We are pleased to announce the release of GNAT GPL 2009, the Ada Toolset for Academic users and FLOSS developers. It introduces many new features including:

- Ability to generate byte code for the JVM

- Improved support for the .NET Framework

- Addition of the Ada-Java Interfacing Suite (AJIS) that enables native Ada code to be called from Java:
http://www.adacore.com/2008/06/17/ada-java_interfacing_suite

- Availability on the Mac OS X (64 bit) platform

- Automatic C/C++ binding generators

- Addition of the GNAT Component Collection (GNATcoll) providing new APIs that can be extended by the user community:
http://www.adacore.com/2008/06/17/gnat_component_collection

GNAT GPL 2009 comes with version 4.3.1 of the GNAT Programming Studio IDE and GNATbench 2.3, the GNAT plug-in for Eclipse.

It is available for the GNU Linux, Mac OS X (64 bit), .NET, JVM and Windows platforms.

GNAT GPL 2009 can be downloaded from the “Download” section on the new Libre website:
https://libre.adacore.com.

I wonder if the new JVM bytecode generation feature was frequently requested by Ada developers, or is just a move towards popularizing Ada as a highly capable programming language. Either way, it’s good.

Hopefully, I will find time and a matching project to finally learn Ada properly – since a couple of years I believe Ada is a very good programming language. And the D language is better than C and C++ (holy war, anyone? )

The Art-of-web has a good article on CSS3 border-radius property, and its support in Gecko/WebKit browsers.

Note: that article is not about using JS and/or tables and/or complicated CSS to make round borders – instead, the CSS3 border-radius property is reviewed.

SecuriTeam has an old, but still very useful article on SQL injection.

I’ve created a PDF of that article, containing some of the comments (all the ‘thank-you’ and ‘help-me-hack’ comments were removed): sql injection walkthrough pdf download.

Note: there were no specific license terms attached to the article; I believe that the word “free” on the SecuriTeam site logo refers to the “right of free use and copying”. If you know this is not the case – please let me know to remove this PDF from public access. (see Brian’s comment)

MC is a console file manager. It supports FTP connections, and in my experience is faster in FTP than both Krusader and Gnome Commander.

However, the default FTP connection format string [username[:password]@]hostname has a drawback of not allowing the use of usernames with ‘@’-symbol in them – which is very common for virtual hostings.

One of the solutions is (done in your home directory):

1. if there is no .netrc file in your home directory — touch .netrc && chmod 600 .netrc
2. mcedit .netrc (or use vi, nano, or any other editor you prefer)
3. add the following line to the file (replace all-caps words with your actual credentials): machine HOSTNAME login USER@HOSTNAME password PASSWORD

Now, start MC, choose FTP connect, and enter only the hostname. You will be automatically logged in to the remote FTP.
This will also work for console ftp clients like lftp.

Today I had a task of displaying random node in a Views-generated sidebar block.

This is how to do that in Drupal 7 (Views 3):

1. edit the view which makes the block available (follow http://your.site/admin/build/views/viewname/edit)
2. in the Sort Criteria section (under Filter), look for and add Global:Random.

This is how to do that in Drupal 6 (Views 2):

1. edit the view which makes the block available (follow http://your.site/admin/build/views/viewname/edit)
2. in the Sort Criteria section, add the Random criteria.

It can’t be simpler than that.

In my childhood, I greatly enjoyed the series of novels by Roger Zelazny about the Amber multiverse. I also did enjoy the book by JRRT.

Many of the epic and thrilling worlds have been brought to the wide screen in recent decades. So today I came to IMDB looking for just any film adaptation of the excellent novel series by Roger Zelazny, and found… nothing! Roger himself is accurately catalogued, though.

The Amber multiverse seems to me even bigger than that of JRRT’s world, yet the LoTR has a screen version, and Amber doesn’t. That’s unfair! I want a screen version of Amber world!

I’ve found a thread at IMDB, which asks for the movie, so I’m not alone in that.

P.S. Inspired by the recently re-viewed episodes of SW, including the CW animation series.