This Old Blog

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I was born in 1953 and thus way too young to have fought in WWII, but my father lived through it as a child (and served in the Navy during the Korean conflict). It was through my father's model building of WWII ships, planes and armor that I became interested in WWII, and watching many John Wayne movies also helped to feed the interest. I only bring this up because for the first time there was no mention of it on CNN.com or NPR. I had to go hunt up references via Google . I remember Pearl Harbor, what happened there, the memory of those who died there, and what it means.

I missed it. A Java 6 Release Candidate, build 60, was released November 10th. I've downloaded and installed it on both Windows XP and SuSE 10. I have, of course, started up my current NetBeans 5 Q-build under 6 on both platforms, and it performs quite well. The only complaint I have is the startup speed: NetBeans 5 10/31 Q-build starts slower under RC than it did under Beta. The other big change, at least for Linux, is that the native Gtk support is much cleaner than I've seen for quite some time (see below). As you can see, Java has clearly picked up the Gnome desktop theme I currently have. In the past the Java Gtk theme defaulted to some horrible grey-and-line-based look. This actually looks good for stock JFC client applications. Unfortunately, turning on the GTK style for NetBeans 5 still leaves a lot to be desired. Which is a shame, since NetBeans 5 on Windows XP has a beautiful theme that matches the Windows XP theme. What's more, sub-pixel anti-aliasing is now on b...

After downloading and building graph , I decided to see if I could create a graph example project in NetBeans 5. I started to create a Java application that would incorporate the sources, but that failed. What I quickly discovered is that I could just open graph/examples as a project. I was surprised by this because when I tried to open graph by itself (before I downloaded the support projects nbbuild and openide) it would fail. This time it opened without a hitch. I was even able to open the run dialog in Matisse. What I also discovered is that double clicking on the editor's tab for a given file expands the editor to fill the entire IDE window. That may sound trivial, but it's very nice to just hide everything but the file you're working on. One feature I really miss from the current emacs emulation is the ability to split screen, and then move back and forth between them via the keyboard. You can split the screen horizontally by grabbing an editor tab and moving towards ...

There's an interesting NetBeans 5 project called graph . Graph Library has been designed to support visualization and editing of node-edge structures using drag'n'drop style of work. The library has been used in the Visual Designer in NetBeans Mobility Pack 4.1. The directions for how to acquire and build graph are a bit cryptic. What follows are the steps I followed to download and build graph. Create a top-level directory to hold everything. In my case I created one called ' netbeans '. Change directory into netbeans, and log into the NetBeans cvs: "cvs -d :pserver: [login-name] @cvs.netbeans.org:/cvs login". Note that you'll have to register and have a login-name to start with. Checkout three modules; graph, nbbuild, and openide: "cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.netbeans.org:/cvs checkout graph", "cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.netbeans.org:/cvs checkout nbbuild", and "cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.netbeans.org:/cvs checkout openide...

Although I reported here that I had pretty much abandoned NetBeans for Eclipse, I still feel the need to look at it and gauge its progress. It's foolish to ignore anything as complex and sophisticated as NetBeans, and just because it doesn't work for me right now doesn't mean it won't work later, and it certainly doesn't mean it won't work for others. For this look I downloaded and installed the October 31st Q-build on both SuSE 10 Linux and Windows XP SP2. All of the following comments come from my using it under Linux. I grabbed the Q-build rather than the daily because the dailies are just too unstable. For example, I grabbed the November 8th daily and discovered it wouldn't even install. For a decent combination of bleeding-edge features and stability, the Q-builds are probably your best bet. For extensive testing on Linux I also grabbed the Mobility Pack and Profiler M9. I installed everything and then went and picked up some modules I'd found usef...

In this posting I complained about NASA's World Wind application. I then went googling for the Mono version, and found Miguel de Icaza's blog entry about a re-implementation that runs on Linux. He wrote about it running with Mono, but he also had a link to a version written in Java at BerliOS called WWD2 . So I downloaded it, followed the directions for setting it up , and execute it. And boy, was I pleasantly surprised. It actually works, and it works really well. Look at the two screen shots that follow and compare them with the Windows World Wind version. While the Linux version doesn't have all the bells and whistles, it does the key things right, especially when you zoom in. One other thing: the two screen shots are again of Orlando International Airport. The images look to be identical, down to the individual aircraft on the taxiways. In the case of WWD2, there are no annoying 'Google' copyright notices plastered all over the place. And the image actually l...

Two stories that point out the mess the world is in: one concerns the US and one concerns Europe . In the US John McCain, Republican senator from Arizona, has vowed to add an amendment to every bill going before the President that bans torturing prisoners of war by U.S. interrogators. Speaking from the Senate floor, McCain said, "If necessary - and I sincerely hope it is not - I and the co-sponsors of this amendment will seek to add it to every piece of important legislation voted on in the Senate until the will of a substantial bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress prevails. Let no one doubt our determination." How did we get into this mess? John McCain himself was a prisoner of war in Vietnam and was tortured by the North Vietnamese. I'm a Democrat, but I have always respected and admired John McCain, both for what he's lived through as well as how he's lived his life. I'm waiting for the Republican lapdogs on talk radio to denigrate Mr. McCain, to...