So I've been using the TiBook a lot recently. I've found that when I need to type a lot, the keyboard doesn't kill my fingertips as much as some other machines. So now I'm thinking about getting an iPod for my music. The cool thing is that iSync can talk to the iPod as well as my Palm (I'll need a new cable of some sort) and there's even a native Palm Desktop for OS X now.
I just have to convince myself to spend the cash. And I'm quite close to doing so...
Apparently I control 45 domain names. I didn't realize I had quite that many registered. I'd have guessed 25.
No, they're not all for me. Many, like php-con.com are for friends and family. But still. That just feels like a lot. I still remember when NSI wanted to rape you for domain registration. I'm so glad it's a comodity now. :-)
I put VIM on the TiBook so that I can hack on the XML for the book. Thanks to this site, it's working pretty well. It's not terribly hard to find using Google, but hey, I felt like saying "cool, it works."
I spent a fair amount of time today reading about and playing with IBM's Eclipse. My reasons for investigating Eclipse are twofold: (1) I'd like to see if it is compelling enough as an IDE to make me switch from GNU Emacs. (2) I was tasked with learning about plug-ins and what Eclipse was really designed for. We were wondering about using it as the framework on which to build some Java GUI tools.
On the first count, I've found Eclipse to be rather frustrating as an IDE. I have a project that lives in CVS today. I was hoping to point eclipse at this directory and begin working with the files. So far I haven't determined how that can be done. The wizard-like things that attempt to guide me thru the project creation process aren't terribly helpful in this regard.
Furthermore, my interactive response with Eclipse it less than I'd hoped for. On my Pentium 3 866 with 768MB RAM and a Voodoo 3 3000 running Debian Linux, it just feels sluggish. If I type a bit too quickly, it can't quite keep up with me. And some of the UI stuff just takes a bit too long to be pleasing.
Don't get me wrong. Eclipse is an amazing piece of software design. I just don't think it's for me. I should probably spend some time checking out what the Emacs world offers for Java programmers. If it's even half as impressive as the C/C++ tools, I should be just fine.
As to point #2, after reading the white paper, it's pretty clear to me that Eclipse was designed for software development. While it is a relatively generic framework, I'm not sure that it's appropriate for building the sort of tools we envision (data browsers, query interfaces, and management tools). Anyone have counter examples? Stories to the contrary? I'd love to hear/see 'em.
Tomorrow will probably be Avalon day, while Friday and Monday will focus on JDBC and MySQL connectivity.
Matt notes that there's a thriving java.blogs community. I must say, I'm impressed and surprised. Impressed at the amount of good Java stuff in the blog community and surprised by the "Yahoo using Avalon" headline that's currently on the site. Thanks for the linkage, Chris.
I guess I need to make a few new additions to my blogroll...