May 27, 2004
Eclipse CVS and proxies!
Eclipse's CVS perspective includes support for SSH which is great, but not proxies, so up till now I've used the command line client access to internet repositories where I had an SSH access based account (via socksify).
Today I came across this nice page describing all of the Java networking system properties, and realized I could just start Eclipse with the following arguments:
eclipse -vmargs -DsocksProxyHost=<hostname> -DsocksProxyPort=<port>
Now I can check out Cocoon, etc using my SSH account from within Eclipse :)
May 24, 2004
May 13, 2004
PearPC!
PearPC 0.1 has just been released. PearPC is a software PowerPC emulator. Check out the screenshots :)
Now we can try out OSX without need to get the hardware first :)
May 12, 2004
Ximian Connector to be released under the GPL!
Novell has just announced that their Ximian Connector product will be released under the GPL. This gives Evolution, the Linux/Unix groupware suite compatibility with Exchange 2000/2003 servers including full mail, addressbook, calendar support (screenshots).
Binary packages will be available from the 14th May 2004 onwards, however the source package is already available (in fact it's already been updated since yesterday), which means eventually it will make it's way into distributions like Debian, etc, that manage non-RPM source packages.
This was also my first slashdot post too :)
Update, Jeff has already ITP'd and packaged the connector for Debian, initial deb is available here
May 05, 2004
May 03, 2004
iPAQ Time!
The latest toy to join the family is a HP iPAQ PocketPC 5555!
Quite a nice PDA to use, it's much larger than the Palm Tungsten and the Blackberry, and feels more like it's name (ie. a pocket sized computer), rather than a personal digital assistant. The 5555 comes with 802.11b WiFi and Bluetooth, a range of PocketPC apps including the Pocket Word, Excel, and the Jeode J2ME CDC runtime.
The iPAQ's display is good, it's as large as the Tungsten T3 (when extended), however the fonts don't seem as crisp as the Palm's, as does the feel of the display which I found not as sensitive of that of the Palm's. Application support is quite good though, the PocketPC Internet Explorer is far better than Palm's Webpro, and the support for 802.11b wireless LAN makes browsing from the couch quite easy :)
The PocketPC's GUI has a 'windows' feel to it - with a few differences (the 'Start' button is up the top and the menus are on the bottom!). The toolkit is 2D though whereas the Tungsten's has a 3D look to it.
I've yet to do a battery life comparison test yet, but I can already tell that the Blackberry will kill both of them, it seems to be able to go for days. Both the Palm and iPAQ seem to be reasonably equal so far.
It's hard to say which one I like the best. The Blackberry stands out as a separate product from the iPAQ & Palm, acting more as a very cool remote email client rather than a PDA. I like the look & feel of the Palm and it's GUI, but the 802.11b/IE support in the PocketPC. Both have the most basic PDA apps (calendar, email client, tasklist, notepad, word/pdf readers, etc) and can handle SD/SDIO cards with data (mp3, video) or hardware extensions. Perhaps it just comes down to a matter of taste :)
Berlin!
Just arrived back from a weekend trip to Berlin!
Berlin is an awesome city. Travelled up on friday night on the ICE sprinter train, 3.5 hours from Frankfurt non-stop, and stayed in a pension in Charlottenburg, towards the west of the city. On saturday we made a tour of the city on a double decker bus, which lasted 3 hours, and saw heaps of the city including the Brandenburg Gate, Siegersauele, Tiergarten, Checkpoint Charlie, parts of the wall, TV tower, and more.
Went to the Hackescher Markt on saturday night, and on sunday visited Checkpoint Charlie again, and Castle Chartlottenburg before travelling back to Frankfurt in the evening.
Photos will be online soon. :)