Blogs

I came across someone using a MySQL SET where they really should have been using a many-to-many mapping table. Wanting to know more about SET, though, I decided to open the MySQL documentation and look up SET in the index:

In case you're wondering, every other line if you scroll down reads "SET" with a location of "MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual."

This is a somewhat obscure point, but it's absolutely retarded if you want to share Eclipse projects and not workspaces.

The classpath in Java is the path used to determine where Java libraries are located. It's used to find the code to run. Without it, the Java program can't find its libraries and therefore can't run.

I tried to download the update to the Check Mii Out channel, and got an error while it was downloading.

No really big deal, except I was rather disappointed with the way the UI handled it. The download UI shows Mario from the original NES Super Mario Bros. running along the screen, gathering up coins that represent ... well, who knows what they represent. Chunks of data, I guess.

In any case, when an error occurs, instead of having Mario die (I'd suggest by Lakitu or a Goomba), they just display an error dialog and suggest trying again later.

Well, maybe not a capital offense. But it should be grounds for a good smack, at least.

If you've used a computer you've probably run into an installer that does the Refilling Progress Bar Trick before. Where there's a progress bar that slowly fills up to 100%, only to immediately drop back to 0% and restart the process.

Really, sometimes you have to wonder about TV shows and computer technology on them. Some of the stuff they pull makes absolutely no sense.

First off, the concept of tracing an IP address to a real-world address is somewhat iffy, without ISP help. It's conceptually possible, though, assuming the ISP actively tracks which IPs are assigned to which subscribers.

This comes courtesy of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Staedler: Subscribers?

Morales: The creeps who pay to watch and download Teddy's Treehouse for thirty bucks a month.

Staedler: Times how many guys?

[Cut to computer screen, displaying "3,139 active accounts" with a list of accounts below. Typing, and then scrolling through the list.]

Morales: Over a thousand.

I'll take a wild guess that there are approximately 2,139 accounts "over a thousand" there.

One of the big features that Java 6 added was the ability to use subpixel anti-aliasing when rendering fonts. This greatly improves the way fonts look on LCD screens, making it far more readable. By default, Swing now uses these AA settings.

Unfortunately, for what I can only imagine must be backwards compatibility reasons, text rendered by user components in Java still uses no font anti-aliasing. (Period.)

Fortunately there's API that allows you to enable subpixel rendering.