Hacking Computers, and the Net

I have had several occasion's where Java apps would open, and then immediately close.  Often, I don't have the time to dig into the reason, as they aren't crucial.  So, I just move on. Recently, I was maddened by this happening to an application ( see other blog post on Kindle Previewer ) I really needed to use, so I had to get into the trench.  After cracking open the app, and rooting through the various files, I did some spot-checks of the java version used to build the jars ( 2 bytes at offsets 6 & 7 ), as well as had a look at the info.plist, which had the JVMVersion key set at 1.5+. Since Oracle took over Java, Apple has essentially abandoned it to them, and hasn't done an update I *think* since version 6. All of Apple's Tooling for Java stops with JVMVersion key's of 6* and 6+.  The short answer to all this is, if something was built using Apple's AppBundler tools, and you have updated Java on your Mac to 7 or above, you're probably SOL to g

So, I've been a big Erlang fan for a few years now, and then found out about Elixir :  what I would describe as kind of a Ruby -ish creamy frosting on top of Erlang . But I'll address more on both in future. Right now, I thought I'd just give a quick and dirty way to add Elixir , if you've already got Erlang installed (hint: check-out this Erlang Solutions link for a pre-compiled Erlang solution).  You can also use brew to install both , but I have found that with the simplicity of brew, you give up having the most current version of software.  In both cases. The pre-compiled zip for the most current version of  Elixir can be found here .  Unzipping reveals a folder containing everything you need.  For simplicity's sake, keeping everything pertaining to Elixir all within this folder makes the most sense.  By doing so, all that's needed is to position the folder, and then make links to all the executables in a directory already in our path.  Through t