Blog of Alexander Mamchenkov

I have finally got myself a photo camera. I was planning to buy one for a long time and I did it. While selecting a type of camera , I had a number of criterias:- The camera should use Memory Stick Duo as a storage since I also have the same in my phone

– The camera should be 5+ megapixels (I don\’t think that whatever is above matters a lot for non-professional photographer)

– The camera should operate on AA size batteries since they are easy to find anywhere.

– The camera should use standart USB cable for connecting to PC, since it is easy to replace in case of failures

– The camera should be able to take videos in MPEG format and 640×480 size
I got myself a Sony Cybershot 600s and I like it a lot. In addition I have purchased a number of accessories like carrying case, battery charger and 1GB memory card.

Here is how it looks like:

I think I have already mentioned before that due to the Object Oriented Programming college class I have to play around Java now. I was assigned to do a project in Java and I decided to check what I can do there. Being more a perl guy, I have a faced a numerous problems with Java which I try to overcome in all possible ways. Here is what problems I have:

1. Static method declaration in abstract class. This really drives me crazy :(. I have a case where I really need to have static methods in abstract class (with implementation code inside) and I can not do it which causes me a lot of headache.

2. I am really missing an analog of perl keyword __PACKAGE__ in Java. This, sometimes also have to do with the first issue. For example I want to create an abstract class which defines the structure of a database table model, and this class should have static methods such as retrieveAll or search to return an array of objects of this class. Lets assume that I am allowed to have static methods in abstract classes and that I have a __PACKAGE__ option, then I would write something like this:

abstract public class DBModel extends DB {

abstract static private String dbTableName;

static public __PACKAGE__ retrieveAll () {

DB myDB = new DB();
myDB.query(\"SELECT id FROM \" + dbTableName + \"\");

if (myDB.getResultCount() > 0) {
int i = 0;

__PACKAGE__ itemList[];
while (myDB.getResultSet().next()) {

itemList[i++] = __PACKAGE__ new( myDB.getResultSet().getInt(\"id\") );
}
return itemList;

}

return null;
}
}

public class MCategories extends DBModel {

static private String dbTableName = \"customers\";
}

Like this, all classes which extend DBModel would have a static method retrieveAll() which would retrieve a list of all items from the DB.

3. Declaration and assignment to a variable inside of if/while/whatever. Sometimes I just need to do something like this (using the above example):

if ((Object[] objectsList= MCategories.retrieveAll()) != null) {

// do something with objectsList[].
}

If you know some workarounds, please let me know.