All new setup!

I have my new superfast internet (4Mbit :) and my superfast dualcore system (Athlon64 X2 4000+ :).

Seriously, compared to my old setup, this new motherboard and CPU combo is super quiet. Of course the motherboard has no fan at all, and I'm not using any separate videocard with noisy cooling, but even then. I didn't know my PSU was so quiet... :)

I also figured that it is faster for me to start using an IDE for further JAVA development. I guess I'll start with Sun's Netbeans, since I like their tutorials and forums.

Phenom CPU at an attractive pricepoint?

Apparantly AMD is going to get rid of its TLB-bug infested Phenom CPU's by lowering the prices (source: Planet3dNow).

Now, they will still be too expensive for me, but I suspect that the normal dual cores will also drop in price. So I will probably buy my AMD Athlon64 X2 4000+  for around € 60, to find that the week after the price has dropped...

New ISP

Well, I was indeed offline the whole weekend. Last friday around 13.00 I went offline, and it took my new ISP till monday morning 8.30 to get me back online. And as of this morning, my own telephone number has been migrated too.

But it is fast! (compared to my previous connection... :) )

Now all I have to do is configure my SSH server correctly, and configure my Apache server correctly.

Thumbnail generator

Just found a free php written thumbnail generator....: http://www.zubrag.com/scripts/thumbnail-generator.php

New ISP

I am changing ISP, from my current 256/256 (Kb that is... :) ) to a whopping (for me at least) 4Mbit/1Mbit line. And the best part is that I am going to have a lower monthly fee.

Hopefully this coming friday everything will be migrated. I am a little worried that I will be offline the whole weekend, but then again, I can always spend time with my family.

Lying to your wife

I have lied to my wife, and she is very upset about it.

I am trying to join the Airforce, and so far I managed to make it to the next round of the selection. However, my wife started to realize that if I make it, I will go abroad for training in America for at least 1 year. And it is strongly advised not to bring your next of kin, so you can concentrate fully on the training. So I told her it is not possible at all to come to the U.S.A. with me.

And this, she found out, is not true. It is actually possible.... Hmmz, that should teach me not to ever lie to my wife again... Hopefully I will survive tonight, after I come home.

Finally bit the bullet

I went ahead, and put my current rig online for sale. AMD Athlon XP 3200+, 1GB PC3200, MSI K7N2 Delta and Club3D 9800SE@Pro. I asked € 150,- for the set, and got an offer for € 125,-. I'll take it!

I also ordered an Kingston Valueram 2GB DDR2 667MHz kit, and found an incomplete (missing i/o shield) Asus M2A-VM HDMI mobo at my work. Now all I need to do is wait for the actual sale, and get that stuff, together with an Athlon64 X2, or maybe an Athlon X2.

Yes, there is a difference, the latter being the BE-2xxx series... But they come at an slight premium, so I'll probably end up being the X2 4000+.

Old articles from qrazi (in Dutch tough)

Last Friday I came across the Internet Archive, which basically conserves websites at specific time point.

Around 2001, 2002 I wrote some articles for a Dutch website, Overclockers.nl, about overclocking and tweaking my AMD K6-2+ and AMD Athlon XP 1600+ systems. Nice to read back, too bad I didn't keep a copy. The text is still there, but all the images are gone, and with them the benchmark results...

A well, the past is the past...

Hardware needed!

I am still running my main rig on the same hardware as 3+ years ago, which is an Athlon XP 3200+ mobile ( hehe ) with 1 GB DDR PC3200 ram and a modded Radeon 9800SE 128MB AGP card...

Sigh.... I really have to get of my butt, sell all the old Pentium3-era crap which is lying around, and upgrade my main station to a cheap dualcore system. I was thinking something along the lines of an AMD Athlon64 X2 4000+, 2GB DDR2 RAM and an AMD 690G-based mainboard. Since I hardly play games anymore, I might as well skip the purchase of an graphic card, and use the integrated X1250 solution for the time being.

More on the MVC (model-view-controller) theory

And of course I haven't figured it out yet. But here goes, I did find some more websites on the subject:

http://www.leepoint.net/notes-java/GUI/structure/40mvc.html
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javase/mvc/

BalusC moved on!

One of the websites that I have known for years, and actually used for years, has ceased to exsist. BalusC has sold his valuable database with info on almost every chipset and x86 CPU since the first Pentium CPU to Tweakers.net.

Hopefully they will but it back online...

Coincedentally, he does write a lot of Java tutorials, and he will continu posting them on his blogspot... :)

Swing theory

I am probably not that smart, but I still haven't got a proper Swing program made. Maybe this article on www.javaworld.com will help me.

Transparancy and Java #2

After reading some more into this specific subject at home, I do not think the current solutions (which involve screenshots, to emulate transparancy) add anything to this specific program. I guess I will be focusing on the "Always on top" feature.

Transparancy and Java

Some interesting links regarding transparant windows:

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/excerpt/swinghks_hack41/index.html
http://blogofjavacrazy.blogspot.com/2007/03/transparent-window-in-java-back-with.html
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=348024&messageID=1451623

And some interesting book titles:
Swing Hacks: Tips and Tools for Killer GUIs

But from what I am reading, the most important link for me now is The Swing Tutorial.

Template Creator

For my work I have started making a little Java application. I have called it "Template Creator". It basically makes copy/pasting information into an internally used template file easier. So this also means it is not of any use to anyone else  :)

But I does give me more hands-on experience with Java, which is always a good thing.

A reminder to myself, the following things are on the to-do:

- Create a "quick paste" button for each TextField
- Create a "select and copy all text" button for the TextArea
- Possible use doubleclick in the TextField as "paste and enter".
- Create an HTML parser to grab the info directly from a website, instead of having to copy manually
- Possibly have the Template Creator window alway on top, maybe with reduced opacity, for quicker switching from the browser to the application.

First two should be easy, and done this week (mostly time contstrained at the moment). The other two, I guess will cost me a lot of trial-and-error.

Torrentflux-b4rt

The current Bittorrent client I am using is Transmission. This is a pretty lightweight client, and suitable enough for my needs. However, as I am always looking around, I came across Torrentflux-b4rt, which is among other thing a webinterface for Transmission.

http://tf-b4rt.berlios.de/

First post

So, everyone blogs, eh? I have decided that together with trying out several other Google apps, I also start a blog.... Well, we'll see how much I'll actually maintain it, and wether I can actually have a purpose for it... :)