I'd love to just delete it, but it has managed to entangle itself throughout my entire application! Dammit!

Nah... Just kidding. I'm in Reading, UK again this week.

Today's "find a place for dinner" mission needed a little more thought given last night's disaster with Mexican cuisine. Because my hindsight is ever so powerful, I was able to assess my mistake simply by making the observation that the Mexican community is mostly non-existant here, at least from where I'm sitting. It should have been obvious that the chances of finding a great Mexican restaurant were slim.

Armed with that knowledge and the fact that I've run into more Polish people that I can count, I quickly came to the conclusion that Polish cuisine might be a good bet. Google helped out and suggested I try Gospoda. Gospoda sits in the middle of what looks to be a run-down Polish community, one that reminds me of Chicago's "Polska dzielnica". What I do remember about the Polish community in Chicago was the great food and hospitality. Would Gospoda up my record to .500?

My Polish is still good enough to read this menu, but after a discussion with a guy at the bar (half English, half Polish), I realized that they serve much more than what you see here.

Best Flaczki I've had in a long time, maybe ever.  Sorry Mom.

The Schabowy Kotlet was also great, but I'm not ready to give it the top prize.

All-in-all, a much better effort tonight. Some may be offended by the cash-only service, but me being a Pole myself I know that there isn't one on the planet that likes to pay taxes.

Tomorrow is my last night I'll have to do Indian.  You can't come to the UK and not have Indian food, that much I know. .667 is a good record for three days work.

I'm staying in Wokingham, Berkshire, commuting to Reading everyday to work with a client.  I flew in yesterday and haven't really been funcitonal until now given the jetlag and such.  I finally feel about 70%. Another day and I'll be 100%.

Wokingham is really small, but I've got everything I need. It has very interesting architecture, where 17th century buildings don't look out of place. There are many pubs, one on just about every corner, sometimes two or three.  I'm not really a beer drinker, but I'll visit a pub or two before I leave to be sure.  I'm thankful that everything is in walking distance, because if I were to drive a car around here there is no way I'd survive.  Just walking down the street is dangerous. As I cross the street I look left when I should be looking right.  I'd better figure that out soon.

Off to Reading tomorrow.

In the last year or so I've been working to Scala. Initally when I came across Scala, there was an Eclipse plug-in that was supposed to be the development environment for Scala. Back then, I tried it and it worked, but only for very trivial cases. It was in its infancy. Surprisingly, as the language matured, the IDE seemed move in the wrong direction, progressively getting worse and worse. In fact, the last time I remember taking it for a spin, I couldn't even create an empty Scala project. Nothing worked. I since then have been working with emacs ENSIME and sbt. I've been satisfied with that environment, but I'm always wanting more.

A few (maybe a dozen or so) months have passed since I've looked at the Eclipse environment for Scala, so I figured I'd give it a try today.

I downloaded a fresh copy of Helios, installed the plugin and off I went.  Very surprisingly, it worked.  Well, the following file did.

It's a trivial example to be sure, but this much code never worked for me in any of the previous releases. This is fantastic news, because one of the things that will help with Scala adoption, and particularily in adoption from Java developers who are already on the JVM, is a development environment that the community is comfortable with.

Kudos to the Scala IDE team.

Here's the code from the demo if you want to try it yourself.

package euler

import scala.actors.Actor
import Actor._

object Euler011 extends Actor {

  type Matrix = Seq[Seq[Int]]
  case class CalculateMaxRequest(matrix: Matrix, from: Actor)
  case class CalculateMaxReply(matrix: Matrix, max: Int)

  var count = 0

  def execute() {
    val input = "08 02 22 97 38 15 00 40 00 75 04 05 07 78 52 12 50 77 91 " +
                "08 49 49 99 40 17 81 18 57 60 87 17 40 98 43 69 48 04 56 " +
                "62 00 81 49 31 73 55 79 14 29 93 71 40 67 53 88 30 03 49 " +
                "13 36 65 52 70 95 23 04 60 11 42 69 24 68 56 01 32 56 71 " +
                "37 02 36 91 22 31 16 71 51 67 63 89 41 92 36 54 22 40 40 " +
                "28 66 33 13 80 24 47 32 60 99 03 45 02 44 75 33 53 78 36 " +
                "84 20 35 17 12 50 32 98 81 28 64 23 67 10 26 38 40 67 59 " +
                "54 70 66 18 38 64 70 67 26 20 68 02 62 12 20 95 63 94 39 " +
                "63 08 40 91 66 49 94 21 24 55 58 05 66 73 99 26 97 17 78 " +
                "78 96 83 14 88 34 89 63 72 21 36 23 09 75 00 76 44 20 45 " +
                "35 14 00 61 33 97 34 31 33 95 78 17 53 28 22 75 31 67 15 " + 
                "94 03 80 04 62 16 14 09 53 56 92 16 39 05 42 96 35 31 47 " + 
                "55 58 88 24 00 17 54 24 36 29 85 57 86 56 00 48 35 71 89 " + 
                "07 05 44 44 37 44 60 21 58 51 54 17 58 19 80 81 68 05 94 " + 
                "47 69 28 73 92 13 86 52 17 77 04 89 55 40 04 52 08 83 97 " + 
                "35 99 16 07 97 57 32 16 26 26 79 33 27 98 66 88 36 68 87 " + 
                "57 62 20 72 03 46 33 67 46 55 12 32 63 93 53 69 04 42 16 " + 
                "73 38 25 39 11 24 94 72 18 08 46 29 32 40 62 76 36 20 69 " + 
                "36 41 72 30 23 88 34 62 99 69 82 67 59 85 74 04 36 16 20 " + 
                "73 35 29 78 31 90 01 74 31 49 71 48 86 81 16 23 57 05 54 " + 
                "01 70 54 71 83 51 54 69 16 92 33 48 61 43 52 01 89 19 67 " + 
                "48"
    val intArray = input split " " map (_.toInt) toList
    val array2D = (intArray grouped 20 toList)
    val sliced = array2D.map(row => row.sliding(4, 1).toList).sliding(4, 1).toList
    val matrices: List[Matrix] = sliced flatMap (_.transpose)
    count = matrices.size
    println("We have " + count + " matrices to process, each using an actor")
    for (matrix <- matrices) {
      val calculator = new MaxProductCalculator
      calculator.start()
      calculator ! CalculateMaxRequest(matrix, this)
    }
  }

  var max = 0
  override def act() = loop {
    react {
      case CalculateMaxReply(matrix, maxProduct) =>
        max = if (maxProduct > max) maxProduct else max
        count -= 1
        if (count == 0) {
          println("Found it.  The answer is " + max)
          exit()
        }
    }
  }

  class MaxProductCalculator extends Actor {
    override def act() = loop {
      react {
        case CalculateMaxRequest(matrix, actor) =>
          actor ! CalculateMaxReply(matrix, calculateMax(matrix))
          exit()
      }
    }

    def calculateMax(matrix: Matrix) = {

      def calculateDiagonals(matrix: Matrix) = {
        var leftTotal = 1
        var rightTotal = 1
        val end = matrix.size - 1
        for (i <- 0 to end) {
          leftTotal = leftTotal * matrix(i)(i)
          rightTotal = rightTotal * matrix(end - i)(i)
        }
        (leftTotal, rightTotal)
      }

      val horizontal = matrix.map(_ product).max
      val vertical = matrix.transpose.map(_ product).max
      val (left, right) = calculateDiagonals(matrix)
      val products = horizontal :: vertical :: left :: right :: Nil
      products max
    }

  }

}

object Runner extends Application {
  Euler011.start
  Euler011.execute
}

To Whom it May Concern,