My pet annoyance of the day is the Windows task bar and how when I set to hide some how it obstinately at times refuses to hide. I mean really, who would have thought hiding was so hard?

Playing with Jasper Reports again and understanding its limitations. I’ve also managed to work out that my issue was that a subreport hadn’t been compiled before I tried to use it even though it was a part of the project workspace I figured it would just work, I guess I was wrong. I’m also fighting with the query builder as well but I’ll get there.

To add to the fighting, I’m dealing with Linux/Windows incompatibilities as well with some home grown software. It is getting to the point where I’ve given up and I’m going to go back to Linux next week. Until then I tried to use one of the servers and then had firewall issues to add to my pain. So I’ve put in a request for access through the firewall to the new server which should be working fine, but thats more paperwork and another working week.

My iPhone annoyingly keeps pausing and playing when I haven’t touched the thing which annoys me no end whilst I’m trying to listen to podcasts. It looks like I’m not the only one to suffer the issues and the general consensus is that going to the Apple Store in Sydney fixes the problem so its a shame I’m stuck in Toowoomba 😐 so that isn’t much help. What is worst is how it annoyingly randomly starts as well which is even stranger considering the posts which seem to suggest that volume plays a part – so I fail to see how that works when its silent. Perhaps the phone is getting confused by the cellular signals that are being picked up by the headphones and randomly causing it to play, who knows. A pain none the less.

I also tried out the latest Skype upgrade and I’ve found it to be extremely ugly and space wasting design and quickly returned back to the old Skype with a much less space wasting design. The new Skype had some interesting features with the way it does its tabs however the conversation window wastes too much white space either side of the text forcing it to wrap even though there was more than enough space. Sufficient to say, I hate it and I’m happy to be back on the older release which makes much better use of space.

I finished the day reading up on the JSR168 portlet specification. Its an interesting idea and interface and has given me the idea on how to build a portal for system for Joomla, perhaps with integration with Google Gadgets and similar portlet style module systems. Perhaps a dream, but another one for my list.