Website update :)

Hey guys, have a look at my homepage! It has been updated once again :)

You might want to claim that it's not as colorful as the old version, but believe me it's better :P I have put a lot of thoughts into that. The site looks very elegant now and has better support for accessibility. It's also optimized for every browser and small screen devices. And it's gradually adopting CSS3, which will be the open standard soon.

In the next few days (or weeks, or even months :P), you'll see more updates. Elimination of broken links, new updates for the CryptoBox, Steganabara, the bbq project, and hopefully a cool applet tutorial :)

Stay tuned!

Waiting for 2008

Hey guys,

2008.0 was scheduled to be released on 27 September, but there were so many critical bugs that it hasn't been out yet. That's no surprise to me as there have been so many delays to the older versions. A bit disappointed, but I'd rather wait than getting an unstable release.

In the meantime I'll tell you how I could move the big DVD isos from one computer to another with just a 2GB USB flash. It's really easy with the following wonderful linux (or rather, unix) commands:

- split: This command helps you split a file into smaller files of equal sizes. The most important option is -b which specifies the file size, with the following multiplier suffixes: b for 512, k for 1K, m for 1 Meg. The beta2 DVD iso was 3.1GB, so I splitted it into 2 files of 1600M each:

split -b 1600m mandriva-linux-2008.0-free-beta2.i586.iso

This command will produce 2 files named xaa and xab.

- cat: Not only help you view the file content, this command also joins files together. It is pretty easy to use:

cat xaa xab > mandriva-linux-2008.0-free-beta2.i586.iso

With just 2 commands you can probably get everything. But as the files are pretty big you should use checksums to make sure there's no error in transmission. Linux provides 2 common checksum tools: md5sum and sha1sum. md5sum is faster and enough for everyday use.

PS. There's this really cool sourceforge project that provides ports of many common unix tools for Windows: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/. Long live the penguin empire :D

quangntenemy teaches java 2 is up!

It must be my lucky day. The jackpot is up at rankk, and now qtj2 has finally been published at tbs too. This second challenge of the qtj series will teach you about object oriented programming in Java.

With 2 challenges being published the same day, I only have a "few" things left to do. The applet tutorial has been pending for so long. And some changes need to be made to "Message Me" to make it solvable. Then some more updates to my website, Steganabara, CryptoBox and of course the bbq project ;)

Stay ready for all the good news ;)

New applet chall! The jackpot

4 years ago, as a student taking the Java programming course instructed by Professor Dave Elliman, I was given the task to fix a broken code for a Fruit machine. It was my first approach to Swing and I really enjoyed it. Although broken, the code was really well designed that it really took me very little time to get the machine working. Being really enjoyed, I enhanced the code even more and the lab instructor was really impressed.

Last week while discussing with Sphinx about writing a Jackpot as the next applet chall, the old code came to my mind. And now it has been recycled to become a real cool challenge. Among the applets I have created, this one has the nicest graphics. The broken code now has become a real gem ;) But don't be lured for its disguise. You'll scream in horror once you see the devils that are protecting those precious gems :P

Curious? If you have yet to create an account at rankk, do so right now and climb up to level 7 to defeat this chall!

Taming the penguin - Part 3

You know, I had Mandriva 2007, but I still wanted to get the latest packages, especially KDE, the best desktop environment out there. In Mandriva, this can be done easily with a single command:

urpmi task-kde

Once again things didn't go on so well - that's the thing I hate the most about Mandriva betas. As an experienced Mandriva user, I logged into failsafe trying to start KDE from text mode and debug the problem. Here's the important command sequence:

xinit
startkde &

From the error output I found out that the arts package was missing. I installed it and voila, the system booted smoothly :)

Now I can live happily until the official 2008.0 release comes out - hopefully before October :)

Something for September

Just realized there hasn't been any post for almost a month, although I have been quite active.

On the new pyramid, aka rankk, I have finally secured the first place. Obtained it quite a long time ago, but the place was always taken back by valsa whenever I woke up in the morning. It was not until he had solved the final challenge - 9/1 - that I had a free race. Was there a curse placed upon the Geb title that he has not been able to surpass? If so, I really should take it with care ;)

On TBS, finally I have grabbed 2 more challenges to reach 300. What's even cooler is that one of them is "The Long Forgotten Game" - a really evil chall. With that challenge done now I only have 3 more BaRa's steganos unsolved - Same record as Phas and Inferno - Of course I'll surpass them soon.

A few months ago flamecruiser claimed that he would get TLFG before me. Now I really have taught him who's the new master. quangntenemy is back and kicking! :D

Taming the penguin - Part 2

Hey, it's me again.

Last time after installing Mandriva 2007, I tried to upgrade to 2008 beta 1 again. And once again things screwed up. Being on a slow connection I had no other choice other than switching back to 2007. So basically I'm on 2007 now.

The next day the Mandriva community released 2008 beta 2. So I grabbed the DVD iso. Too scared to upgrade the whole system yet so I planned to keep it for individual package upgrading. I don't have a DVD burner, but there's no need for it actually. In Linux you can mount an iso without the need for a virtual CD/DVD drive. The command is:

mount -o loop -t iso9660 /mnt/data/images/mandriva-linux-2008.0-free-beta2.i586.iso /mnt/2008/

You can make the system mount the iso automatically by adding the following line to /etc/fstab:

/mnt/data/images/mandriva-linux-2008.0-free-beta2.i586.iso /mnt/2008 iso966 0 ro,loop,auto 0 0

And here's the command to add it to the urpmi source:

urpmi.addmedia --distrib 2008 /mnt/2008/i586/
rpm --import /mnt/2008/i586/media/media_info/pubkey1

There's a cool game added to 2007 that I really enjoyed: Super Tux (haven't noticed it until now :P) Basically it is similar to the famous Super Mario Bros series with nicer graphics and the most important thing is that it is freely available. Not just that you can get it for free, you can also use the level editor to create new levels, or if you are familiar with c++ programming in *nix you can edit the source code to add more cool features :)

As a member of the @ generation, which browser do you use? A sad fact is that although the Internet has been around for many years all the browsers out there are still immature. Internet Explorer (aka Exploder) is a piece of crap. Firefox, the currently dominating browser is a big mem eater. Other browsers like Opera, Konqueror, Netscape, Safari don't provide as good plugins. And none handles applets/flash loading very well. People always claimed applets/flash suck because they freeze their browsers but the real truth is that the browsers really sucked.

I used to have 3 browsers installed on my Linux box: Firefox, Konqueror and Opera. Now I have to install Opera on my fresh system again. Having grabbed the latest rpm from http://www.opera.com, installing was easy with urpmi. Unfortunately, on startup, the fonts were so badly broken that I could not read even a damn word.

After some research, I found out that the problem was that Opera was using 100dpi fonts while they had not been installed on my system. xorg-x11-100dpi-fonts was what I need :)

That's it for now. Stay tuned for the next chapter :P

Still taming the damn penguin

Been experiencing the best and worst things you can see in the IT world :D
Well, I've been trying to enlarge my Linux partition. There are 2 ways to do it: creating another partition for /home or a fresh install. I decided to do a fresh install because I wanted to fix some trivial problem with KDE sound (but later on it turned out to be a bad choice :().
Since Windows was crappy I decided to do a fresh reinstall for it too. The sucker could not boot from slave drive, so I had to install it to the master drive. On the secondary drive I had 30GB for Linux and 45GB for data.
After backing up the data, I got myself a 3-CD version of Mandriva 2008 beta 1. Installation went smooth, the only thing that annoyed me was that I had to switch too often between CDs - they should have distributed the packages cleverer :P
As all packages have been installed, I was taken to the configuration screen. To my surprise, there was no graphical lilo bootloader, and although I could choose grub-graphic, it still complained that some packages were missing. So I had no choice but to choose lilo-text as the bootloader.
The text version was really awful. As I logged into the system, I found myself in IceWM. There were no KDE nor fluxbox although I was sure that I had choosen to install them.
OK, I'm no fan of Gnome, I didn't install it either, and IceWM really sucked. Also I noticed that the 3-CD version was much smaller than the DVD one. Unfortunately I don't have a DVD burner, and the DVD image was too big for my damn connection. Therefore I decided to switch back to 2007 and wait for the official version later this year...

(To be continued)

New Java applet challenge

Just created a quick one for the new pyramid. Named "Chamber door". Not as hard as the others I have made but it goes really well with the ancient Egyptian background ;)
Create an account at the new pyramid, defeat the first 4 levels to give it a try guys :D

bbq project - fourth release

Hey guys, it's been a long time.
I have been quite busy (mostly reading HP7 :P) so there hasn't been much update to the bbq project.
Anyway, a new version has just been released. Features including new items, new monsters and a new mechanism for monster spawning (mostly to control farming :P)
Oh and sniperkid now provides the new host so bbq can be up most of the time ;)
Also, I have started playing at a new challenge site: The new pyramid. Quite interesting. However with my skills and experience I have climbed to the 2nd place within only 9 days :)
Come challenge me there!

Yet another blog

Hey dude, are you out of mind? You have too many blogs already! Why create a new one?

Hehe true. But since I'm working on too many different things I believe I really need a new blog. This one will be about problems I encounter on my projects (and surely the solutions to them). I hope this will help those who encounter the same problem as me.

Now let's get onto the first problem.

Since the return of an old friend who was fighting alongside with me in the fierce battle to wipe out all the evilness in this world, I am now working on a new project - Enfair (you'll hear more details about it soon :P). The project makes use of 2 common libraries - JSF and MyFaces Tomahawk. On his comp everything went smoothly without any problem. But on mine the stupid thing always refused to work by throwing a crazy exception:

07/07/04 16:50:43 oracle.classloader.util.AnnotatedClassNotFoundException:

     Missing class: [Ljava.lang.String;

   Dependent class: com.sun.faces.config.ConfigureListener
            Loader: current-workspace-app.web.Tomahawk-Project1-webapp:0.0.0
       Code-Source: .../jdevstudio10132/jdev/mywork/Tomahawk/Project1/public_html/WEB-INF/lib/jsf-impl.jar
     Configuration: WEB-INF/lib/ directory in .../jdevstudio10132/jdev/mywork/Tomahawk/Project1/public_html/WEB-INF/lib

This load was initiated at current-workspace-app.web.Tomahawk-Project1-webapp:0.0.0 using the loadClass() method.

Been trying to resolve the problem without any luck, I tried deploying the project to Tomcat. A similar exception is thrown:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: [Ljava.lang.String;
   at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1358)
   at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1204)

It has been bugging me for quite a while until I entered the right keyword on Google and found the solution.

The problem was that Tomahawk and the JSF library bundled with JDeveloper were not fully compatible in Java 6. Fortunately there have been a new patch from https://javaserverfaces.dev.java.net to fix it. I downloaded version 1.2_04 P02 (23 May 2007) and it runs like a charm now :)

So scary how a tiny problem could lead to a big disaster.

bbq project third release!

Finally! The nasty bugs with the listeners have been fixed! Wrong use of finalize method surely lead to disasters.
Anyway, enjoy the new stable release! There have been too many features added since the second release so you should refer to the version history for more details.

Challenge solved!! New Steganabara version soon :D

Finally solved Stegano 36: "You are granted a license!" [made by BaRa]. A crazy chall!
Anyway, it inspired me to continue working on Steganabara, once again :P
Well the next version will be a bugfix, which makes it fully functioning under Windows :P
There's no planned new features yet, but maybe the CryptoBox will be improved too

Something before the end of the month :P

Well here I am again, trying to post something before June comes.
If you're looking for something new, this really is the right place.

The bbq rpg is still going fine as ever. We now have level 5 spells and a whole load of new monsters and items. Most noticeable is the new combination of items and the addition of healing items. A supermarket will be there soon enough. And the trading feature is almost complete.
The bad news is that there are bugs in the bj and hangman modules that I haven't been able to fix. So the next official release will be delayed a bit.
Oh, before I forget to mention, I managed to find a cvs host for it at CVSDude, and now bbq can be online longer being co-hosted by theAnswer and Gizmore.

In the meantime, I am now a JBB moderator leading a few exams. Hopefully we'll have new Swing exams soon :)

The last thing I want to mention in this post is that I have come back to hackquest and solved all the Linux challenges there! gdb rocks!
Maybe I'll solve all the Linux challs @ tbs soon.

Long time again - am I too lazy?

Nope, just because I have been working on the bbq project everyday :P

We have some big updates and a new release will surely come out this month.

Notably are the addition of items, mvp monster bosses, spells up to level 4, autoheal and autospell.
The cool smiley :D has been used wisely for dueling too :D.

Don't forget to check the website for the cool new features. I'll update a version history soon enough so you can know what's actually going on (and maybe make some contribution :P)

Any comments/suggestions are welcome!

bbq RPG goes official

Hey guys,

Finally the first official release of the bbq RPG. Now you can actually fight monsters with your friends :) At the moment only basic level 1 spells are available, but more will be added later.

More details about the game can be found here. Come join us on #tbs-botzone @ irc.idlemonkeys.net now!

At the moment the game is only available when I'm online. Maybe I'll find a (free) IRC bot host? :P

More updates :)

Hey guys,
Some new updates from my projects :)

Firstly, the website has been completely updated to comply with XHTML 1.0 Strict :) And it's now 100% table-less (if you click on the validation icon it'll say it's no 100% - stupid freewebs ads, I'll do something to have it changed)

Secondly, Steganabara 1.0.8.2 has been released. Well, not a public release btw :P Other than me, theAnswer has the only copy :P Just a minor bug fix for the drag & drop feature support for Windows. If you are using another desktop environment other than KDE/Windows, and for some weird reason the feature isn't working, feel free to drop me a mail :)

Thirdly, and our featured update today :) An update from the bbq project. There's no update to the bbq rpg and atm the Lamb-shadowrun is taking advantages. But a new bbq game is now catching the attentions :) Yes, it's the arcade game hangman that has been revived in an irc context :) There has been many attempts from theAnswer to cheat on the game, but on-time updates have been release to stop them all :) Come get hung at #tbs-botzone now!

Steganabara 1.0.8

Hey guys,
Steganabara 1.0.8 is out :)
It now provides full drag & drop support, with a brand new feature: color explorer (idea shamelessly taken from Phas :P)

Next major release will be 1.1. If you have any cool idea that should be implemented, start contributing now :)

Oh and in the meantime I'm upgrading my website to using table-less layout - Yay for the new W3C standard :) Once it is done then maybe we'll be migrating to a new webhost - searix for better performance :)

That's it for now! Stay tuned for the next chapter :)

Steganabara official release - 1.0.6

Hey guys,

The Steganabara project first official release - 1.0.6.
Almost all features mentioned in the last post have been implemented.
Drag and drop support will be added soon.

Download the new release now and play with various new features of the color map/table at http://www.freewebs.com/quangntenemy/steganabara/Steganabara.jar

Steganabara - official release

Hey guys,

I'm working on the Steganabara project again :)

There will be an official release this month, featuring:
- Drag & drop support (yay XD)
- Color chooser (no need to type the hex color anymore)
- Visual bit mask selector (no need for that long 0s and 1s sequence :P)
- Quick color map chooser (yes, you can view the color map for every color from the color table now)

Stay tuned for the next chapter :D