JEEConf 2013 trip report

Like last year, I had the opportunity to speak at JEEConf Kiev, the leading Java conference in Eastern Europe. More than 700 people from countries like Ukraine, Russia and Belarus attended JEEConf. Most talks are therefore in Russian. However, there was just enough English content to keep me entertained as well.

Launching Scalabitz

Today marks the launch of my lingering weekend-project: scalabitz.com. It tries to surface interesting Scala content through the API of link-shortener Bit.ly. The site was built using Scala and Play (and a bit of Akka) with a MongoDB storage layer and can be found on GitHub.

A year of blogging analyzed with R

Today it’s exactly one year ago that I published my first blogpost on branchandbound.net. During this year I’ve written 12 posts, including this one. Since we live in the age of analytics, I thought it would be nice to show how this blog has fared during its first year.

Book review: Infinity and the Mind

Infinity and the Mind provides a rare mixture of mathematical, scientific and philosophical explorations. It gives both an account of the theory of transfinite numbers and discusses its implications from a philosophical point of view. With ‘The science and philosophy of the infinite’ as its subtitle, it is one of the most challenging books I’ve read in a while. Granted, this may be because I’m neither a mathematician nor a philosopher, just a software developer who has some interest in both fields. And yes, the book is relatively old, but it has stood the test of time.