Jason Lenhart

Yesterday, after sipping my favorite Moroccan Mint tea at my favorite tea bar; Kristen (one of the owners) set me aside to break the news… Remedy Tea Bar is closing. My heart sank. I love this place and cannot believe it will be closing. Where will I go to get quality product like what the two owners served (with a smile every time)? I guess there are always the larger stores – but Remedy was such a great local Center-City establishment. Within trendy tin-metal cans, Remedy always had a fresh selection of teas. For roughly four years, I would routinely find myself in deep thought selecting which tea to sip. Like Calgon – this establishment as well as the tea had powers to ‘take me away’ from the bad of my day.

I have nothing but fond memories of going to Remedy as a way to get thoughts in order, work on grad homework, and in general just work. Many of my best ideas have originated from Remedy and I believe this is due to the great atmosphere the owners encouraged. It was a very relaxing environment, with great snacks, awesome tea, free wifi, and most importantly always played the best music.

Overall, I believe this to be upsetting as this is the first time in my life where an establishment I recommend and regularly enjoy is closing. The good news is that the website will remain open for visitors to purchase tea. However, it still does not make up for the loss of the bar.

Kristen and Courtney - thank you for supporting my caffeine habit over the years. I wish nothing but the best for the both of you in your future endeavors.

I recently completed reading JavaSpaces Principles, Patterns, and Practice and found it to be a quality book on the subject.  This was a great introduction to the concepts and implementation of Space Based Architectures. 

Coupled with the introduction are plenty of great examples, applicable to the Web 2.0 architecture being evangelized these days.

One thing that was really neat about this book was the foreword by David Gelernter, the father of Space Based Architectures.

Yesterday I gave a presentation on JavaSpaces within my organization - mainly to share some different approaches to implementing distributed systems around data.  Literally around the data, as JavaSpaces is all about processing units that associate (via a Template Pattern) into a network accessible object store.  The processing units can also be notified of data/state changes enabling a type of Event Driven Architecture.

One thing I keep coming back to in my mind is this concept of the internet working for people rather than people engaging the net.  For example, while not an exclusive Space Based Architecture; what was presented as Google Wave within the Google I/O conference fits the bill of data being shared by processing units looking for state changes.  The example they gave was set around email — mainly how email should be more of a collaboration of people acting on a virtual document.  This sounds a lot like an object in a tuple space ‘event-driving’ changes in state.  Reviewing the Google Wave architectural diagrams it is interesting to see how they are making concessions to deal with Partial Failures much the same way a Space Based Architecture would perform.

Overall, is it safe to assume that the “Next Big Thing” is to have the internet work for each of us in a personalized way?

For example, I would like to setup my own processing units around the web notifying me of health records changes, better insurance rates, and local restaurant deals, short-sellers killing my portfolio, etc…  — but to not go through umpteen different services (Geico, Fodors, and Fidelity).  Shouldn’t the web really just act as my own personal-grid (queue Depeche Mode here) that I can independently process to my hearts content (for free) in an event driven manner — who wants to pay for these services? — Certainly Not Me.  While social aspects on the internet are wonderful, perhaps it is time for all of us to use the internet much the same way that an Investment Bank determines Value at Risk.  Instead of risk - we can attempt to only determine Value.

The Google Grid???

I have been lucky to work with many talented individuals who have taught me so much.  Mark Little is one such person that I had the fortune to work with/for.  I found Mark to always go out of his way to help a developer or someone establishing open source communities (no matter his busy schedule).  It is of no surprise that Red Hat would ask him to take the top development role.  I wish nothing but the best for Mark and I know his experience and approach to developing quality teams and software will shine.  Congratulations Mark!

http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2009/03/30/daily12.html

http://bobbickel.blogspot.com/2009/03/mark-little-jboss-cto.html

Last night my wife and I enjoyed a nice evening out with friends - dining at Osteria.  The menu is fairly diverse and found some of the more exotic items not so daring in taste.  For example the octopus (normally I would never take such risks) was unlike what I had expected - dare I say “it tastes like chicken”.  The pizzas were great as appetizers and my Tuna Scallopine was delicious (very fresh).  The service was great as we had a waiter that seemingly had Dane Cook down pat (mannerisms and appearance) — my wife kept quoting lines from one of her favorite Dane Cook movies.  Overall, excellent restaurant but certainly not low-key as reservations are booked a month in advance and the place is crowded.  On the downside - the parking situation is a bit of a game - You can wait for a prime spot on Broad street or park in one of the more risky alley ways off Broad — recently having some wheel covers just stolen from my car and costing me several hundred in replacement has me waiting for the prime location.