Hey, I'm back!

I was going to wipe this blog because it's full of crap but I decided against it.

I took a break from programming but now I am regularly coding PHP, Javascript, and C#.

I've taken a break.

I've taken a break from Programming.

I have been dealing with Life. I'm trying to get my money right, my woman right, and my car right.

It's going to be a while before I return.

I hate Eclipse.

I used to love Eclipse. In fact, I thought it was the most fantastic IDE that I had ever used. As the days drag on and on I am realizing... I hate eclipse.

This buggy piece of fucking garbage. I have been struggling with it for the last three days attempting to make it function correctly. On one machine it slowly trudges along like a fly trying to make it's way through an ocean of honey. On the other machine, it doesn't move at all. It loads, then makes my entire GUI freeze. Bullshit!

I'm so tired of bloated software with 8,000 features for every moron who shouldn't be working in the Technology industry. How many features does your editor need for you to code efficiently? One-hundred? Two-hundred? Download Eclipse! You will quickly find that it has a feature to satisfy the needs of every lazy programmer. Care to guess how many features I need to code efficiently? Go ahead..

FIVE

1. Syntax Highlighting
2. Line Numbers
3. Ability to open more than one file simultaneously using tabs
4. Tree view of Project Directory
5. Search and Replace with Regular Expressions across multiple and directories.

That's all I want. I'll write my own IBM, thank you very much. I don't care if I have to copy and paste from 2,000 different open source projects. I would much rather do that than deal with this bloated piece of buggy Java crap for any longer.

<3 daedalus__

MOOD: highly pissed

Alphabet Navigation Bar

You know those alphabet navigation menus? They look like this:

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

I recently wrote a class to generate and output one of these. It takes two arguments, the name of the field you are are reading from, and the name of the table.

Current Code

{
        public $Chars = array();
        public $Alphabet = array();
       
        public $TableName;
        public $ColumnName;

        public function __construct($table_name, $column_name)
        {
                $this->TableName = $table_name;
                $this->ColumnName = $column_name;
                $this->GetChars();
                $this->PopulateAlphabetArray();
        }

        private function GetChars()
        {
                $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT LEFT(`{$this->ColumnName}`, 1) as first_letter FROM `{$this->TableName}`";
                $result = mysql_query($sql);
                while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result))
                {
                        $this->Chars[] = strtoupper($row[0]);
                }
        }

        private function PopulateAlphabetArray()
        {
                $this->Alphabet = range("a", "z");
        }

        public function CreateAlphabetNavigationBar()
        {
                foreach ($this->Alphabet as $letter)
                {
                        if (in_array(letter, $this->Chars))
                        {
                                $navi[] = ''.$letter.'';
                        }
                        else
                        {
                                $navi[] = $letter;
                        }
                }
                echo implode(" | ", $navi);
        }
} 

Example usage:


mysql_connect('localhost', 'adfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdffasdffasdfasdf', 'safsdfadsdfasdfasdfasfdas');
mysql_select_db('test');

$abc = new AbcBar('links', 'name');

$abc->CreateAlphabetNavigationBar();
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to comment or post in the thread I created for it on www.devnetwork.net/.

PHPDN Forums Thread

Special thanks to JayBird for his suggestions!

How to Install Steam on Ubuntu 6.10 Using WINE

This tutorial will guide the user through installing Steam on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) using the WINE (Wine is Not an Emulator) Windows Compatibility Layer. I would like to assume that the user knows basic BASH (Bourne Again Shell) commands.

There are a few things we are going to need before we actually install Steam:

1. Latest Video Drivers
2. WINE
3. msttcorefonts
4. Persistance

Make sure you update your video drivers. I have a Nvidia card in this laptop and I got the "Steam freezes at 26%-27% when updating" error before I updated my drivers.

Now, I would like to think that anyone can use Synaptic Package Manager. We are going to use SPM to install WINE and msttcorefonts since that is easiest for everyone. If you know that you can download the WINE source from CVS, then you probably know how to compile it, therefore I will not explain how.

Let's open up Synaptic Package Manager.
Click search and type 'wine'.
Right click on the package named 'wine' and click 'Mark for installation'.
Click 'Apply'.
When it is finished installing open up a terminal window and type 'wine'.
If that doesn't work as intended type 'sudo wine'.
If still doesn't work then you fucked something up and should probably go to google.

Now, slide on back over to SPM.
Click search and type 'msttcorefonts'.
Right click on the package named 'msttcorefonts' and click 'Mark for installation'.
Click 'Apply'.
Creep on back over to the terminal and type:

cp -R /usr/share/fonts/truetype/* ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts

That should have copied the fonts into your virtual windows directory. If it didn't, you know the drill: google. What I wrote worked for me and three other people.

Now we have to do something that is fun but may be scary for some people: Open the windows registry editor.

Open up terminal and type:

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/windows
sudo wine regedit

When regedit finishes loading you want to navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

Add a string value named 'Tahoma' with a value of 'Verdana' or whatever other font you like. This will be the font that Steam uses to render text.

Now that we are through all that bullshit we can surf over to www.steampowered.com and download the Steam installer. Run it.

Two things, first, never try to minimize steam unless you like Gnome better when it is frozen. Second, you can not focus (get into them) on the text fields unless you right click (or left click if you are left handed).

Okay, log-in with your username and password, update CS and you should be ready to go.

This really is a short guide to getting Steam to run on Ubuntu 6.10 using WINE. There are probably more errors than I know about that you could run into. I refer you to Google in that case. These steps worked for me the first time (after I figured it all out).

Don't forget to leave a comment if you have something you think should be added!

Windows Form Programming Using C#.NET, Part I - Your First Windows Form!

Today, I intend to write a small introduction to programming Windows Forms in C#. You don't really need any programming knowledge to follow this but I am not going to explain basic language syntax and constructs. I would assume that you have basic knowledge of an Object Oriented Programming Language. I would prefer that you have worked in other languages before and simply wish to learn about Windows Forms in C#. I can not describe the differences between Windows Forms in C++ and C#, or make comparisons for any other language versus C#.

The first part of this series is intended to be short and concise. We are simply going to code a form that has a button in the middle. When the user (you) clicks that button, it will pop-up a message box that reads, "Hello World!".

To be continued... Sorry

Dual-Booting Ubuntu 6.10 and Windows XP Professional, Part III

I was able to run Ubuntu again after re-installing GRUB.

To re-install grub I had to boot from a Live CD, open terminal and type these commands:

sudo -i
grub
find /boot/grub/stage1 // this output: hd(0,0)
root hd(0,0)
setup hd(0,0)
quit

This information can also be found at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

Now, I am going to re-install Windows, after downloading the drivers I forgot I needed for it. Then, I will figure out how to make dual-booting work.