Code Campfire (Page 2)

muCommander - the ultimate cross platform utility

Despite NTFS supporting very long path names, Windows frequently has issues [http://codecampfire.blogspot.com/2009/11/windows-file-path-fail.html] with long filepaths. Sometimes you need to bring in another tool for the job. My favorite tool for dealing with long filepaths is muCommander [http://www.mucommander.com/]. It is a

editors

Replacing Notepad with Notepad2

I've been using Notepad2 [http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html] as a light-weight replacement for the notepad.exe that comes with Windows for several years. Let's face it, the original notepad.exe falls short on many levels - no auto-tab, no multi-line tabbing/untabbing, poor line

java

Desktop Java Apps - to bundle or not to bundle a JRE?

First - here is my definition of bundling the JRE. Shipping your application with a JRE, such that it is the one used by default from your application startup scripts, regardless of the environment on the target system. The bundled JRE is not registered with the system, so it should

musings

Usability Fail - Confirm Then Swipe

I consider a fundamental goal of software, and technology in general, to make people's lives easier. To simplify, automate, and perform useful functions. When the above holds true, technology is a success. When technology gets in the way, is a hassle to use, or does not otherwise improve

musings

Thoughts on OpenID

I've had an OpenID [http://openid.net/] for over two years now, since I joined StackOverflow [http://stackoverflow.com/] during the beta. A lot has probably happened since then. If memory serves correct, at least one OpenID provider went out of business. Others may have changed ownership -

goals

November month in writing: week 1 summary

One week down - three to go. This year I am aiming to write my posts a day early, scheduling them for 8:00 AM the following day. That worked last week - but I am off to a late start this week. Fortunately, as of this writing, I already

dcvs

Distributed Source Control Rocks

Hudson core still uses Subversion, and the java.net svn server is kind of slow. I needed to do some diffs when investigating a fix for an issue I encountered. I had to wait a couple of minutes for every single diff I wanted (from the log, not local diff)

Uncategorized

News and Links Nov 6 2010

Marco Arment had a great post about technology - Developers don’t rush to new platforms [http://www.marco.org/1483805627]. Everyone considering getting new smartphones or tablets should definitely read this. It's short and to the point. I've been looking at our database performance at

browser benchmark

Browser Benchmarks November 5 2010

It's been a few months since I last benchmarked web browsers [http://codecampfire.blogspot.com/2010/07/browser-benchmarks-july-8-2010-ready.html] , so I figured it was time for an update. There's just something innately fun about running benchmarks. These are first and foremost for my curiosity and amusement,

java

Java Roadmap Disappointment

Am I the only one disappointed with the new Java 7 road map? It seems both late and lackluster. First, let's look back at past Java releases (courtesy of the first google result I saw [http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jdkreleasedates.html] with actual release dates) J2SE 1.3

iPad

iPad Thoughts, Part II

There are a couple of topics I forgot to mention in my first iPad thoughts post. More favorites apps The new Twitter app for iPad is awesome. There are so many great UI concepts happening, it is hard to describe. Pulling and sliding and locking important things in place. Kick.

hotfix

Bogus file corruption issues with TortoiseSVN on Windows 7 64-bit

Last Thursday I encountered a strange and frustrating issue. There are a wealth of blog entries out there about this, for anyone who bothers to search, but I am going to summarize it regardless. I myself didn't google it until after it happened to a coworker as well

goals

It's November again...

Last year I did my own take on http://www.nanowrimo.org/ by writing in this blog every day for a month. I plan on doing it again this year. Hopefully the writing habit will stick. I intended to post this last week, but as it is already November 1st

ant

Ant DirectoryScanner memory problems with large directory trees

I encountered a very interesting build problem this week. Hudson running out of memory when trying to parse test reports. It wasn't actually even getting to the parsing part though. Thread dump looked innocent, Ant...hmm... so I took a heap dump and examined that a bit. Top

filtering

Don't Filter Without Being Aware of the Scunthorpe Problem

I just happened to stumble across this question [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1521646/whats-the-best-profanity-filter-which-supports-java-integration] today while browsing StackOverflow [http://stackoverflow.com/]. In it, a user is searching for a library that will filter profanity. Some suggestions are posed - as well as a problem with one of them. The Scunthorpe

books

More on e-reading, and the Pragmatic Bookshelf

I had some ranting [http://codecampfire.blogspot.com/2010/08/adventures-in-e-reading.html] the other day on my first experimentation with e-reading, but afterwards I learned something cool to offset the potential downer. I had completely forgotten that I have PDF versions of lots of books from the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I

ereader

Adventures in E-reading

I read my first book and a half on the Kindle reader for iPad last weekend. Specifically I enjoyed: * Masters of Doom [http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-ebook/dp/B000FBFNL0/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1280802651&sr=1-1] - a great book primary

murphy's law

Stage. Stage. Stage. Always Stage.

It doesn't matter what software we're talking about. * MySQL * Hudson * Java releases * thirdparty libraries * Subversion client * you name it - if it can be upgraded or replaced, it can and needs to be staged. Always stage. ALWAYS. If you don't stage, you're

iPad

iPad Thoughts

I bought an iPad in early May. This post is a summary of my thoughts when i first got it, up till now, 3 months later Opening Thoughts and The First Month First off - you really need to use an iPad to appreciate their coolness. They are incredibly slick.

browser benchmark

Browser Benchmarks - July 8, 2010 - Ready. Set. Fight!

**Update**: [More recent benchmark](http://codecampfire.blogspot.com/2010/11/browser-benchmarks-november-5-2010.html)Yesterday my Opera browser at work auto-updated to 10.60. Opera's auto update is finally coming in line with Firefox...still not quite as nice, but it's getting there. More interesting was the dev

calendar bugs

My Nana Broke My iPhone Calendar

The other day I was following Google's instructions [http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=22681] on how to sync my Google Calendar with my iPhone. I've been a big fan of Rainlendar [http://rainlendar.net/cms/index.php] for

eclipse

Eclipse and Mockito

Mockito [http://mockito.org/] is great. A big part of it is the syntactic sugar, which relies on using static imports. Eclipse, by default, removes static imports when you use 'Organize Imports' (Ctrl+Shift+O). This saddened me, so I found a way to fix it. Thanks go

concurrency

Cool concurrency feed and some links

Google Reader recommended a new feed to me today: Concurrency [http://concurrency.tumblr.com/rss]. I have to say, that was pretty smart of it. Sure, that word appears a lot in some of the feeds I frequent - it's still nice that it brought it to my

UI prototyping

UI Prototyping Tools

I have been a fan of paper prototyping for many years. Paper prototypes are easy to create, easy to edit, and easy to scan and distribute the same as if it was created with some software UI designer. They also put your mind in a different mode - writing with

64-bit

Intel SSD Toolbox on WinXP x64

If you use an Intel x25-m (G2) on Windows XP, then you've probably been eagerly awaiting the Intel SSD Toolbox now that both the TRIM-capable firmware and new toolbox are released. I was too, so I downloaded it today. I just installed it on a 64-bit XP box,