One of my current projects requires me to deliver a Swing application via Java Web Start. This meant some research to figure out how that works. Since i’m a nice guy, here’s the result for everyone that needs it. As you can see – in the folder structure image – there are some files that [...]
Apple had an event yesterday. And i saw that it was goooood. Seriously now, i was pleasantly surprised by – well – the surprises that were shown by Steve and co. Here’s a brief sum of coolness: iLife 11 This update to the iLife family of products is one of the best ever, in my [...]
In case you missed the Google event, they are rolling out a new feature called “Instant”. It basically shows you search results as you type the query in the search box. Currently i could only have it working on Chrome at www.google.com (can’t be any other suffix, like co.uk, pt, etc.) but you definitely need [...]
After a long, long time without crashes on my windows box i finally got this one while watching a movie on vimeo.com. It seems they call the crash event “Blue Screen”. Got love the nostalgia on the windows developers
And i must say it looks beautiful! It features twice the graphics speed, HDMI connector (finally!), a thin unibody aluminum case, and a built in power supply (which means no more big power transformer in along the power cable). I love it and i definitely want one connected to my TV in my living room [...]
At least if you are using Chrome 
If you drag any picture from your desktop to the message body it will get automagically included in the email. Pretty neat, uh?
Today i found a neat trick. Typically when you inject an AnnotationSessionFactoryBean into one of your classes you end up with a SessionFactory on the other side. This is because Spring is doing its magic inside, proxying stuff so you end up with an easy way to instantiate hibernate sessions. The problem is that i [...]
I’m starting to love Layar more and more. One of the latest “layers” introduced was the ability to view the Berlin wall – as if it was still standing – by pointing your phone to the place where the wall used to exist. You can read the entire article here. Do you see the potential? [...]
It recently came to my attention the existence of this heavily-client-based web framework to develop desktop-like applications called Sproutcore and is backed up by Apple (there is another cool alternative called Capuccino). Basically it relies on Javascript to create nice desktop-like applications, but on the web. Ever since i heard about node.js i have been [...]
“A well-known hacker of the iPhone, who previously defeated Apple’s restrictions on developers, has claimed in a video to have hacked the iPad. Just a day after release, the hacker, who goes by ‘MuscleNerd’ online, said that he has gained root access to the iPad…”, as seen on slashdot.
Today at lunch i felt taken by this concept once again. A long time ago it came to me that software, au contraire of living beings, does not evolve; the best description for it, in my not-so-humble opinion, is of a big tower of LEGOs building blocks: You start stacking them up and, when a [...]
Following up on my post about RAM (or lack of it), i decided to install a proper wordpress plugin to cache most of the stuff in static HTML files. It’s called WP-SuperCache and i’m hoping it’s really super But now i cannot but wonder if i shouldn’t – somehow – find a way to have [...]
I know what you are thinking: “Well, duh Pedro, how come you didn’t know that?”. I’ll explain: Recently i started having some service shortages on my blog. From times to times the CPU usage would just go rooftop and then nginx and apache both stopped serving requests. I am using Linode as my host, where [...]
I don’t know if you noticed, but youtube introduced speed controls to their HTML5 video player. I have no idea if it was there from the beginning, actually, but it’s a really cool feature indeed
I have to say this: looking for a simple music player for OSX is like searching for a needle in the middle of lots of big sticks; it should be easy, except the needle is under the carpet. Nevertheless, between trying out iTunes , Songbird , and a few other options, i have always felt like there should be something, you know, simple and memory efficient.
After an awesome Japanese dinner with my good friend Luizzz , we came to the conclusion that the website that was missing was one where you could bomb any country in the world. … So over the course of about 8 hours – the next day – we came up with bombthiscountry.com , a meaningless website where you can bomb any country in the world (yes, China, Tibet is a country).
Ok, this is so freaking hilarious that i cannot help it but sharing. It seems that, when faced with the impossibility of using their iPhones with gloves on, some Koreans have started using miniature sausages (yes, sausages) for that effect. It seems that the composition of the sausage is similar enough to a human finger [...]
After an interesting discussion with some co-workers about having people breathing down your neck, i figured i should coin the term “neck-breather” in the famous urban dictionary. The reply came instantly saying that an editor would take a look at the new entry and that – if acceptable – it would be added to the [...]
I recently came across an article entitled “Pair programming works“. To be honest, the first thing that crossed my mind was that this would be a cartoon mocking the concept. Fortunately, i was wrong as the article gives very compelling arguments on why “Pair programming” has a lot of benefits, both to the employer as [...]
Cool as it may be, i cannot but feel disappointed with Apple’s newest unveiling – the iPad: No camera – Really? In this day and age of videoconferencing?!? What are you guys thinking? No GPS – It does have assisted (wifi/3G) GPS but it’s not quite the same, is it? Especially when you don’t have wifi or [...]