Eclipse loses your stuff, but that's okay

The last time that I mentioned Eclipse I hadn't yet come across any major issues, but I recently came across an error that makes it appear as though you have lost all of the work that you have ever done in Eclipse. It forgets where it has put all of your things, and you need to import all of your projects back into Eclipse. Despite repeatedly stressing 'all' back there this isn't a huge drama, but if you don't know that it is easily fixed there will be all of the swearing.

The error will say:

The file does not exist        org.eclipse.core.filebuffers

That is okay though, because we can fix it in two easy steps that are actually made up of a couple of steps each, but you could skip the whole first step and it's sub-steps, but you should read it to find it if you need to first.

1. Workspaces 

You will need to know where your workspace is, so if you are certain that you know, go to step 2. Otherwise follow these directions.

Windows -> Preferences

Once the preferences pane is open, expand 'General', then 'Startup and Shutdown' in the menu on the left. Click on workspaces. This should show you a list of your workspaces. Most people should only be using a couple. If there is more than one, and you aren't sure which one you want, find them in explorer.

2. Import

File -> Import

Once the import pane turns up expand 'General' and select 'Existing Projects into Workspace', and click 'Next'.

Browse to your original workspace folder (which we looked up in step 1), because the files haven't actually moved. Once you have done this a list of your projects will appear in the window. Make sure the ones you want are ticked. If they are grayed out, they should already be viewable by Eclipse. If you use nested projects, tick that box too. You won't need to tick 'Copy projects into workspace', because they are already there.

I was pretty frustrated by this, and I'm not entirely sure what brings it on, but it hasn't really put me off Eclipse. It would be nice if it just didn't do this, but it does and it is still a fantastic IDE even with this special feature. While it appears to be a relatively major issue, the fact that is so quickly and easily fixed renders it a nuisance at worst. I came across another incredibly tedious fix for this, but importing is quicker and easier.

@UnitedByGlue

I recently got myself a twitter account, because I was required to for my Social Web Analytics practicals. If I get enough followers and people talking about 'united by glue', I will probably be able to use 'united by glue' data for my assignments and practicals.

There is another @unitedbyglue, so make sure you use the camelled @UnitedByGlue.

The sharp hand of fate

There are certain conversations that become part of your academic landscape. Conversations where we exchange knowledge, opinions and ignorance in the form of hypotheticals pertaining to whatever field we happen to be studying. I remember this being particularly loose at art school, and the purest form of ignorant auto callipygian osculation while I was studying philosophy. These conversations have been a little more down to Earth while studying ICT. Well, to be strictly honest some of them are pretty wild, but for the most part they usual centre around professional projects or assessment tasks. The second most common of these concerns situation specific language preferences.

I was having one of these second most common conversations with some of my fellow study monkeys, when I was queried as to in which language I would prefer to work given a specific assessment task, Java or C# (C-Sharp). I gave the perfectly reasonable answer that I would prefer to work in Java, because I had no experience with C# and though I assumed it was similar to C++ (which it really isn't), I wasn't prepared to jump into a project without knowing where and how it differed.

Later that same day, I said to another student who had been absent from the original conversation, "I hope I never have to learn C Sharp, just so that I can decrease the risk of having to deal with people who call it C hash." BAM! Right there. The Fates heard that, and in it they saw a certain poetry in striking my wind-pinkened cheeks.

That was the Thursday before last, and it turns out that the Fates make up their own long weekends, because they got round to me on Monday last, when I met with my tutor with whom I am going to work on some research related activities, such as research. We had a similar, but far less hypothetical discussion about the project at hand, with the presented options being JavaScript and C#. Now, as a more experienced programmer with a foreign accent, he swayed me quickly and easily to his point of view, and C# became a part of my life.

As I considered the irony of this situation, I made my way to the library, only because getting even mildly across the new language seemed like the prudent thing to do, where I picked up a book with a fish on it. Not more than fifty metres from the library did I come across one of the students with whom I have forged some sort of social relationship. "Hey, you on your way to the tute?" he asked, referring to the next class that we shared. I responded in the affirmative, and the conversation lapsed momentarily. Noticing the book he continued, "Why are you learning C hash?", and so the nightmare began.

Realworld applications for statistics

This morning I found myself uncomfortably close to a stranger on a crowded Sydney bus. Generally speaking this is not how I like to make the trip to work. The two of us had found ourselves awkwardly positioned by the sudden influx of passengers, a desire to remain upright and an unwillingness to press our more intimate body parts into the faces of those passengers who had boarded the bus early enough to be seated. There was an initial mutual acknowledgement that neither of us would normally stand this close to a stranger without at least first being on the right side of a good couple of hours of drinking, then we both fulfilled the obligatory attempts at finding somewhere for our eyes to be that weren't each other. It's a ritual and it is time honoured.

Standing as close as I was, it was difficult not to notice the even coverage of his three (or four) day stubble. Those that have stood close enough to my unshaven face, will know that a man of my facial follicle spread is want to appreciate, and perhaps covet, a more consistent patterning. This isn't what caused me to stare, and I did stare. each hair seemed so similar in size to those that surrounded it, while differing from those situated around other areas of his face. Clear and neat patterns of length and direction swirled before me in tiny pitch black vectors against the consistent hue of his brown skin. They seemed so perfect that not for a second did I doubt that I could plot them in R, given the right formula. I imagined the elegantly nested loops that I would write, paying homage to Turing in my mimicry of nature. I could scan his cleanly shaven face, and call the image to set my plot against it. It could be a game. An exquisite game. A race to the formula that would reproduce the brilliant display that lay before me.

I don't know when he noticed, but it was definitely before I did. By the time I realised that I had been staring, I looked up into his eyes and saw a very particular kind of discomfort. I considered explaining myself and what I thought about doing with his face, but it occurred to me that this could be the wrong thing to do. You don't tell strangers that you want to make a game out of their face. Our previously discussed positioning prevented either of us from removing ourselves from this newly heightened discomfort, and we simply made the rest of the trip in silence.

He could've been famous.

Unity in three easy steps

I mentioned Unity a little while ago, and said that I would get back to it at some stage, well that stage is NOW! I'm not going to go into too much detail about everything to do with Unity, and cover all of it's good and bad points. That time is not now, and honestly may never be. I will drop three tutorials on you that I fell everyone should be able to complete with minimal difficulty. I will talk briefly about those tutorials, but I think you should hook into the free downloads and let them speak for themselves.

A quick word on monitor sizes before we get too far into this. I having been playing around with Unity on a couple of systems and a couple of different monitor sizes, and while some other system resources don't seem to have made a lot of difference, the difference between 13", 15" and 22" monitors is definitely worth mentioning. I found working on the smaller monitors frustrating, and often found that it negatively affected my workflow (as well as my mood). You can still use Unity on smaller monitors, but in this instance bigger is better. If you are thinking about getting into this seriously and are working with a laptop or smaller monitor, you can pick up reasonably priced monitors from MSY, and other places of that ilk. I'd love to quote my friend Adrian on monitor sizes during his experience with modelling software, but his exact words escape me. Maybe he'll comment.

Getting Started

The current version of Unity is 4.2, and you can retrieve (download) it from unity3d.com. When you install it, you will be asked which version you would like to use. I recommend the free version for now. You will also be asked to register a Unity account. Do this. This isn't one of those pointless things that is about getting your e-mail address, and flinging spam, this lets you access the asset store, so pick your favourite e-mail and get started.

Beginner Tutorial Modules

The tutorial modules cover a surprising amount of stuff. They are incomplete for the time being (2013-08-09), but would hardly be classified as useless. Far from it. While only beginner level tutorial modules are provided on the site, they introduce you to the editor, graphics, physics, audio and scripting. This is about all you need to know to get started.

To get into these tutorial modules you will need the Unity Labs 01: Robot Lab, which will have all of the assets and things that you will need for the tutorials. The other thing you will probably need is a link.

3D Platformer Tutorial

This was the first one that I completed, and you could probably jump in here. The game is very basic, but you still feel productive. I also really like the way that this tutorial is written. It was made by the Unity guys a few years ago for a previous version of Unity, but it is still pretty straight forward. There are only a few minor differences between what is in the tutorial and what you will need to do.

Whenever colours come up the with RGB and opacity values the opacity value needs to be multiplied by 2.5ish. In the old version of Unity the opacity scale was out of 100, but most programs use a 0-255 scale now.

There are going to be a few extra things, as well as things moved around when they show you screen shots of the user interface. Nothing major, just be careful.

The other thing worth keeping in mind is that some of the values for things, like particle systems, tend to err on the cautious side. The tutorial was written a few years ago, so you can jack up some of the values fairly substantially for bigger effects. Just play around with it. You can get it through the asset store built into Unity or you can grab it from the site.

UPDATE: There are more problems with this tutorial in more recent versions of Unity, which include the sound.

Project #01: Stealth

I've read through this one, but haven't had time to start it. There isn't really anything in it that should throw you if you have done the other tutorials, but the final product is definitely more impressive, and is playable online. Unlike the 3D Platformer Tutorial, this one was actually written for the current version of Unity, but like the modules, the instructions for the tutorial are online, at the projects page, and the assets are in the asset store, under Unity Projects 01: Stealth.

Let me know how you go.



(All of the images including the Unity logo are the property of the people over at Unity, and are nabbed from their website. I'm not really across the rules for this stuff, but I thought that seeing as I am promoting them they probably wouldn't mind so much. I'll drop them an e-mail and see how they feel. Either way I will be talking about Unity again.)