April 24, 2003

My AOP journey has begun

So, AOP, verrrry topical among the java.blogger crowd and TNCNTIWTPW (the next cool new thing i want to play with) heh.

I downloaded the sample chapters from theserverside for the new Manning AspectJ book and started reading through. I really wasnt sure what AOP was or what it bought you. I can understand the Interceptor pattern, but I already learned that AOP!=Intercepter so I figured that there was more. I'm still not sure what the more is, but what has sunken in so far seems kinda cool. I think it definately would be fun to apply some AOP to a project.

One of the things however that came to mind is, If I create aspects for different parts of a system, and somebody goes to modify my code but doesnt know about the aspects, that could lead to a lot of confusion.

Assuming that they are aware the system has aspects applied to it, Without an IDE saying where the crosscutting is, did I use that term correctly? they would have to pick through all the aspects every time they see behaviour that is not directly in class to really get the picture.

April 16, 2003

A programmers language editor

Am I the only one who wishes there was word completion in the document editor they use for email or any other non coding writing they do.

It would be dictionary based of course and the tense currently used in sentence to formulate the dropdown list. How cool would that be? Sometimes MS Word does it with todays date and such.

I can't tell you how many times I've begun typing words and pressed ctrl-space to complete the word I was typing or ctrl-w to highlight surrounding text and closed or almost closed the damn document I was editing.

Office Space

One of the best funniest movies ever...anybody who is a fan of this movie is gonna LOVE this link.

I have one word for you, "Lumbergh".

April 12, 2003

I got a new monitor!

I've been putting off getting a new monitor for quite some time, I was thinking of getting one of those older SGI 24" 'ers I see on ebay but they seem to run about $600-$700 before shipping. I didn't feel like spending that much just yet so I picked up a semi-new 21 " 'er for half that.

Its a Sony trinitron on the inside, OEM'd by by Dell. Yay me!

By the by Dell is having a damn good offer on new PC's right now. I just saw it on dealspree, $399 after a mail in rebate for a pretty good box, all it needs is some RAM. Now if only I could pick up the apple counterpart for a price so nice.

April 08, 2003

Anybody notice this?

I'm not sure how recently they added this to their menu, but I just noticed it. VB Development on java.sun.com. I guess they are starting their push to embrace VB developers now.

Also what the hell is up with the sun servers? I cant download anything or look at bug parade, their servlets keep crashing. Anybody else getting that?

April 05, 2003

Kurt

Wow 9 years since Kurt Cobain died and 3 days before we all found out about it. I can't believe its been that long, but it also feels like forever ago. I had no idea what lied ahead of me I was 17 in april '94 and finishing my senior year of high school, on the day in particular his body was found I was heading back from visiting a potential college when I heard the news on the radio. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

Now 9 years later I'm 26 going on 27 about a year younger than Kurt when he died, which is just impossibly unreal to imagine. Age is really bugging me out these days. When I think about it that is. When I was writing this entry I almost freaked out for a minute because I thought maybe I'm 27 going on 28 before I realized I was thinking 10 years when its only 9. I don't keep track of my age so much anymore, it's weird that I almost have to think about how old I am if somebody asks me. Its as if as soon as I remember I try to forget again.

Back to Kurt, for some reason I can't explain, you'll just have to take my word for it, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were special to me, they mattered a lot more than any other band of my time and I really do feel losing him was a devastating event to a shit-load of people who are and were just like me.

Kurt inspired me, his style of composing song and lyric were very powerful. I am or was a songwriter, I played guitar and sang with a band for the better part of my late teens / early twenties that sounded nothing like nirvana, more like blur and superchunk rolled up into a pretty indie package but the subtle influence was always there. I certainly always felt it. These days I don't pick up my guitars so much, I probably touch one for about a minute every 3 or 4 months. I still love them, but I've lost my passion for writing and playing music. I think I channel all that into code now, which is fine I guess.

After realizing what today was from flipping through the TV, MTV is doing a some weekend long tribute or something. I decided to dig out my fender blues deville amp (god I love that amp, tubes rock) and my gibson les paul custom (god I love that guitar, it just has a presence unmatched) and play around for a bit for all those who can't play anymore and then write this entry.

Rest In Peace Kurt, I feel like I knew you and in a few minuscule ways I probably do.

April 04, 2003

Swinging away in 1.4.2

So 1.4.2 beta was released and I've been pretty eager to get it since I heard about all the fixes and updates they were going to do on Swing to be more inline with new WinXP interface stuff as well as GTK2.

I downloaded it and ran the swingset demo from javastart for a quickie test view, seems to pretty kickass. Most of the widgets look good, except the tab for JCombobox that does the face switcher thing which still is humongous-ly mis-sized, whats odd is that the comboboxes on the other pages and all apps I've used are sized appropriately, this was the same in 1.4.x, don't know why.

Another thing is as of now Swing doesn't pick up some of the finer details of a customized environment, for instance when I use Luna interface in WinXP, I resize the title-bars down to a reasonable 20 pixels or whatever, the default is like 25 which is just obscenely huge. Swing doesn't pick this up and for internal windows, it uses the default title-bar size of 25 which is not a super huge deal to me because apps I like use tabs not internal windows.

I also read today that intellij are going to be supporting 1.4.2 in the new EAP builds, yay! I can't wait to see IDEA with a real Luna L&F. Now if only i could get the jre hack to work for me on 3.0.3 to make it use 1.4.2beta as well, that would be very sweet.

April 01, 2003

Make your own classic

Ok so some of my fondest childhood memories are of playing kings quest 2 and 3, the black cauldron, etc...back in the day.

Somehow I stumbled across these game builders and wow are they cool. You can make new games or even modify old ones!

SCI Studio
Game Maker
Adventure Game Studio