Arrested Development
Unsurprisingly, I haven't got anything done on my site for quite some time. I haven't written any new content and I haven't added any new features to the site, but that's not to say I haven't been a busy bunny. I've just been programming in other places.
Yet again, there's been no visible progress made with the site and I haven't added any content either. I did have a pretty decently sized update detailing my antics from the past few months that I tried to post up, but Firefox decided my login session had timed out and so the entire entry was lost when I hit the Create Entry
button. Presumably it must be some form of security enhancement
in Firefox 3. Either that or it's just a plain bug. It's certainly not what is supposed to happen anyway. I specifically created my login to not expire in this way so that I could take plenty of time in writing up an entry.
Well in any case, the long and the short of it is that I had almost completed a mail message class written in PHP that I was going to use for the mailing requirements of the site (and would have also been the finishing touch to the registrations system). Just as I was nearing its completion, though, I ended up getting interested in Java. I spent a significant amount of time tweaking my operating system to redirect calls to the outdated default installation of the JRE that came with my operating system over to the JRE in the JDK I installed manually. Once I had an up-to-date Java environment, I installed the Netbeans IDE and got to work learning Java and its API.
I started out with the usual stuff that everyone does when starting with a new language, but it wasn't long before I settled on an actual program I wanted to make (a GUI-based application for creating files you can customize Sony's Playstation 3 games console with). I've learned a hell of a lot so far, but I've still plenty more to do and learn. One of the things I did learn is that Netbeans can be just as much of a curse as it is a blessing. I came to the point where I had to decide how best to work around Netbeans' refusal to allow me to edit the often rather bloated code that it automatically generates, but I've had to halt progress on that too for now.
Currently, everything is on hold because I've upgraded my operating system (openSuse). No more need for work-arounds to allow me to work with an up-to-date JDK and the promise of properly working drivers for my wireless network card being some of the biggest draws, but it also means restoring all of the files I'd backed up and reinstalling and/or reconfiguring much of the software I use. I'm also having a fair bit of trouble with the UI in this new version too. Much of the UI that I've become accustomed to using for getting things done quickly has simply been ripped out.
Perhaps I'll write up my findings after I've had more time to explore and play around with the system.
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