So How Can *I* Use Spaces?

So I got an EclipseCon email telling me I should share my code using this nifty new thing called Spaces. And to be honest - I'd love to use it. But is it just me, or it is only possible to use this service via AOL XDrive? First of all, I have never heard of this service (I mean, who uses AOL outside of the US?), but OK, fine - I figured I'd give it a go.

Well, I tried to set up an account and they only accept US zip codes. What's a poor Canadian supposed to do? Make up a US zip code, and fake phone number. Check. Well, after 5 more minutes and about 10 tries at trying to figure out why it won't accept my username, or password, or captcha input (I'm still not sure which is wrong - it seems to be telling me the captcha is wrong, but it looks right to me...) I'm giving up in disgust. Their website totally sucks. There is no way to check the username availability without typing everything in and seeing if it fails (forcing you to type it all in again), and I can't seem to type in correct information no matter what I do.

So - I *really* want to use the Spaces feature. Honestly I do. But why is it tied to AOL XDrive? Surely there has got to be a better service than this?? What about hooking into something like Google Code or Sourceforge? Henrik's blog suggests there may be Sourceforge support but I don't see it anywhere in my installed version. Am I missing something here? I'm about to just throw it onto my Linux server at home, but it certainly won't stand up to more than a few people downloading at once (although that's probably all I need anyway...).

But wait! I just read Henrik's next post about using bluestring.com instead, along with a fake ZipCode and it worked (after jumping through way too many hoops)! OK, so now I have an XDrive account and AOL or bluestring.com has a lot of information about me (most of it fake). Hmm...this had better be worth it.

Is there anyone else out there using Spaces? It looks like a great idea, but currently seems to be crippled by a crappy back-end. Maybe the Eclipse Foundation should consider providing some storage space for Eclipse-related projects? Either that, or the Spaces project should start supporting other backends very quickly. I'm a fairly patient guy when it comes to this sort of thing (I sign up for a lot of crap), so I can see the majority of people quitting after the first sign-up screen.

Looking Forward To EclipseCON

While I am still cranking on polishing up my presentations for EclipseCON (is it March 9th already!?), I am definitely looking forward to a week in sunn(ier-than-here) Santa Clara. Especially after the massive dumping of snow we got this weekend.





And to think, I was BBQ'ing steak a couple weeks ago...

Total Lunar Eclipse

It looks like it is going to be a clear sky for tonight's total lunar eclipse. Hmm...I thought I would have heard more about it in the usual Eclipse news channels today. The event should start around 8:45pm (EST) with the total eclipse happening at around 10pm (EST). If you live in Toronto, you could always attend the free* party.

*Free? I should hope so! I know I wouldn't pay to "look up".

Updating UI Elements From Command Handlers

I struggled a bit with this tonight so I figured it was worth a post. I am piddling around with command handlers as part of my background work for my upcoming talk at EclipseCON (should I keep plugging EclipseCON, or is that enough already?), and one of my simple samples was building on the Hello World, Command PDE sample. I wanted a simple toggle command instead of the default push-style command, but I could not get the menu item to toggle state (checked versus unchecked) when I executed my command with the keybinding. A little searching led me to this newsgroup post, and an eventual solution.

The secret sauce seems to be:

Make your class implement IElementUpdater:

public class SampleHandler extends AbstractHandler implements IElementUpdater {
    //...
}

Implement said interface with your required logic (this code is for my particular case):

/**
 *@Override
 */
public void updateElement(UIElement element,
                          Map parameters) {
    element.setChecked(this.image != null);
}

Now, you need to get the command service to call updateElement. The easiest way to do this is in your execute method like so:

public Object execute(ExecutionEvent event) throws ExecutionException {

    //... actually do something here ...

    // Refresh the UI elements
    IWorkbenchWindow window = HandlerUtil.getActiveWorkbenchWindowChecked(event);
    ICommandService service = (ICommandService) window.getService(ICommandService.class);
    service.refreshElements(event.getCommand().getId(), null);
    return null;
}

StSanders Banned!

Apparently YouTube has pulled all the StSanders videos for copyright infringement, according to Wired. I guess it is their policy to pull videos after three complaints and someone complained a third time. Rumor has it Yngwie Malmsteen may have been one of them.

I'm not sure how you can not have a sense of humor about something like this. Just watch this video and tell me it is not hilarious:



Haha - that one has to be my favorite. I can't imagine the effort that went into overdubbing some of these. Anyway, Wired Video is mirroring them all anyway. I guess they don't have any sort of copyright infringment policy. ;)

PDE Nuggets

I find myself constantly amazed at the hidden gems you can find in Eclipse. Today's nugget is brought to you by the PDE, and is the Plug-In Registry View. I found it very useful while playing with namespace wackiness for my upcoming EclipseCON talk.



Some of you may say "What's so new about that?". Well, what can I say - I'm a little behind the times I guess. Most of my extension development has been done in Eclipse 3.2 or earlier, and this view seems to have appeared in Eclipse 3.3, so I'm sure there are others who don't know of its existence. (Correction: It looks like this view has been around far longer than that; as early as Eclipse 2.0, in fact. It just did not look or behave the same.)

I'm a little disappointed, however. I had this plan to write my own "extension registry spy" plug-in as sample code to accompany my presentation, but this view already does most of what I was going to implement. Oh well, I guess I'll have to think of another application to hack on for sample code purposes.

I guess it's more of a diamond in the rough than a gem as there are still some limitations and little bugs to be ironed out, but it is worth a look. So if you're a plug-in developer - check it out:

Window > Show View > Other > PDE Runtime > Plug-in Registry, or simply press Ctrl+3 (another Eclipse nugget), type "plu", and select it from the list.

An Empty House

Well, we got Michelle off to the airport and back home last night and she managed to make it home to Glasgow with only one minor injury. Turns out she took a nasty fall one morning last week and dislocated her knee-cap! I've updated the photos in the gallery, so you can see her stylish knee brace there. So not only did she get to see real Canadian snow, she also got to experience our health care system first-hand with a three-hour stint in the emergency room. Welcome to Canada!

Thanks for visiting and staying with us Michelle, we had a great time and we hope you did too (despite your Canadian ice-induced injury)!