Livin' the life...

Curious about what's going on in my homeland, I headed over to Nation News website, and what would greet me but the 'article' below.. I think this is intended to be a joke, but it's soo random, I could not help but blog about it. Enjoy!

PS. You can click on the image for a more complete screenshot of that section of the Nation News page.

To be honest, I'm not really a Crop Over fan at all, and believe me, that makes me stand out like a sore thumb in Barbados around this season. When it comes to the music, it's really only 2 or 3 songs that I at least would tap my foot to.

This year I must say that I'm filled with mixed feelings. I do admit that there are a few songs I have taken to mainly due to their rhythm, but what some promote is.. shady at best. The ones I refer to specifically are:

Contone - Hard Times (alcoholic?), Pong - Offset (rum?), John Mahameed - The La La Song (not sure what's a "la la"), Stabby - Stabby De Guard (starts funny, but a bit.. radical), Edwin Yearwood - Nah Missing Me, Nard - Socarobics (..), RPB - Wrong Gal (..), John Mahameed - Hold The Brass (still trying to figure this one out).

If you want to hear these songs and judge them for yourself, you can head over to BajanTube or 98.1 The One (requires a .m3u player) websites.

"Torres ends Spain's long wait for glory"

That's the headline of the official Euro 2008 UEFA website! Below is a photo of the Liverpool striker who sealed the deal for Spain and in doing so, earned a well-deserved Man-of-the-Match award.

In general, I must say that Germany didn't play well, only a few of their players shone in that final. Whereas in Spain, everyone seemed to turn up, fully ready to end their 44 -year award-drought. Regarding Germany, from what I've heard they didn't "deserve" to be in the final anyway! However I'm just glad that on the day the better team one.

Congrats Espana! Woohoo!

Read more on the Euro final at the following sites: UEFA Euro 2008, Yahoo! Sports and ESPN Soccernet. And see these links for photos: UEFA and Yahoo!.

Every time I look back
And every time I think back
On all the stuff I've been through
I've prayed through I cried through
And then I tried you and just
When I was about to fall
Your love caught me when your name I called
Jesus you keep on lookin' out for me!

Those are the some of the lyrics from a rather popular song by gospel artist Kirk Franklin called Lookin' Out For Me. The reason I've included them in the preamble to this TFTW is because I think it's extremely important for us to remember that Jesus is looking out for us, in whatever situation we manage to entangle ourselves, and wherever we venture on this little earth.

To give you a brief true story of my experience with this fact, I recall when I started my current course in jolly ol' England. For the first few months, it was a bit testing academic-wise, but it was especially testing at times, because this course is very individual- as opposed to group- or class-based. The tough time here was getting used to working largely alone and in a climate where I didn't know anyone, and there were NO Bajan (Barbadian), furthermore Caribbean people in sight! As one can imagine, this also meant that I had some serious work to do if there was to be any hope for Christian fellowship.

That is until one rosy day, I heard a familiar accent, from behind me in a university-held seminar. To be honest, until that moment, I really did not know or readily accept, that Bajans had "an accent"! Anyway, through that lovely lady, I met another lovely lady and from her, I met a few other lovely people. Now, I'm sure you're wondering, what's the link with Christianity, how is Jesus involved? Well, it turns out that those two initial ladies are Christians, and us three regularly meet and for casual discussion which usually entails chats about Christianity and other relevant and related issues.

To be honest, it's great! And whenever I think about it all I can do is smile (). To meet people: (a) from Barbados; (b) who share the faith; and (c) who are actually doing the same course (different fields of study though) and have been here for a bit so can "show me the ropes" whenever need be.

Now tell me, considering that reality, can't I shout to the top of my lungs,

JESUS YOU KEEP ON LOOKIN' OUT FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a great week all! And of course, "Me" really means "Us", I just wanted to keep Kirk's line. :-)

PS. This post is dedicated to those two ladies, you both know who you are and I IMAGINE you know that I appreciate you.

For a few hours today I've been fighting with a java problem so in the interest of goodwill I've documented it and the solution below. I think for someone new to java (or someone who hasn't used it in ages aka me) this will be rather useful.

The problem: I wanted to run a Java file 'he.java', which is in a Java package (and Windows directory) called 'her'. Below you can see that when I compiled everything went fine, however when I tried to run the file that became somewhat of a problem! ..

R:\tech\her>javac he.java
R:\tech\her>java he
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: he (wrong name: her/he)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(Unknown Source)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
        at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source)

The solution:
1. Because of the package the command will actually be "java her.he"
2. With that command alone, Java will look for "her.he.class" in "her" directory. However, because you are already in the "her" directory, you'll likely get the same error again, so you need to go up a directory i.e. "cd .."
3. Now try "java her.he"
R:\tech\>java he
Hello Jason!

I thank this article for enlightening me on this exception. It also has more detail, therefore I recommend it if you're interested.

The saturated fat "binge culture" enjoyed by Britons every weekend is leading to potentially serious health problems, according to experts.

A survey of 11,000 households including about 25,000 people found their typical weekend diets contained saturated fat at levels well above recommended guidelines, the study for Unilever found.

A weekend fry-up with buttered toast and a cappuccino contains 33.7g of saturated fat. The recommended daily limit of saturated fat is 30g for men and 20g for women.

The study found consumption of saturated fat could increase to 61g for men and 33g for women on weekend days.

High levels of saturated fat can raise blood cholesterol, particularly low density lipoprotein cholesterol, which is a risk factor for coronary heart disease.

Coronary heart disease is the UK's biggest killer, with one in every four men, and one in every six women dying from the disease. Approximately 300,000 people have a heart attack in the UK each year.

Source

Ohh nooo, not the "classic British breakfast"!! I look forward to that stuff on weekends! :$

If you've ever spoken to me for any extended period of time, you would know that I love to mix in other languages in my speech. Other languages meaning French and Spanish! Well just now, I've stumbled across a rather worthwhile article listing 8 FREE online resources for learning languages. I must say that some of these are anything but extensive, but they provide a reasonable foundation. And, let's be honest, if you really want to learn a new language, you'll probably do a course!

So enjoy the article! I know I will. Adios amigos! Y, hasta la vista! Or.. En Francais; Au revoir, a bientot!

I stumbled across the following USB stick lately, I could help but come to the conclusion that this is strictly created for soldiers or well, forest dwellers!

Here's the photo of another more snazzy looking one! It's amazing what USB sticks are being combined with these days. Then again, I guess that follows on quite nicely from the weird USB devices that are available in general!