Annoying Maps

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Sep 092011
 

I’m creating a Maps applicition on Android. I had my location in an ItemizedOverlay, displaying a man-icon (similar to the yellow streetview marker). Then I wanted to add a layer with markers, so I created another ItemizedOverlay. But I can’t seem to add that to my MapView. As soon as I do that, I get a Forced Close.

Changing the first ItemizedOverlay to a MyLocationOverlay does not do the trick, the FC still kicks in as soon as I try to add the second overlay. I must be doing something wrong…….

Update: the initial code was created very late at night. And then things get mixed up. Don’t use before instantiate….DUH. Needless to say, it works now 😉

Assassin’s Creed

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Aug 272011
 

Right. That was quick. Yup. I bought Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II as well. So now I have to wait (whilst playing the other ones) for Revelations, which will be out in november. Nice.

Assassin’s Creed – Brotherhood

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Aug 262011
 

Yesterday, I bought Assassin’s Creed – Brotherhood for the XBox360. One of my best friends plays it, and I watched it, and liked it. It’s from the same people that made Prince of Persia – The Forgotten Sands: Ubisoft. That’s a pro and a con at the same time. A pro, because I like the gameplay (way of storytelling, the puzzles, etc) and the graphics are equally superb. But it’s a con too, since the same annoying auto-shifting camera that haunts you in Prince of Persia is even more present in Brotherhood. Sometimes in the middle of a jump the camera is repositioned, effectively altering the way the stick moves you (forward becomes move to the right for instance). It will definitely lead to some frustrating moments where you fall of some building or just missed a latch, even though you know what needs to be done there.

I’ve never played the other Assassin’s Creed games, but Brotherhood is a nice mix of present and past (around the year 1500), using the present (future to be exact, it’s 2012 in the game) to re-live memories from the past. Once you’ve re-lived a memory, you’re one step closer to solving the game. But for me that’s still a long way to go!

Prince of Persia – Forgotten Sands

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Aug 112011
 

The game Prince of Persia – Forgotten Sands does not get the highest ratings in the world (Gamespot gives it a 7.5/10), but I bought the game after playing it on the Wii (and liking it) for only €7,50. That’s a bargain, since most shops still sell the title for about €20!

Apart from the sometimes annoying camera (you can’t see what you want to see) the game is very beautiful and nice to play if you like to puzzle. Sure, there are enemies, but so far they are not a real problem, and certainly after some upgrades (earned in the game) they are not. For the price: highly recommended. If you are a die-hard gamer, just skip it 😉

Dumping data very fast

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Aug 062011
 

Too bad my comment on the original post was deleted. Perhaps they don’t want to know what I had to say, or they don’t like C#? From the top of my head I wrote something like:
The original post.

I created a very simple C# implementation, a console application with hardcoded username/password and select-statement. It roughly has the same speed as the Pro*C (C routine) version, about 1.7 million ALL_SOURCE records in about 57 seconds. C# is a little more appreciated amongst managers, since C# developers are a lot easier to hire than Pro*C developers. Why on earth you want to fiddle around with Java when something needs to be done fast, puzzles me. Even Java 6 (don’t know about 7 yet) does not come close to the performance of .NET, let alone natively compiling languages.

Renewed

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Aug 012011
 

Just to be sure, I did not only renew the “switchbl8.nl” domain, but also “rare-it.com”. Not “rare-it-services.com”, since I did not use it anyway. But I’m not sure what stuff on the web uses my rare-it.com email address, so I now have another year to figure that out.

Unable to upgrade

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Jul 132011
 

The problem of self-thinking repositories like Ubuntu has (this server runs Ubuntu) is that you cannot always upgrade to the latest version of the software you use, without doing a OS-upgrade. I cannot upgrade WordPress any further because I cannot update PHP to the minimum required version. It’s not in the repositories.

So, I guess this is the point where I have to say: the 32-bit Ubuntu installation running on 64-bit hardware is long overdue its update, mainly because the upgrade means: complete re-installation. You cannot upgrade 32-bit to 64-bit. Perhaps later this week. I’ve got a spare 1TB disk here, now all I have to decide is which distro it’s going to be. Ubuntu again, or perhaps OpenSuSE like my desktop?

Switched URL

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Jun 282011
 

I just changed the URL of the weblog from rare-it.com/blog to switchbl8.nl/blog. Let me know if that leads to any strange behaviour, or just let me know everything works like expected.

Update: I should have written the following: I updated www.rare-it.com/blog to www.switchbl8.nl/blog. The previous blog was not reachable without www, neither is the new location.

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