Europe Travelblog  -

+ 6 - 3 | § ¶Really cool map site

I found World66, a fun travel site with some interesting free services.  The services I really like are free dynampic maps of all the countries/state/provinces I've been to in the World, Europe, the USA, or Canada.  I have included the map of European countries I have visted on the front page of this site and here.  I'd been thinking about such a map recently, but didn't know how to create it.  They just helped me out.

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+ 11 - 11 | § ¶Java Code Coverage Tools Evaluation

Over the past week, I've been evaluating various test Code Coverage tools for our Java application.  We have a large Java project with about 1500 production classes and 550 test classes.  My goal was to find a tool that integrates well into our Ant test target, automatically producing html reports at the application, package, class, and line level without requiring code changes.  The tool can't be too slow.  Good documentation and examples, historical reports, and an IntelliJ IDEA plugin were nice-to-have but not necessary.  Cost is a consideration.  I looked at ten free tools and one commercial tool during the evaluation.  I found that some projects are dead, some have some work to do, and some have created excellent tools that should work for any team.

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+ 7 - 2 | § ¶Beslan - Russia's Reichstag?

Feb 27, 1933, a fire started in the German parliament building, the Reichstag. The next day, Adolf Hitler, a quasi-democratically-elected national leader, convinced the nation to declare martial law and give him dictatorial powers.

Sep 1, 2004, a group of Chechen rebels stormed a school in Beslan, Russia, leading to the deaths of 300 innocent children. Ten days later, Vladimir Putin, a quasi-democratically-elected national leader, announced plans that essentially make him the only political power in Russia. Within days, Russian politicians universally praised Putin, despite their loss of power through the unconstitutional changes.

Are these similarities relevant? How scared should we be about the future of Russia and the world?

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+ 3 - 6 | § ¶Eugene got published

My friend and common traveling companion Eugene Day, who appears in many of the pictures on this site, was published last week.  He wrote a letter to the editors of the International Herald Tribune, and his letter got in.  He's very excited that millions around the world had a chance to see his thoughts on the Electoral College.  Check it out.

+ 3 - 5 | § ¶...and they say Bush talks funny

I was saddened and angered today to receive a bit of intra-office political spam today.  One of my co-workers, L, forwarded an email ripping Kerry.  I wasn't surprised by that part; L often sends emails directly from the RNC to the office.  What surprised me were the sheer inanity of the accusations against Kerry and L's partisan blindness to what he had done. 

I'm astonished that the level of political discourse has sunk so low that people are making up meaningless accusations like this and refusing to research them.

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