Last night I attended the XFM Winter Wonderland concert at Brixton Academy, a charity gig for the Shelter organisation. I had bought the tickets off eBay a while back and hadn’t realised that it was the same day that I arrived back from Vienna, and despite being exhausted I still went to enjoy the awesome performances of The Go! Team, Athlete, Richard Ashcroft (from The Verve) and Supergrass. The event was actually spread over two days, with Sunday’s headliners including The Kaiser Chiefs, The Editors, Hard-Fi, and Maximo Park. All of the bands I saw were quite impressive, but still couldn’t quite top the one-hour set from Supergrass making the two tickets completely worth the £35 I paid for them. XFM writes up a better and more in-depth review here.
Viennese Christmas Markets
Even though I’ve been in London for only a few months now, I haven’t yet taken advantage of the multitude of travel opportunities available with Europe being in such close proximity. This all changed this weekend when I went to visit the Christmas Markets in Vienna. The Christmas Markets, which apparently first started in this city, has spread as a tradition all throughout Europe and even has plenty of imitators back here in England. Its atmosphere is something that can only really be experienced first hand, and is highly recommend at night time, where the Gluwein (mulled wine) has its best warming effects and where the Christmas lights, trinkets, music and general atmosphere can be enjoyed at its fullest. You will definitely not run out of things to do in this city, with over six different Christmas markets in addition to all the other tourist spots.
Although I am probably naive, not having visited many other European cities, I was stunned by the amount of effort most buildings have had put into them. It seemed that each building was watched over by intricately chiselled gargoyles not to mention the lavish gold trimmings that adorned the awnings found on most of them. The Schonbrunn Palace is yet another great example of the delight that can be had from the architecture and culture of this bourgeois empire. The grounds are probably at their height in summer or spring where the large sprawling gardens, the hedge maze and the huge palace grounds come out in their greenest and would be excellent for lazily strolling around in. There is also a Zoo with one of the widest range of animals I’ve seen (including one of our Australian icons, the Koala), not to mention the ever popular tour of the palace insides.
Austria tends not to be very vegan or vegetarian friendly, with many of their national dishes containing pork or beef. A well trodden tourist spot, yet managing to stay authentic where you can consume apparently the best of one of the national dishes, the Schnitzel is Figmullers, tucked away in an alley way just behind the towering Stephensdom Cathedral. The reason it is so well known is because of the giant-sized breaded pork piece that overshadows the plate it sits upon, and is complemented well by their uniquely tasting potato salad. Although there is another Figmullers around the corner, I think the original is the best with its cosy settings and buzzing waiters and people providing the ambiance.
Cakes and pastries are big in Vienna and just down the road from Figlmullers, you can find Café Diglas, one of the better places in Vienna that serves a good Apple Strudel amongst the many other pastries and cakes on offer. The Hotel Sacher is also an essential visit, officially the home of the world renowned Sacher Torte. Though overpriced at €4.50 a slice, this light but rich tasting chocolate cake, thinly covered with apricot jam before being smothered with a chocolate ganache is best eaten with the cream served with it used to lighten each bite. The alternative is the famous chocalatier, Café Demel, that serves another version of the Sacher Cake, though is more likely to be busy because of its location on one of the main shopping streets.
Viennese coffee has an excellent reputation and there are enough cafes serving that you would have no difficulty enjoying one every morning. A place we hunted down was Café Hawelka, a place that not only serves a mean coffee, but also one that seems to be a favourite of locals. The slightly smoky, speak-easy like settings attended by waiters in suits seems like quite an appropriate place to enjoy a peaceful break from the bustling of the Christmas markets. Finally, although the best chocolate probably still lies with the Belgian or the Swiss, Vienna’s take on good chocolate is the Mozartkugeln, balls or coins of chocolate filled with a marzipan and praline cream. These gift friendly chocolates are sold all over the place, but buy them at a supermarket where they are sold at more reasonable prices.
Getting around Vienna is not difficult, with excellent public transport via the Underground, buses and trams serving all parts of central Vienna and with most parts being extremely walkable. In fact it is probably by walking around that you can full appreciate the culture that Vienna has to offer and discover the little alley ways of cafes and shops for yourself.
The photo album can be found here.
Porcupine Tree @ The Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Last night I went along with Ben to see Porcupine Tree a band that Gerrod had put me on to a while back. It was my first concert at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, yet another Carling sponsored music venue in London. The venue itself is the smallest I’ve been to so far, but with a just a bit more capacity than The Arena back home. This venue has three floors with pretty much every seat or position having an easy view of the main stage.
I’m terrible at trying to describe bands, so I won’t try, but I think that if you like any of Porcupine Tree’s albums, I definitely can recommend you to see them live. Somehow their songs are delivered with much more vibrancy than what a recording seems to give them, allowing them to drive home their songs, if not sometimes perhaps a little bit too loudly. The front man last night held a much better conversation with the audience, all who seemed to be fairly big fans and predominantly older (think late thirties, almost early forties). It’s also one of the first times, I’ve ever seen someone perform in their bare feet.
After watching them last night, I realised that I liked a lot more of their songs from the In Absentia album over those from Deadwing, perhaps because I think the former tends to be more melodic with less of the heavier rock undertones I tend not to favour in the latter. It was a great night for a Wednesday and a big thanks to Ben for getting those tickets ages back.
Please Stage Your Tests
It’s a bad sign if the only feedback you have for a project is a long build with only one set of tests. Do yourself (and your team) a favour by splitting test execution into logical groupings, with the fastest (or most important) running first. Here’s an ant macro you can reuse easily that’s optimised to only generate the junit HTML report and fail the build if any tests fail. (Sorry about the funny quote characters – I can’t seem to get my blog software to properly encode them)
<macrodef name="run_junit_tests" description="Macro for running junit tests"><br /> <attribute name="testclasspath" default="unit.test"/><br /> <attribute name="testfileset" default="unittest.fileset"/><br /> <attribute name="outputdir" default="build/output/test"/><br /> <attribute name="basedir" default="."/><br /> <sequential><br /> <mkdir dir="@{outputdir}"/><br /> <junit forkmode="perBatch"<br /> printsummary="yes"<br /> haltonfailure="false"<br /> failureproperty="unit.test.failure"<br /> haltonerror="false"<br /> errorproperty="unit.test.error"<br /> dir="@{basedir}"><br /> <classpath refid="@{testclasspath}"/><br /> <formatter type="xml"/><br /> <batchtest fork="yes" todir="@{outputdir}"><br /> <fileset refid="@{testfileset}"/><br /> </batchtest><br /> </junit><br /> <condition property="tests.failed.or.errored"><br /> <or><br /> <isset property="unit.test.failure"/><br /> <isset property="unit.test.error"/><br /> </or><br /> </condition><br /> <property name="_junit_report_dir_" value="@{outputdir}"/><br /> <antcall target="-generate_junit_report_and_fail"/><br /> </sequential><br /></macrodef><br /><target name="-generate_junit_report_and_fail" if="tests.failed.or.errored"<br /> description="Generate the unit test report if tests failed and cause build to stop short"><br /> <junitreport todir="${_junit_report_dir_}"><br /> <fileset dir="${_junit_report_dir_}"><br /> <include name="TEST-*.xml"/><br /> </fileset><br /> <report format="frames" todir="${_junit_report_dir_}/output"/><br /> </junitreport><br /> <fail if="tests.failed.or.errored" message="Build failed due to Unit test failures or errors"/><br /></target>
Festive Good Food Show @ Earl’s Court
One of the reasons I tell people when they ask me what brings me to London is the food. Although I have some doubt about the freshness of certain types of fruit and vegetables, I’m still impressed by the variety and availability of so many different foods and produce. As a result, I thought it would be good to go along to the Festive Good Food and Wine Show held at Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre today. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, with a visit to something similar to this back home keeping me occupied for about an hour before I got bored. After going along today, it was definitely the sheer number of produce retailers and distributors, the numerous celebrity cooks and the huge sprawl of stands that kept me entertained for most of the day.
Some of the celebrity chefs that I got to see included Curtis Stone (from Surfing the Menu, Saturday Kitchen, and Dinner in a Box), Jo Pratt (from Great Food Live and Elle Magazine), and my favourite of the day, the world renowned Rick Stein (from too many shows to list). It was almost quite surreal having watched someone like Rick Stein overseas for such along time, and then being able to see him be just as passionate about his food live as he is on his shows.
Although each ticket is worth a fairly hefty £14 you easily make up for this with the excellent demonstrations and all the samplings around the place, everything from dips, oils, breads, sausages, cheese, chilli ice-cream, and chocolate products. In addition to all the food, there is also much in the way of drinks including cordials, liqueurs, whiskeys, flavoured vodkas, London produced Gin and the variety of wines from all over the world with sampling. With many of the hosts encouraging people to sample all these wares at eleven in the morning, it’s no wonder there’s a number of people staggering around by the end of the exhibition. A great way to taste some fabulous nosh, sample some interesting drinks and just kick back for the day. Oh yeah, and if you’re wondering, yes that is a fountain of chocolate for fondue.
Franz Ferdinand @ Alexandra Palace
I’ve had tickets to see Franz Ferdinand since early September and last night’s show at Alexandra Palace reminded me of why I wanted to see them so desperately. The Palace is yet another one of London’s heritage buildings, easily fitting the most people in relation to any of the other venue’s I’ve been to so far. However having said that its capacity is impressive, its flat floor also means that it is much more suited to the exhibitions and conventions it is normally the home of, and not so great for seeing someone as great as Franz.
The support acts for the night included The Rakes and The Editors, two excellent indie rock bands who I can now thoroughly recommend but whose performances were far surpassed by the main act. The only other time that I’ve seen Franz was when I went to my first Splendour in the Grass two years ago, and even then it was difficult to make it inside the tent. When I saw them that time, it was just as they were getting big with their first hit, Take Me Out, and their progress reminded me heavily of the success that the Australian band, Jet, went through.
I like to think that there are so many other reasons that make them such great performers other than their catchy pop rock tunes which no other band seems to be able to reproduce. I am always impressed by bands that acknowledge the quality of their support acts, and Franz thanked both of their support acts probably with the understanding that it is difficult to make it in that industry, while at the same time, demonstrating their humbleness. Another great reason to see them live is that they have a fantastic stage presence. Last night for example, the largish stage was quite bare, yet for every moment of the concert, it seemed to be constantly filled with all their energy and solidly performed music.
The set was extremely well planned, taking plenty of their new album songs and mixing it up with a lot of the hits from their previous album. It was also probably most ideal for an audience that has probably had the widest age range I’ve seen some time, with enough mellow songs to chill out on, interspersed through their harder rock songs that resulted in a fair amount of moshing in most of the audience. Surprisingly Take Me Out was played during their main act while they finished off their night with an encore consisting of Jacqueline (1st album), Evil And A Heathen (2nd album), Outsiders (2nd album), and This Fire (1st album).
The Kua Rating: 8 out of 10
IntelliJ Live Templates for Eclipse
Migrating to Eclipse has been interesting having used it for a little over a week now. I’m definitely not as productive in it yet, and there are features (or plugins) that win some points, but others that lose dismally. I’m still reserving my judgement for a few more weeks and probably should wait until I pair with an Eclipse super user. Til then though, I’ve missed some of the common IntelliJ Live Templates (equating to Eclipse Templates), so here‘s a file for those that want them (for use with Eclipse 3.1.1). Import them under Window -> Preferences -> Java -> Editor -> Templates (no, I’m not kidding). I’m building up a list of key mappings as well, but that will take a little bit longer.
Anything that saves me from typing is awesome. Enjoy!
Derrick Carter @ The End
The End is a club located right next door to AKA (which I went to for my birthday). I’ve heard great things about this club and I definitely wasn’t disappointed by the experience I had last night. I was heading there with a few friends and was stunned when I heard that Derrick Carter, a famous Chicago House DJ was playing. I wasn’t really expecting to know any of the DJ’s playing and was just thrilled to find out he would be playing the closing set from 3:30am in their main room. Cover is not exactly cheap, coming in at just over £15 but compared to most other clubs and with the prospect of finally seeing Derrick Carter live, was happy to pay the amount.
The End is not as big a club as I thought it would be but thankfully last night was not as busy as it apparently sometimes gets. There certainly seems like a lot more room than what AKA offers next door, with two main rooms and several bars serving the various areas. There are several areas to chill out with some comfy couches in the corners in one room, but with most people just cooling off in the little space between the two rooms.
On some nights (like last night), access is granted for some to move between The End and AKA (also known as ‘As One’). We briefly stepped into AKA but like the last time, found it was overly packed and the music was not as good as what was below in The End. After speaking with a few people at random last night, it seemed that some had come specifically listen to Derrick Carter, whilst many others were just happy to dance to the awesome music he played all night (morning?) long. The crowd was quite friendly and we had an awesome night.