Things that die out .. part 1

In 2009, I had a train ride from Bangalore to Madras(Chennai). To be honest, the trip was really good. I was impressed by the comfort and feel of the A/C chair cars in the "Shatabdi express" that hardly stopped anywhere during the 1000 km journey.
I felt this way because I am from the "railway-deficient state" Kerala. Back there, we still have the diesel locomotives for the northern part (North to Shornur Junction). Even the tracks were just single track almost 5 years ago. That was fun. Your train would suddenly stop nowhere for no apparent reason. You look out of the window and notice another track running parallel to the track you are in. You may wonder where the parallel track appeared from? Suddenly a thundering WDM-2 loco will roar pass pulling numerous brown cars -and you realize that you were giving way to another train...and the double tracks were just to deviate for such good times.
Like any other kid I was also a big fan of trains. During our road trips from Kannur to Kozhikode ( through national highway with 4 railroad crossings) I would pray that we get stopped at least in one of those so that I can catch a glimpse of those wild trains. Though trains in Kerala still suck, all over India, it has improved a long way. WDM-2, the massive diesel beast is not to be seen in most of the places.

The new Netbeans look on OS X - Part II

Earlier, I had mentioned about the impressive UI improvements for OSX in the latest release of Netbeans( "The new Netbeans look on OS X" )

If you are a look and feel freak like me, you will notice that the toolbar is not just right under OS X 10.5, when running with default java 1.6, which is "1.6.0_13". The toolbar does not appear as "unified" and it will sooner or later turn out in to an eye-sore.

The way to work around this is to edit your netbeans.conf and tell netbeans to use JDK 1.5 instead of 1.6 for running. Put the following lines in to netbeans.conf (Probably at /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans\ 6.7.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf)

netbeans_jdkhome="/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home/"

This will use your 1.5 version of Java, and it gives the right Unified toolbar look to netbeans. You can always set project specific JDK for each project in Netbeans.

So, here are couple of screen shots for comparisons.

1) Running with Jdk 1.6, non-unified

2) Running with Jdk 1.5, unified

If you don't want to edit the netbeans.conf file, just set your default java preference using "Java preferences" dialog in OS X. Select Java SE 5 as your default application Java, and you are all set.

Ubuntu 9.04 on OS X via virtual box

Virtualization and virtual machines are a great concept and it is here to stay. I tried installing virtual box (from Sun) on my OS X 10.5, and the experience had been smooth, smoother and the smoothest. I am running Ubuntu on top of my Mac OS, with full screen enabled. For tips to enable fullscreen, visit this link. Though it was written for vista, applies to other OSs as well.

The next step was to bridge the network adapter to use the wired connection en0 on mac.

For this,

• Shut down your guest OS (ubuntu)
• Click Network option in the details tab of Sun Virtualbox
• It will show a small dialog with Adapter1 as selected tab as below

Change the settings to look like what I have in the above picture.

Also, after installing - "Vbox additions" I have noticed the automatic mouse capture and release whenever you move your mouse in and out of the Virtual guest OS window - too cool.

Oh yes, sound works right off the box.

Here is a screen capture of Ubuntu running on OS X

Chrome OS? what the heck?

Headline in one of India's English news paper read : "Google to challenge Microsoft with new operating system" - as I read the piece I had this strange feeling of mixed emotion that ranged from being pissed-off to starting to LMAO. First off, Chrome OS targeted for netbooks/nettops can't even be called an operating system - it is a shame to the years and years of human labor and hard work involved in developing other great OSs. It may be an operating environment. And god, it is going to be based on chrome? well, who uses chrome? how soon does google think to capture the internet browser market share from IE/Safari and Firefox? - and what is the market share of netbooks? Who even cares? it may be around 5% of the whole computer/mobile device market - I know how many people in India uses netbooks - "0" - that is how many. - Oh well, that is where Google is going to give M$ for a run for its money.
Pissed off both at the Newspaper as well as google's lack of imagination in projecting Chrome OS as the next Microsoft basher....

Downloading free software

Life in software development would have sucked without all the free/open tools available from soureforge or code.google.com or even netbeans

But at times your exciting rush to download your favorite tool is cut short by the firewall/proxy server at your work. So, here are two alternatives.

One is source forge mirror that would go under the radar(all source forge projects are indexed and served here)

• SF Mirror1

Another is netbeans FTP sites just in case your firewall prohibits download sites

• Computer Science and Information Engineering (CSIE), Providence University , Taiwan
• University of Twente

The new Netbeans look on OS X

I keep a tab on the IDE scene. So, I downloaded the latest development build of Netbeans and lo!

The UI look on OS X - is by far the best I have seen for Java IDEs

I have not used it enough so, I can not tell you about how it feels. Look-wise it rocks.

So, if you run OS X and you been complaining about the Netbeans look, it is the time to play with the development build. Go ahead

Google search - hacked or bug?

I was surprised to see the new "feature" on Google search result page this morning. Have a look at the following image.

Apparently google is tagging every search result as a potential harm. Clicking on the result will take you to one annoying page, instead of the result. Interestingly, lists.apple.com and sun.com are potential harm?!

Bug or not, this is removed by now.