Roo’s Ramblings

To be fair, this is hardly news. There has been a lot of work with font rendering in Mustang (Java 1.6.0) and with Sun releasing weekly builds, people have been able to test this for months.

Today was the first day for me though. No one could deny that fonts in Java looked poor (relative to other GUI libs, at least). It was possible to turn on anti-aliasing, which helped, but then they sometimes looked a little fuzzy, especially for smaller sizes. Anyway, here’s the current situation.

JRE 1.5.0 (default)	JRE 1.5.0 (with AA)	Mustang b61 (default)

I was very pleased to see the display in Mustang looking great - as they should be! Now, Mustang also supports subpixel anti-aliasing for improved rendering on LCD screens. What I’ve yet to establish is whether it was on for the above screenshots. They look pretty good, so it could be the case.

I was at the bus stop this morning, killing time whilst waiting for the inevitably late bus. The cold was setting in, and my mind for some unknown reason wandered to the excellent web comic series, Mr Tourette at ModernToss.com. Now, those cartoons crack me up big time (”I still want paying”). So, a big grin quickly turned into a small giggle and then into full belly laughs. This normally wouldn’t bother me except for the 10 other people at the bus stop suddenly started to give me a wide birth - move away from the nutter.

Still, it’s hardly the worst thing in the world. The only saving grace was that I had my iPod on and so I could at least pretend I was listening to Bill Hicks rather than my usualy funky choons.

Anyone given this a try yet? It’s a Java port of the Quake 2 game. I tried it a few months ago - admittedly, I was in my Windows partition at the time - and it ran really well.

Ok, I can read your mind though: “it must be sloooow?!?”.

Well, I can’t give you my own findings, but there are some benchmarks on the site charting the progress of their port.

Here’s the table from their page:

Benchmarks being benchmarks, there is always flaws. However, I think the numbers are pretty decent. The Quake FPS test has been a pretty robust benchmark for many years. That said, testing at 800×600 seems rather too conservative. Running in full-screen mode is what seems to cause the largest issues, but it’s hardly sluggish.

Chanced upon this site earlier: http://turbulence.org/Works/nums/prepare.html. It’s supposedly a visualisation of the frequency of used numbers on the Internet, or something like that. However, I just thought it was quite a funky little Java applet. The actual results aren’t that interesting, I have to say. But the interface is pretty snazzy. Give it a whirl!

Dang! Catcus has been doing some spring-cleaning over at cactuswax.net and there’s no more Transit Tales. I thought I’d carry the baton for a little while since I do rely on public transport quite a bit. To get to work, I catch a bus, then the tube and finally an overground train.

So, last week, I jumped on the 8.19 train to Cambridge from London Liverpool Street (I don’t work in Cambridge - I just get the train that heads that way!) and not only did it leave on time, it arrived a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. Well, as a British traveller, I don’t pay some of the highest fares in Europe to get a prompt service! Why couldn’t it be as shite as every other day?!? Anyway, time to write a letter, methinks…

MS have been trumpting their new-look fonts for Vista. They’re nice, you have to agree. But, they’re Microsoft’s fonts and so they won’t want us Linux users getting our grubby hands them. This is where Mr Friedman comes in. He kindly published a great list on his blog titled, 25 Best License-Free Quality Fonts.

I personally warming to Lacuna:

I’m pretty happy with my Getting to Grips with Latex tutorials. I know they’ve gone down well because I get plenty of feedback from readers telling me so. But every now and then, I like to check how they are doing in the Google-sphere. If you type “latex tutorials” into Google, you get:

I come 2nd! Woo hoo! Now, I know it’s not first, but I don’t reasonably expect to leapfrog the Tex Users’ Group site. So, I’m pretty chuffed because most people doing a Google search at least sees the top few entries before they decided to click. The other reason I’m pretty happy is because I’m a new kid on the block when it comes to Latex guides. Latex has been out for decades and there’s no shortage of sites to help users.

An interesting aside is that the entry that appears on the Google results page says “Latex tutorials taking you from the very basics towards more advanced topics. Clear presentation and narrative flow.” But, that content doesn’t appear in my site. This must be what others have written about them! B)

I keep a little counter on the main page (which is basically a contents page). In the past 20 months, I’ve had over 130,000 hits on that single page alone, and I’m now at a rate of 10,000 hits per month.

Saw an excellent blog, by Phillip Eby, almost a year ago, and a friend of happened happened to recall it recently in a discussion about Python. It’s titled Python is not Java and talks about how adopting a Java approach when programming in Python just makes life difficult. In particular, I love the section about overuse of XML:

If you are a Java programmer, do not trust your instincts regarding whether you should use XML as part of your core application in Python. If you’re not implementing an existing XML standard for interoperability reasons, creating some kind of import/export format, or creating some kind of XML editor or processing tool, then Just Don’t Do It. At all. Ever. Not even just this once. Don’t even think about it. Drop that schema and put your hands in the air, now! If your application or platform will be used by Python developers, they will only thank you for not adding the burden of using XML to their workload. [Phil’s emphasis]

Now, it takes a brave man to be critical of any programming language. After overwhelming response from readers, he followed up with Java is not Python Either. It’s nice that he balanced the argument somewhat. His argument is in fact somewhat lacking, and it basically boils down to Java is good because it has generated a lot of good frameworks that are then ported to other platforms. He confesses to taking scraps from the Java table on many-a-occasion in order to avoid reinventing the wheel within a Python project.

I personally am a fan of both languages. The trick is to simply pick the strengths of a given language to match the needs of a given project.

I had myself a wee break in Paris last weekend. Man, that is one amazing capital. The French certainly know how to knock-up a good looking city. ‘Twas vibrant too. Being English means that I’m automatically supposed to hate the French. However, that’s never been the case and I really love the French lifestyle. Would trade Paris for London any day. The only problem with Paris is that it was far too many American tourists!

Anyway, as Skoal put in a request, I happened to spot some funky French buskers. It started off as a rather normal guitar player. Bit boring in many respects. Then, out of nowhere, some bloke turns up with two wooden spoons and starts drumming away on a post. He the man!

I can’t believe it’s taken so long but I’ve finally setup a hosting account. Thanks to Dibble for the heads-up about xs-host.com who have been pretty darn good - and excellent value! I’m such a newbie though when it comes to configuring the databases and software. Still, I’ve managed to get this blog going!

Oh my god! I’m 25. Mid-twenties. It’s all downhill from here…