Spring is here – time to post more pictures of beetles and butterflies! I’ve also linked two Google+ albums from March not yet mentioned on this weblog. Peacock Butterfly & Goldsmith Beetle — Today I finally caught a beautiful peacock butterfly (downscaled sample below). While feeding honeybees are extremely placid and easy to shoot, butterflies […]
JavaScript is notorious for the nasty surprises it springs on the unwary programmer, especially since it looks like many perfectly sensible languages (and is deceptively named after one). Two compact books present its mind-melting horrors in concentrated form, so as to quickly bring the unfortunate JavaScript neophyte up to speed. Douglas Crockford’s 2008 classic long […]
Windows 8.1 Update 1 (with a capital U) has arrived to close off the catastrophic Windows 8 era at Microsoft. If the overhyped Windows 8.1 did little but bring the new Metro environment finally up to release quality, U1 is at least more honest about its fairly minor changes – and comes with the promise […]
For the past 2½ years I’ve been brewing coffee with the Technivorm Moccamaster KBT 741, generally accounted the best drip coffee maker in existence. It’s not cheap – I paid €200 for the predecessor of the linked model – but it very thoroughly extracts the coffee grind’s tasty chemicals, thanks to a precise water heater […]
My overview article Java for C# Programmers has been updated for Java SE 8. You can find many links to the new features in the announcement and follow-up post at Oracle’s Java Tutorials Blog. I also once again recommend Cay S. Horstmann’s book, Java SE 8 for the Really Impatient. That said, here’s a quick […]
Microsoft’s latest attempt to fight the race to the bottom in Windows hardware has once again ended in a whimper, mostly because its own Surface and similar upmarket devices showcased the Metro part of Windows 8 that nobody wants. Anecdotally, I saw the elegant ultrabooks and hybrids vanishing again that had populated store shelves around […]
Version 1.3 of MIME Browser, my free EML message viewer written in JavaFX, is now available for download. The one big change is the upgrade to Java SE 8 with JavaFX 8 whose new Modena theme is fashionably flat and gray, as you can see in the screenshot below. (I made the blue hyperlinks a […]
Following Oracle’s long-awaited release of Java SE 8, I went through my Java-related articles and updated various links, file paths, and test results to the latest version. See Java Links & Tools for the current Oracle documentation and downloads. Most test results haven’t changed much, but neither has Oracle’s annoying default Windows JVM packaging. Here […]
I’m not a huge fan of most Blizzard titles, but I did play the hell (sorry) out of Diablo I/II and tried the free Starter Edition (a.k.a. playable demo) of Diablo III when it became available. Unfortunately I found it rather boring, and I was put off by Blizzard’s open contempt for people who wanted […]
Three new entries in the Developer Books archive. McFarland’s CSS3 guide is both accessible and comprehensive, MacDonald’s HTML5 intro is well-suited for people who already know HTML 4, and Horstmann’s Java SE 8 overview should remain useful even after Core Java has been updated. I recommend all three books. (2014-03-14: Added McFarland review) CSS3: The […]