Netbeans 6.9 CPU Usage
I use Netbeans for just about all of my editing on projects anymore.. and the latest version of 6.9 has had a problem I've been dying to get fixed for a while. I'm primarly a PHP programmer, so I'm not sure if the bug extends beyond the PHP plugin or not. However, I've noticed while having a project open, Netbeans seems to use 100% of one of my CPUs (dual core machine). I've been casually searching around for a fix and until tonight I hadn't found anything. Finally I found this comment on the netbeans blog which provides a flag to use that seems to have fixed it completely!
Hopefully this helps some of you out there from getting totally frustrated with netbeans. For those of you who don't want to click the link... the fix is to add this flag to your shortcut for netbeans.
-J-Dnetbeans.indexing.recursiveListeners=false
SiTech_Plugins
Well, I'm finally doing it. I'm rewriting my voodoo code that makes reloadable modules or plugins in PHP. I've always toyed with the idea of rewriting my original work for PHP_Modules and making it work with classes; now the time has come. I have started work with my SiTech library to make SiTech_Plugins. It will be the same concept of PHP_Modules, but not only will it work with functions, it will now work with classes. This is something that was never really possible before because when PHP_Modules was written, it was written for PHP 4.
I haven't gotten very far yet with code, but the theory of it is to create a base class with a __call() method. That's basically all the base class will consist of. When a plugin is loaded, the class read from the plugin file will be created to extend this base class. From there, all methods found within the class will be stored as lambda functions inside a special class variable. This then makes it easy to reload code, by recreating the lambda function when the code is reloaded. Therefore, the class itself never needs to be redefined, it just needs all the functions reloaded. So, in theory this is entirely possible with PHP 5 and the use of the magic __call() method for classes.
Some of you may wonder why I don't use runkit from PECL. While it would make things a ton easier, I wanted more of a code solution that might work for everyone without extra requirements. I might look into creating it to work both ways though. I can imagine runkit would be a lot cleaner method of doing such voodoo, but I'm also unsure if runkit will even compile with 5.3. I'll have to do some research into that and find out for sure. Of course, there will be more to come as I make progress even if its good or bad progress.
Gnome and Totem … previews and codecs
So I just installed Gentoo again because I miss being in linux. I am running amd64, so the first problem I had with totem is that it wouldn't create thumbnails or play certian video files due to missing codecs. Some of codecs I was missing was MPEG-4 and some of the WMV codecs. If you've ever used the x86 branch, you know that by enabling win32codecs, you can get all of the neccisary codecs installed. Of course, this doesn't work in the amd64 branch, but after a bit of googling, I tried installing gstreamer-plugins-ffmpeg. Once I got that installed, thumbnails started showing up and videos started playing just fine. If you don't really like totem, I can't say I blame you, there's also VLC which with the proper use flags works fine as well for watching videos.
Another issue I came across was when I was browsing around some files and realized that Nautalis wasn't displaying thumbnails for .flv files. I remember coming across this a long time ago and never finding a solution for the problem, but today things have changed. One thing you will need is gstreamer-plugins-ffmpeg installed. From what I understand here, thumbnails don't show up due to Totem not getting the right mime type for FLV files. The comments mention that this is fixed in Totem 2.23.4, but amd64 only has 2.22.2. You've probably already noticed the XML file on the link, but I couldn't make it work in its current format. So, I recreated the file using a format that worked fine for me. To load the file into your configuration just run the command `gconftool-2 --load flv_thumbnailerschema.xml`. Once I ran that command, I refreshed a directory with .flv files and saw thumbnails. YAY!
Here's the download link for the XML file: flv_thumbnailerschema.xml
Anyway, I hope all of this has helped someone out.
New IM Client – Digsby
So, recently I've been looking around for a new IM client other than Pidgin. I don't have anything major against it, but the latest version 2.5.2 had quite a bit memory leak that cause it to consume memory like no other. That and the fact that its very limiting in what you can do with it look wise. Recently Kelsey showed me a post on lifehacker.com about free software. Most of them I've heard of or used before, but one I hadn't heard of before was digsby.
Uppon looking into it further... I found that Digsby actually has quite a bit going on. Not only does it support all the major messengers, but it also supports other sites like Facebook and Myspace. Another cool feature is that it checks e-mail from IMAP servers for you, as well as gmail, hotmail, and yahoo mail. After seeing all this, I had to give it a try. I'm happy to report that I'm now using it as my IM client for.. well... everything. I've had it open for a full 24 hours now with absolutely no problems or complaints. It's staying well within the expected memory usage and hasn't been slow or laggy.
Well, that's all for now, just thought I'd throw it out there that I found something cool I like 
So far they only support Windows and Linux, they don't have anything for OS X, but I'm pretty sure they're planning on something. Anyway, check it out, you might like it.
Edit: After looking around further, I realized Digsby is only available for Windows... sorry. Aparently there will be a OS X and Linux version available soon. Also, I found one thing I don't like about it... it doesn't parse /me messages 
Linksys WRT54G Router and Call of Duty
Since I got my new Linksys WRT54G router, I've had a bit of a problem playing Call of Duty online. I could join games and play all I wanted, however, when my girlfriend wanted to play too, it would disconnect both of us from the games. I searched and tried different things, also upgraded the firmware, all to no avail. I finally solved the issue by setting up a port trigger for the port the game uses.
I had tried before to setup a port trigger, but kept getting errors about the ports being the same. I don't know what I did different the last time I tried it, but it seems to have worked. I just set the application name to "CoD" and set all four port fields to 28690, which is the default port for Call of Duty.
This should work for CoD, CoD2, and possibly CoD4 (but I'm unsure since I haven't looked at the ports for it.) I checked the "Enable" checkbox and then clicked the "Save Settings" button. Once the router saved the settings and redirected me back to the page, I was then able to join a game, and have my girlfriends computer do the same.
Call of Duty mods
Lately in my spare time, I've been working on something a bit different. Instead of the normal PHP or Python adventures, I've been working with a game language for Call of Duty. It's structured somewhat like C++ but there's quite a few differences. I won't get into them now, but perhaps at a later date I'll post my findings on the language itself, somewhat of a tutorial of sorts. Anyway, I've been working with this language to create my own mod for the game.
Why do I want to do this, you may ask? It's for a few reasons, but mainly because I'm curious and picky. I can't find a mod out there that does everything I like. Out of the mods I can find, I can't find one that works without modification and is easy to add on to. I'm modeling my code closely after another mod that I've downloaded and like, but I'm rebuilding the code, hopefully fixing a few flaws and problems I've seen and ran into with the other mod. I'm also taking things from another mod I like that will add features that aren't in the mod I'm modeling mine after.
I haven't got much done so far, but I'm hoping sometime this week I'll have some actual code that can be tested on my server. I'm going to have quite a few features in it, like the ability to maintain a crouch only server (this means that there is no standing and running, you must remain crouched), user punishment methods, bash only (weapon melee only attack), weapon damage modifiers, weather effects, and lots of other things. I'll make another post explaining more, it's pretty interesting stuff though. Until next time...
Vista and Google … network problems?
Alright, I admit. I like Vista. I'm a sucker for eye candy and Vista definately has that. I've got Vista installed on my laptop just to give it a test drive. I'm enjoying it so far, but there's one HUGE setback that's really bugging me. I can't reach certian google sites, like Gmail, Google Image Search, just to name a couple. I'm not saying it's only google, I've noticed the issue with CNN.com as well. It just seems very bizzare to me.
I've got a small network setup here at home with 4 computers. One is my server/router. It handles all requests in and out. I then have two desktop computers, one is mine and the other is my girlfriends. Both run Windows XP and I run Gentoo linux. Neither of us have any difficulty getting to any of the web sites mentioned. Now, on the laptop, I run Vista (used to run XP). When it ran XP, I could reach all of the google sites just fine, and CNN.com worked great as well as Gmail and Google Image Search. Now that I have Vista installed, I have random missing images on Google Image Search, and for Gmail, well, I can see the login screen (barely), but not my mailbox. CNN.com just completely hangs when I try to visit it.
I'm absolutely dumbfounded by this behavior. I've had Vista also on both desktops with the SAME issue. It's not just an incompatable NIC because I've tried several NICs through my process of trouble shooting. I've also tried differnet settings and configurations on my router. If anyone has any ideas, or possibly some way I could trace the connection problem down, please let me know!! I'm at my absolute witts end with this. I'm just looking for a way to even find where the connection is stopping... hopefully I can get this solved because I'm sure others out there are having similar issues too.
Edit - 12-11-2008: After doing some extensive testing on this, it really seems to be just an issue of drivers. With newer hardware and drivers, everything has been running fine Vista installs.
Gentoo stage1 install & ccache
Today I was trying to get Gentoo installed on my desktop from a stage1. I wanted the ccache feature enabled, but kept getting errors like the compiler couldn't create executables and such. I went and did a little digging in the Gentoo forums but ended up finding nothing. It then dawned on me what was wrong after retrying without ccache.
When you first emerge ccache, it automatically creates symlinks to itself for your CHOST setting. That means that in /usr/lib/ccache/bin I had i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc symlinks to ccache. That's why compiles were failing, the compiler didn't exist on my system, but ccache was trying to use it like it did. The simple solution was to run:
ccache-config --remove-links i686-pc-linux-gnu
After using this, things were compiling again using ccache. I do want to note that after sys-devel/gcc emerges during bootstrapping, you'll loose ccache because it will now use the new i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc compiler instead of ccache. All I did to fix this was pause my bootstrap using Ctrl+Z, then type the command
ccache-config --install-links i686-pc-linux-gnu
and then typed in %1 to resume the boostrap job I just paused. I can't prove that this made it use ccache again, but it eased my mind.
So, to sum it up, if you want ccache when compiling from a stage one, you must use
ccache-config --remove-links i686-pc-linux-gnu
first, then
ccache-config --install-links i686-pc-linux-gnu
after sys-devel/gcc has emerged to make sure ccache works with your new compiler. Hope that helps someone out there!
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