Sunday, August 24, 2008

Vacation!!!

I'm currently off on vacation to Kano, so I'd be doing no blogging for the next 3 weeks to 1 month. But once I'm back, there'd be lots of stuffs for you to benefit from on this blog; tutorials, articles, design works and lots more. See you then

Monday, August 18, 2008

Free Online Java Magazine


Java Jazz Up is a free online magazine on Java technology. It's a monthly publication and it usually covers everything that revolves around Java. Lots of open-source projects and Java frameworks are being discussed. The August edition focuses on JavaFX technology. Do check out their site to download your own free copy

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

I stumbled across a writeup on James Gosling's blog and I felt I had to also support the fight against Pancreatic Cancer by creating an awareness for it in my own little way. Randy Pausch, a charismatic young college professor, as ABC News puts it, finally lost the battle against pancreatic cancer on the 25th of July, 2008. He gave a last lecture on the disease, and the video of his talk has been viewed over 6 million times and downloaded over 10 million times. A book is also being published by Hyperion on his last lecture. Randy, though I didn't get to know him or read about him while he was alive , did greatly on Alice which has been hugely used in teaching. He however gave the world a beautiful example of dying eloquently. His Last lecture was one of hope, grace and optimism. I can't imagine how it was for him; knowing that your days on earth are numbered and still moving on to make an impact in the last days instead of worrying to death about his circumstance. Randy, you'd greatly be missed. Thanks alot for creating the awareness about the killer disease before you eventually lost the battle against it.

So I'm putting forward the question to you, 'What would you say or do if you knew you were going to die and had a chance to sum up everything that was most important to you?'. If you had only six months to live, like he did, what would you do? How would you live your life?
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) say that approximately 37,170 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2008 and 33,370 will die from it. How many people will die from it in a country like ours? If you've seen the kind of diseases that most of our old people here in Nigeria battle with, you will not but pray to God that you never experience such in your old age. The disease is said to be the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the US, and unlike other cancers, during the last 30 years, the medical community has seen very little advancement in prolonging the lives of pancreatic cancer patients. The video is highly inspiring. Instead of focusing on his death, he spoke about his childhood dreams, and he went on to attain quite a number of them, but they didn't all come easy. It's a video that will stir up something inside of you to get more done and work towards fulfilling your goals if you have one. One statement he made that I'd also like to leave you with is this: "The brick walls are there for a reason, they are not there to keep us out, but are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something". So why not fight against this disease with me, by creating the awareness. You can get to read more about Pancreatic Cancer on wikipedia. Read the more about his last days on ABC News

Friday, August 1, 2008

JavaFX Preview SDK is finally out!

I'm pleased to announce to you that the preview release of the JavaFX SDK is out for early adopters to try out. Go to www.javafx.com to check it out. This preview was developed to empower users proficient in web scripting technologies (such as HTML, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript and ActionScript) to create connected applications that run in standard web browsers as well as on the desktop, as described on their website. Very good direction I must say. We've waited long enough for this.
There are some issues I'm not comfortable with while browsing the JavaFX website which I believe Sun should address.They need to still work on the site to enable we the users to get a better experience in interacting with the website. Some of the most essential features that need to be worked on for now is the way content is being loaded, create a smoother transition of the lightweight panels, and browser history needs to be supported. I see no advantage the users derive when you put AJAX, and nifty Javascript effects to use, but use it wrongly. While the user is viewing a particular section, the content of subsequent pages that the user might want to be should be loaded while the user is busy on this page, so that when the want to proceed elsewhere, the content is immediately shown if it has already been preloaded instead of showing us a useless throbber. Secondly, going back to a previously visited page involves showing the throbber again, and requesting for the same information from the server. This shouldn't be. One thing I seem to have noticed about Sun (correct me if I'm wrong), is that they tend to put people who are not skilled at working perfectly well with a technology work to do with that technology; that's why we've been having crappy look-and-feels since the onset of Java civilization. When developers become designers, what do you expect? But even that notwithstanding, I believe they should look into the issues I've raised. I can see that Mootools was used for the nifty effects, I urge you to please optimize the code to make it faster for the users; this is because the transitions are not smooth. The internal scrollbar too doesn't respond well to mouse scrolling.
Overall, I'm impressed that the Preview SDK is out so that early adopters like us can try it out to see if there's a future for it in our workflow.