Notch tweeted yesterday that Minecraft is going gold next week! I’ve been on the beta for at least a year, and with the latest additions, I almost feel lost in the game, having not played the last few updates. I welcome a final release, I wonder what pricing he’ll place on it. I’d like to think I saved some money being in the “beta program”.
I’ve been tasked to work with old Microsoft Access database files (MDB). I have a lot of experience in this area. This time though, I’m developing my application on a Windows 7 64-bit system. I think all the ODBC work I’ve done in the past happened on Windows XP machines.
So I bring up the ODBC Data Source Administrator tool to try and add my MDB file. I could not find a way to add my new data source. All it listed was two SQL Server entries. Doing a quick Google search, it turns out the other data sources are security risks so they are “dissabled”.
If you ran into this same problem, navigate to ‘C:\windows\SysWOW64′ in Windows Explorer. Right-Click on ‘odbcad32.exe’ and select ‘Run as administrator’.
You should now be able to add MDB files as well as all the other formats that you could in Windows XP.
In the next week, I’m going to work personal over-time to get my blog revamped. I’m also going to dedicate time every week for posts. I need to keep my web development skills sharp, while working on this blog doesn’t help me much with that, I’ll be posting more about some side project PHP classes I’ve developed as well as some my general day-to-day work issues and how I overcome them. Oh yeah, and I’ll hopefully post some more reptile stuff for those interested.
Look forward to…
An engineer was crossing a road one day, when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.”
He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket.
The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn back into a beautiful princess and stay with you for one week.”
The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it
and returned it to the pocket.The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you for one week and do anything you want.”
Again, the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it
and put it back into his pocket.Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess and that I’ll stay with you for one week and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?”
The engineer said, “Look, I’m a busy engineer.
I don’t have time for a girlfriend. But a talking frog, now that’s cool!”
I’m hoping this post might just help out at least one person that gets put into the same boat I was. I’ve focused back onto a different project at work, mainly working with JavaScript (JS) and DOJO. There may potentially be two other parties working on the same code base so I took the time yesterday to class out all the code. Generally, I always use jsdoc style commenting in my JS code. However, this was my first time utilizing the jsdoc-toolkit to generate docs from code with DOJO.
If you don’t do any sort of advanced utilization of DOJO, you may never experience any issues. I, however, found it to be a pain to get DOJO classes to show up properly in my docs.
Let’s use a simple class as an example…
dojo.declare("SnakeClass", null,
{
constructor: function(breed)
{
this._breed = breed;
},
GetBreed: function()
{
return this._breed;
},
SetMorph: function(morph)
{
this._morph = morph;
},
GetMorph: function()
{
return this._morph;
},
});
OK, here’s how I originally would have commented this code…
/**
* Represents a single snake.
* @author jbfreels
* @see Reptiles#
* @class
*/
dojo.declare("SnakeClass", null,
{
/**
* New snake
* @param breed The breed of snake.
* @constructor
*/
constructor: function(/**String*/ breed)
{
this._breed = breed;
this._morph = "normal";
},
/**
* @returns {String} Breed of the snake.
*/
GetBreed: function()
{
return this._breed;
},
/**
* Sets morph type of the snake.
* @param morph Morph type of snake.
*/
SetMorph: function(/**String*/ morph)
{
this._morph = morph;
},
/**
* @returns {String} Morph type of the snake.
*/
GetMorph: function()
{
return this._morph;
},
});
Here’s what jsdoc outputs…
This does no one any good. Let’s try and trick the jsdoc parser to think this is a valid class (since it kind of is).
dojo.declare("SnakeClass", null,
{
/** @lends SnakeClass# */
/**
* Snakes, snakes everywhere!
* @param breed The breed of snake.
* @class Represents a single snake.
* @author <a href="mailto:jb@tech-tiles.com">J.B. Freels</a>
* @see Reptiles#
* @constructs
*/
constructor: function(/**String*/ breed)
{
this._breed = breed;
this._morph = "normal";
},
/**
* Retrieve breed of the snake.
* @returns {String} Breed of the snake.
*/
GetBreed: function()
{
return this._breed;
},
/**
* Sets morph type of the snake.
* @param morph Morph type of snake.
*/
SetMorph: function(/**String*/ morph)
{
this._morph = morph;
},
/**
* Retrieve morph type of the snake.
* @returns {String} Morph type of the snake.
*/
GetMorph: function()
{
return this._morph;
},
});
And here’s what we get with jsdoc…
If you’re on the fence about getting the new iPad, I’d say go ahead and pull the trigger, that is, if you can find one. If you already have the first iPad you could probably skip this version, but I love it!
I quickly wanted to write something up giving everyone a little information about tomorrow’s impending release of the iPad 2. Here’s the breakdown.
The iPad 2 will go on sale Friday (March 11th) @ 5 PM at Apple Stores, Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless, Best Buy, Walmart, Sams Club and some Target stores will get a few. You can also pre-order the iPad2 on Apples website @ 1 AM *PST* tonight/tomorrow. Don’t expect it to show up Saturday morning though. Shipping is free, but I’d venture a guess that you won’t see it until later next week. Hopefully Monday or Tuesday, but no one really knows.
16, yes sixteen versions of the iPad are available. 16, 32, 64 GB in black or white all offered as WiFi only, Verizon or AT&T flavors.
This question has been eating at me. The 3G iPad will allow you to use the internet on your iPad wherever 3G coverage is offered. It costs about $136 more for the 3G model. The only other plus that the 3G model gives you is GPS. The WiFi only iPad will still get your location, but it does it based on your WiFi connection, it’s not a signal coming from a satellite. The data plans differ on each carrier. Verizon gives you a little(??) more flexibility. Their data plans start at 1 GB for $20 a month, increasing $10 per GB staggering. No unlimited is offered, but you can get a month-to-month plan. AT&T on the other hand just offers you the current iPhone/iPad data plans. 250 MB for $15, $25 for 2 GB, etc.. They will not be offering month-to-month at this time. If I did opt for the 3G, I’d go AT&T with the 2 GB plan. I don’t think I’ve ever gone over a gig on my iPhone, I doubt I’d double it. That’s me though.
Two words, smart cover. Smart covers will be available in five different colors for polyurethane (pink, orange, green, blue, gray) or leather (cream, tan, black, dark blue, red). Check them out if you have not seen them yet! They are not optimum protection, but don’t drop your shit and you’ll be fine! If you are going to travel with it a lot, pick up a cheap netbook sleeve until new fancy cases come out that take advantage of the magical magnets.
Loaded question here, you’ll be mad if I send you to the wrong place. Thankfully Apple makes this one pretty easy. The Apple Store is your best bet. They will have the largest stock and the most employees to help expedite the wait. When you should show up is another story. I’ll be headed over to my local Apple Store after lunch and get in line. Some people predict that there won’t be big lines because Best Buy, Walmart and the cellular carriers will be carrying the iPads. There WILL be a wait at the Apple Store. Not sure on how big of a wait though.
Me? I’m getting the 16 GB black WiFi. I have found that I never filled up my 8 GB iPhone 3G and have not even filled up half my 16 GB iPhone 4. I have two movies on it which I have never watched. I still prefer Netflix. I’ll be headed to the Apple store after lunch, as long as I can get out of work. I’ll case the Apple store and hopefully there won’t be a line. If there isn’t, I’ll be starting one. If there is a line, I’ll sigh and take my place at the end.
I’d have to venture a guess that if you really wanted an iPad 2 and you can’t make it to the release tomorrow, you should be able to snag one up fairly easy Saturday morning. Don’t hold me to that! I just have a feeling that if you call around first thing in the morning, you’ll be able to find one out of all the different outlets that are carrying it.
Ever since the original iPad, I have lusted for a nice working tablet. Tablets have existed for a long time, believe it or not. Most ran either a full Microsoft Windows OS or some flavor of Windows Mobile. Neither OS was tailored to a tablet form so the experience was quite awkward.
In 2010 Apple released the first iPad. This was the first device to really catch on with consumers. Big beautiful display, easy to use and lots of user friendly apps. Sorry if you don’t agree, but the iPad became the benchmark for the future of tablet computing. Oh, and did I forget to mention that it was affordable? The base model, WiFi-only 16 GB model was originally priced at $499. Previous tablets have always generally hovered around the $1,000 mark, if not way above.
Critics and spec-junkies cringed at what people were running to the stores to drop $500 on. The usual “It doesn’t have a camera?”, “Not 16:9 format (widescreen)?” etc., can be heard all day long on “hater” forums and even on some Apple devoted forums. C’mon, it was 2010, what electronic device produced would consumers buy that doesn’t have all the latest bells and whistles? I’ll give you a good strait up answer, a WORKING device. Out of the box, it did everything as advertised and met all expectations of the buyer.
So I have started out this rant completely biased. Let me see if I can persuade you into believing that I am not an Apple loving Kool-Aid drinker. I HATE Macs, anyone who knows me can attest to this. I did not stand in line for the original iPhone, Apple TV or any iPad. I run Windows 7, proudly I might add, on both my laptops, netbook and desktop. I owned a Zune before getting my iPhone 3G. I still like the Zune and I really like seeing what Microsoft has done with Windows Phone 7. An Apple fanboy would never admit to any of this.
March 2nd Apple announced the new iPad 2. Most everyone already knows the new stuff, but I’ll do a quick overview…
That’s the gist of it. No mind-blowing specs here, but when I pick up my iPad 2 on Friday, I’ll not only expect all the advertised features and updates to work, they will!
Now Motorola has released the Xoom tablet a little bit before the iPad 2 release. Competition is awesome! I was really expecting the first Android tablet to knock it out of the park. Especially after the details were released. Here’s a few highlights…
That’s hot shit right there! Any geek would be drooling over that, I did. Price point is set at $799. That was a shocker, but it sounds worth it. Maybe Motorola will release a WiFi only version for a couple bills less?? Have I talked you into it yet? Well, here’s why it’s not going to be a success quite yet. After laying down the $799+tax+mobile activation, you’ll get home with your fancy new tablet running the latest, hottest and most talked about OS on it just to be disappointed at every turn. You’ll be relieved to know though that fixes are all in the works for the current issues with the Xoom tablet, but if it were me, I’d cry rape if I didn’t know all these issues already existed…
You’re going to have to give it back to your mobile carrier for that and go without your tablet for at least a week.
Sorry, they put in a SD card module that wasn’t compatible with Honeycomb, you’ll have to wait on new custom drivers.
Well, you’ll have to because flash isn’t ready yet for Honeycomb.
Cool, just don’t put anything on there that’s protected by DRM. So no iTunes, no Napster (hey, they are legit now), no Zune Marketplace content.
Just plug in a flash drive, just like on the Galaxy Tab….oh wait, that’s a mini-USB connector…OK, they make converters right? Don’t try it though, because it won’t work. This is merely for transferring data to the Xoom.
That’s true, but you bought a Xoom, Son. Good luck finding more than 20 apps to run on it right now…natively. You can try running older apps made for the smaller displays, but I’ll tell you right now, they won’t scale properly. I hear Angry Birds runs fine tho!
Two issues are going to get you here. First, many users are reporting that HD video playback just sucks on the Xoom. They believe it’s a driver issue with the Tegra 2 processor. Another issue you will face is format. Even though the Xoom specs list many different playable video formats, it’s picky. Be sure to browse the Android forums for support, sounds like they are even having problems figuring it out.
That’s right, the mini-USB port isn’t even good for charging. Hope you like lugging around your power brick and having to purchase a proprietary car adapter.
So if you’re a fan of the Xoom already, you’ve been rolling your eyes while reading this entire thing and thinking to yourself, “but, J.B., all of this is going to be fixed!”. True, some day, all the advertised features will work, the app store will be full of Honeycomb apps and Adobe will finally release a version of flash, just for you! But are you going to pay $800 just to wait?
If you really want an Android tablet, I’d advise waiting for the fixes on the Xoom, or I hear Toshiba is suppose to release an iPad/Xoom killer in late spring. Honestly, if I could wait any longer, I’d probably give Toshiba my money. I’m not going to wait though.
I have been using WAMP now for a couple years. WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySql & PHP. All the things I use on nearly a daily basis 
A WAMP installation saves a LOT of time. Mainly for testing different versions of PHP and MySql. If you ever wanted to run an easy to configure web server from your house, I strongly recommend WAMP. You can also use it just to play around with creating a website before you invest in a host. Out of the box, it’s functional and ready to go, unlike IIS which requires you to configure every folder. Both have their pluses, and I use both, but prefer WAMP for my hacking/sandbox/FUN needs.
I bring up WAMP in a post for a couple reasons. One, a friend needed an easy solution to get a web developer sandbox up. The other reason was my new laptop. I was actually kind of worried about running WAMP on my new lappy. The new laptop is Windows 7 64-bit, I had previously read on many accounts that WAMP was/is not compatible with Windows 7 64-bit. I can vouch that it works just fine 
Over the years you could say that I have acquired some knowledge on different JavaScript libraries. Just to name a few off the top of my head…
Just a few JQuery has always been my go-to library when I needed to complete a project that required cross-browser functionality and efficient code. For my general purpose one-off scripts, I will normally not utilize a library and just code starting from square 1.
Lately, I have been working with DOJO quite a bit for a work project. I’m not quite sure why, but I have fallen in love! I previously investigated DOJO about four years ago for a project and utilized part of it but it never really clicked with me. I switched to JQuery with a quickness and never bothered to really give DOJO another chance. I can’t tell if DOJO has evolved into the greatness that I feel for it today, or did I just not get it.
Either way, I’ve already started to roll it into some of my existing projects. I’ll be sure to post any neat trickery I come up with later on my blog.