http://donald-ferguson.net/blog Dulcius Ex Asperis Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:01:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Well, my Spanish speaking friends are still messing with my head. I asked a cab driver a question about his "carro," which should mean "car." This resulted in a serious failure. Carro means car in Latin America but horse drawn wagon in Castillian. I could not twill my "rr" and pronouced it ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=119 I am on a trip to Barcelona. My girlfriend and I were walking and decided to have gelato. My girlfriend ordered in English and got what she wanted. I have been practicing Spanish and have been doing very well. I have no trouble at all understanding people or expressing myself. ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=118 OK. Can someone explain to me why lobster is feminine (la langosta) and crab is masculine (el cangrejo)? And I warned you about " " and "." being important. The Spanish speaking flight attendant that also speaks English failed to pronounce " " and "." in the safety announcement. The attendant ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=117 Someone pointed out that my discussion of precursor projects did not mention Encina and work from Transarc. I had been planning to include that information when I started writing about the formation of WebSphere 3.0. Transarc's JetSpeed project and Raleigh's Servlet Express project were the two threads that came together ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=116 I am making progress but am going slowly. I can never produce my history as fast as the team that wrote the official history. Writing the history is a hobby, not a full time job.I will get this done, however. So far, the voting is  The history in the book is innacurate: ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=115 I have started writing the history on one of this site's pages. I am going to forget things and make a lot of mistakes. Please correct any errors. http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=114 Well, my adventures in speaking Spanish are off to a good start. I am arriving on Saturday. I have a few questions for the hotel and sent them an email, in both Spanish (or my version) and English. I did not get a response. It turns out it went into ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=112 I have decided that I am going to write my recollections of WebSphere's history. There are a few reasons why I have chosen to do so, which I will explain later. The most important one is my children. My girlfriend told my daughter about the eBook on WebSphere’s history. Her ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=111 I easily found the keystone in Hercules tonight. The human mind is amazing. Finding a constellation for the 1st time is surprisingly hard. Once your mind recognizes the pattern you can snap to it instantly. I also found M13 quite easily with binoculars. Vega is prominent and relatively low in the ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=110 Conditions were OK tonight. The sky was relatively clear with scattered clouds from 10:00 -- 10:30 PM. Seeing and Transparency were average (3/5). There was a bright half moon. Limiting magnitude was 4.7. I clearly found Arcturus.  I think, but am not sure, that I found Epsilon Boötis (ε Boo / ... http://donald-ferguson.net/blog/?p=109