Young entrepreneurs in London

Yesterday while at the excellent Camden Market, I met some fellow country men (Czechs). They had set up a stand from which a lovely caramelised sugar and cinnamon scent was coming.
They were selling “Trdlo” that they proclaimed was a traditional Czech pastry. I had never seen “Trdlo” before so I asked about it, in English.
They started explaining how traditional it is but when I mentioned that I am Czech as well and that I had never seen it before, they had few and lame explanations.
Anyway, I was amused by the claim and it smelled lovely so I decided to try it. It was really yum and at £2 (100 Czech krounes) a pop it seems to be a gold mine. I don’t really care whether the claim is true, I am just happy to see some young Czech entrepreneurs trying their wings due to the new EU membership 😉
Update 06/09/04
Looks as if trdlo has been introduced in Prague as well; with not so good response. A Czech blogger writes how people are being ripped of with burned dough (In Czech).
Update 18/04/06
Trdlo recipe (is in Slovak… will be translated to English at some point)

Netbeans 4.0 Beta 1 – first impressions

The potential is great but I have mixed first feelings.
Netbeans 4.1 splashThe new Netbeans is (Ant) project oriented a la Eclipse, IntelliJ and others. Point at an Ant build script, and Netbeans will try to pick out source, target and library directories. No more mounting ad hoc mounting of directories, things have to be more organised.
Refactoring has a dedicated menu option. You will be able to rename and move classes around; Netbeans will search all of the code base and reflect the changes.
Multiple build targets is something that has always been lacking. Finally Netbeans 4.0 allows you to define a build target for each source path. Build your Servlets, EJB implementations, interfaces, utilities and etc to different targets.
I know this is just a first beta (the final release is scheduled for December 2004) but there were exceptions all over the place. Possibly because I tried to open two medium to large sized existing projects. Had I started creating a small project from scratch, it would have given NB 4.0b1 a more fair chance.
The J2EE development support preview coming in October will be interesting. Additional exciting coming feature is the Profiler. I have already tried the stand-alone preview and once again it did not manage to profile two of our main projects due to exceptions 🙁
Here is a good document on how to move from Netbeans 3.6 to Netbeans 4.0.

Heja Sverige!

Sweden secured 3 gold medals within 24 hours. That’s a very good feat considering the size of the country. Again and again they prove how talented and athletic they are.
First the heroin Carolina Klüft got gold for women’s heptathlon where she frankly dominated (6952 points). Then Christian Olsson in men’s triple jump (17.79m). Last Stefan Holm in high jump (2.36m); his first win in a major competition in a long time.
Being born in Czech Republic, raised in Sweden, living in England and soon to be married to a Brazilian wife, I sometimes get confused about who to cheer on. As long as all of them are winning gold medals, it’s all good!

Luisa Miller, Opera Holland Park

The heroine Luisa and “Carlo” fall in love but Carlo is really Rodolfo, the son of the powerful count Walter. In jealousy Wurma, the counts servant, revels the true identity of Carlo to Luisa’s father Miller.
When Walter finds out of son’s plans of marrying Luisa he feels he needs to intervene. Not only is Luisa just a farmers daughter, Walter also has plans for Rudolfo to marry the now wealthy duchess Frederica who has loved Rudolfo since he was a little boy.
The scene is set for a tragedy of love and jealousy. A tragedy that comes true.
(Spoiler below but in true Opera fashion, it’s good to be aware of the whole story so that you can appreciate the music and the singing)
Rudolfo overhears Luisa denouncing her love for him and is in despair. He doesn’t know that Luisa wasn’t telling the truth, she was only trying to save her father that had been put into prison. Rudolfo is desperate and decides to poison both Luisa and himself. Only after Luisa finds out they are both beyond saving is she able to once again proclaim her love for him.
The wardrobe was very bizarre; if not ugly. It was a modernised, 80s wardrobe. Think yellow cardigans and light blue skirts for the girls, big shoulder suits and skinny ties for the men. This in turn did not work with very well with the story. Terms like castle, villagers, count, stables and servants.
One of the highlights for me was the fact that the orchestra was on the same level as you. Playing at a mere arms length away. Normally they would be tucked away somewhere below the stage but at Opera Holland Park you can watch them every moment.

Beach bumming

Last Saturday was sunny and hot and I was looking forward to Sunday when we had plans to go the East coast of England, Broadstairs.
But on Sunday the weather turned out pretty bad. Windy and with solid overcast, not giving us more than 10 minutes of sunshine throughout the day. Still there were many persons braving the weather and swimming or playing in the water.
I was amazed to see how well prepared the beach visitors were. Normally people bring a beach towel and a good book but these beach bums had so much more. Wind shields, tents, parasols, portable BBQs, crocket and more.
The highlight of the day was ice-cream and cappuccino while overlooking the main Broadstairs beach with its (in)famous rent-a-donkey.