The latest version of my sample clone!
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! 
I 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).
Everyone’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.
It’s been a while since I last updated on this, but hopefully you’ve brushed up on your C and OpenGL skills. Here you’ll find the entire source code to a pong implementation in C and OpenGL.
I recently helped my nephew Peter do a massive overhaul/upgrade of his current PC. We basically rebuilt his PC and the only thing he kept was his recently purchased insane-o vid card and his hard drive. Several hours later we had his new PC up and running–hardware wise at least.
One of the orders of the day–much to my dismay–was to install Windows Vista. I advised him not too, but he got his aunt to get it for him for his birthday and he rationalized his defiance of my advice on DirectX 10. (Truth be told, I sabotaged myself by telling him it was one of the only neat features of Vista, outside of massive memory footprint and overall sluggishness.)
And so our journey began..
I’d like to tell you it didn’t take us in excess of 2 days to get Vista installed. I mean, I’ve been building PCs for years now and I’m a recent grad of Computer Engineering (I know the two aren’t the same, but still..). Piece of cake, right?
Wrong.