Archive for 2002

[2002-12-23] Building GCJ for Windows

I have written a small article on the process I use to build GCJ for Windows on Linux. It also includes the shell scripts I use at each stage of the process. I hope this would prove useful to other hackers wishing to play around with creating GCJ for Windows.

[2002-12-13] Native GUI Applications in Java

I have released a fresh snapshot of GCJ 3.2 for MinGW which has much better support for the Java Native Interface (JNI) and can create native SWT-based GUI applications. Finally the dream can now also be realised on Windows!

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[2002-10-28] Blender Has Been Freed!

I know this is old news now, but that does not mean that I am not excited about it: my favourite free 3D modelling tool Blender has finally been freed after a spirited effort by people from around the world who just could not bear to see it die after the company that owned it (NaN) went bankrupt. NaN (“Not a Number”) shareholders agreed to allow Blender to be released as completely free (with the source code) software only if they could get 100,000 euros for it. The campaign led by Ton Roosendaal, the creator of Blender, has managed to raise this amount - and more - and this darling of a tool is now completely FREE!

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[2002-10-11] Harried Porter

I guess I was feeling a bit too euphoric on being annointed a MinGW developer, so I migrated Artem Khodush's patches to GDB for MinGW from version 5.1.1 to 5.2.1 - the result is now available for your downloading pleasure at the MinGW SourceForge repository.

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[2002-09-23] GNUs

I have been playing around with the GNU Compiler for Java (GCJ) and have been trying to get it to work reliably as a native compiler on Windows. I finally succeeded in this goal (sort of) - some of the pieces are still unfinished and some are plain missing, but as The Beatles put it: “It's getting better all the time!”.

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[2002-08-13] Prime Time

IIT-K CSE junta have come up with a deterministic, polynomial time algorithm for finding out if a given number is prime or not. Yay!

[2002-07-24] On The Other Hand...

I just discovered the ultra-cool GP32 (“GamePark 32”) handheld gaming console that beats the Game Boy Advance hands down in performance and supported features and is much friendlier to developers. It also has a growing developer community and supporting freeware tools (including an emulator). The only problem is that at $160 (plus shipping charges), it is a tad too much of an indulgence even for yours truly!

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[2002-07-16] Thumbs Up!

I just bought myself a Game Boy Advance!
(I know that the Japanese are generally bad at English, but doesn't anyone at Nintendo realise that the name should have been the more proper “Game Boy Advanced”?)

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[2002-06-07] Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!

The 1.0 release of Mozilla has finally happened after almost 4.5 years (January 1998 to June 2002) of development! I have been using it for around a year now and am a very happy user - do check it out yourself, if you haven't already, especially if you have used Netscape Communicator before. It has goodies like the ability to block popups, tabbed browsing, the ability to block banner ads, proper support for modern web standards, availability on a large number of platforms, etc. that make life so much better for all of us web-surfers. Check out some of the really cool stuff that Mozilla can do!

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[2002-05-02] Getting “Chandrakanta”

A lot of people have asked me about obtaining the great “Chandrakanta” and “Chandrakanta Santati” written by Devakinandan Khatri.

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[2002-04-25] “Get Rid Of Slimy Scumware” (G.R.O.S.S.)

(With due apologies to Calvin!)

Scumware is software that is installed on your machine, generally without your consent, by a lot of software these days. This particularly despicable strain of software pops up banner adds on sites that do not have any, steals browser URLs to drive up affiliate marketing scores, puts ugly green and yellow lines under words on a web page (extra hyperlinks that take you to their affiliate sites), messes with search engine results, eats up your bandwidth, etc.

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[2002-04-18] Of Engines and Men

Blogging has quickly become a phenomenon on the Internet - so much so that even I succumbed to it, before realising that I have been doing it all along with these pages. Duh!

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[2002-04-02] New Adventures

I have left Torry Harris and have joined Elind, a maker of products and solutions for the financial securities market (e.g. stock exchanges).

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[2002-03-25] Updated Bookmarks

I have finally managed to clean up my bookmarks - reorganising links, removing dead URLs, etc. If you so desire, you can directly import these into Netscape/Mozilla - or even IE, though I have not tried that.

[2002-01-07] Get Serious!

I have been playing Serious Sam: The First Encounter - the coolest FPS (First Person Shooter) I have ever seen - jaw-dropping, yet fast, 3D graphics, relentless action, great music, lovely locales and amusing one-liners from your alter ego make this an unrivalled winner of a game!

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