Abstract: A decorative winged insect includes a single piece of translucent material in the shape of two or more insect wings; a crease in the single piece of translucent material between at least two of the two or more insect wings; and a body adhered to the piece of translucent material near the crease. Methods for making decorative winged insects, instruction documents for making decorative winged insects, and kits for facilitating the creation of decorative winged insects are also disclosed.

Abstract: For a flexible error trace mechanism, embodiments may be implemented for C/C++ interface libraries, or in programs written in C/C++ or other programming languages. In one embodiment, when an error occurs in a function call, a trace element may be recorded that may include the source file name, function name, line number and other information that may be used to identify the error. In one embodiment, the library function may call a plurality of library functions in a function call stack. For each of the plurality of library functions, if the library function generates an error, an error trace element may be added to the error trace. After completion of the library function, the program may obtain the error trace for the library function. The error(s), if any, may be debugged using the information in the obtained error trace.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing user notification. In a desktop environment in which multiple applications, or applets may be simultaneously resident in main memory, it may be necessary to release or unload one or more applications or applets from main memory to provide memory space for a newly selected application or applet. Applications or applets thus unloaded are incapable of providing feedback or user notification of state changes associated with the respective application or applet. An embodiment of the invention provides a user notification class for notifying users of application or applet state changes. For each application or applet that needs to provide user notification, the desktop manager loads an instance of a notification class as an independent thread which will operate even when the associated application or applet is not resident in main memory. The user notification class instance performs all notification functions on behalf of the application or applet.