Jeremy's Blog

Zend has a document in their resources section for Zend Studio v6.1 that “explains” how to install the IDE as a plugin into an existing install of Eclipse. The document appears to be missing some very bits of information for the current version. Here’s a list of update sites you need to add, in addition to the Zend Studio update site, before it will actually install: 

Well, I was going to put a list of update sites that you need here, except I still haven’t found them all. I can’t seem to get all of them that you need and because the resources document is just flat-wrong, this process is pretty much just dead in the water, at this point. It is absolutely pointless to install Zend Studio as a standalone editor when I want to use Eclipse for other things besides PHP (sometimes two different languages at the same time).

I think I’m done with Zend Studio. The Eclipse move frustrates me to no end. Prior to now, I’ve absolutely hated Eclipse with a passion. I’ve tried to work with it, several times. I just don’t like the workflows, the memory hogging tendencies, the fact that it slows to an absolute crawl when trying to do anything in a project larger than a handful of files. It’s ridiculous.

I’ve been giving NetBeans a shot for the past couple of days and it’s pretty decent, but it’s missing something that I can’t really place my finger on. An IDE that doesn’t suck and has support for multiple languages would be a killer app. Aptana seems like they’re on the right track, but there’s that Eclipse dependency that irks me again. I’m not above giving Eclipse another shot and trying to make it work, if someone can come along and make an IDE worth using.

As much as I hate to admit it, Microsoft owns the land of development tools, hands down. I love Visual Studio 2008. If VS.PHP didn’t suck and there was good support for CPython (not IronPython!) available, I think I’d use it for everything. Maybe more language plugins for Visual Studio will start to appear. Even if they were commercial plugins, it would still be worth it, as long as they were solid language support that properly utilized Visual Studio’s features. Even just being half as awesome and intuitive as working in C# in VS would be leagues beyond pretty much any other IDE I’ve used, so far.

… it’s kind of sad, really.

Dutch and I have been playing quite a lot of Soul Calibur, lately. I’ve got a custom character named Atrophius who I created back in November of last year when I rented the game for the first time. Atrophius is a big ninja with Siegfried’s combat style. He’s a pretty awesome character and I can throw down pretty well with him. Atrophius and Nishi, the character Dutch created and is affectionately referred to as “Naughty Nurse Angel Cat”, have been very key characters in our ascent and descent through the game’s “Tower of Souls”.

For those unfamiliar with the game, one of the game modes is the “Tower of Souls” which features a 60 floor tower that you can ascend or descend. Ascending takes it 1 – 4 floors at a time with pauses in between to select different characters for the next set of floors and gives you information on the treasures available and whatnot. Descending is a non-stop run from the top to the bottom and you only get to select two characters for the entire run. So far, we’ve made it to the last two sets of floors for the ascent and have  gone 25 consecutive floors in the descent.

The tower is technically supposed to be a single-player game mode, but in the areas where we’re allowed to select multiple characters we’ve been selecting one for me and one for him and when it comes time to switch character’s we’ll quickly pass the controller over to the other person. It’s actually been quite fun and helpful, because we’re both proficient in different styles of play, so when one thing isn’t working we can pass it over to one another and see if they have better luck.

Maybe we’ll get through the last two sets of floors soon. It’s probably a long way off before we can even hope to manage to accomplish the descent. Unless we do it the cheap way and find a character who we can successfully spam the same attacks over and over again or something.

I’m going to try and start getting back into the swing of writing by writing new development articles to be published here on my blog. This entry is basically a call for ideas. (continue reading…)

Obviously, when you move to a new location, one of the decently high priorities is figuring out transportation. Since I’ve been staying with Dutch, I really haven’t had to be too concerned about getting around. We’re mostly either hanging out at the house or at work. I’ve known for a while that I’m going to need a car sooner rather than later, though. Sometimes, it’d just be nice to be able to let Dutch go to work as early or late as he decides and the two of us just go in and leave at different times.

Ruzena helps me again. Somewhat. Her roommate’s dad was apparently selling a 1997 BMW 528i and was willing to give me quite an astounding deal on it. I have the car now and we went to the DMV yesterday to get everything official. Title transfer, License transfer, plates, etc. I also setup my car insurance in the morning, but for some reason it doesn’t seem like the payment actually took and I’ll have to call Progressive to see what’s going on with that. It’s not letting me print off the temporary insurance cards, so I’m assuming the policy isn’t activated. Can’t really drive without insurance, so I need to get that worked out soon.

The only real problem with the car when I first saw it was a hot-start issue with the starter where it wouldn’t start while the car was hot. He got the starter replaced and it hasn’t had a problem, so far. A few other minor issues but nothing show-stopping. I won’t have to dump a ton of money into it upfront, but there’s certainly a few minor annoyances that I’ll want to fix over time.

Here’s hoping that all goes well with the car and I can get my insurance issue worked out soon.