Kevin's Musings

I have been using Eclipse for my Java development for several years, it has served me pretty well – it has its idiosyncrasies but nothing that I cannot work around. When I started my current job two years ago, they were somewhat split between Eclipse and JetBrain’s IntelliJ IDEA. I tried IntelliJ at that time and it just didn’t seem to offer enough over Eclipse to warrant learning a new IDE. Recently, Eclipse has been totally flaking out on me (running out of memory for no reason, crashing, etc.) so I decided to try out IntelliJ again (version 6.0.5) and I must say I really do like it a lot. The subversion support is loads better than in Eclipse and the “diff” editor in IntelliJ absolutely stomps the “diff” editor in Eclipse. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that it is a ton of small things that will keep me with IntelliJ – I have decided that it really is better. Sure, it has some issues – startup time is slower, but the biggest issue is that you if you have more than two or three projects open it hogs system resources and things can come to a grinding halt (it goes slowly) but maybe version 7 will solve this issue.

The major reason people may use Eclipse over IntelliJ is price – it is one of the last “pay for” Java IDEs, but, it is probably worth doing the free trial to see how it compares to what your using now. The Java Posse have been touting that the new Net Beans (6.0, not out yet) is gunning for IntelliJ – we’ll see how it compares when it is available.

I mentioned Drive before, we have been continuing to watch and enjoy it. I just found out it was canceled. Oh well, so, sad.

Not a lot to mention… over the weekend, we played some Guitar Hero II, watched a documentary about John Ronald Brown (ick), visited Palisades Center (a HUGE shopping mall) and and also the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets (a big outlet mall). I picked up a nifty Fossil Darth Vader watch – it is a limited edition (856 out of 2000) so I thought about leaving it in the box, but, I would rather wear it, I think. We’ll see.

I completed medium on GH2 including Freebird (and on the first try). I need to go back and work on increasing my scores on the medium songs – I doubt I will be able to “5 star” all of medium ones like I did with the easy ones (at least not in the immediate future) – I have four and five stars on some of them, but, getting them all to at least four stars will be a big enough accomplishment for now.

I have been reading the newly released book Pro Drupal Development. I use Drupal to run a couple of websites and have been wanting to learn more about developing new modules for it. If you have any interest in running a CMS-type site that supports forums, etc. Drupal is an excellent choice – the  Drupal software seems to be very cleanly written and their module system makes it incredibly extensible. I am incredibly impressed by this book – it is well written, very detailed but understandable. There were places where I needed slightly modified functionality and I manually hacked the code, now I can clearly see how to write modules to do the same thing. Drupal is written in PHP and requires either a MySql or Postgres database.

The misses and I had a pretty relaxing weekend. Mostly hung around the new place, spent some time with friends, caught up on some TV and played (a fair bit of) Guitar Hero II. I am happy to say I got five stars on absolutely all of the Easy songs and I almost completed the Medium songs (I think I have three or four songs left on Medium — this page includes the song list). We played a little GH2 co-op. While we were out running around yesterday, we picked up a second guitar controller so we can play co-op and both use guitars (actually, I bought a second game/controller set and am just selling the game – it is impossible to find just the guitar right now). I’m telling you, if you have a PS2 or a 360, go get Guitar Hero II or let me know when you want to come by and I’ll show you how to play 🙂 It is absolutely addictive and a blast.

We’ve been watching the new show Drive, which we like so far – but we’re big Nathan Fillion fans from the Firefly days. We finally starting to watch this winter’s Lost episodes and we staying caught up with American Idol (yay! no more Sanjaya), Sopranos, and Amazing Race. I ordered Twin Peaks Season Two, which will happily complete my Twin Peaks DVD collection – I’ve been waiting for the season two DVDs for a long time.

Regarding Sanjaya – don’t think we’re just hating on Sanjaya – at the beginning of the season we really liked him but it became evident that he was clearly not as good a singer as some of the others and should have been voted off several weeks ago – not to mention that Blake should not have been in the bottom three last week. Regarding Charla and Mirna on the Amazing Race… we are just hating on them – Mirna is just absolutely nasty, I am surprised nobody has smacked her (including Charla) – we just hate seeing them finish every week knowing we will have to watch her nastiness again next week.

We think we finally found a blackout curtain solution that works – the “Euro-Premium Blackout Drapery Liners” (you can get them from Joann.com – if you watch you can frequently get a big discount on that site) – we don’t like that the set that is advertised as 2 panels, 54″ but is actually two 27″ panels, but, they DO blackout the light. We paired these with a set of normal curtains and they do a great job.

Here is a video of a guy playing the Rush song YYZ on Guitar Hero. This is on EXPERT MODE – this is much harder than anything I can do, but, it is impressive and a well done video (well, except for the first part which is really hokey).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua3hZXfNZOE&mode=related&search=[/youtube]

Another birthday come and gone. The missus and I celebrated my 37th year on this planet – all of them have been worth celebrating. We had a wonderful dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant – Villarinas. Afterward, we came home and I played the great present she got me, Guitar Hero II for the 360. Guitar Hero II is really a TON of fun. I have repeatedly heard what a great game it is and people are absolutely right – this game is a blast. I am no stranger to rhythm / music games (such as DDR, Elite Beat Agents, others) and this one does the genre incredibly well. The game teaches you how to play and then gently increases the difficulty. By the end of the evening I was able to play the early medium-level songs pretty fluidly. I have no delusions it will help me with actual guitar playing, but it kind of “feels” like playing guitar and (as I said) is an absolute blast. If you know somebody who has it, you should definitely give it a try. If you are in the neighborhood, come by and you can play mine 🙂 Or better yet, bring a guitar controller and we’ll jam 😉

One other thing worth commenting on — we have been living without “2” of the 5.1 surround sound (we were missing the “surround” left and right) for the last couple years — which saddened me, but, I didn’t have great solutions for running the cables or speaker placement in our smaller apartments. Now that we have a better sized living room, I wanted to get back to 5.1 so I started thinking about cable placement. I didn’t really like ANY of the solutions (I have never liked running the speaker cable for surround left and right). A year ago or so I discovered the Amphony 1520 Wireless Digital Amp which reportedly takes two channels of audio (such as surround left and right) and lets you avoid running the cables. I was mostly hesitant because it isn’t “cheap” and my experience with wireless audio has been spotty (at best), but we decided to try it – worst case is that we hated it and returned it. It arrived yesterday and I must say I am impressed. Anybody who wants to do surround sound without running speaker wires should definitely consider this option. It did, in fact, sound CD quality (as advertised), at least to me. Maybe an audiophile (the guy who spends $5k on a receiver and buys Monster Cable (bleh)) wouldn’t be happy with it… but we are very pleased.

It is probably a little late for my readers to utilize, but I discovered TaxSlayer.com last night thanks to a recommendation from a friend… our tax situation shouldn’t be difficult (three W2s, two states, one move) but TurboTax was giving me fits – the federal part was easy but the state returns were next to impossible. I tried it several times but the partial year residency in two states while maintaining the same jobs before and after the moves really made using TurboTax difficult.  I called Jackson Hewitt and H&R Block to get an idea what it would cost if they did my taxes. I described my simple situation (no itemization, etc.) and was quoted “probably about $300” from Hewitt and “about $200” from H&R Block. That seems insane. What is more insane is that the woman from Jackson Hewitt was obviously no more familiar with how to handle my tax situation than I was… when I asked about it she just replied “well, I dunno – I am sure when I put the stuff into the computer it will know what to do”. I didn’t want to spend $200 – $300 for a person who didn’t know more about the situation than I do.

I am unlikely to use TurboTax again now that I have found TaxSlayer.com. It is so much easier and faster. Not to mention, it was considerably cheaper (than the boxed TurboTax) includes e-filing (for federal and BOTH states) for the minuscule total of $9.95. Sorry this sounds like an advertisement for TaxSlayer.com, but I am really impressed. Hopefully a month or two from now my opinion is the same (if my opinion changes, I’ll post it here). Also, you do your entire taxes and don’t have to pay until you are completely finished and ready to file. If you still haven’t done your taxes, give it a try.

We spent the weekend doing variations on curtain hanging. We are now very happy with the bar but have yet to find suitable “blackout curtains”. We bought some called “Eclipse” from Bed, Bath, & Beyond that are touted to be “blackout” and block “99.8%” of light – don’t believe it!! They are garbage. They don’t block anywhere near all the light that comes through. Another “normal” pair of curtains we had bought did a better job. We’re still looking. Needless to say the “Eclipse” curtains are going back.

I went (without the lovely missus) to see Grindhouse. It was absolutely everything I hoped it would be. If you see the trailers and it looks like your “cup of tea” and you like Tarantino and Rodriguez movies, go see it. If you think you won’t like it… you probably won’t 🙂 Anyway, I had a great time. It is long at 3h 15m, but it is two whole movies (plus some great fake movie previews).

We got the very last odd and the very last end moved this weekend, apartment cleaned, and keys turned in. Happily they were able to lease it for April 1 so we don’t have to pay the two weeks of overlap, which will be nice with taxes coming due in a couple weeks. We’re still are loving the new neighborhood.

I went to see The Hills Have Eyes 2 last night – meh, nowhere near as interesting as the first one or the original – I’d say skip it if you were considering it. I wanted to see a couple other movies but I wanted to wait for Deb to have time to go.

The new TV looks great. The only “issue” is that for SD television to look good you really have to sit back 5 or 6 feet, if you are close, SD stuff looks pretty sad – I had heard this before but it is true. I suppose tuning the set might help – I’ll have to do that soon (just need to find my tuning disc).

We had a LONG weekend. We took three trips in the SUV of boxes and “stuff” to the new apartment. We were astonished every time we walked in at “how big” the place felt but felt sure that once all the furniture (and the rest of the boxes) were moved it wouldn’t feel nearly as big. Yesterday, we moved all of the furniture (we’re ALMOST out of the old place, one or two more trips by SUV) with the fantastic help of some friends and we are still amazed to find it feels really big! Yay! It is amazing how living in a 500 square foot shoe box (a nice one, but…) can reset your expectations of “big”.

We spent a bit of time on Friday exploring the new neighborhood and absolutely love it. We quite close (driving or a reasonable walk) to a huge Costco, Home Depot, and a Linen’s and Things. A very short drive to a Target & Best Buy. VERY easy walking distance to a huge entertainment complex (18-plex theater and IMAX, bowling, ice skating, etc.) TONS of (what appear to be) great restaurants. Steps from the Metro North train. We just love it.

I got (for an amazing price, after a bit of work) a Sharp Aquos LC-37D62U. It comes in on Wednesday (tomorrow!!). I am so excited to try it out. Cable and internet is coming on Thursday, but, I’ll probably pick up an HD antenna to see if that will work well enough for us.