I am really impressed with pkgng. On the mebsd website there's a handy explanation and tutorial that's really worth reading to get up to speed.
FreeBSD, p0f, and USB pcap
If, like me, you had a working FreeBSD system with amavisd-new and p0f set up, you might find that p0f suddenly stopped working at some point. The cause for this is that it tries to use pcap on the USB bus, which it cannot do. The solution is to put hw.usb.no_pf=1 in your /boot/loader.conf.
PS Vita and Near location
If you try to use the PS Vita's Near functionality over WiFi and get "Location data cannot be obtained" constantly, try to turn off the Vita completely (hold the power button at the top for a few seconds) and then turn it on again. This at least solved it for my PS Vita.
Detecting keyboard layout used on Windows
int localeId = GetKeyboardLayout(0);
// The low word contains a Language Identifier for the input language
// and the high word contains a device handle to the physical layout
// of the keyboard.
localeId &= 0xffff; // mask off high word to get the locale
// identifier
switch (localeId) {
0x040c:
0x080c:
0x1009:
useAzertyMapping();
default:
useQwertyMapping();
}
Relevant links:
JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA and Monokai
I'm a fan of the Monokai colour scheme for my source code editing and thus set up it whenever I can in the IDEs I use.
For JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA I use Long Cao's Monokai colour scheme. Grab the XML file and drop it, on Windows, in your %HOMEPATH%.IntelliJIdea11configcolors directory. Restart IDEA and the Monokai colour scheme ought to be present in the dropdown box under File » Settings » Editor » Colors & Fonts » Scheme Name.
The rendering equation
The rendering equation, the keystone of computer graphics rendering:
$$L_o(x, \vec{w}) = L_e(x, \vec{w}) + \int_\Omega f_r(x, \vec w', \vec w) L_i(x, \vec w') (\vec w' \cdot \vec n) \mathrm{d}\vec w'$$
(This is at the same time also a test for MathJax support on my weblog in order to provide correct mathematical typesetting using proper typography instead of some lame pixelated image.)
Setting up Eclipse 4.2 as I like it
Download Eclipse 4.2 Classic 64-bits version from the Eclipse website. Extract the contents to a location, such as C:Eclipse. Adjust the eclipse.ini in that directory according to my post in order to pin it to the taskbar.
Next, within Eclipse, go to Window » Preferences » Install/Update » Available Software Sites » Add... and add the following URL under something like "4.2-M builds": http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.2-M-builds. After adding you can hit Reload to reload the information from the website. Exit all windows through pressing OK. Then follow up by going to Help » Check for Updates and you will most likely get an Eclipse SDK update right away. Accept the licensing terms and wait until it downloaded and installed everything and restart Eclipse.
Go to Help » Install New Software... » Work with, select the Juno entry and from the resulting list of software select General Purpose Tools » Marketplace Client followed by Next » Next, accept the license and Finish. Restart Eclipse when done. Now under Help is an entry called the Eclipse Marketplace.
Open the Eclipse Marketplace and search for and install the following: "code recommenders", "MercurialEclipse", "mylyn" (not selecting the Bugzilla connector). It might ask if it is OK to install unsigned content, acknowledge it.
Pinning Eclipse to the Windows taskbar
I pin programs that I use frequently to the taskbar of Windows. So I was a bit surprised to see that the newer version of Eclipse, Juno, doesn't seem to support this by default. After some searching I find out that you can force this by adjusting the eclipse.ini by starting the file with something akin to:
-vm C:Program FilesJavajdk1.7.0_05bin
Then after starting Eclipse with this in place, you can, once fully loaded and past the splash screen, pin Eclipse to the taskbar.
Steam indefinite update paused
So recently I had an issue with Steam where the Witcher 2 update got stuck at 99% and the status "Update Paused". No matter what I tried with the pause/resume button, I couldn't get it to budge from this status and actually update.
After a while I grabbed Process Explorer from the Microsoft website and checked the files that were being opened when I toggled this state. I noticed a reference to Steamsteamappsdownloading20920CookedPCpack0.dzip. Then I also noticed a file reference to Steamsteamapplogscontent.log. Upon checking that file I found a notice that it was trying to preallocate about 11 GB for this pack0.dzip. Checking my drive status, I saw that this particular drive letter only had about 9 GB left. Freeing up some space allowed the update process to actually start and finish, after which I got even more space back, since it seems Steam downloads these files and then replaces them, deleting the temporary one. So I guess the lesson learnt is that you should always have enough disk space free as the single largest file in any of your games.
Adding android.support.v4 to your Android application in IntelliJ IDEA
You can enable support for certain forward version features via the android.support namespace. In order to accomplish this you need to start the Android SDK Manager and make sure that under the Extras heading you select and install the Android Support package.
Once done you go into the directory extras/android/support/v4 and copy the android-support-v4.jar to your own project's libs directory. Next go within IntelliJ IDEA to File » Project Structure and under Project Settings go to Modules, make sure your application is selected in the middle pane, then on the right side select the Dependencies tab. In the window below click the plus-icon and select Jars or directories. From the resulting window browse to your libs directory and select the android-support-v4.jar and press OK to close the window and add the jar-file to the dependencies of the project. Since you are now using certain constants from a newer version of Android the Module SDK needs to be changed to Android 4.0.3 Platform as well. Press Apply and close the Project Settings by pressing the OK button.