So what's new?  Sure it's about a month late in celebration, but I haven't really had much that I considered worthy of sharing recently.  The biggest news I have is that with the economy that everyone knows we are in, I too have fallen victim to the ensuing economic troubles.  I was laid off from my position at Sun Microsystems on December 22nd, 2008; yep- three days before Christmas, oh and with a generous five days worth of notice. 

If you've tried to access this site recently you may have found it simply unreachable or maybe a repository or two just wasn't working for you.  This is because I've moved the site to a two terabyte RAID 1 backup solution which took some time setting up, played with Far Cry 2 a bit which was an absolute blast, but more importantly I chose to temporarily disable the University of Massachusetts source code found in the Repository.  Recently, I noticed a heavy amount of traffic coming from the university centering on the source code found in the courses 91.101 and 91.102, which are both introductory courses in UMass Lowell's Computer Science Department.  Normally, there isn't much traffic to these courses, but with the current semester in progress I think it's kind of obvious what's going on here. 

I'm not exactly sure of the criteria that the folks at Movable Type go through to approve a plugin submitted by the general community.  To me, it would make sense that plugins that are submitted should go through some level of testing before it is listed among the many plugins in their directory.  If some testing does occur, then I'm comfortable saying that my recent plugin has been approved.  You can see it listed in the directory, but I consider it dry there - I think you'll get more information if you view the project page here.  One caveat I've seen, is plugins listed in the directory that either didn't work or had broken links that were critical to acquiring the plugin or critical to acquiring the plugin's documentation, which can certainly be a downer when you're looking to install a plugin to help you solve an issue you're having.

You may or may not have noticed a change here at Lozzi Solutions.  With my most recent post I briefly described a few things that have been happening.  If you have time, I'd like to hear what you are up to and that request was not meant as a holier-than-thou request but sincerely, I'd like to know what other developers are up to.  If you have a blog where you discuss your work you're welcome to link to it from here, briefly describing the new projects you're currently on or about to take on.

This summer has been particularly tough in regards to branching off and adding code to projects that were started in the past. In an effort to publish what I've been working on since the spring semester ended, here's a brief discussion on what's been happening. Care to share what you have been doing?

San Francisco is a great city. Sure, like any city it has its negatives but there's a great number of positives about the city too. Of course there's the weather, much nicer than New England. Transportation is much more accessible than a place like Boston(the streets are also wider to account for this system) and there's plenty of great things to do and see.

Nope. Almost two years ago the infamous unknown error -203 bug surfaced when you would try to install your favorite add-ons. Personally, I never experienced it back then, but after upgrading my systems to Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron", this problem appears to be ever more present. Aggravated over the failed attempts at installing the most essential add-ons like Web-Developer and Googlebar, I went looking for the source of the problem.

This year the cards are apparently in my favor- I'm heading to the JavaOne Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for May 4th-9th. It's my first time at a software development and/or computing conference so I'm quite excited. Some pretty notable speakers are going to be there talking about all the latest in the industry and where they believe the industry is going. Sure, I could probably read this stuff online- but I'm sure I don't have to tell you in-person experiences can make or break the topic. Besides, because I'm a student of an accredited university- I'm attending this year for free, so I really couldn't afford to pass this up.

The first day consists of a mini-conference called CommunityOne and starting on Tuesday is the official JavaOne conference. I've handpicked my schedule for the week and it's pretty full(try here if the former doesn't work). I hope to see a few attractions before the conference gets too busy, the Golden Gate bridge for example. If you don't understand the abbreviations and topics listed there on that schedule don't worry, I'm hoping to take copious notes and document my travel experience on here.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I consider myself an upper-level intermediate Java programmer, which means mostly nothing other than the fact I have had my share of books to peruse in my day. Not just Java books either, but a multitude of books in almost a dozen different languages. Out of all of them, Thinking in Java, 4th Edition, has got to be the worst I've ever read - in terms of presentation.  

A topic arose recently in a course I am taking. The IDE Dr. Java, chosen by the instructor of the course, has a serious problem regarding Java SE 6 update 4. Since I have chosen not to curse my system with such a degrading piece of software, most of the problems I hear are just that- hearsay. Apparently Dr. Java cannot compile source code if the JDK is update 4. However, if update 3 is used then source files can be compiled. The question becomes, do you stick with the IDE or do you value the update of the JDK more?