meck's blog

In general we really like the current layout and blog system of our web page, but concerning static content, we encountered some limitations of the content management system "Wordpress" we use.

This is why we are thinking of switching our web pages to a more powerful system called Joomla.

Good news for all Linux (or future Linux users) out there. Today the newest Flash Player from Adobe was released for the OS system. Well a beta have been existing for a while. But now it's official. Thx Adobe!

Just installed it on my system by freaking with the "uncomfortable command line" :-)

sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree did it for me. Now I am waiting for other companies to follow this example. In my dreams I see Microsoft porting their DirectX 10 to Linux... ;-)

Today a thing happened to me, I have not seen for quite a LONG time: The famous kernel panic. While fooling around with vpnc (a vpn client for linux) the system freezed. Only the power button could help it. On the next reboot after the file system checks I got something similar to the picture I posted here.

Some lines told me what I had already suspected: The ndiswrapper caused the issue. For those who don't know: It's a kernel module allowing to use network drivers for windows under linux. I had to use it as a consequence of the lack of existing open source drivers for the new Apple wifi hardware.

Now I am not too depressed, I will see it as a system upgrade. I am already downloading the newest developer version of Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn, Herd 2)... Wish me luck!

Here is some post for all Java programmers out there: Today I've been coding an object pool, that enables instance sharing. It could be used for example, if you have an application with many strings storing the same character data.

Basic idea is: Store all strings in the object pool - but only virtually. The pool itself will not create new strings, if it already possesses an equivalent one.

Now there is one problem: There are references to the objects not only within the application, but also from inside the pool. If the garbage collector wants to delete some unreferenced objects, my pool references will always prevent him from doing so. First I was thinking about some release methods for my pool and some reference counting stuff. Then I finally dropped this C++ style concepts and remembered the good old SoftReferences, that we learned in the lessons with PH. Now everything is smooth and without memory headaches.

... dudes and mates out there! I am sending you this little Christmas tree on the picture for those among you who don't have one.

This also includes me, because our tree in the garden we used to decorate has become too high...

I have been using Linux for over 3 years now and when switched to a Macbook I just did not want to give it up. So grabbed the latest version of Ubuntu (Edgy Eft) and made an installation. Following a howto posted in the ubuntu forums it was a rather painless task. The only big thing not working was my wireless card. And here was the problem:

Apple changed the wifi hardware to a better version in Core 2 Duo MB, which will probably support faster standards in the future. So I guess I will have to wait until the madwifi-project will fix this issue... fortunately this problem is already known and being addressed.

OK, but even with all the hardware working there are lil drawbacks: The Apple keyboard, even if its quality is very nice, has a different layout than the standard pc one. Keys that I used to use quite often are just missing... For example the "DEL", the "END" and the keys for page up and down scrolling... or AM I missing something??

The last weekend I made a very short visit to Valencia, which is in the southeast of Spain. After 4 hours on the motorway starting from Madrid we encountered a pretty nice city with huge buildings, palms and - for December - very hot weather about up to 20 degrees.

In the city we had some problems to encounter our hostel, for which we had made a reservation. So we had to ask many people and I learned many new words... primarily Italian swearings ;-). At last we found it and I was really surprised about the quality: Nice building, everything clean, colorful and international ambiance. In the late evening we were walking around in the streets and took some photos as the one on the upper left.

Later in the night we found some delicious original Italian pizza from a guy who came from the south of Italy. Then we spent the whole night until 6 am in some nice bars in town. Only having slept 5 hours, because the girl cleaning our rooms didn't give us more time, we felt a little bit tired the next day.

We proudly present the new improved sidebar. It now features besides the all present Meta menu a part for navigating within the sub pages of a main page. Supports arbitrary nested web pages and only shows  when the main page contains sub pages.

So what do you think? Suggestions?

I am happy to say we are finished with integrating our former blog into the new pages. There is just one lil thing: The menu layout is totally corrupted. ;-)

It's fun to discover some hidden buttons, check it out!

Well, the new awesome WordPress pages are online and functional. So we are now all very happy and will hopefully see some more posts in the near future. Convenient topics here would be: Windows, Mac, Linux, Iran, USA, technology and others...