Kyle Smith

I’ve come to hate Java for everything except web applications. Writing Java GUI code is teh suck. Setting properties for each and every widget is so 1997. But when you need your application to run on Windows, Linux and everything in between, what other choice do you have? Can’t use GTK+. Can’t use Mono’s System.Windows.Forms. All I’m really looking for is a tool like Glade that will generate an XML file that I can easily just load and autoconnect all of the callbacks.

Does anyone know of such a tool? I came across this list several months ago but having looked at each and every one, none satisify my needs.

I’ve also come to loathe the various methods for parsing XML. Really I just want to load a file and have the properties bound automatically. JWhirli currently uses jConfig, but I don’t see any way to have the XML conform to an XSD. See, I’d rather have an XML schema define and enforce the property constraints instead of doing it myself programmatically.

Oh, and how ’bout some of that world peace too?

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Drove to Holyoke, Mass. today to drop off my sister-in-law, who is spending the holiday with her family in Connecticut and passed four accidents in thirty miles on I-91. The trip started off slow as my mother was driving, but once I took over we made good time (no accident for me today!). On the way back the rain started in and it got pretty crappy for a few hours.

Upon arriving home I finally heard from the insurance assessor (let’s call him Fucktard Prime or FP for short). According to FP they were just so swamped this week that they won’t get a chance to look at my car until sometime early next week, which means I’m still without a vehicle. My insurance coverage includes car rental support, but it won’t cover the entire cost so I’m holding off on renting something as long as possible. FP assured me that they’ll get to it but I’m not holding my breath. Something tells me they’ll string me a long until it’s convenient for them to do something.

It really doesn’t matter what the outcome is, I’m still screwed. If they classify my car as totaled it means I need to go buy another car and start the whole monthly loan payment process all over again. If they decide it can be repaired, it means I get to wait several weeks (at least) for that to actually happen.

One other thing I didn’t mention earlier is that my computer science GRE subject test scores arrived on Monday. I did about as well as I expected, which unfortunately was not good. I guess I have to wait and see how that will affect my chances at being accepted to PhD programs. Something tells me I’ll be back at Clarkson next year…

Update: it’s amazing how an interesting conversation can improve one’s disposition. I’m glad I know all of you. Thank you.

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I was pleasantly surprised this morning when reading p.g.o because Todd Berman has finally called several developers on the practice of dumping exe and dll files for Mono apps in places like /usr/bin, a big pet peeve I’ve had lately.

I’m still a little annoyed because last week I needed to manually build and install Mono, Gtk#, Monodoc, and MonoDevelop because Ubuntu didn’t have PPC packages for them yet. Unfortunately, most of my Mono apps have been dying due to SIGILL’s so I’ve been looking to rebuild the Mono stuff in the hopes that it would fix the problem.

Yesterday I discovered that Ubuntu finally has PPC packages for Mono (but not Gtk# or MonoDevelop). Now I just need to figure out how to clean out all the junk in /usr/local/bin that I don’t need, which is further complicated by the fact that Ubuntu looks to /usr/local before /usr (I could easily fix this in the bash profile, but it’ll probably be overwritten when I update packages).

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I decided this morning that I don’t like how gaim handles message notification. Now now now, calm down. I know I said “notification”, but I’m not going to throw my hat into the ring with some newfangled solution.

My beef is this: I don’t like it when my focus gets stolen by a new window. My current solution is to have the system tray plugin queue new messages until I click the systray icon. Not a terribly bad thing, but when I already have a gaim conversation open I still have to click the icon for the new conversation to start, which gets annoying.

If I go the opposite way and just always leave a gaim conversation open and don’t have the systray/queue option enabled so new conversations automatically open in the existing window. Also not a bad thing. Unless the conversation window is hidden behind another one and you never have any indication that a message came in.

The only solution I can think of is to have gaim be aware of whether or not it is the active application. If it isn’t, the system tray icon should signal me. If it is the active application, just shutup and open the conversation in the existing window.

Also, gaim sucks at handling protocol actions (i.e. not auto-populating the “set available message” dialog with the current available message, if one exists, and not using the profile information from the server).

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I think I’ve finally had it with Apple’s iTunes Music Store. I went to purchase a couple of tracks tonight and once again it won’t accept my fucking credit card info, even though it worked perfectly fine 9 days ago and it hasn’t changed since then. This is the third instance of this happening since iTMS was started last year.

When it first came out I tried to use it but for several months it bitched that my billing address didn’t match the bank’s records. It didn’t matter whether I used my credit card, my debit card, or what combinations of abbreviations I used.

Finally in late March I tried once more and miraculously it worked. In the 3 months since then I’ve forked over about $200 to Apple for music, but the address problem continues to surface, as it did in early June. After fiddling with the address and card information for almost an hour it finally started working again.

I’ve been trying to cut back on unnecessary expenses for the last two months or so, but until today my music budget has remained largely exempt. Until today. I don’t think I’m going to bother trying to use the music store anymore until Apple either fixes this fucking hassle once and for all, or at the very least they provide contact information for people that are having problems with iTMS.

I thought I’d post my almost-daily blog entry a little early today, as I’m going to see Spider-Man 2 at midnight, and won’t remember to post something when I get back.

I’ve come to realize lately that I like it when I have problems with my computer. Not critical issues, but annoyances that force me to examine something in more depth in an attempt to understand and then fix it. For example, I purchased a DVD burner several weeks ago. It took me a day or so to figure out how to burn a DVD movie and while I’ve got the steps down to a science (to the point where I’ve now got a shell script that will take an AVI and perform all the intermediate steps before I actually burn the disc). My only problem with it now is that the audio is always 20 to 30 seconds behind, even after I followed someone’s instructions to prevent AV sync problems.

Recently I’ve also finally gotten the color fixed when watching TV under Linux. It turns out that the bttv kernel module was autodetecting the wrong tuner type, which I’ve finally managed to fix. My only problem now is that I can’t seem to capture from the line in on my Sound Blaster card and mute it simultaneously. It’s not bad when I’m watching TV with XawTV (which is actually my preferred app right now because MythTV stretches the video horribly), but Myth is totally out of sync because it’s playing directly from the line in instead of writing it to disk and playing it back, as it does with the video.

One of my other dreams is to be able to play commercial games under Linux. I bought Knights of the Old Republic back in May and while I really like the game, it’s a pain in the ass to reboot to Windows just to play the game. When I heard about Cedega (WineX 4), I quickly purchased a minimal subscription and installed it. I’ve managed to get KOTOR installed, and after some kernel DRM tweaks, I now have decent 3D acceleration for my display. Unfortunately, that also seems to crash my system now. Whenever I launch XawTV the display immediately goes black and I can’t get it to come back. Before when I had framebuffer support in my kernel the machine would totally lock whenever I switched to a virtual console, so for now I’ve got kernel DRM off, framebuffer support off, and the ATI FireGL drivers doing everything.

A previous project of mine was to get the music I purchased from the iTunes Music Store to work with Rhythmbox under Linux, which I can now do. Unfortunately, I think I’ve discovered a bug where RB won’t sort the tracks properly (i.e. when sorting by album, sort by album name, then disc number, then track number), either because they’re AAC files or because hymn munged the ID3 tags. I initially thought that RB didn’t support this but after getting exasperated and getting to the point where I was going to implement it myself, I discovered that it does do this (just not for me). I need to look into this more to determine where specifically the problem lies.

Rhythmbox isn’t all bad though. Previously something that annoyed me was that when creating a new playlist RB didn’t put the focus in the new tree cell (well, it sort of did, but it required a click in the field to allow me to type properly). I was going to fix this too, but then I happened to roll my own 0.8.5 ebuild and it magically worked, so perhaps it was a quirk with 0.8.4 or with the Gentoo build of it.

Web developers who use JavaScript to raise the window should be dragged out into the street and shot repeatedly in sensitive areas! I’m talking about YOU, Amazon and IBM eServer Info Center developers!

I’m a bit surprised by the default JavaScript settings in Firefox. Does anyone really want scripts to move, resize, or raise/lower windows? I know I sure don’t.

Walking back from the Science Center, I was once again disappointed that I didn’t have my digital camera with me, as there were a couple of things I’d have liked to take a picture of.

Why don’t I ever have my camera with me? Because I *hate* my camera. And it hates me too. For those of you that haven’t seen it, I’ve got a Toshiba PDR-M25 camera. It’s your basic 2.2 MP camera with a 3x optical and 2x digital zoom. But it always produces flat, grainy pictures. And it’s hunger for AA batteries is unmatched. On a good day I get about 30 full minutes of use from 4 AA batteries.

So I’d really like a new camera. Doesn’t have to be a fancy Nikon SLR (although that *would* be cool), but I want something small that takes high quality photos (both indoor and outdoor), uses a rechargable battery, has decent battery life, and costs less than $400. Price will definitely be the limiting factor here, as I’d like to purchase a new laptop sometime in the fall.

Another disappointment: once again there was no naked chick in my bed waiting to surprise me when I got back here. Oh well — I really just wanted an excuse to post that photo anyway.

…is going on with this school? Went to Empire at 6:55PM on Sunday only to find that they had no food prepared and were closing up for an hour “to clean” and make the transition from all-you-can-eat to declining balance. Robo-Carol (the vending machines on the 3rd floor of the Science Center), constantly steals people’s money (it just takes the money in and then ignores all input). When I signed up for a co-op last year I was told to fill out and return an expense for to SAS upon returning to campus. I finally got it all filled out over winter break and attempted to return it today, only to find that they can’t do anything until I complete a FAFSA for next year. Plus, when I asked about getting a check cut for my account credit, they happen to discover the lost $180 credit I had from last spring (that they denied having any knowledge of in September).

In slightly better news, I happened to start reading the article on Howard Dean in this month’s issue of Wired. While I’m not a huge fan of Dean, I do like the fact that he appears to be somewhat tech-savvy. His reading list was a huge surprise, as I’ve been slowly working my way through Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control, and I’m still waiting to read Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.

On the MyDoom worm:
MessageLabs: “One in twelve emails infected.”
My take: “One in twelve people dumb enough to open an infected attachment from someone they don’t know.”

3 more assignments to finish for Friday and I CAN’T CONCENTRATE.