Wahay! A blog of My Very Own, thanks to Ovidiu.. let me see.. how does one link.. Ovidiu's weblog.

Who am I anyway? I was born in South Africa 23 years ago, emigrated to Australia 5 years ago, did a comp sci degree at Sydney Uni, and am now working as a Java programmer. When not coding, I'm usually reading, mostly in the closely related subjects of science fiction, fantasy and theology. Favourite authors include Greg Egan (modern SF), Terry Pratchett, discworld, Dicworld author, and (though not recently) Douglas Hofstadter (Metamagical Themas; Godel, Escher, Bach), and C.S. Lewis, a brilliant theologian.

In computing, I seem to spend an awful lot of time reading Jakarta mailing lists, wherein lurk a whole bunch of interesting and clever people who spend their time writing open source Java code. Cool. I've gotten somewhat involved, and ended up a committer in the Avalon and Commons projects.

I have an unnatural fascination with XML, ever since my introduction to it in late 1999 when I worked on an XML database at University. I'd recommend subscribing to the XML-DEV mailing list, which is like listening in on a tea party from Alice in Wonderland, but very educational anyway. One of the more interesting projects involving XML is Apache Cocoon, on whose lists I've lurked for about 2 years. Cocoon has become rather top-heavy, and forXP'ers, it's no longer "the simplest thing that can possibly work", but it's fun nonetheless.

I'm currently working on the Anteater project, about which I'm also meant to be writing a chapter of a book entitled "Extreme XML: Cocoon, and somethingorother", along with Ivelin Ivanov, Ugo Cei and Nicola Ken Barozzi.

Which reminds me, I ought to get some real work done..

--Jeff Posted by jefft at August 08, 2002 12:37 PM