Java may not be getting much Apple love, at least not for the moment, but the better language sure is. ;-)

Also Leopard has built-in Subversion, including Python bindings, and ssh key management too. Sweet.

Just as soon as they get Java up to spec, looks like I'll be jumping.

Update: And perhaps Java on Leopard isn't looking so bad after all.

I took yesterday afternoon off to nip across to Reading for a parents' evening, missing a retrospective. This morning, I find I'm giving a breakfast brown bag on news story packages (a set of interesting if complex user stories that I've been working on).

I don't think "bastards" is too strong a word.

Tim Vine on top form:

He wasn't quite as good on Thursday - he was trying out new material - but I still thought he was great. Opinions differed, though.

Leopard looks like it's got some good stuff in it - Time Machine and Spaces especially look good, and the new Terminal looks like it might replace iTerm.

But it looks like they've done the Dock no favours. The Finder changes don't sound to great either. I use Quicksilver and Path Finder, though, so I'm not too bothered about them, and I have a feeling that going forward, I'm going to have to upgrade to get any of the latest toys working.

But anyway, until they fix Java, I can't upgrade, so that's that. Early adopters around the office have found that Eclipse is totally broken on Leopard at the moment, and that's a show-stopper.

Update: Lifehacker on the new Terminal. Also, Richard and Jeff on why it doesn't matter that Java's broken on Leopard. It does matter, though - if Java won't run on Leopard, I won't upgrade to it, and I won't buy a new Mac, either. My loss, but Apple's loss too. I'm a consultant - I don't always get to choose the platform I work with, and many of my clients choose Java.

Roar this evening. Good - I could do with a laugh.

I didn't get out of the office 'till after 11 yesterday - we were launching stuff. Shiny shiny!

It took so long 'cos the launch procedure didn't work properly 'cos of an Oracle bug. Bloody thing. Turns out that Orable's materialised views can be configure only to update periodically rather than synchronously. Which is fair enough, except that the query optimiser still sometimes decides to use the stale view. At one point yesterday, we had select

count(*) from table

select * from table

I mean, what's the point in an expensive product like Oracle if the bloody thing doesn't work? This stuff was all sorted on the '400 20 years ago. Bah.

Then, when I got home after midnight, I found that one of the t-shirts that I'd left on my washing line in my front garden had caught fire. It was one of my favorites, too - Make Coldplay History.

Bizarre thing was, only the one t-shirt was damaged. The other clothes hanging around it weren't even scorched. Weird.

I'm rather hoping that t-shirts don't do this sort of thing spontaneously, so I'm assuming that it was either some nasty little oik on his way home from school, or some drunken tosser on his way home from the pub. Git. Where am I going to dry my washing now?

Update: List minute bill update - Tim Vine's on! It's not too late to get here.

El P just sent me a link to this:

Sigh. I remember Barbarian Prince. Takes me back - I must have been twelve or thirteen. Before I had access to a computer, this is the sort of thing I used to play

Radiohead: 01 and 10 - wonderfully barking.

Also interesting - She Talks In Maths - hear some tracks on MySpace. Sounds fab, but is that just 'cos the material is so good? Might be worth picking up, anyway.

This Kraftwork take-off is hysterical:

Bill Bailey is a god.

The Wikipedia is wonderful, too - who would ever have guessed that the Hokey Cokey had its origins in anti-Catholic propaganda?

"Motorists will face a mandatory speed limit of 20mph in residential areas if the government accepts proposals that would reduce the annual death toll of 3,100 people on British roads". Wouldn't that be nice?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Your chances of killing a child at 20, should you hit one, are very low. It 30, much higher. At 40, they are dead. Even the most skillful driver can't avoid hitting a child who runs out in front of them, as they are wont to do.

Am I scared that my kids will be abducted buy those predatory paedoes that you read about in the gutter press all the time? Not particularly. I'm aware, but the risk there is very low. No, it's the roads that scare me.

I'm a little disappointed with Overpowered, to be honest. The title track is lovely, but little of the rest of it shows the originally I was hoping for from Ms. Murphy. There's nothing like the mad inventiveness of a Ramalama (Bang Bang) here.

In fact, a lot of it sounds rather dated, rather 80s. And not in a good way. (Is there a good way of sounding rather 80s?) I might have been listening to the Eurythmics on an off-night half the time.

The Black and White Album, OTOH, is great. It is more of the same on the whole, as I thought it would be, but my goodness aren't The Hives magnificent in full flight?

Jython 2.2.1 is out. It's fabulous to see Jython really making strides again. I used Jython 2.1 for years, and it worked just fine, but somehow if people don't see an OSS project making regular releases they somehow assume that they should steer clear, regardless of the quality of the existing software.

And I must say that while the missing new Python features were never a show stopper, it'll be nice to have them.

Some unmitigated bastard has stolen Jez's Mac. Anyone got any suggestions for him that don't involve already having installed MacPhoneHome?

In the meantime, if any of you see a Mac with a Cyberman's head in the lid, get in touch with Jez or me.

Stone me - that caught everyone on the hop!

I'm sorry to see him go in a way, but he wasn't attracting much support, and the Lib-Dems need a boost if the Tories are to get the stuffing they deserve next time, so new blood is probably a good thing.

Bugger. Growl doesn't have an option to wake your Mac from a screen saver, even on a per-app or per-event basis - and it isn't going to get one. I have to say, I don't agree that it would be that evil an option, provided that it wasn't the default. People wouldn't have to turn it on if they didn't want to, after all.

I'm quite prepared to believe that it would be a bugger to implement, though.

Why do I want it? Well, I'm currently Build Whip here at GU, and ccmenu is an essential tool in my armory. It would be really nice if I could arrange to be told about a broken build even if my screen saver has kicked it. I can make it play a sound, I suppose, but it's not really the same.

What's a Build Whip? Well, we have a big old team here, twenty-odd pairs, and we are not allowed to check in on red. Someone needs to make sure that the build gets fixed ASAP, and it's my job to make sure that happens.

Still none the wiser? OK, well, we practice something called Continuous Integration. When we are happy with a bit of code we've written, we put it into a single shared place, the code repository. Whenever the code in the repository changes, one or our server machines automatically bursts into life, and compiles all the code (to make sure that it's valid) then runs all our automated tests (hopefully demonstrating that it's bug free).

If this all works, the build is green. If not, it's red, and there's always some what that the entire team is informed of this. At my last site, we had a lava lamp. At GU, we have a big-ass plasma TV showing all sorts of stuff, and ccmenu or ccTray.

If the build is red, it need to be fixed ASAP. Fixing the build can be enormously complicated by other people putting further changes into the repository while you are working on it, so that's not allowed. Since that means that no one can check in (i.e. put code changes into the repository) while the build is red, that means it's even more important that the build is fixed ASAP. ASAPer? ASAPest? Whatever. So you have a build whip, whose job it is to either fix the build, or more often to track down the pair whose change was responsible for breaking the build, and make them fix it.

More on this later. Time to go shopping.

So, the Catholics are boycotting Pullman, are they? The film makers should have stuck to their guns and left God as the villain of the piece in the first place.

I know, I'm going to boycott them right back.

Oh yes, that's right, I already was.

It's a good month for music. I got the new PJ Harvey's White Chalk a couple of weeks ago, the fabulous In Rainbows last week, and I'm picking up The Black and White Album (more of the same, I'm sure, but fun with it) and Overpowered (who knows, but a wonderfully barking cover) on my way home this evening.

Just came across the Overpowered video:

Superb.

Skyrocket is nothing short of superb. Problem is, if you're like me, you'll spend too much time watching it when you should be working.

A version for the inferior OS available here.

Dave's wondering why Al Gore should get a peace prize for his work on publicizing climate change.

I'd imagine it's because climate change is likely to be a major cause of conflict over the next century. What with shortages of basic resources such as fresh water and arable land, and mass migration due to flooding and so on, it's going to get ugly.

Let's just hope that Gore is actually able to accomplish something to justify the prize.

Here's one nice practice that we have here at GU - whenever the QAs sign off a story, they take a bell over to the devs who implemented it. The devs ring it, and the room applauds.

It's not just nice for the people ringing the bell - it gives the whole team a feeling of progress.

London Python went well last night - more here.

Funny - In Rainbows reviewed in a Guardian Cricket stylee.

Update: I had a listen to much of it this lunchtime. First impressions - very dense, not especially jolly, beautiful. Typical Radiohead, really. More later.

And yes, it's finally arrived, thanks. Word is that it's pretty good - I'll let you know what I think of it when I get a chance to give it a listen or two.

No one else seems to be having any trouble. Is it only me?

Bah. Not happy.

I've fired off am email to W.A.S.T.E, but no reply yet. I hope they are good, 'cos there are some t-shirts I fancy from them too (Hadley or no Hadley) but if they don't answer customer queries, I'll keep my money.

Thanks to Tony for the photo. T-shirt by xkcd.

In Rainbows is out tomorrow. Ooooh, I'm excited!

Naturally, I went for the box set. I'sd be in two minds about spending £40 on an album by anyone else, but this is Radiohead we are talking about here. No brainer.

I'm in two minds about the whole experiment, though, I must say. I'm perfectly happy to see the stupid record companies get it in the neck, but I'm less happy about cutting the record shops out of the loop. (Yes, I'm quite aware that this is inconsistent, but still.) I buy almost all my music from real, meatspace record shops. For me, poking around looking for stuff, more often than not stumbling across something I wasn't expecting, is half the fun. If we don't buy from them, they'll just disappear.

Ah well. Download tomorrow!

Update: Bah! Bloody download doesn't work!

I've arranged a London Python meetup tomorrow evening. See some of you there!