Tag Archive


… and sometimes they don’t.

I’ve spent most of the last year involved in an intensive project that really drained me – hence the lack of blogging. I want to blog in a positive fashion this year, so I’ll start by getting a lot of gripes off my chest. :) Call it things that suck.
Here’s a short list, before I [...]

Sometimes, things just work…

9 months of intense development later, our first big integration project with Tourico Holidays, went live today, with an additional 1000-odd hotels appearing on our site (with more to come). A good example is Texas where we had only a few hotels outside of the major cities and we now have about 90 (plus more [...]

If it quacks like a startup, it is a startup…

Mike Cannon-Brookes asks Is Atlassian still a startup? And when is a startup not a startup anymore? Well, Mike, the answer’s simple. If it still feels like a startup, it’s a startup.

Interfaces with EJB3

Starting last October, we went through a process of upgrading the main application at Wotif to be running under Java EE 5 (not just Java SE 5). The biggest part of this was upgrading from EJB 2 to EJB 3.
One of the things I noticed was that EJB3 gives you a lot of choices for [...]

Running on Glassfish

Well, it took long enough, but it’s finally done:

Response Headers – http://www.wotif.com/

X-Powered-By: Servlet/2.5, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1, JSP/2.1
Set-Cookie: PersistCountryCode=1; Domain=.wotif.com; Expires=Wed, 23-Sep-2037 22:11:45 GMT; Path=/
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 11520
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:11:45 GMT
Server: Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.0_01
Connection: close

200 OK

Phew. Now maybe I can get those backlogged [...]

There’s no feeling like releasing software…

Ahhh… that’s the first production release of my latest project at work out the door today. I can’t talk too much about specifics, but it’s not a big secret that Wotif is enabling various B2B aspects of our web site, mainly with the registered hotels. Today saw the first big step in that direction. :) [...]

Third time’s the charm?

Well, that makes it official: Wotif is the third company I’ve worked in that’s decided to go public. Hope it goes better than the last two… the first misread the market badly and went into a several year downturn, while the other managed to burn through nearly all their VC finance, nearly went bankrupt, and [...]

Some businesses just don’t get it

Well, this entry started as a quick blurb to highlight an article on my boss here at Wotif.com in the Australian Financial Review But that’s not what it’s ended up as. :)

Moving on – reflections

I’m leaving Suncorp in January, after about 3 years there. I’m taking up a position at wotif.com where I will be joining a small team that drives their website.