

I knew this would be a great subject for a photo - the intense orange of the leaves contrasted with the cool blue of the building behind it. Unfortunately I could not get my composition as well as I wanted to, due to distracting surroundings. However this photo still shows how incredible a beam of light can be on the right subject.

Another example:

A polarising filter helps reduce reflections on reflective surfaces, such as water or leaves. When you are out on a trip to photograph fall colours, it is paramount that you take your polarising filter with. Look at the difference between the photo Karin took, and what I captured. The cameras used are not important - both are impressive cameras and indistinguishable at web resolutions. Focus on the colours and "pop" in the image below.

This image from Karin's camera without polarising filter: