This Old Blog

I downloaded and installing the Linux version of Netbeans 4.2 Dev Q Build for 26 July . This is the same realease as I installed on Windows XP SP2, and the version I've had reasonble success with regards to using the Matisse visual editor. The Linux distribution I'm running with is Fedora Core 4 running the Gnome desktop and the ClearLooks theme. The Linux version of Netbeans does not exhibit the same level of stability that the Windows version does. I decided to reimplement the same simple panel I'd implemented in this post . I only got the Home subpanel implemented before it became impossible to continue without generating unknown exceptions. The following image shows the layout and the form preview. Some of the issues I ran across using 4.2 Q on Linux: The titled JPanel (Home) would not show up when it was first added to the form. It only showed up much later after closing and reopening the form. The elements did not flow as easily around the form. And in genera...

At a distant research facility, the final 10% of the human genome has just been discovered. And with it all Hell has broken loose. Now, a call for help has gone out. So ring out the ominous first words of the Doom Movie Trailer . And guess who shows up? The Rock and Karl Urban With Friends looking particularly mean and nasty, wielding typically vicious looking BFGs with unlimited ammunition, running heroically into the Doomed Martian Facility to Fight Evil. And they have with them a company of sacrificial Marines whose duty is it to die in gruesome yet entertaining ways for the movie audience. I haven't seen this many set up for a sacrifice since Aliens . But hey. It Ain't Shakespeare. So when it comes out, pay your cash, sit back, and bathe once again in the magnetic personalities of The Rock and Karl Urban. Remember... Around Every Corner... Behind Every Door... Doom Is Waiting. No One Gets Out Alive.

I'll switch to Apple because Apple has switched to Intel. As long as Apple stayed on the Motorola 68K, and later the PowerPC, there was no incentive to give up the rich technical ecology of the PC. The PC in the early years had its flaws, but ever since the PC platform incorporated PCI and AGP, and started to use USB and Firewire, the PC platform has been more than a match for anything Apple could provide in hardware. The only thing lacking was software, and I had no real love for OS 9 and earlier to make me tolerate Apple hardware. But then Apple released OS X. OS X, as you all know by now, is essentially the Mach kernel with BSD wrapped around it. Beneath the very shiny (and very good) GUI beat the heart of a real Unix. Now I was faced with a tough choice: buy the OS I really wanted to run on an inferior hardware platform, or buy the hardware platform I wanted and run an inferior OS. I chose hardware every time because I could always hack the software sufficiently to give me 90% ...

I managed to get NetBeans 4.2 Dev back into reasonable shape by uninstalling the application and reinstalling it. I then installed only a very few plugins from the Development Update Center; specifically plugins that support development of NetBeans Modules projects. I have a feeling that there are one or more development plugins in the Infrastructure folder that conflict with the core infrastructure plugins that come bundled with NetBeans. So I think for the time being I'll just leave those be. I've pushed forward with learning what I can do with Matisse. I created a second simple panel, taking as my inspiration Hacknot's " Beware The GUI Builder ." The author raises a number of important points with regards to how GUI builders are used and the poor quality code they produce. But the GUI Builder's inability to recognize repetitive structures in the GUI (opportunities for reusing a custom component) has the potential to create a great deal of unnecessary code, ...

After fixing the problem outlined here I ran Update Center and picked up quite a few interesting bits. I then allowed the system to restart itself, and when it did, I got Unexpected Exception: ArrayIndexOutOfBounds. What follows is the exception trace. java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 0 at org.netbeans.core.windows.model.SplitSubModel.setSplitWeights(SplitSubModel.java:487) at org.netbeans.core.windows.model.EditorSplitSubModel.setSplitWeights(EditorSplitSubModel.java:72) at org.netbeans.core.windows.model.ModesSubModel.setSplitWeights(ModesSubModel.java:247) at org.netbeans.core.windows.model.DefaultModel.setSplitWeights(DefaultModel.java:998) at org.netbeans.core.windows.Central.userChangedSplit(Central.java:1527) at org.netbeans.core.windows.view.ViewHelper.setSplitWeights(ViewHelper.java:239) at org.netbeans.core.windows.view.DefaultView.userMovedSplit(DefaultView.java:711) at org.netbeans.core.windows.view.SplitView$1.propertyChange(SplitView.java:139) at java.beans.Prope...

I've complained here and here that I could not run Tools | Update Center. Trying to run Update Center would result in an 'unexpected exception'. The problem appears to be one or more corrupt settings in the .netbeans/dev cache area. I don't know where the specific problem lies, but I was able to test this theory by simply renaming .netbeans/dev to .netbeans/dev.bad and restarting the 4.2 Q build. When I forced NetBeans 4.2 to rebuilt its cache area, then the Update Center started working again. I have yet to determine exactly what the problem is, but I did manage to carefully move many of my older settings from the 'bad' dev cache to the newer, so I could at least continue with my projects and my database settings and servers under Runtime. The Update Development Center is now open to me again. As I posted earlier the problem showed up with a daily build, specifically the one from July 24th. Getting rid of the build didn't get rid of the problem. If you ru...

Today was a really good day to watch a launch. Around 10:30 am my office mates and I went up on the roof of our building (it's three stories) to wait for Discovery's launch. We were joined by about 20 others from other companies; all told we had between 3 and 4 dozen observers on the roof. One of the watchers was a woman whose husband worked on the countdown team. She called his office to check if there was any hold, and was told that the shuttle was ready to go in about 10 seconds. Sure enough, looking east, we saw a brief flash as the engines lit off. There were clouds on the horizon so it was another long 20 seconds before the shuttle lifted over the cloud tops and we had a clear view of the shuttle. We all stood and waited silently, until the rumble of the engines finally reached us (in Orlando) and then we started talking a little. The shuttle continued to lift higher and higher. When it finally diminished to a little dot we all started moving back towards the stairs and b...