Scala, Java, Unix, MacOS tutorials (page 383)

Apple makes Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) technology open source

In a surprising move, Apple has decided to make their Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) technology open source.

Here are a couple of short quotes from the Apple Insider story:

The New York Times reports that AMD is getting away from talking about horsepower in chips, and in a new marketing approach, they will be referring to their chips (systems?) as See, Share, or Create:

Drupal FAQ: How do I install Google Analytics on a Drupal website?

There are two ways to do this, and I think they're both pretty easy. In the first approach you can just add the Google Analytics code to your Drupal template files, which is basically a copy and paste operation. However, if you don't want to do that, you can also use a Drupal "Google Analytics" module, and I share the link to that module below.

Drupal user login URL FAQ: What the heck is my Drupal user login URL?

A funny story about this Drupal website (alvinalexander.com) is that after I first installed it with my own custom theme where I don’t display the Drupal login link, I couldn’t remember where the Drupal user login page was located. With my Drupal theme changes I didn’t have a link to the Drupal login page anywhere on my Drupal website pages.

After a little bit of poking around, I finally realized the Drupal login page is located at this pretty obvious URI:

Reuters.com reports that Steve Jobs got back on stage yesterday to reveal a few new Apple products, including iPod and iTunes updates. Most reports refer to the new products as a yawner, but report that Mr. Jobs seems healthy again, and made this statement regarding the liver transplant and organ donor:

Here's a JDBC Timestamp example that shows how to read a Java Timestamp field from a database timestamp column (a MySQL Timestamp field) in a SQL SELECT statement. I pulled this source code out of a real-world Java application, so I'll break it into small steps, and hopefully it will make sense.

The MySQL timestamp field definition

My Java application uses a MySQL database, including one table named commands that has a MySQL Timestamp field I need to read. The SQL definition for this MySQL table is shown below:

After finishing my latest Drupal installation, I installed a MySQL database on my Linux server using yum, and then my mind went blank -- I couldn't remember how to create the initial MySQL “root” user (i.e., the initial MySQL user account).

Still unable to remember how to do this, I went ahead and started the MySQL server from my Linux root prompt just to make sure it was installed okay, like this:

For those looking for a Drupal CAPTCHA product or service, I still remain very happy with the Mollom CAPTCHA service. Like Drupal, Mollom was also created by Dries Buytaert, so as you can imagine, it integrates very well with Drupal.

Here are some more details on my Mollom Drupal CAPTCHA experiences to date.

I just ran across this Java method I used to create a list of all files in a directory that match a specific filename pattern, or more specifically, matched the same filename extension.

The Java "list files in a directory" source code

First, here's the source code for this Java "list files" method. I'll follow this code with a brief description:

Summary: This is a Java SimpleDateFormat (date formatting) example, showing how to convert a String to a Date.

In an earlier example I showed how to use the Java SimpleDateFormat class to convert from a Date to a String, but you can also use the SimpleDateFormat class to convert in the opposite direction, from a given Java String to a Date object.

Cool link of the day: The Telegraph reports that millions of people are asked to take part in a mass test of "brain training". As the article states:

Scientists have joined together with the BBC to create what they say will be the largest scientific test of whether machines, such as the Nintendo DS, or even just playing Sudoku, can improve memory and brain power.

If you ever want to build your own Mac (and violate at least one Terms Of Use agreement), this article on "How to build a Hackintosh" is pretty good. In the article, the author describes how to build what he calls a "Hack Pro" from industry standard components (for roughly $900, not including a monitor), and a Mac OS X Snow Leopard installation disk.

For a long time I couldn't remember how to show the indexes for a database table with MySQL, but I think it's finally sunk in. Just use the MySQL SHOW INDEX command, like this:

show index from node;

That example can be read as, "Show the indexes from the database table named node". It assumes that you have already selected a database table, so really, a full sequence of commands to show a MySQL database table index looks like this:

Summary: This is a review of the Mollom CAPTCHA service, based on our experiences using Mollom with Drupal here on the devdaily.com website.

When I switched this website over to Drupal about three weeks ago, I knew I also needed to find a good Drupal CAPTCHA tool to deal with both comment spam (also known as "comment form spam") and contact spam (contact form spam). After digging around a little bit, Mollom seemed like it might be a good tool, especially since both Drupal and Mollom were both created by the same author, Dries Buytaert.

With custom icon

It’s important to note that you can also customize the icon that is displayed when using a JOptionPane showMessageDialog. In the following example, I specify that I want to display my own PNG image as an icon on the dialog by creating an ImageIcon as an additional argument to the showMessageDialog method:

Software development best practices FAQ: Can you share some "software development best practices" you learned as the owner of a computer programming consulting firm?

Sorry, I don't have a lot of time for discussion today, but here's a brief list of the most important "software development best practices" I know, both for a software development organization, and your personal programming career:

In other tutorials I've written about the Java "instanceof null" behavior, and the Java "instanceof interface" behavior, and it occurred to me that I've never written anything about how the instanceof operator works with Java class inheritance.

Drupal FAQ: How do I get the URI (or URL) of the current web page from my Drupal theme?

Sometimes when you're working on a Drupal theme, or customizing an existing Drupal theme, you'll want to know the URL (or more likely, the URI) of the page that the user is currently looking at so you can customize that page (or more likely, a series of pages beginning with a certain URI pattern, as with this Custom Drupal PHP block example).

The EU is taking a longer look at Oracle's intended purchases of Sun, saying they want to make sure Oracle is committed to the future of the MySQL database. As we wrote about on our site back on August 21, 2009, you have to wonder about the future of many current Sun products, including not only MySQL, but also other products where there is a collision between Sun and Oracle, including the OpenSSO platform.

GM reported Tuesday that it's Chevrolet Volt electric car could get 230 mpg in city driving. However, Edmunds.com cast doubt on whether drivers will achieve that mileage, as it apparently depends a lot on driving style. (Oh, and wait until you see the sticker price.)

Here's an interesting quote about the Volt technology from SiliconValley.com: