I was sure it just works...

Today I learned that you cannot plug a mini-jack microphone to a MacBook and expect it to work. MacBooks don't amplify their line-in input to process the signal, they require a special gizmo you have to pay extra for.

To learn that I had to scratch Mac's case (and notice high mic signal level), then tap my headphones' mic (and notice no mic signal), then consciously process the information.

This observation makes my everyday habit of connecting headphones' mic to the MacBook and adjusting the mic so other people hear me better just look stupid.
The only upside is that I can still see other guys doing the same ;-)

I wonder how many things there are that I take for granted that actually are false.
The only problem is that to learn that I would need to challenge the obvious - not an easy task.

Antialiased fonts in Idea on Linux

I was switching my dev environment from MacBookPro to a proper Ubuntu server - performance improvement is enormous (see next post for more).

There was one small problem that just drove me crazy: Idea has not used font antialiasing. Not only has it looked ugly, but more importantly less legible.

I thought it is some system-specific or VNC-related problem. Googling did not help me much.

A quick look at bin/idea.properties file revealed this gem:

# Use default antialiasing in system, i.e. override value of "Settings|Editor|Appearance|Use antialiased font"
# option. May be useful when using Windows Remote Desktop Connection for instance.
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
idea.use.default.antialiasing.in.editor=false

<edit>
Actually, my post has apparently caused more confusion then good - changing the setting above to true is not the way to fix the font unless your java antialiases fonts by default.
To make things straight:

Don't change the bin/idea.properties.
Tick the "Settings|Editor|Appearance|Use antialiased font" option instead.

</edit>