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Matt Farrell:
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Live Free or Die Hard (2007) The Movie Quotes

 

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iPod Annoyances

Monday, September 12th, 2011 03:05 pm GMT +2 at 3:05 pm Comments off

I love my iPod. I mostly use it in the car and while I’m on the train / walking to/from the station. The biggest annoyance with it though, is that while I’m driving, the screen randomly changes from portrait mode to landscape “coverflow” mode, which is fucking annoying, because you can’t easily skip tracks in that mode, which means that I either have to live with the currently playing track until I have an opportunity (like stopped at a traffic light) to reach down and orient the iPod so that it switches back to portrait mode, or try stuff with doing that while I’m driving – which is quite stupid and dangerous.

I’ve looked through the iPod settings, but there is no obvious means of disabling the auto-rotation. How incredibly stupid! However, after googling and looking at various sites, 99.9% of which have information pertaining only to jailbroken++ devices, I finally found what I was looking for on http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/97974.

It’s simple really. Double click the home button, scroll all the way left, and press the button with the circular arrow. Voila, screen orientation is frozen. Doh! You think this information would be documented somewhere convenient. Or maybe somewhere in the settings? >.<

++ And no, I’m seriously not going to stuff around trying to jailbreak my ipod. I just use it to listen to music. When I want to stuff around with stuff, I use my Android phone.

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Learning Java #4

Friday, July 29th, 2011 01:55 pm GMT +2 at 1:55 pm Comments off

Since Apache James can do pretty much whatever I want it to do, and it would make an excellent base for whatever I might be able to dream up in terms of a filtering MTA, I ended up scrapping the idea of learning Java for a while. (Man, the font in this editor sucks ass after upgrading WP).

However, after messing around with my new Android phone for awhile, I figured that a good project would be to write a call/text filtering app. Yes, I know there are plenty on the market, most of them commercial with “limited” free editions. I figure something I’ve written myself, possibly open source, will be better. At least then it will have the features I want.

So far, I’ve set up a development environment using the Java SDK, Eclipse Indigo Classic, and the Android SDK. I’ve successfully written my own take of a Hello World app, and launched it on an emulator.

The Hello World app has a button and displays a toast notification when you click it. :-P

Java, Programming none

(Not) Learning Java #3.1

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 10:26 am GMT +2 at 10:26 am Comments off

… and have I done anything since yesterday? No. Big surprise there.

Actually, I have another distraction. I bought an Amaz(ing)on Kindle the other day. Loving it to bits… but now I have the severe distraction of organizing the collection of e-books that I have into some semblance of order. Thankfully Calibre seems to be up to the task (along with the Kindle Collections plugin). Excuses are bitchin’.

Yes, I tell myself that when I actually have none.

I think my task for today will be to explore Apache James and figure out how the configuration works.

General, Java, Programming ,

(Not) Learning Java #3

Monday, June 20th, 2011 11:44 am GMT +2 at 11:44 am Comments off

Ah, the bane of my life, procrastination, has struck again.

I had the idea to develop a mail filtering server (MTA) that would essentially be a gateway in the email system that would process incoming email and then output it to another (external) MTA, such as a groupware server of some sort, like Exchange, Lotus Notes, or whatever. That part is irrelevant really. The basic concept is that this would be an initial spam filter that would filter against custom regex lists (I have personally developed quite a few filters and spam email databases that could be implemented), but would most likely include common technologies such as RBL lookups, and the like. Whatever I could think of, really.

While searching for some libraries to handle SMTP traffic, etc (Why re-invent the wheel), I came across Apache JAMES. This has (kind of) thrown a spanner in the works, in that it is a fully functional enterprise mail server (go read the project site and see what it can do), and I may be able to configure it to do exactly what I want (especially with its built-in filtering language), or at least, failing that, I should be able to utilize its API to build the service that I desire – and that would at least get me back on track with Java development.

While I have downloaded the Early dev release of version 3, both on my server and at home, I have yet to fiddle around with the configuration and start it up to see what I can get it to do.

My initial target is to get the server listening on port 25 and accepting any mail that is sent to it and save it to a file in the file system.

Outside of James, in terms of developing from scratch, I was thinking I would need at least 3 services to handle full mail processing. One service to receive mail (SMTP Listener), one or more services to filter accepted mail, and another service to deliver mail.

General, Java, Programming ,

Learning Java #2

Friday, May 20th, 2011 10:27 am GMT +2 at 10:27 am Comments off

I’ve read through some of the tutes on Oracle’s site. Completed the annoying Hello World app – it is just me, or are these freaking boring? While I understand what it is trying to do, if you’re already familiar with programming, it’s pretty damn annoying. And yes, I realize I didn’t actually have to do it… but at least it helps with getting to know the IDE (Netbeans).

During one of my (many) mind wonderings, I was thinking about application design. Being self-taught, I actually have no idea how to properly design an application (ie, the way REAL programmers do it :p), so I did some searching.

ARGH! WAYYY too many acronyms! DDD, TDA, BDA, ABD, DDB (Ok, some of those I made up), but seriously? Why does everything have to be reduced to an acronym? Sometimes just jumping in and designing on the fly has its benefits. :p Or not.

Having been completely overwhelmed with the acronyms, and still not having found anything simple, I figure I’ll just download a copy of Dia, and try document the processes that I think the application will use. It shouldn’t be too hard, since – at least initially – the program won’t have a GUI.

Java, Programming none

Learning Java #1

Thursday, May 19th, 2011 12:40 pm GMT +2 at 12:40 pm Comments off

My foray in to learning Java has just begun. Actually, it began a few weeks ago when I decided I want to do it for various reasons, and then a short while after that I thought of a project that would make learning it worthwhile.

Back then, when Learning Java was still something I was barely contemplating, I was also thinking about Android. After doing a bit of reading on the web here and there, I set up a Windows XP VM to do Android development, for when I brought my Java skills up to scratch. I installed Eclipse, the JDK, and the Android SDK. Then I became stuck in the “Now What?” moment.

Fast forward a week or two (my grasp on time frames is really horrible), and I had a project in mind. Not an Android project, mind you. Just a server type application that I will most likely eventually get around to describing.

I had a project in mind and I had a seemingly ideal language to develop it in. That damn “Now What?” moment appeared again. This time I didn’t wait too long before searching Google for some Java Tutorials. I read a few here and there, read up a bit on the Java Libraries, came across information on the Apache Commons libs – but all this wasn’t really helping me get started. Eventually I came across the official Java Tutorials, and took a look. Those particular tutes refer to Netbeans, so I created a new VM, and installed the JDK & Netbeans in to it. That’s where I am now. Have Netbeans, have the tutes. Just need to read them and get started.

Java, Programming none

It’s a bitch, baby

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 03:31 pm GMT +2 at 3:31 pm Comments off

I am a terminal procrastinator. I rarely finish projects that I start, and it is annoying the hell out of me. It’s probably because I’m lazy, or maybe it’s because I’m easily distracted. I don’t know. I’m not going to try psychoanalyze myself right now. Heck, it’s so bad that I don’t even know what I want to do with myself. I’m technically minded, but my job bores the fuck out of me.

At least it pays the bills. Unfortunately, (I feel that) things are too unstable in this country for me to successfully go out and find a new job right now. It also doesn’t help that I don’t have all the necessary pieces of paper that recruiters want. Shitloads of experience don’t count unless you have those papers, dollink.

I want to write. I don’t call myself a writer, though. I have started writing a few things, but I have yet to finish one. One! Not even one finished! How lame am I? And I struggle for ideas. I do come up with things that appeal to me from time to time. — But at least I’m better than a friend of mine. He has hundreds of awesome ideas, but he hasn’t written a single thing yet. You know who you are, Gavin.

I also want to write some software. I know how to program, but I’m entirely self taught, so there are areas that I am extremely lacking in, and I have some very bad habits. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, and the only language that I knew fairly well was Delphi (Pascal). I’ve dabbled a bit in VB, very little in C# (still want to learn it properly), some php, and not too horrible at vbscript. I’m pretty good at reading code in a few languages, and can probably cobble something together from samples (Thank you, Google) in whatever language, however for this project I have in mind, I decided I want to do it in Java. I suppose my reasoning is a little bit crazy, too. I’ve always looked down on Java as being slow and not being capable of producing ‘true’ executables, but these days, that doesn’t really matter much anymore, and in my old age, I’m getting over a lot of my old prejudices.

I must say that I’ve been pretty impressed with software like PS3 Media Server (which I use all the time), and Minecraft (which I play fairly regularly). I also chose Java because it is cross-platform, and while my project is intended to be run on Linux, it would be good if it would execute on Windows too, for those so inclined. – And don’t forget Android development. While I don’t have a device as yet, I am planning on getting one in the very near future.

I’m planning to blog about the process I follow to learn Java, and – hopefully – complete this project.

General, Java, Programming , , , ,
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