Month: June 2004

Eclipse 3.0 Plug-ins I Use

Best part of using Eclipse is the large plugin developer community.  Since it could be a little bewildering, here are some of the plugins I am using with Eclipse 3.0.  They are all free and most of them are open source.

Color Editor - Free, Open Source

While Eclipse ships with syntax coloring support for many file types, it does miss some major ones like HTML, JS, JSP, CSS, and even XML.  The last one is a surprise because XML syntax coloring plugin was one of the example plugins offered by the Eclipse team.  Anyway, Color Editor adds syntax coloring support for 74 file types by porting syntax coloring files for JEdit, a popular pure-Java editor, to work under Eclipse.  Very nice.

Sysdeo Eclipse Tomcat Launcher – Free, Open Source

If you do anything with Tomcat, you'll have to get this one.  There are several other plugins that lets you do the same, but this one sucks the least among the free ones and the author seems to be still mildy interested in keeping it up to date.  JSP debugging is a bit of a hassle, but not quite enough for me to wade into the source code to fix it yet.  I am hoping another talented sucker will have less patience than I.  Heh.

QuantumDB - Free, Open Source

With this plugin, you can bookmark databases, browse them using a tree GUI, and execute queries on them.  Results are displayed in a grid.  Not exactly impressive, but very functional and very handy.

Azzurri Clay – Free Core Version, Not Open Source

Clay allows you to edit database schemas visually similar to the way MS Access does it.  It's not a tool I use everyday but it's very useful when you do use it.  You can create a diagram out of an existing database, make changes to the schema model, and then generate SQL dialect-specific SQL.  This is pretty handy for porting your database to another database implementation since Clay will generate the target database specific DDL.

GEF - Free, Open Source

Graphical Editor Framework is a framework for, surprise, building graphical editors like UML diagram editors, etc.  This plugin is used by many other plugins (i.e. Azzurri Clay) so you'll have to get it eventually.  Only issue I have with GEF is that it doesn't support Java2D yet.  Since Eclipse 3.0 adds support for AWT, JFC/Swing, and Java2D, I am hoping this shortcoming will disappear soon.

I also have EMF, SDO, XSD, UML2, and VE plugins but I haven't used them yet.  Visual Editor (VE) plugin, in particular, should be very useful so I am going to play with it this weekend.

BTW, I usually go to the Eclipse-Plugins Info site to find plugins.  Many of the plugins listed there will have some problem with Eclipse 3.0, but now that Eclipse 3.0 is out, updates are coming at a fast pace already.

Reclaiming Comments

While most of the comments I write elsewhere are throwaways, some of them are precious enough for me to feel as if I abandoned a small part of me.  The comment I made in response to a final goodbye, Jeneane Sessum's post about death of her sister's dog, was one of those.

My own experience with my dog wasn't that pleasant. I knew the time to put her to sleep was coming because she was in pain more frequently. One night, we woke up to her howling in pain. As much as I wanted to keep her with me just a little longer, I thought she deserved better.

So my wife and I took her to a 24 hour vet on Middlefield. The doctor gave her a tranquilizer first and, while she seemed to feel less pain, the sight of her tongue seemingly woozing out of her mouth scarred my memory of her forever. On the way back, I was too shaken to drive. When we got back, I sat next to her bed to inhale memories of her still lingering about. So sad.

Now she sits atop my desk in a small pine box with a little metal statue of her. I regret not getting some of her hairs though because I miss her smell. I guess I have a dog's nose or something.

Damn. I am full of tears again.

It's rightful place is here at my blog.

Cheney on Feeling Good

On Washington Post via Joi:

'Fuck yourself,' said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.

…

CHENEY: Well, I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it.

Hmm.  Are there any medical researches done on the use of foul words to increase endorphin production?

Korean Online Game Market

Nice article at News.com on Korean online game market and how it's trying to expand into other countries.  This quote notes interesting differences between Korean and American culture:

Webzen's Kim said Asian game players, for example, like to beat each other up and try to kill each other's characters. But American players prefer the quest aspect of its games, so the company will amend its U.S. versions accordingly.

Sounds about right.  It's no wonder Lineage, a megahit in Korea, has unusually elaborate support for player-to-player wars.  Checkout Lineage 2 demo videos and you see amazing battle scenes not unlike the Lord of the Ring battles scenes.  Only differences is that it's players fighting players in large numbers.  Maybe the ever present DMZ makes young Koreans thirsty for battles.

Last Thursday, I got Freedom Fighters for PS2.  It's top rated and have been out for a while but I waited until the price dropped to more sane level.  More I get older, more budget conscious I seem to be getting.  I like to think I am setting a good example for my son.  I won't let him play this game though because it's too violent.  Heh.

Racoon Kickboxing

It's 5:30AM here and I was about to chuck it in for the night when I heard a noise outside.  It was a racoon beating up a cat.  The racoon looked pretty young, probably one of the six racoons that was born up in our attic a few years ago.  Too bad I didn't see them when they were babies.  When I first saw them they were already lanky and ugly.  I like the way adult racoons look though.  But then that's how I got bitten by the mother racoon.  Nasty gal.  After all those peanut butter cookies I gave her.  I would give her two and she would take one in her mouth, take the other one in her hands, and casually walk away standing up.  Hillarious.

I did that only because she broke her nails trying to get back into the attic when we blocked the entrance (we didn't know about the babies until they started crying) and I felt sorry.  One day I was cursing about the racoon making noise in the attic and the next day at 4AM I was on the roof (it was raining too) with a crowbar and hammer to make holes so the mother racoon could get back in.  Oy.  I had this horror image of dead baby racoons in the attic.  Anyway, I am not feeding her any more so don't bother leaving tsk tsk comments.

Eclipse 3.0 is NOT released yet

I don't know where the mix up got started but numberous websites are announcing the release of Eclipse 3.0 already.  Note that the latest version is Eclipse 3.0 RC3.  The final version will be released on June 28 or so.

BTW, I noticed that Eclipse site now has links to BitTorrent seeds for Eclipse releases.  That should come in handy at the end of this month.

Update:

Just one day after I said Eclipse 3.0 final is not released yet, they released it ahead of schedule!  I am not sure whether this is good news or bad news since RC3 was still buggy and reporting problems here and there without much explanation.  Did they fix all the bugs in one week?  Unlikely.  And the next bug fix release (3.0.1) is not scheduled until September.

My guess is that schedule of some commercial products that depended on Eclipse 3.0 might have pinched Eclipse team's schedule.  Too bad.  I would have been happy with addition month of test.

BTW, forget about downloading it until later.  My own download session is estimated to take 16 hours to completion and BitTorrent seed site doesn't have 3.0 final available.

Update 2:

I have used Eclipse 3.0 final version for 8 hours straight now and it looks pretty solid.  Search complaining in out of sync projects is annoying but I haven't figured out how to turn it off yet.

WARNING #1: Regardless of which version of Eclipse you used before, start with a clean workspace.  Old workspace configuration will confuse some plugins.  Sysdeo Tomcat Plugin was acting erratic until I did that.  For example, Tomcat would not work properly on restart without restarting Eclipse as well.  Even then the pages would sometimes appear blank.  I wasted 3 hours trying different Eclipse/Tomcat/Sysdeo settings to get it working and ended up cursing softly (everyone was asleep) and lucked out with a desperate guess.

WARNING #2: JSP files will not be added as ASCII into CVS repositories unless you specifically add it to the list of known file types.  Look under Team > CVS section of the preference dialog.

Have fun.

Tomcat Crap

Urgh.  I just spent a few hours trying to figure out why JNDI JavaMail session stopped working.  Previously, I had Tomcat 5.0.26 beta installed and it was working just fine.  In an attempt to debug another problem, I peddled back to 5.0.25, which is the latest version without any beta tag, and found that I couldn't send e-mail out from an webapp.  Error message was rather bland so it took me a while to find the relevant bug report.  Guess what?  5.0.25 build left out some key classes related to JNDI JavaMail session support.  Heck, I think I'll go back to the beta version and keep my fingers crossed.

Murder She Wrote

Halley writes:

Blog Murder

Is there a reason Dave Winer just killed 3000 blogs — like this one (Tom Matrullo's) and this one (Dean Landsman's) and this one (Craig's Booknotes)– and no one, including Slashdot has the balls to write about it?!

At least he's taken the gloves off — if you thought he was a cuddly teddy bear friend of all bloggers — you might want to rethink that.

then she added later:

And if you want to take the time to read what I wrote — I never called anyone a "murderer" as some have claimed — and my question was why no one else had written about it.

Halley obviously has some harsh feelings against Dave, feelings that distorts her view on anything Dave does.  I think it is all right for a person to not like another person.  But I think she should have just said so instead of practically calling Dave a murderer on flimsy evidences and then, instead of apologizing, resort to playing word games.

To Both Sides of Weblogs.com Conflict

I have a problem understanding people who routinely go beyond the needs of momentary emotional ranting to shred another person's reputation in public.  Over and over, they portray the focus of their anger as the ultimate evil.  What are they trying to accomplish?  If they are successful, then the person will be ruined professionally and shunned socially.  Is that really what they want?

If I could give them an advice, it is this:

If you are chasing, you better be ready to catch.

First Manned Private Spaceflight

Hurrah!  Privately funded by Paul Allen, designed by Burt Rutan, and piloted by Mike Melvill, a 62 year-old test pilot who is now an astronaut, SpaceShipOne successfully reached space and returned safely this morning, the very first manned private spaceflight in history.  Awesome.  With all the doom and gloom these days, it's nice to have something to smile about.

 

An Appeal by 365 Korean Organizations to the Iraqi Group Holding a Korean National

Following open letter is from an OhmyNews article that encouraged wide distribution.  I don't agree with the content but I think the letter reflects the view of a small yet growing and increasingly vocal part of Korean population so here it is:

An Appeal by 365 Korean Organizations to the Iraqi Group Holding a Korean National

We appeal for the release of the Korean national Kim Seon Il.

Today the Korean people were overcome with shock at the news the Korean Kim Seon Il has been kidnapped in Iraq. His seizure and the threat against the life of this private citizen is already a source of unspeakable sadness for his family and the Korean people. This sadness and shock is the same for the many Koreans who have opposed the United States' unjust invasion and the deployment of Korean troops to Iraq.

The Korean people are well aware of the fact that the US invaded Iraq for domination and oil, and not for the freedom and peace of the Iraqi people. We know also that the US occupation of Iraq has denied the Iraqi people their sovereignty and that there have been widespread human rights abuses by US forces there, leading to Iraqi pain and loss of life. For this reason we have done all that is humanly possible to prevent the deployment of Korean troops, as they will in no way contribute to the peace and security of the Iraqi people.

The kidnapping and threatening a private citizen with death, however, will not contribute to Iraqi peace. The Iraqi people are right to resist the US's unjust invasion, occupation, and carnage. Nevertheless, kidnapping and threatening a private citizen with death cannot be justified. Doing so will only lead to a vicious cycle of blood and revenge.

Again we make an earnest appeal. Please make your claims known through dialogue and release Kim Seon Il to his family as he is of no relation to government policy.

21 June 2004

Seoul, Korea

Korean Network Against Dispatching Troops To Iraq

My view is that if they are so concerned about saving human lives, I think they can save far more lives by banning the use of automobiles in Korea.