Eclipse: Class filename must end with .class

Just recently upgraded to Eclipse 3.5.1 RC1 and started getting this error in the console when trying to search for classes:

I tried cleaning, closing projects and even downgrading to Eclipse 3.5. No luck. Found this post on stackoverflow.com with the solution:

1. Close Eclipse
2. Open/cd into workspace folder
3. Delete .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.jdt.core/*.index
4. Delete .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.jdt.core/savedIndexNames.txt
5. Start Eclipse again

Followed those instructions and eclipse is happy to search for classes again.

GeekTool – How did I not know?

One of the coolest apps I’ve found recently is Geektool. Its been around awhile and I’m ashamed to admit I just found out about it.

That said, a number of my uber-geek friends didn’t know about it either so I’m not sure what to make of that. Either Geektool is a gem hidden in the weeds or my circle of nerds is seriously out of touch…

Moving forward! Geektool lets you watch a log file, image or the output of a shell command on your desktop background like so:

NOTE – Make sure to read the FAQ if you want to run ‘top’ in GeekTool.

Snow Leopard Terminal Split Window Feature

Ok – this was a nice surprise while mucking around with Snow Leopard’s Terminal. Check out the split/collapse window buttons here above the scroll bar:

Click the top “split” button and now you’ve got your window split into two usable panes like so:

Macbook PRO 17″ and OCZ Vertex SSD

This article is meant to share the great work my business partner Matthew did to make this process as easy as can be. I take no credit for figuring this stuff out.

I just upgraded to the 2.8 ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook PRO 17″ with one special enhancement – an OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD swapped in place of the stock 500GB 5400RPM drive.

There are plenty of articles on the net showing how to do this. That said, these are the steps I went through to get it all working:

• First buy an OCZ Vertex SSD. Don’t get the Mac specific version as it costs more and you don’t need it!
• Use Disk Utility to burn an image of the OCZ Vertex firmware update to CD. Get the Mac compatible ISO image from http://ocztechnology.com.
• Replace the stock drive with your nice OCZ Vertex drive.
• Put in your ISO CD and reboot. Hold the ‘C’ key during boot.
• Type FWUPDATE at the prompt and type ‘Y’ for all subsequent questions – be patient it takes a few moments for the FWUPDATE to recognize the drive.
• Reboot with an OS X Snow Leopard Installation Disc and follow install.
• IMPORTANT! Once you get to the ‘Select where to install…” step, use Disk Utility to partition the drive so you have a volume to install Snow Leopard on. Disk Utility is available in the Menubar. Use HFS+ with a GUID Partition table.

OK – After all of this is done, be prepared for the fastest machine you have ever used, unless you have already used a machine built on SSDs before.

This thing screams. iPhoto, Illustrator, Eclipse – they load INSTANTLY. My initial reaction was that something was wrong because these windows just appeared. It took me a second to realize the application was already UP.

For $359 after rebate, I now have a machine that feels, and literally is, 3x times faster for operations that really count – disk I/O.

Matthew insisted that upgrading to a 3.06 GHz CPU ($300) is a total waste when you can spend an additional $60 for an INSANE performance improvement.

I couldn’t agree more.

HexColorPicker + Pixelmator

I’ve been going without Photoshop for about a month now and I have to say, I don’t miss it.

I did have the issue of getting hex color codes from a color picker in Pixelmator. A quick google revealed that the OS X community had a solution. It’s called HexColorPicker and it upgrades the standard color picker in OS X with hex color code support.

Once installed, all applications that use the standard color picker get this nice feature.

OS X Leopard – command line fun with voices!

Open up terminal and type

say -v "Bad News" Your mother in-law is moving in with you

See a list of available voices here.

Eclipse 3.5M7 – SWeeT Sheet!

I have long awaited for sheet dialog support on OS X in SWT and 3.5M7 delivers!

Read more about what is New and Noteworthy in Eclipse 3.5M7.

Eclipse 3.5M6 – No issues after 2 weeks of usage

I have been using Eclipse 3.5 M6 as my main IDE since it came out a couple of weeks ago. I am happy to say that I have not ran into any issues or crashes for that matter.

The latest updates in 3.5 M6 are described here -

http://update.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/S-3.5M6-200903130100/eclipse-news-M6.html

Disable SWT Browser Drop Handling

I like using the SWT Browser component for embedded web application functionality in a desktop app. Unfortunately, users can drop whatever they want on the Browser and it will load the dropped item.

Let’s take a look at what I’m talking about

SWT Browser is sweet for displaying various content types like PDF

Not looking so sweet after dropping a URL on it!

Coming up with a fix

My first line of thought was to disable drop handling using a DropTarget and DropTargetListener. Short story – that doesn’t work as of SWT 3.5M6.

Well, you can’t disable drop handling in the Browser component, as the title suggests. It *is possible* to capture location change events and cancel them before they actually change the browser’s location. Since location change events fire when a user drops an item on the Browser component, canceling them achieves the desire effect of disabling drop handling.

Disable Browser Location Change Event

See the code snippet below for a simple solution for preventing the Browser from loading user dropped items.

// Prevent browser from changing to unwanted location
// Assumes you have a Browser reference named 'browser'
browser.addLocationListener(new LocationListener() {

    public void changed(LocationEvent event) {
        System.out.println("Changed location to " + event.location);
    }

    public void changing(LocationEvent event) {
        System.out.println("Changing location to " + event.location);
        event.doit = false; // this cancels the browser location change
    }
});

Further Customization

The above example can be tailored to suit your needs. You can put conditions in the ‘changing()’ method to only allow your valid location URLs. To really polish this off, we can add a ‘disabled’ cursor action when the user tries to drop an item on the Browser.

new DropTarget(browser, DND.DROP_NONE);

There! Now the user knows that the drop is invalid and the actual drop will not result in the Browser loading the dropped item.

Dangers of Relying on Online Backup

TechCrunch.com – Carbonite Loses Customer Data

According to this article, Carbonite lost 7,500 customers’ data. Losing customer data is not a fun spot to be in and I seriously feel for the folks at Carbonite, especially since it was a hardware failure and not related to Carbonite software.

Note – CEO of Carbonite, David Friend points out in a comment below that only 54 customers actually lost data that was unrecoverable.

Before I begin, please be aware of the following -

• I am a partner in a company that makes the backup software CrashPlan
• Carbonite is a competitor to the CrashPlan consumer backup product
• I am going to tout a feature about CrashPlan that prevents this from affecting CrashPlan users

This brings me to the point of this article and a point we’ve been trying to make with CrashPlan since its inception -

Online backup by itself is not enough

Online backup solutions are for the most part very simple to use and get going with. However many of them lack a crucial component to a complete backup solution – multiple backup locations. The premise is that because the solution is online and in the cloud, it is reliable and safe. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Cloud reliability relies on a number variables -

1. Network connectivity – You have to be online to talk to the cloud! In other words, if you are not online, you are not backed up.
2. Bandwidth – Bandwidth is the killer for transferring data too and from the cloud. Backup data is often measured in GB if not TB these days. At 10 Mb/s, you are looking at 10 days to download a 1 TB of data.
3. Hardware – Ultimately your data is going to be on some storage system, somewhere. Believe it or not, its most likely sitting on the same type of storage that is in your computer – a SATA drive of some sort. Various RAID setups can help make failure of this drive less drastic but the bottom line is that all drives fail at some point.

As of today, online/cloud solutions are facing some serious practical challenges. Will these challenges be overcome in the future? Possibly, but to be safe, one should treat online backup as just a part of a complete backup solution.

You need multiple backup locations

• Your backup is only as good as your backup location.
• Your best bet is to have at least three.

A complete backup solution should provide you a guaranteed restore experience and to have that, you need at least three (3) backup locations -

1. Local backup – This hits the 80% sweet spot for your daily backup and restore needs. An external USB drive works beautifully in this capacity as it provides a fast, easy to use backup location.
2. Near-line backup – In CrashPlan we call this backing up to your friends and family. Don’t just backup to a cloud, backup to a trusted location that you can access physically and quickly should disaster strike. If that USB drive fails after someone stole your laptop, you can still drive over to a friend’s house and get your data.
3. Online backup – Yes, online backup is an important part of the overall solution. In a pinch, you can quickly restore key files, like a term paper or a sales presentation. However, it is less than ideal should you need to restore an entire filesystem.

<start-sales-pitch>
CrashPlan makes backing up to mutiple locations simple. Backup to local drives, your friends computers and/or our online backup service, CrashPlan Central. All of this done in a super efficient, secured manner.

If this sounds like a backup solution for you then try CrashPlan for yourself, its free!
</end-sales-pitch>