javanicus

Loving thinlets

Posted on 30 Jun 2003

I love thinlets, love them. I know there limitations, which is the best place to be, set the right expectation from your third party API, and you'll be happy. Thinlet's not only let me build a gui for my blogging editorial system, but is also one of the most logical ways to do a prototype GUI.
I've managed to knock up a working GUI, from scratch, in half an hour, ok so no back end to it, but it is wonderful for going back to the eventual user and getting early feedback on the direction a project should take, without eating into valuable hours on the train.
Now, I have to work out which the best place to submit my thinlet changes are, as thinlets do seem to have three forums, and they ignored my posting to the main website, perhaps a sourceforge development forum posting will do the trick, hmm..
Limitations, I guess the main thing is not being able to use regular swing controls inside of a thinlet JPanel, not a big issue for most, I guess, but it does sort of mandate the eventual layout I give to a GUI. Unless someone can correct me. Just means that top half of my screen will be a thinlet controlled panel, and the bottom half a JEditorPane, with funky looking search results.

30 Jun 2003 |

I was right...

Posted on 28 Jun 2003

Tania is out of the big brother house with 72% of the votes, not bad prediction powers huh!

28 Jun 2003 |

Scope creep at the dentists

Posted on 27 Jun 2003

Well after three days of tooth ache, I finally submit myself to the local dentist. Unfortunately although I have incredible shooting pain all down my right side, I'm unable to pinpoint the precise tooth that is causing all the trouble. A heated discussion ensues where we weigh up the facts of what we can see, with what the X-ray shows. I decide that, as we cannot tell which tooth is the culprit, she should do both just to be sure, but at a whopping �43 a filling I'm thinking it might be better to just eat my dinner through a straw...

27 Jun 2003 |

Blogmento is coming along nicely

Posted on 27 Jun 2003

The blogging tool that I'm writing (and this blog is generated by) is starting to shape up, and for those of you eager to see what it is going to look like, enclosed one screenshot of the editorial gui.

more details as I can get them to you...

27 Jun 2003 |

Java Gaming author without a publisher

Posted on 25 Jun 2003

Rather nice java gaming book covering Java3D and networking is in progress by a chap called Dr. Andrew Davison.

He has done lots already on this book, and he hasn't even got a publisher yet, what a bloke..! Over a dozen chapters ready to be downloaded for free, just make sure you let Andrew know about your opinions of this book.

25 Jun 2003 |

The trouble with timezones

Posted on 25 Jun 2003

It seems that if you create a value object on your server that contains a date in the default timezone for that server (GMT+0100), and then pop it over to the client with a different default timezone (GMT+0000), the date is quite correctly shown to be an hour earlier on the client than it was on the server.

This means using java.util.Date for storing just the date part of a timestamp will lead to issues as the time defaults to midnight, thus display -0100 on the client, i.e. midnight -0100 is 23:00 the day before. Solution: agree on a timezone and use the same one on both client and server. (only if your trying to store the date, the time element should not be relevent)

25 Jun 2003 |

Three girls up for eviction

Posted on 24 Jun 2003

All three of the UK Big Brother girls are up for eviction this week, I think due to the editing, internet chatter and newspapers it will be Tania to be evicted on Friday 27th, as although pleasant to look at she has been shown to be selfish and ditzy (not in a good way), and more shallow than most.

I guess she is quite young and inexperienced with the way of the world, but really - far too much money on handbags love. So Tania to go on friday 70%, with Steph and Nush getting a disinterested 15% of the votes each.

24 Jun 2003 |