Chris Johnston

Ruby is one language that I keep telling myself that I am really going to learn someday. I know a little bit of it, but I have not done anything major in it that would really force me to learn the language. However, with that said, it is a beautiful programming language.

Mike Clark has written a short review of the second edition of Programming Ruby. I have the first edition of this book, which is aimed at Ruby 1.6 and it is an excellent book. By the time you finish the book, you definitely feel like you have a firm grasp on the Ruby language. And the second edition contains even more information.

If you want to learn a new programming language then check out Mike Clark’s review of Programming Ruby

Mandrakesoft has officially announced the release of Mandrake 10.1 Official Edition. If you are a club member, you can start downloading it now and the free version will be available in a couple of weeks.

I plan on installing the new version of Mandrake onto my Linux server instead of White Box Enterprise Linux this time around. I may also try and install it onto my laptop (always the ultimate test for any linux distro). So as soon as they release the free public torrents and I can get it installed, look for a review here.

Linux Today - PR: Mandrakeliux 10.1 Official Released

Now this is a computer!!!
Now all I need to do is figure out how I am going to get it into my car, hmm…

Photo: SGI’s Columbia supercomputer | CNET News.com

I have been working on a new design for the site. Have a look and tell me what you think. I am hoping to have the new design in place by the end of this week.

I have finally imported all of my old posts so the archives are now up to date. The import wasn’t actually all that bad. I wrote a quick little ColdFusion MX script to transfer the posts from one table to another and, presto, it was all done, mostly. There is a problem with some links that I am slowly fixing up (I have all of 2004 done), but other than that it was rather clear sailing.

If you are looking for something from the past, feel free to do a search, you should find whatever it is your are looking for. The only thing now that I still have to bring forward are the articles that I wrote. Those I need to rethink (whether I still want them around), reformat, and repost. I am not sure if they will get integrated into the site or get placed in their own section. Maybe a little bit of both.

If you have ever needed to read or write a Microsoft Office file format from within a Java program, then this project is for. I worked with this package, I had to create Excel spreadsheets based on data returned from a database, this past summer. It is very nice. The amount of things you can do is incredible. Using POI, you are not creating a CSV file and having that imported into Excel to create the spreadsheet, you are creating the actual spreadsheet. This means that you can specifiy borders, cell widths, fonts, font sizes, and just about anything you can specifiy in Excel (I am not sure if it supports formulas — never tried it).

Check out the article on NewsForge

If you have been following the Linux scene at all over the last year, you have undoubtedly heard about mono. If you haven’t, mono is a port of Microsoft’s .NET framework, and the C# language, to Linux. If have been wanting to play with mono, or you simply want to see if anyone is actually using it to create desktop apps, here is an article outlining seven cool programs that have all been built using mono. Check out the article at O’Reilly Network