Mao

Mao

Originally uploaded by OrganicVeggie.

Man, what a ridiculously adorable cat! A bit neurotic at times, but still wonderful.

Struts Redirect w/Parameters

If you have a Struts Action servlet and you want to redirect to another page, the standard Struts technique is to return an ActionForward and setup an appropriate forward entry in struts-config.xml:

return mapping.findForward("success");

Unfortunately, this doesn’t provide a mechanism for passing request parameters to the target. So what can you do if you want to redirect to another page and pass some parameters along? You use an additional class:

KDE 4

Linux Dev Center has an interview with KDE developer Aaron J. Seigo about KDE 4, which should be released next fall.  The interview discusses some the big new features slated for release, as well as some of the rationale behind the features.

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/12/kde4.html

Prefactoring

Prefactoring is the process of using your experience to write better code.  Specifically, writing code that can be refactored more easily, that is easier to read and easier to maintain.

The article is available on oreillynet.com:
What Is Prefactoring?
by Ken Pugh, author of Prefactoring

ESRB vs NIMF

The National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF) gave the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) a failing grade for their ratings accuracy.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gamepolitics/145625.html

Of course, wonderfully open-minded individuals like Joseph Liebermann support NIMF. Bah. As far as I have seen, the NIMF is a group of people and organizations that believe in forcing the rest of the world to follow their narrow moralistic view.  Looking at their Top 10 list of games to avoid, apparently they’re not big on zombies.  Maybe zombies are un-christian?

Fortunately, there is a silver lining in the form of a fantastic response from the ESRB that completely lambasts the NIMF report card. My favorite quote?

“NIMF’s real agenda… is to destroy the commercial viability of games it deems objectionable. Unlike NIMF, ESRB’s job is to be a neutral rater, not a censor.“

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gamepolitics/145848.html

Good to see the ESRB fighting back.

FC4: Additional Repositories

There are several additional yum/apt repositories for Fedora Core that provide software not available via the standard Fedora servers. I found rpm.livna.org provided some of the most useful tools for DVD and MP3 support. Check their configuration page for information on how to add rpm.livna.org as a repository.

fedora.us used to be another useful repository, providing hundreds of additional packages. However, as of Fedora Core 3, the "Extras" repository should cover everything that used to reside on fedora.us.

http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Fedora_apt_and_yum_repositories.html has a nice summary of using the different repositories such as rpm.livna.org, FreshRPMS, DAG, etc.

Getting Started with Subversion

Getting started with Subversion requires a couple of things.

Subversion 1.2.3 – If you’re on Windows, grab the MSI installer.  If you’re on Linux, check your distro.  Basically this just gives you the command line tools – no GUI.

Subclipse – Eclipse plugin to provide Team support for Subversion.  Basically, you open Eclipse, go to the Help Menu and select Software Updates, Find and Install.  When the dialog appears, select Search for New Features.  Then click New Remote Site.  Call it “Subclipse” and the URL is “http://subclipse.tigris.org/update”.  Then mark certain Subclipse is selected in the list and click next.  Go through the screens to install Subclipse.  You will have to restart when you finished.

Optional components:
ankhsvn: VS.NET plugin for Subversion.
TortoiseSVN: Windows Explorer integration for Subversion.

There are also a myriad of other cross-platform GUIs, none of which I have really used.  You can sift through that list here.

Apache Derby

Just started to look at Apache’s Derby project and so far I’m impressed. Derby is an RDBMS written entirely in Java that supports most of SQL 92, some of SQL 99 and can operate either in embedded mode or client/server. My initial reaction is that Derby looks much better and more robust than other embedded Java databases like HypersonicSQL. According to the documentation, you can use Derby three different ways:

1. Embedded in a single-user Java application. Derby can be almost invisible to the end user because it requires no administration and runs in the same Java virtual machine (JVM) as the application.
2. Embedded in a multiuser application such as a web server, an application server, or a shared development environment.
3. Embedded in a server framework. You can use the Network Server with the Network Client driver or a server of your own choice.

Pretty sweet.

Apparently Derby was originally created by Cloudscape. Then Informix bought Cloudscape. Then IBM bought Informix. Then IBM renamed it to Derby and gave it to the Apache Group.