Blue Sky On Mars

I’m not sure how I missed this… ImageJ is image processing and analysis software in Java. This is complete, with UI, macros and plugins (a whole host of ‘em!) to do all kinds of image processing. It also claims to be quite fast, desptie not requiring a native library like JAI.

Oh yeah, and it’s public domain. (Your tax dollars at work, if you’re in the US… And if you’re not in the US, enjoy it on us!

Since installing SCode (an MT plugin that adds a captcha for submitting comments), I had not received a single comment spam. This was an improvement, because I think I had comment spam to eliminate every day last week. Somehow, a comment spam made it through last night.

Sure, I’m only using a 3 digit captcha, but I figured any captcha would be enough to keep the spammers at bay. If I had time, I’d take a look at the logs and see if I could figure out how they made it through. But, that’s only one spam, and I really don’t have the time.

Sadly, Groovy’s Eclipse plugin has been out of commission for a while (since I’ve been using the 3.0 Eclipse versions for a while). I don’t think Groovy’s plugin at its height was as complete as Red Robin, the Jython (Python) plugin for Java. Looks like a bunch of great features, and it’s 3.0 compatible. I plan to give this a whirl next week.

On the more general topic of Groovy and Jython… I like Groovy because it has some nice language features but can also run a good deal of Java code straight up. This makes it a more seamless transition between Java and Groovy.

On the other hand, I’ve liked Python for many years, and Jython can open the doors to using many Python-based libraries in addition to your Java favorites. One big downside, though, is that the current release version of Jython has fallen way behind, ever since the big class/type mashup that happened in Python 2.2. I was using Jython quite a bit in 2001, and I think Jython 2.1 was current then. There’s an early test release of Jython 2.2. I’d love to see them get caught up.

Part of what I was using Jython for back in 2001 was an attempt to port Zope to Jython. I started this project (Phabric) while at Web Elite. Though we had ported enough of ExtensionClass and Acquisition to make a bunch of unit tests pass, there were some gnarly differences between CPython and Jython and we ran out of time on the project. The changes in Python 2.2, once integrated into Jython, could make porting Zope to Java much more of a reality. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Want to look like a pro at some random thing you’ve never done before? Take a look at Tricks of the Trade by Matthew Baldwin. Sure, you might wonder if these are real… but, they certainly sound plausible enough to be useful!

Chet Haase has provided very detailed information on strategies for loading images in Java and acheiving good display performance: java.net: ToolkitBufferedVolatileManagedImage Strategies. We’re doing quite a bit of image work (with 600 dpi 8.5″x11″ images), so I’ve already become acquainted with Java 1.4 ImageIO and JDK 1.2 BufferedImage. Most recently, I’ve been looking at the operation chaining features of Java Advanced Imaging in an attempt to quickly provide high-quality screen resolution scalings of those 600 dpi images. Too bad we can’t just get 600 dpi screens

I don’t know why I haven’t been blogging interesting links much lately. I don’t know how many times I wished I could remember some cool thing that I had spotted, only to find that I didn’t blog it. Here’s a cool one: Godchecker - Your Guide To The Gods. Mythology with a twist!. Very entertaining guide to all sorts of mythology.

Scott Delap provides a nice, simple way to Easily Find Swing Threading Mistakes. It involves a replacement RepaintManager that confirms that repaints are all taking place on the Swing event dispatch thread. Nice solution.

(You’ll note from the comments and the followup article that this solution isn’t perfect… but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful!)

Here’s a good thread on image scaling that includes some nice tips like how to get a scaled BufferedImage instead of a scaled Image.

There are some very well done scenes in the POVCOMP 2004: Hall of Fame. All ray traced with the open source POV-Ray!

Despite having MT-Blacklist installed and religiously purging evil comment spam, I’ve still been getting a fair amount of it. It can be a pain to get rid of (particularly when I get a raftload of comment spams). I have installed James Seng’s SCode plugin, which requires entry of a security code that is displayed in an image. I suspect this will completely eliminate my comment spam. I understand the trouble these pose for the blind. Luckily, there is a simple workaround (and I list it right next to the captcha). If you cannot see the image, just send me an email message and I will make sure your comment makes it up there. It’s not perfect, but I don’t want to have to take time out of my day to blast comment spam.