Tuesday, April 29, 2008

A Morning with NetBeans 6.1....

I've been off working on the iPhone SDK, so I wasn't too interrupted when NetBeans 6.1 made an early entrance this week. That was until Nomine said to me "What I'd like is an application which looks up the people you are following on Twitter and the people following you on Twitter and shows who the mutual followed/following are"...

So, I broke out NetBeans 6.1 and gave it a go. First up was the Twitter access. That turned out to be very easy; NB6.1 has precanned code generators for lots of well known web services out there. So I selected Twitter and the appropriate function in the tree and drag it into my code. And pow!, there it is, complete with separate classes generated to handle the result and authentication, including popping up a user name/password authentication dialogue.

Parsing the XML was more interesting. I decided to use the XML Schema design tool in NetBeans 6.1, which I hadn't used before, but after about an hour or so of fiddling, I had a schema file which was automatically generating code for JAXB.

Next up, feeding the result of the Twitter API to create objects... Already in there. The result of the Twitter API call can be parsed into a JAXB object by calling a method on the result and telling it what JAXB class you want it turned into.

The GUI, Matisse as usual, but it's just getting better. Now there's Java Application Framework support in there I made a JAF application, and getting a button to call up Twitter and do all that parsing was a matter of picking the button and doing "Set Action" on it. NetBeans 6.1 can also code generate all the background processing bits, including an animated busy indicator.

And that was an application built. Doesn't actually change anything but boy, it shows how useful NetBeans 6.1 is.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Goodbye Humph....

Here's a compressed burst of ISIHAC from the South Bank Show.



And here's all the South Bank Show.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6



What a great guy... goodbye Humph.

Friday, April 25, 2008

On a bit of a video roll here....



Oh, and I'd better throw in the Thunderbirds one too



And the Avengers one has emedding disabled so go here for Avengers remix excellence

Ah.... U F O....



Cracking stuff....

Update... and more....



and more....



"Flood cue! Dive Dive Dive!"

All from the wonderful Power Themes 90....

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

FIRST!

"This" for the day....

I'd like this on my desktop.

I'd rather not think about how awful this is.

I'm not going for dinner on this.... I like to stretch my legs between courses.

Monday, April 21, 2008

"This" for the day....

I must not even consider building this.

This is so not on my Amazon Wishlist.

This has left me abruptly deflated.

And finally this reminds me never to ask for a show of hands if you don't know the result in advance.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Just for fun....

If you read this blog, and have a PS3... do remember to add "codepope" to your PSN friends.

Psystar-k-raving-bonkers....

Well, you'd have to be bonkers to buy anything from a company who's terms of service are 'Well, you are on your own matey..." and thats before all the other shenanigans.



Friday, April 18, 2008

Thursday, April 17, 2008

New rule time....

Inspired by this Nokia "concept"*....

Rule: You can't call your whacky rendering a "concept" device if something better designed has appeared in a SciFi TV series.

That is all.

* Rodenberry's Earth Final Conflict had a much nicer device which looked like people could use it.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Inconsolable....

Cross posted from Codepapacy

I was looking for monospaced fonts, after I was reminded that Microsoft had actually made a decent monospaced font with Consola. After some hunting, and a false start finding the original Inconsolas, I found the latest version, with a slashed zero, and my it looks good. Check it out here.

Inconsolable....

I was looking for monospaced fonts, after I was reminded that Microsoft had actually made a decent monospaced font with Consola. After some hunting, and a false start finding the original Inconsolas, I found the latest version, with a slashed zero, and my it looks good. Check it out here.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Selected links....

A tweak on Toshiba's USB... powered when the machine isn't powered up.

An Overheard in New York I'd have loved to overhear.

(Extracted from past twittering)

What's heavier than a dumbbell?

Easy. A box of weights for a dumbbell. Heavier still? Two boxes of weights for a pair of dumbbells. And don't ask me about my enormous pole. Still, that lot will keep Nomine busy...

Sunday, April 13, 2008

6 People and their ids....

Playing with the iPhone SDK? If you are working with the addressbook, you might want to know what the default record ids of the simulated addressbook is.

1 - Kate Bell
2 - Daniel Higgins
3 - John Appleseed
4 - Anna Haro
5 - Hank Zakroff
6 - David Taylor


Now you know. This might be handy for testing if nothing else.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Vodafone impressed me....

Sent them my old E70 for unlocking on Thursday. Back today all unlocked. Jolly quick. I'm impressed. Not with them any more, having got O2/iPhone, but if I had an unlocked iPhone, Vodafone wouldn't be out of the question as a carrier.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

FAQ intros...

From The Blu-Ray Disc site:

FAQ
These are the questions frequently asked, so please refer to them before getting in contact with the Entity.


Hmmm.... The Entity you say....

Long Photography...

Looks like Flickr has gone for the video thing, which means 90 second long videos. An interesting approach, dodging taking on Gootube head on and playing to the world of cameras with a video option. Quality looks decent enough... let's see how that plays out.


Monday, April 07, 2008

Oooh - Quake3 on an iPod touch....



Sweet work....

McCain (not Oven Fries)

What a nice man. Sounds like he's got the right stuff for the presidency.... sorry, I mean, a residency at a Sweary McSwear Swear's Comedy Club.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

And in font news...

Microsoft finally find a use for the font "Comic Blackmail Sans".

Friday, April 04, 2008

When April Fool's leak...

Ok... I got caught... The mobile plasma story turns out to be a late delivered April Fool. Which is quite a pity as we could do with something different in the mobile display space. Hey ho, back to OLEDs and ePaper and LCDs....

Grails and Groovy....

I've done an article on Grails and Groovy, which you can find at here on Heise Online UK. It's an introduction to what Grails is about.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Thinking hard....

Well, I'm doing my usual thing of hacking code and then going into "This isn't right" rethinking, but I'm trying to push forward. The big mind blocker is making "the app" slick in the hand and until I get it in my hand, simulators don't really crack it.

Anyway, let's see what's been distracting me today....

First up, the news that Panasonic are putting plasma screens in phones which I'll admit is a place I hadn't really expected for anyone to do. The new twist, low power, apparently with the magic enabled by AbleComm's work on headsets. It'll be interesting to see how these pan out in practice.

John Cole's Balloon Juice analyse McCain's new ad and have worked out what the foundation of his policies are.

Oh My! SOOO CUTE but I'm still not getting one... unless it's that cute.

And another thanks to Balloon Juice for Mike Gravel's Helter Skelter... But heck.... I kinda like it as art.

Right, that's enough for the day.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Apparently....

The most popular thing I've posted here is... a little thing on Windows Se7en. Who knew. Well, apparently Google Analytics knew after a little bit of a sample. Using Analytics on this blog is like using the Large Hadron Collider to crack a nut. Actually, could you crack a nut with the LHC? Maybe that is its real purpose. You can never tell with these physics types.

Now I've tidied up the kipple that was here, time for me to get down to some steady bloggery. On what I don't know yet.

Anyway, that's my blogging quota for the day.