Here’s the last part of my multi-part series on programming your very own pong clone in c and opengl! It’s been a long time coming, so I hope you enjoy. There’s lots of improvements in this version including a completely custom old-style “LED Alarm Clock” scoreboard, flashes on bounce, funky changing colors, improved collision detection, and a round ball!
Programming Pong in C and OpenGL – Part VI
January 19th, 2009Connecting to MS SQL Server from Java Recipe
November 28th, 2008I thought I’d provide a recipe for how to connect to SQL Server from Java. The following is a quick, relatively clean way to connect to Microsoft’s SQL Server from Java without going through too much voodoo–as is often the case when trying to connect to MS SQL Server through a non-microsoft language. Luckily, Microsoft provides a pure Java JDBC driver for connecting to it’s server! You can find it here. Don’t forget to properly include in your Java project! Also, even though it’s the MS SQL 2k3 driver, it works perfectly fine with MS SQL 2000 (so you might as well just use this driver).
A New Way To Surf – LP
October 12th, 2008Everyone’s talking about IP TV and how it’s going to revolutionize things. We’ll be able to get our TV anywhere, any way, but the reality has fallen short of the promise. Your ISP may be beaming Digital channels down to you over IP, but the experience is largely unique to your ISP. Your cable box is not a TV Content browser, no matter how much it tries to be. Heck, you can’t even take your Time Warner Cable box and easily connect it to a Comcast user’s home. The spirit of the IP in IPTV is sorely missing.
That’s why I’m working on a better way–and I need your help.
There are several standards regarding IPTV (and they are used), but while they focus on delivering the content, they do not focus on the programming. If you’re looking at the web to solve your problem, don’t look there either. Every single news or content producer has their own site with their own way of accessing it. You need accounts, you need a pretty hefty browser, and you need to wade through a different interface each and every time.
There is no way to channel surf on the web.
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An Unlikely Monopoly – What’s Wrong with Google AdSense
July 30th, 2008There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to the internet. Microsoft wishes it was them, Yahoo’s just had too much to drink, and there’s a big purple elephant in the corner — Google.



