Updating eclipse with callisto

I just tested the eclipse callisto release. The purpose of this project is to get the 10 main eclipse projects together in one simultaneous release. This should increase the usability and facilitate the working with this different projects in just one eclipse distribution.

It is as easy as using the callisto update site with the eclipse update manager. The new remote update site for callisto is:

http://download.eclipse.org/callisto/releases/

After connecting to this server, you can install the features you need. If the selected feature requires another feature, the required project can be added using the 'Select Required'-Button.

I can say more in a little while (testing while working with it). All in all the first impression is really good. Right know I have different eclipse distributions installed on one system. One for each top level project. Hopefully we dont need that anymore in the future…

visual basic – error handling

The error or exception handling in visual basic is quite simple, here an example:

Public Sub doSomething(argument1,argument2)
  On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
    ...
    Exit Sub
  ErrorHandler:
    ...
    Resume Next
End Sub

More infos can be found here (using internet explorer recommended, that this site works properly)

Initial pc standard setup

This is my personal collections of free tools, I need on a newly installed pc. In my case this is usally on windows…

• Firefox –
• Trillian – instant messaging with icq/aol, msn and yahoo
• Proton – quick text editor with syntax highlighting and regexp-search-replace
• JEdit – extendable high performance text editor
• MWSnap – Screen capturing
• Wink – Movie Screen capturing, generating Flash-Videos (.swf)
• IrfanView – Image viewing (various formats)
• Filezilla– FTP Client
• Disktective — shows harddisk usage graphically
• Azureus – Bittorrent Client for File Sharing
• Ethereal — Network traffic analyser for multiple protocolls
• ZoneAlarm – Personal Firewall controlling and monitoring the applications accessing the internet
• AddAware – Can find with scans malicious software installed
• UltraVNC – Remote Desktop Tool
• Acrobat Reader — PDF viewing
• Winamp – Audio player
• VideoLAN – Video player (various formats)
• Quicktime – Video player (.mov-format)
• Realplayer – Video player (.rm-format)
• Google Earth — World viewer
• 7-Zip –file compressing and decompressing

• Eclipse – the one and only integrated development environment
• Tortoise SVN — client for revision control with subversion

More updates and/or specific information on some of them, are coming soon…

What is Subversion (SVN)?

Subversion is a tool for revision control. Possibly most people know one of the main features of revision control. It is implemented in most editing softwares. You can find it in the (however you call it): history-or-undo-redo-functions. If you recognize that you did some shit editing e.g. your MS-Word-Document you can step back to the version before the shit happened using the undo-function. Subversion is a tool doing exactly this with some more features:

• you never loose your previous version. (e.g. in the MS-Office-Tools you loose your history when you close the file)
• one version can include multiple files
• support for a multi-user-environment working on the same versions
• you can easily reload a specific version
• you have integration in different IDEs

A detailed description can be found in wikipedia.

In my company we are using subversion for nearly two years now. It was a choice between CVS and SVN because both were open source and free and our external partner for software development used CVS. 'Cause SVN was said to be the successor of CVS and it removed some restrictions of the CVS we decided to start with SVN. In the meantime our partner also migrated to SVN.

Import old postings

This is my first posting. It is about how to get my postings of my old blog to this new one.

The procedure how to do this is discribed here. The problem is that the function Import->Movable Type is not working… So I gonna try this some days later…

UPDATE: As you can see below: one day later it worked! Two points I didn't like much with the rss2mt:

1. it cutted the end of my posting with [...]
2. my formattings were gone

So i did this manually for each posting;-(

visual basic – regular expression example

Output of the following code-snippet would be: robert kleineikenscheidt

Dim re As RegExp
Set re = New RegExp
Dim s As String
re.Pattern = " r.*kleineikenscheidt"
s = "this is robert kleineikenscheidt in biberach"
Dim matches As MatchCollection
Set matches = re.Execute(s)
Dim match As Match
For Each match In matches
    Debug.Print = match.ValueNext
Next

You can find more detailed information and a short reference here.

Screen capturing – comparison

I tested the following (windows only)

1. The MS Windows default capturing (alt+)print with MSPaint
2. Mirek's MWSnap (free)
3. Deluxe screen capturing with the commercial SnagIt (Free Trial, $29.95 to buy)

For the first point – windows default capturing – u dont need any additional software installed

Online word processing

This is an ajax, online and free word processing tool including support for the widely spread doc-format!

Here you find this future ms word replacement.

Microsoft be ready, including a feature not yet supported by default in MS Word -> Save As PDF. Easy to use and all u need.

Wait a second

Thread.sleep(1000);

DateFormat and current date

My example in one ugly line:

DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.MEDIUM, Locale.GERMAN).format(new Date())

Result is:

24.03.2006