Switching to Java JDK 6u10

I’ve been using 6u10 beta for a while and keeping 6u3 as my main JDK. It’s also the default JDK for NetBeans but now that update 10 of Mustang is out of beta, it’s time for me to ditch 6u3 and swtich to 6u10 final.

“generic” types: what’s in a name?

I’ve been stumbling over Java’s generic types for a while now…  I think I finally understand what my problem is:

They should be called specific types, or parametrised collections!

Project: Dvorcode

I’ve just finished hacking together a simple little program to transcode my “dvorcodes” for when entering on a QWERTY keyboard. I’ve created a new project on SourceForge and I’ve uploaded the code and a pair of pre-compiled executable JARs (one for Java 5 and also a re-worked version that’s been tested on Java 1.4.2).

Compiling JNLP projects under stock NetBeans 6.x

This is a pretty simple issue that was easy to solve but took a bit of fumbling around…

I recently checked out the new Java SwingSet3 project from it’s SVN repo, to play around with it. It’s a NetBeans project so it was simple enough to fire up NetBeans 6.0 and use it’s built-in Subversion support to check the project out from the repository directly…

My plan was very simple: check out the code with NetBeans, build it, run it (using JDK 1.6.0_10 beta for the new Nimbus look/feel too) and then hack at the code.

Essentials to make Windows almost bareable

Okay, so I hate working in Windows, but on my employer’s equipment at least, I must live with it. After having had this machine replaced twice (faulty Dell hardware) and rebuilt more times than I can remember (Windows BSODs), for a total of at least 3 system migrations this past year, I thought I’d better keep a list of what free software to install on top of Windows, and what adjustments to make, so that at least I don’t feel like I’m wearing a straight jacket. Here goes: