Seb's weblog

I think that now I know why I prefer Eclipse. Just to start, if I create a new Java class, with Eclipse, I can specify:

• which class it inherits

• which interfaces it implements

Why aren’t those simple tasks available with Netbeans?

Only thing that I “prefer” in Netbeans compared to Eclipse, is that I can checkout a project before actually creating the project (especially considering that project informations or ant build files or the directory tree might not be available otherwise). But I create more than one class per project, so…

Short list:

• Netbeans support of SVN (bleh!);
• Eclipse update system asking again and again and again and again the preferred update site;

• WordPress support for multi-homed host. And breaking the freaking URL withouth checking, at that!

I can read my news feeds, my comics, my friends’ weblogs through Google Reader. But I can’t search in my subscribed feeds?! What the…

...or how happiness can lead to frustration.

So, a few days ago, I had watched a video found on google and tonight, I wanted to see it again. So I fire up a few searches that I thought would lead me to it, but no matches. I can’t find it. I can’t look up my browser history, since I’m not on the same computer (and the other one is sleeping or not finding its network, whatever!). But being a merry camper as I am, not afraid of salt mines or something, so being remembered that there’s a search history into google, I look it up and after a few seconds I find my link back.

Everything is fine, then? Almost. Except that I can’t do anything without having to use local bookmarks. I use google’s notebook which offers me a note this link for my web searches — but it doesn’t appear for video searches. And anyway, it would require a browser extension — which doesn’t exist for Safari.

On the search history page, I have a list of google’s search engines, my google bookmarks labels, the list of results and a calendar. “Oh, if there are my bookmarks, maybe I would be able to add directly a result to those?” No! The only proposed way is to add a scriptlet that would open a new window (once the target opened) to add the bookmark. Why can’t I just say “add this search result to my bookmarks” ? Doesn’t this sound wrong: “Bookmark pages more easily. Drag this bookmarklet…” ? I always thought that having a “click here” link on a web page just meant something was wrong with the UI, and the bookmarklet references just does sound the same to me.

And is there somehow a “Add features, but don’t integrate them” rule somewhere?

Gargl…

writing a presentation, I used to copy/paste code from xcode to get some nice formatting. I need some weird language, so I try to do it with Textmate. But copy/paste won’t keep the color formatting. test: FAILED. (emacs won’t do it either, but that doesn’t surprise me much).

In a recent article our usual crew (well, this time Dizzy Reed) went upfront to tell the world that the leaked version of the song titled better comes from an ad by harley davidson, a few months ago. And the leaked version would be the version that was published on the internet for a few hours.

I call for the bullsh*t police!

Can somebody tell me how a 1 min cut song in a flash ad can become a fully fledged 5:10 mins song?

Ok, ok, let’s be reasonable and let’s say that, what Dizzy really meant to say is that a fully fledged demo version of the song was sent to harley or their ad company to be edited to fit the video, and that would be that version which was stolen/leaked/whatever.

The main problem at this point is that the ad is still available from some sites (say… youtube for example) and since the music is mono and quite filtered, it’s hard to tell anything about the content. But there are a few distinguishable sound or voice features that just disappeared or at least seem to: the synth opposed to the guitar during the first part, the stronger nahnahnah chorus and the drum machine at the end.

Nonetheless, having heard it, the latest version better, although “badly” mixed and still showing non-final sound parts, just rocks the house and offers plenty to discover. The bass is more present, the drums begin to sound like there a real drummer holding the sticks (which is still a problem with most of the “new” songs), there’s a little guitar attack during the bridge which brings yet more aggressivity and the new multi-voices choice gives a new dimension to the ending chorus.

The song could be easily cut to a 3 mins radio-friendly format, but maybe that would be too easy to use it as a single. Well, if anything is ever released as opposed to leaked or just played on some concerts. Ever is the word.

So, let’s say I want to insert a button in a HTML page. It’s as easy as:

<input type="button" name="Refresh" value="Refresh"/>

Well, bleh, it ain’t fnu enough, I say. So let’s try this:

<table id="sub-tree-refresh" class="button-container unselectable button-container-tight">
<tr>
<td class="btl"></td>
<td class="btr"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="bbl"></td>
<td class="bbr"><div class="button-body-container"><span class="button-body unselectable">
Refresh
</span></div></td>
</tr>
</table>

All of this for… one… button. Really. Whoah.

(well, I just hope for the poor soul behind this that this is all generated code and I’m pretty sure this is the case).

It used to be a somewhat funny now-and-then site, if reading it didn’t give you a sense of Déjà-vu, but they recently changed their interface: you have to click to get to the full article. And once there, you have to click once more to see the comments. But you can add a comment before seeing other comments? Bleh!

I used to be a Debian follower. But I grew somewhat tired of the 3 years old releases when I needed some bleeding-edge software on a server, and following on testing/unstable and the whole bug-of-the-day.
Recently, I have been rather pleased by Ubuntu. It smells like Debian. It feels like a Debian. And I don’t have to upgrade and face strange things every now and then to have an up-to-date or secure system.
Except that the more it differs from its Debian base, the more strange bugs are able to occur. Today, I wanted to install a small no-features, no-thrills FTP server. So, I search a bit and here goes an aptitude install. So far, so good. Let’s connect. Connection refused. Ok, I may need to, say, configure and/or restart inetd. Except that there is no inetd installed. Not even a dependency. Apparently, the Ubuntu people removed the latter in their version of the netbase package.
Filling a bug or not filing a bug, that is the question.
It could be ok, except that at least two FTP packages are usually run through some kind of inetd and neither have any kind of dependency towards one. And one fails its postinst stage, since it uses a script (update-inetd) that has been moved from netbase to *-inetd

I’m currently looking for a way to make a screen presentation for a future conference. I would like to use my ibook with an external screen (aka, a video projector of some kind). I would like to project my slides on the external display while still having either notes or system tools on the main display. Furthermore, I want to be able to switch to a different desktop (either virtual or a real one using fast user switching) to show examples or a software demo.

First try, let’s use Preview.app. There’s a slideshow mode. And I could easily generate slides either using LaTeX or any kind of tool in fact. Except that Preview.app can only do its slideshow mode on the main display while blanking the other one. This clearly doesn’t help.

Let’s get complicated. I try a demo version of Keynote. The interface is nice, there’s an option for using another display for the slides. The other display is then used to show the current slide, the following, timers and eventually notes. Except that it won’t allow me to do anything except going back or forward in my slides. I can’t use Exposé or Alt+tab or whatever. A friend tells me there’s an option for this. Except this option is only in iWork ’06 (Keynote 3) while I was trying with iWork ’05 (Keynote 2).

Grmbl, grmbl.