The results are in: Java has hit the top of mind on Google’s Zeitgeist 2007, scoring the 8th position on the “what …” list. But… “what?” Exactly. If even the average Joe is wondering what is Java, I don’t see how that can be a good thing. What these results tell me is not that there is a burst of new developers willing to learn Java, or that the language is so utterly good that even non-technical people are curious. Google’s Zeitgeist will probably never feature wxWidgets or C++, because they’re just invisible to the end user. You don’t see a wxWidgets logo when a wxWidgets application is loading, nor do you ask a user to update his libc. I would rather hear “I don’t know what is Java” than to hear “Oh, I know. It is that thing that was bugging me!” Java needs better integration with browsers and OSes. Java should be invisible to the end-user.

A while ago I was working on a new feature of a CG project that involved loading hundreds of textures from disk. So far, so good. The images, however, were like an order from the devil: I needed RGBA images, but the images were all in BMP format (no chance for alpha channels) and splitted. How great is that?! To solve this problem, I had two alternatives: the first was joining and converting the images manually. If you consider the ammount of images (422) and the average time to join and convert them (aprox. 3 minutes), that would take more than 21 hours (assuming the bore factor wouldn’t spoil my productivity in the meanwhile). Fortunately, there was a second alternative: automating the whole process. As I could not find a program that could supply my very specific need, I knew I had to make a little program for that, and there came JAI for the rescue.