NetBeans in Precise Pangolin

Every 18 months, Ubuntu releases a stable version that people and businesses can rely on. Other releases, such as the Oneiric Ocelot I previously used were kind of buggy to the point that I was afraid to do updates anymore. Those updates usually screwed something up that prevented me from working: from the inability to disable the touch-pad, to unexpected log outs or even failure to log in at all after the splash screen. So after I fixed all of those and got it to a point where all I needed worked, I promised myself I won’t do one single update until the next LTS.

And here it is – a few days ago, on the 26th of April, the Precise Pangolin LTS was released and I immediately installed it. It was nice to see that some minor issues that bothered me were fixed, as well as some new improvements, but then again it would have been too much to expect no issues affecting my workflow.

The first problem that I ran into was that NetBeans did not load at all anymore. That really wasn’t cool, because I do all of my work in NetBeans and I didn’t want to start using some other IDE until that bug was fixed. So I looked into it and found that the problem was the failure to link a shared object library, due to the fact that I was using the 32-bit java development kit. So the solution was quite simple: install the 64-bit jdk and point NetBeans to use that one. You can find a bit more details on my post on launchpad.

Hope it saves someone`s trouble.

Status: Approved.

I’ve just found out that I was accepted for Google Summer of Code 2012! Woo-Hoo! 🙂 Well, actually I found out last night, but I ended up celebrating with a few drinks, so I only got round writing about it today.

I’d like to thank the mentors from phpMyAdmin for selecting my application ( phew, it was the only one I wrote 🙂 ), along with 5 other ideas. I’m really excited about starting to work on this project, as well as getting to know the other accepted students.

On a related note, yesterday I also received the Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management book as a prize for the phpMyAdmin contest I took part in last month. Although I do most of my reading at the computer, I prefer printed copies to pdf versions. I’m sure the book will be a good read, as well as a nice souvenir from one of my first contributions to open-source.

A few things I’ve noticed: apparently Google is not good at scaling things 🙂 Really now, the 1-hour-that-seemed-like-1-month wait to get the results was a pretty nasty thing. Second, I’ve seen there were quite a few Romanian students accepted at this year’s edition. I’m really curious to find out how many of them are actually from “Politehnica” University of Bucharest. Anyway, GG guys 😉

To wrap it up,  good things come to those who work hard. If you weren’t selected this year, don’t give up, stick around and try again next year. I’ve recently come across this video which I find highly motivational. It shows a man who deserves nothing but respect: Oscar Pistorius.

Hello World!

This is my first blog, so bare with me 🙂

I wasn’t really into blogging, I never really had a good reason, but now, an opportunity has risen: posting my progress on the GSoC project I am applying to this year, and also using it after GSoC 2012 finishes, to track my open source contributions.

I am currently applying to phpMyAdmin and I hope they will find my OOP ideas appropriate. In the posts to come, I will write about my progress at that time, as well as other tech-related articles that I might find interesting to approach.

Meanwhile, have a TED 🙂