Enabling 1400×1050 resolution in Toshiba Portege M200 under Windows 7 without tears

Back then in 2003, Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC notebook reigns as one of  the most innovative and beautifully designed Tablet PC (TPC)  notebooks. With black-coated magnesium chassis and the highest screen resolution (1400×1050) display housing the state of art components, the attractive-looking Portege M200 is undoubtedly a work of timeless beauty and engineering, which even today continue to attract buyers who want to own a piece of this classic.

However, like any computers, the technological marvel of today will be obsolete tomorrow. Traditionally, the notebook vendors support a computer notebook for 5 years for driver update and repair. Hence, M200 has enjoyed its heyday running Windows XP and Windows Vista. However, with Windows 7 , Toshiba no longer support M200 in term of updating compatible system software and optimized driver. With no official support, Windows 7 no longer can take full advantage of the hardware capability for performance and functionality.

Java Tips: Disabling the maximize button of JFrame

The truth is that there is no direct way to remove the maximize button off the  Resizable JFrame as it is created by Windows and it is not painted using Swing so U can’t touch this.

Still many posts on the net are giving “creative” suggestions on how to remove the maximize button of “JFrame”. The simplest and yet effective solution is to replace JFrame with JDialog as the latter does not have a maximize button. Other feasible “Java-based” solution is  remove the title bar and painstakingly implement customized title bar.

Java Tips: “Adventure” in resolving the Java error “Error occurred during initialization of VM”

The objective of this post talk about my little “adventure” in resolving the fatal Java error that prohibits running Java application.

Symptoms

You use to have the Java applications and Java IDE on your Windows-based system working then one fine day, out of unknown reason, all the Java application and plug-in in the IDE cease to work. Worse, no error message and the application just silently fail to run. Oh, your first thought is that this shouldn’t happen because it is not even April’s fool day or Monday’s blue because today is Wednesday in July. So your first reaction is to re-install the Java SDK or runtime assuming that they might have been damaged. However just before re-installing you confirm that the SDK/runtime is indeed the main problem so you test-run some command in Window command console. jar.exe command run fine but running java.exe on directory other it’s bin directory produce the infamous

Error occurred during initialization of VM
java/lang/NoClassDefFoundError: java/lang/Object

What so damaging about this problem is the some plugins like Android and Grails in Intellij become non-functional as well. You know why very soon.

So here I go trying to resolve the issue. Running Java.exe produce error in other directories (since the SDK’s bin is added to path.)

However running in it’s bin directory, it runs fine.

Review<Song>: A Whiter Shade of Pale

Geezer: A whiter shade of pale (S2)

 

A Whiter Shade of Pale is a popular classic song by Procol Harum.  It has a haunting melody and very “nostalgic” feel to it.

Android: How to download the latest zip Android Source Code easily and using it in Intellij

This is a follow-up to my post: Android: Zip download of Cupcake Android v1.5 source code

There is a popular quote which says

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

That’s definitely true for most developers using Windows as the main development platform and will want to get the latest Android Source code without installing any prerequisite software (Cygwin, repo, git etc) to obtain the latest source code, and hence the fastest way to do so is to obtain the zip Android Source code uploaded by some kind souls. However, it is always best not to depend on someone else in the long run and therefore it will be beneficial to learn how to obtain the latest source code. Although it is unnecessary to periodically getting the latest entire source code, it is good to know that one can easily obtain the latest source code just as easy as saving a file (albeit with much patience) . In addition, the source code may even more valuable if it can be easily accessible in the IDE. So the objectives for this post is

This post will split into two main sections: Downloading the Source Code and Configuring the Source Code for use in Intellij.

Tribute to Michael Jackson with “I’ll be there”

The King is dead !
Long live the King !

It is been more than 3 decades since the slogan is repeated. Last time it is for legendary icon, The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll", Elvis Presley  who passed 42 years old in 1977 due to heart attack. Now 32 years later, history has repeated itself for King of Pop, Michael Jackson , who died at age of 50 years old due to heart attack.

Even though these legends are no longer with us, they leave behind legacies that will remembered forever.

Portraiter site up in GeekyWare

The Portraiter site is finally up in GeekyWare.

Pivoting your screen with ease (and fun) using Portraiter

Introducing Portraiter

I have just completed my latest software project which is a application that make use of third-party pivoting system to pivot the screen easily into Portrait Mode, offers more customizations and with the mouse honours the screen orientation.

If you ever use eeeRotate, iRotate, Pivot Pro before then you probably have some ideas of what Portraiter is. Pivoting the screen into the Portrait mode make it easy to use the notebook as ebook reader or surf the web among the useful function.

Now why inventing the wheel if there are systems that can already do so ?

The followings are some of the reasons:

• Most pivoting systems do not adjust the mouse after the screen orientation changes. In other words, if the screen is in portrait mode, the mouse still works as in landscape mode, making hard to navigate the screen.
• Unless you are fortunate to own Tablet PC which comes with seamless pivoting system that simply works, Portraiter will come in handy to provide such function.
• Pivoting system provides limited choice in customization, hence some customization is useful.

The followings are some of the screenshot of application.

 

• Work as System Tray application.

 

• PortraiterCmd (Pc icon) allows command line pivoting.

 

• Useful customization. User can select iRotate or Pivot Pro pivoting system. iRotate is built into Portraiter whereas Pivot Pro is a separate commercial download. If iRotate does not work for you, you may want to consider Pivot Pro.
  Another option allows the icon to display as Notebook or Monitor. You can also limit the Portrait to just ClockWise or Anti-ClockWise direction Portrait.

System Requirements

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista

(So far  I test it under XP and Vista using Home, Pro, Premium edition running 32bits Windows)

Java Runtime 1.6 and above

 

The Good News

The good news is you don’t have to wait for it as I releasing it for public usage now. The only work left is the help page and other support pages.

The installation file in the zip file contains the necessary installation information.

  portraiter.zip (580kb)

Song: The Little MatchGirl dreaming of Match Heaven

Match Heaven (火柴天堂) is a touching sad song written and sang by Panda Xiong back in 1988.  Back then, this song which is among the best of the author achieved immerse popularity. This timeless classic proves to be a perfect complement to Disney’s popular short animated film “The Little MatchGirl” (2006). The Chinese lyrics and melancholic tune uncannily fit the film as author of the song and producer of the film takes similar inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen ’s classic story “The Little MatchGirl”. The only difference is that the Chinese Lyrics refers to the kin of the girl as her mother whereas the story to which the film is based on, refers her kin as her grandmother. Very detailed story can be found here

Although there are many animated films on “The Little MatchGirl”, I favour the Disney version because it successfully create a feeling of sadness and sympathy for the MatchGirl, well augment by the melancholic classical music playing in the background.

 

 

Review<Song>: Dreams are my reality

Geezer: Reality (S2)

Richard Sanderson sang this song back in 1983 and since then it remains a classic timeless love song. He is best known for his song "Reality", which was the title theme to the soundtrack to the 1980 film La Boum. The song became a hit in Europe in 1982, reaching #1 in 15 countries, including Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and selling more than eight million copies worldwide. Site: http://www.richard-sanderson.com/