Chris Johnston

This is something that I plan on reading later, it is an article by Bruce Eckel entitled Does Java need Checked Exceptions?

Although C++ introduced the exception specification, Java is the only mainstream language that enforces the use of specifications with “Checked Exceptions.” In this discussion I will examine the motivation and outcome of this experiment, and look at alternative (and possibly more useful) ways to manage exceptions. The goal of this discussion is to explore the ideas — in particular, what are your experiences with exceptions? Would it be more beneficial to you to use un-checked exceptions?

THE.SCENE.05 - A TV show about the world of software and movie piracy and the groups that rip it and distribute it.

Practical PHP Programming - An online php book for beginners.

Every computer that I have ever been given has always had things on the hard drive. Usually this incluced the entire operation system plus any and all user files. I usually take these old computers and immediately install Linux onto them removing all the old data. However, this does not mean that the old information is beyond retrieval.

Here is a tutorial outlining a quick and dirty way to affectively erase an old hard drive.

This looks interesting:

Ruby Quiz is a weekly programming challenge for Ruby programmers in the spirit of the Perl Quiz of the Week. A new Ruby Quiz is sent to the Ruby Talk mailing list each Friday. (Watch for the [QUIZ] subject identifier.) After a 48 hour no-spoiler period has passed, everyone is invited to contribute solutions and/or discussion back to the list. The following Thursday a Summary will be sent to the list, discussing the quiz, solutions and discussion. The next day, the cycle begins again.

If you are a designer and anything like me you are constantly looking for new fonts to use in your designs. Someone has setup a website called Essential Fonts For Designers which has, for download, 300 truetype fonts. Go have a look. All the fonts look high quality and they are all free. The only downside to the site is that you have to download each font individually.

When I got my very cool Dell Dimension 8400 computer I made the mistake of only getting 512MB of ram in the thing. Unfortunetaly, when running Netbeans 4.1 and Sun Java System Application Server PE 8.1 (they have got to get a shorter name) I end up using about 650MB of ram.

My solution to this problem was to try and upgrade my ram. I went to my local computer store and purchased some nice OCZ Value ram to up the computer to 1.5GB—I got the 2×512 kit in to benefit from the dual channel thingy. I brought the ram home and put it into the computer. Nothing. I tried putting the ram in again. Nothing. Everything I tried ended in the same thing—Nothing. So it is back to the computer store tomorrow for some new ram. Actually it may be back to another computer store because I am becoming less and less impressed with the store that I usually deal with, but I am not sure yet.

Anyway, have I ever said I hate computers?

Updated: I took the ram back to the computer and replaced it with some Geil ram and everything works great now. I have never heard of them before now, but apparently they make really good ram. Hey it works in a Dimension 8400, good enough for me.

You learn something everday. I always knew that you should override equals and hashCode, but I never knew that if you override equals then you must override hashCode. RoBlog has an excellent explanation as to why this is and also offers several links to more information. Time to go back and change some code.