Iterative vs. Incremental Development

A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker about iterative vs. incremental development and what he felt the differences are. (I'm going to talk about what and how things were discussed, just to let people think about it.)

Iterative developement is where you keep on going over what you have done before and improve, refactor, and build upon what you have done before. Each iteration (should be) better than the one you had before, even if you don't add features. This is important. This (like in XP), requires you have the courage to look at what you did before and refactor what you did before in order to make the app better.

Incremental developement on the other hand is where you keep on adding on what you did before. This is the subtle difference. In incremental you don't go back and refactor what you have done before, you only focus on adding new features and not on improving existing ones. It's a focus on feature count instead of quality.

Needless to say that incremental doesn't sound very good, but I can see how it's possible to get squeezed into that mindset (?) if the customer's only focus is on the number of features they get per $. This isn't "big picture" thinking, nor is it a place that any developer wants to be. I just thought that this is an interesting anti-pattern that would be good to share. It's better to know the bad patterns before you find yourself in them.

Being sick sucks

Laura and I just got back from a vacation and I get home sick. *sigh* So much for a great christmas if I can't socialize with people if I'm sick at home. Grrr....

Tough game

If you think that you have good mouse control, try out this game and let me know how you do. It's funnier if you have the sound on. ;-)

Tough driving

You know that it's going to be hard to get into work for a lot of people when 2 OC transpo slinky buses "ditch it" (ie. get stuck) in one block of the downtown core... Oie.

Best Advice EVER!

I just couldn't help but laughing when I saw this solution to a problem. Okay, we're running out of "cursors" (ie. because we are not managing them properly). Instead of looking into this leak, just make the max # bigger... sooo smart. *cough*

This kind of crap is what gives software people a bad name. :-(

I want it that way...

Okay to watch this video you will need
1) Flash 7
2) A good (fast) connection
3) A change of pants because you will be laughing so hard at 2 chinese students lip sync'ing to Back Street Boys

Enjoy. ;-)

Update: another classic one of a guy in a cube

Three Simple Words

She said yes.

Disappointment with FF 1.5

If you are thinking about downloading the latest version of FireFox you might want to wait. I downloaded it at work and home and so far I am not impressed. At home (WinXP Home) when I look at a slashdot story like the one that I linked to there is no scroll bar. I don't know if this is on purpose or what, but I don't like it. If I try and change the settings by going Tools -> Options I get an invisable dialog box with floating buttons and (some) text over text. There is no way that I could change anything in that section.

*sigh*

I just hope that they release a fixed version soon. I would have thought that something like this would not have made it past the RC's but I guess that I'm not really doing anything to help. ;-P (ahhggg! I lost my spell checker too! Please forgive me)

Party Trick

This is something that we can do at someone else's house... someone with high ceilings and an easy to clean floor. ;-)

There is no second place to White Box Testing

One thing that I find about testing: QA can never test the application as deeply and easily if they do not have access to the code. Black box testing only gets you "so far", but for efficient testing White Box is the way to go.

Let's take an example: for most java projects have property files for the message resources so you can easily swap out the different languages you are using for your app. I think that it's impossible (or nearly so) if you do not have access to the files themselves to test for things like: duplicate keys; keys existing for all the languages you are supporting; or (this was new to me) if you have a space after the line continuation char (\) and the java property file reader doesn't pick up the next line.

I just don't know how any developers can rely on a QA department that is doing manual black box testing. Ultimately it's a developer's responsibility to ensure that things are working correctly, so why would you not have them do the testing?

I just don't get it

I've been watching the amazing race 8 this season and one family always amazes me: the Weaver family. I just don't how they see themselves in the world.

They say things like "we're the only nice people left in this race" while they taunt strangers, insult other people's cultures, disparage where other people live, etc. They don't seem to be able to make a positive comment about anything other than themselves. Horrible.

And it's just not my impression. There are lots of stories about them.

It's funny how first impressions can be very wrong. At first I thought the Weavers were "nice" people and the Paolo were bad, bad people. The Paolo's fight a lot, but they were still okay people in that they just where not mean to everyone they met.

Unlike the Weavers, I really hope that I have an accurate picture of myself: as others see me.

Review of the latest products

Some of you know that my favourite business is Tim Hortons (or, affectionately known as TH). A couple of weeks ago I had one of their Hot Smoothees and it was less than stellar to say the least. It tasted like a shot of flavour in hot water. Ewww... I tried Butter Caramel because I heard that Raspberry wasn't very good. I think that I figured out why it's not good: "non-caffeinated". I see that you can add "flavour shots" to your coffee... I have yet to try this but that sounds better than the smoothee.

Today I had Southwest Chicken Sandwich. Very tasty! The girl who made it said that they were addictive and now I believe her. I would get it again in a heartbeat. I hope that they keep it around. On a related note, I think that I am one of the few people that loves the commercial for that sandwich... so funny.

Java quiz

What do you think will be the outcome for this code? This is something that I ran into today and wasted an hour (or 30 minutes, don't remember) on.

Date now = new Date();
// gets a calendar instance of the current time
Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();

// let's change the cal time to last year.
cal.add(Calendar.YEAR, -1);

System.out.println("Is " + cal.getTime() + " before " + now + " ???");
System.out.println(cal.before(now));

Usable again

I finally took the time and cleaned off my desk at home so I can work on it again. It's probably been 6 months since I've sat here. On a related note I have turned on my linux box again and have that running. I'm going to use it as a media box again, sans Apache / JBoss. Why am I even bothering to use it as a media box? Well, simply put my laptop doesn't have enough hd space for all the stuff that I want to keep on it. I only have a 20 Gb drive and I have like 3 Gb of digital photos. I have much, much more music than that... The only pain is that I would have to go turn it on when I actually want to use it, but I can live with that.

Open format vs closed

Well, I don't really think that an open document format is bad, at least not for users. Bernard Golden has an interesting write up about it. The only people that I can see not benefiting from moving towards an open standard are the people who currently have the market share using a closed format. It's not really rocket science.

All the power to Massachusetts' decision to go with OpenDocument since being the first to make the bold move has to be hard. As soon as that move goes well, hoo hoo, it's going to be a huge slide for MS as everyone saves 500$ a workstation.

WotD

And the word of the day is: priapism.

No reason, just that I learned it today... don't ask.

Developers are the keepers of quality

Just me ranting here...

It bothers me when talking to other developers and they say things like "I didn't check [the feature]. That's why we have a QA department!". No, that's wrong. It's the developers responsibility to test and ensure that every way they can think of using the software is working well. QA is just a fresh set of eyes to go through the app in a way that the developer hadn't thought of before.

That's why developers have unit tests: so they can regression test the whole app quickly. If it's the developers responsibility to completely regression test the app every day or so, of course they are going to use unit tests. It's impossible to do so otherwise.

If you have a bug opened against you once: no worries, everyone misses something. If it's opened twice: you either didn't write the tests, run them, or the tests are wrong. And if the bug is opened more than that, well, there is no excuse for that.

If you cannot be responsible for the quality of your work, you should move to a role that doesn't require such standards.

Perfect timing

Went for a run. It was great (37.25 minutes). A bit windy, but nice. Got back, jumped into the shower and about 30 seconds later the fire alarm goes off. *sigh* Not every day is perfect.

Missed it

I tried to buy the new Star Wars today from BestBuy. Got there and they were all sold out. The guy said that they were all gone at 5 pm. Apparently all BestBuy and FutureShop's didn't have any. He said that he heard that Walmart still had some... but I wasn't going that far tonight. Damn. It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine...

Figured it out

I think that I have finally figured it out. I have been disappointed with some of my pictures how the reds in the sky have not been showing up at all (example). I usually have my camera set to "auto" but it's been totally washing out the colour for sunrise or sunset pictures.

After doing some searching and going through some forums, people suggested for pictures like that setting the ISO setting (film speed?) lower. So I changed it to 100 and am happy with the results. Now to play around with focal lengths and other settings to make neat focus shots.

That and I like playing around with perspective. Man, I love digital photography and how much I can have fun with it. ;-)

Ghosts and the Gallows

Laura and I went on a haunted walk last weekend (?). I've been on them before in Ottawa, but this time we went on the "Ghosts and the Gallows" tour. Pretty cool. I for one never knew the old building right beside the Mackenzie King bridge was a jail and the site of Canada's last public hanging... a little weird that it's now a youth hostel. It actually looked like a pretty nice place to stay. It's funny 'cause they apparently shut it down as a jail 'cause it was no longer fit to keep prisoners there. Oie.

Some times it's fun to do the tourist things around town.

Llama! Llama! Duck!

So funny... llama, llama, duck!

There was a flash, then photos

Yes, I know flash is evil, but don't we all need a little evil now and then? Just kidding. I'm talking about the photo thing on the right side of the blog. They call it a "Flickr badge". I could have used plain ol' html or have a nice flash thing-ma-bobber. I sort of like it, mostly 'cause I think that it's somewhere that Flash does well in: images and rich media like that.

I hate Flash being used for text and put in little scroll boxes that I can't use my browser for, can't change the font size, can't load into different tabs while I read the current one. I guess it's like any tech, you can use it well or badly.

If you take a look at my photo stream and some of the pics seem old, it's 'cause they are. I'm getting around to uploading some of the shots that are several years old that my dad took (I asked him if I could put them up). I just figure that it's more likely that I will be able to see them and other's than if they are buried on my hd somewhere. Next step: digital picture frame. ;-)

New version of spam

Oh joy, there's a new version of blog spam that's been hitting me lately: pollution spam. I deleted some spam and tracked it around legit looking blogs and found what Marco wrote and why they think this is happening. I guess that's another technique that I should have paid more attention to in security class: if bad traffic can't get through, it may be enough to just not allow good traffic.

Grrrrr.... >:-|

Sad today

When I got in this morning there was a message on my phone from my mom asking me to call her back when I get in. Something in her voice told me it wasn't good news.

My dog that we got in '92 died last night. He was the my first "big dog" and lots of fun. I am going to miss Joe. :-(

Biking into work: Day 1

I finally got over my fear of biking in traffic downtown in rush hour. It's not that bad. It's just difficult because my bike is sort of broken right now which means I have 1, maybe 2 gears. That's something that I have to fix fast, perhaps by getting a new bike or getting mine fixed.

I'd love to have 1 bike that's kick-ass awesome and great to go out for a ride, and another that I can take to work all the time and if it gets stolen I won't get too angry. We'll see. At this point I am going to see how long I can bike before I wuss out. :-P

Seperate logic from persistence

One thing that I have found writing software and testing it as I go is to structure an application in a way to make it easy to test. I find it much easier to do this when you separate any logic from where you persist data by saving it to a db or file or whatever. I always work best with examples, so let's use one: I need a class that will use complex (or not so complex) logic to create widgets and then save those to a db.

Here's one way to do it:
doEverythingMethod() {
 for (loopCondition) {
  // complex logic to decide what kind of widget to make
  saveWidget();
 }
}


Now, that's all well and good. However to test the logic of the method then you will end up making tons of widgets to the db. You might want to clean it up out of the db, but in the end you are making the test slow by saving things to the db when all you want to do is test the logic.

Here's another solution:
doEverythingMethod() {
 collectionOfWidgets = complexLogicMethod();
 for (eachWidget in collectionOfWidgets) {
  saveWidget();
 }
}
Collection complexLogicMethod() {
 // complex logic to decide what kind of widget to make
 return collectionOfWidgets;
}

The second way will allow you to test the complex logic in an isolated way. The doEverythingMethod() in the second example then needs less aggressive testing since it's simpler.

Short answer: slightly different structure of the application will make testing easier and faster.

Podcast? Sold!

Okay, I know that I am behind the times. I am listening to my first podcast from cbc radio 3 and I am sold on it. No more annoying people from the local radio station playing the same crap every morning, just hearing new music that people think is cool. Awesome.

Oh, check out Litterbug on newmusiccanada.com for some songs that you can play. God, I hate Flash and RealPlayer sometimes... *sigh*

Update: The song was called "brush with life" from Litterbug that I liked. Listening to it again I'm not sure if I was just really tired and alone when I heard it first. I'll have to give it a try more. :-|

My precious

My birthday-present! It came to me on my birthday, my precious. So small, so beautiful... jimum! jimum!

Happy 1/4 to me!

I am a quarter of a century today. Yay me. ;-P

Some nice stuff on flickr

Just poking around on flickr and some people have some really beautiful pictures. Man, I think that I have to dig around for some tips on how to take better pictures. That's next week's project. ;-)

Running Log, LogDate 2005.09.20.1718

Dear running log:

It was a hard, windy run today. I was tilted sideways for a lot of it and I thought that I was going to get blown off a bridge as I crossed the Ottawa in my interprovincial run today. Gray, sunny, today had everything but rain. Same route for the last 3 business days, with time of 39:12, 40:14 (I blame the hot weather and traffic lights), and 37:28 today. I'd love to shave off a couple of more minutes, but I don't know how realistic that is right now.

Ideally I would just figure out how to use my watch correctly and keep track of my splits so that I can monitor progress. That'll be my project for next weekend. ;-P

Need practice

I've been trying to make coffee and take it in to work instead of always buying it. Some times I am successful, others not. Today I made coffee so weak that it's almost like tea... I think that I'll have to use a measuring cup to put the water in or get a one cup coffee marker filter thingy... ah well. ;-P

Bad, bad, bad.

Gotta love what people write it in slashdot polls. ;-P

Flickr account for us

I signed up for a flickr account this morning. It's flickr.com/photos/jim_and_laura/. Now I'm going to upload all our photos at this point. I might make some "hidden" because the quality (lighting, whatever) sucks, but other than that I think that I am going to put everything up. I'm always afraid of loosing that data if my computer crashes or the "worse" happens and my backups die.

It'll be easy to label, tag, and share the photos. I looked briefly into just getting hosting but the amount of hd space that I'd need would cost me 10x as much a year.

I can't upload all my pictures this month 'cause I have a 2 Gb upload limit, so I'll have to do more of the older stuff next month. I am going to try and work from the most recent backwards. I'll blog about how I like the service as I go along but I'm going to be using it for the next 2 years. ;-)

Nasty vegetables

Nothing brings a happy moment to sudden stop quite like bitting into rotten food. In this case it was a carrot. Yuck.

9/11

It's been 4 years. Wars are still going on, terror acts are still going on. We'll see what happens in the next 4 years.

More space on the network

One of the ideas that I had by putting my linux box on the network was to provide hard drive space for media like pictures and music. I have not turned it on in like 6 months. :-( Ideally I would just put on something like the Linksys NSLU2, but if I put my external drive on it the thing would never power down. I'd rather have something that powers down when it's not being accessed. So I have been looking at things like a Buffalo LinkStation but they are pretty pricey. I'll keep my eye out for something good though.

Music on the cheap

One of my co-workers pointed out allofmp3.com which is a site where you can cheaply get music in any format that you want. Very cheaply. Like less than 2 USD for an album. And rare stuff too that is very hard to find. I'm pretty excited about it 'cause I found a band that I love called Space where I have found it really hard to get the music.

Even though it's a Russian site and all that usually brings to mind, it (from what I was told) has won court cases that say they are able offer this service and everything is legal. I don't think that I'll give them my credit card though, I'll probably use PayPal when I do download stuff.

Yay cheap music. ;-)

Bodies...

Has anyone else noticed that for all the reporters asking people who have been to New Orleans they always get to a certain part of the interview where it goes like this:

"So, have you know, uhh, seen any bodies? Lots of them? Floating around? Gross eh? Did you, you know, poke them with a stick? Gross eh?
Now on to Bob for the weather..."

Okay, we get it. Lots of people died. There are bodies around, lots of them. We get it Media, we really do. You're starting to disgust me, not with thinking about bodies, but with you.

Ah crap...

We just moved from having Rogers to another ISP. I was afraid that I would loose the Yahoo! Photos and all the photos we have there. Well, we half lost it. My favourite thing about it was that I was able to upload the full sized photos and be able to download the same later. It was a great off site storage / backup for all the shots that I didn't want to loose. But with just a straight Yahoo! account I can no longer download them again. Crappy.

I have to figure out another good place to keep my photos for long term storage. *sigh*

Scary...

After checking out a slashdot story I was really startled by what I read in that guys blog: "Crime is absolutely rampant: rapes, murders, rape-murder combinations." The looting was on the news.

The thing is I just don't get it, not at all. Are people really that messed up that a flood is all they need to revert to the lowest possible behaviour? I don't remember things like that when tsunami hit aisa. I don't remember any stories like that when the ice storm hit eastern ontario / western QC...

Is is just the Americans? Are they just freaking crazy? One person being interviewed on the news was saying how he didn't think that him looting was wrong, because if it was wrong the cops would be out shooting people for it. WTF???!!! Someone has to shoot you for you to figure out that something you are doing was wrong? Well, I guess people only make mistakes once then eh?

I am sure that there are "reasons" for how things have played out but it just blows my mind. I really hope that it's a few giving the whole situation a bad rap and there are tons of stories of selfless acts of kindness.

It's just that those don't make the news.

It's raining, it's pouring, ...

One of the things that I hate about days with this much rain is how frizzy it makes my hair. *sigh* It's just so not manageable!

hahaha....

Blogging from home again

The switch to a "new" ISP now done, I am again able to do all the important stuff like blog, plan a route to someone's house, order pizza, etc. again. It really gets me just how much we rely on having an internet connection all the time. I can deal with no tv or radio, but take away the net and I am lost. Simple things like ordering a pizza become a chore when you don't have the places phone number or know what they have. Weird. Less than 10 years to become totally and utterly dependant. Ah well. There are worse things I guess.

Ow ow ow...

The thing that sucks about stopping running is the pain you have to go through again when you start. All my hard earned foot callous' have disappeared. Now I am getting them back with blisters first. I hate feet blisters. :-(

@*(&$^@

I really wish that I hadn't taken such a big break from running. Ah well.

All quiet on the Jim front...

It's been a while since my last post. I am currently changing ISP's so I can't blog from home and I always feel bad about blogging from work even though I do it. (I'm waiting for the test suite to finish).

Not too much is new with me. I ran yesterday at lunch. I had not run at work for a long, long, long time. Probably almost a year. Scary. I didn't run today 'cause, well, I'm lazy. But I was able to see my running buddy that's off sick. That was good. ;-)

So much to say, so little time to say it in. *sigh*

Science is about asking questions

A slashdot story started my brain rolling about what is science exactly. There are many different explanations like the dictionary one or the wikipedia one, but what it means to me is asking questions. It's about not being happy with the answers if they don't match what you see. It's about not actually thinking that you have "figured it out", but for any science that we "know" accepting that as the best idea we have right now. It might change tomorrow.

Growing up I assumed what I read in textbooks in school was fact. Star Wars taught me that facts are only from a certain point of view: you change your view, the facts can change. I guess like in quantum mechanics the observer is very important. (don't assume that me linking to Q.M. means I understand it).

Getting back to the /. article, what's true: Creationism or Darwinian Evolution? Both have holes in them (one of the reasons for the argument), so I will hold that neither are true. I think that there is something we have not figured out yet that will make more sense than either of them. Maybe it's a mixture of the two. Assuming that there is a god, it would make more sense to me that he (she, whatever) would set up the rules for the physical universe rather than be involved in the life / death of each and every being in it. Maybe everything here is chance with no noble purpose and will come to a random end. Maybe each and every life has been planned from beginning to end.

In the end I don't think that it matters to me one way or another for day to day life. I'm still going to try and be a good*, happy* person. I'd prefer to think of it as being my responsibility for those rather than god's though. That way I won't sit on my ass and complain when they don't happen.

Carpe diem and all that. ;-)

* as defined by me

Things to do...

But I don't want to do anything right now. Ever feel like that? *sigh* Maybe this is a good time for a nap.

I don't want to watch tv (even though I found some more channels we get), I don't feel like watching a movie, I don't feel like going out, I don't feel like cleaning the apartment, I don't feel like doing more "setting up" more corporation stuff, I don't feel like playing nintendo. I just have to make sure that I don't eat all the cookies. So hard.

Purchase patterns

The other day I got a call from my credit card company. They thought that I had my card stolen (I guess) because a couple of purchases I did. I filled up on gas twice in the same day (driving from London), which isn't something that I normally do. I just think that it's interesting that 2 purchase tipped them off that something might be "up". They must have some kind of a learning algorithm for each and every customer. I wonder if it's similar tech to how my spam filter learns..

Before Laura and I went to Europe I made sure that I called my CC co. and bank to let them know that I might be making purchase from afar. Everything went smoothly. Maybe it's like the rock that protects me from tigers, or maybe it really made a difference, but I'll do the same thing next time I go away. ;-)

Architect needed for 1 month

One of the things that scare me (other than nuclear war and carnies) are people that want a senior software person for only like 30 days to "set things up" and then other people will take over. Yikes. What it says to me is that they do not have people who know how to do things by themselves.

Software is not paint by numbers or fill in the blank.

If the people you have working for you can't figure out it by themselves, you should get other people to do the job. No matter how smart or well laid out a projects framework is, it can go bad very quickly. It just sets of warning bells in my head that tell me to run away fast.

The other thing that bothers me is that people want and need to make money. They also want to make sure they make their lives as easy as possible for themselves. I want to make my own life easy, that's one of the reasons why I love TDD. If I was hired as a consultant for 30 days, I would probably like to be hired back for more work. Would I have a longterm investment in the project? Would I care about the quality of the project if I never have to see it again? Do I want teach the people I am handing off the project to everything there is to know so I am not needed anymore? Maybe, maybe not. So when you're hiring someone you are also trusting that they have your best interests at heart.

The whole idea of a developer swooping in, pointing everyone in the correct direction (which they follow to the bitter end) and swooping out sounds something like a super hero to me. It just sounds like fiction bound for disaster. Maybe I'm wrong, but at this point I don't think so.

How scary are they going to get?

I just can't believe that they are going to track all visitors to the US. Wow. Scary. Do I now want to take a trip to Boston or NY? No thanks. Please only treat me like a criminal if I become one.

I remember in Hunt for Red October they were talking about the US as someplace where you were free to move around, where you could go from place to place "without papers". The USA is getting scarier all the time moving into a society that seems to be based on fear.

They keep on adding value...

Check out the "hybrid" choice for google maps. No longer with just satellite and "maps"... so freaking cool. On a related note, when you are zoomed out and can see most of north america, move the map around with the mouse and watch the scale change as you go North... nice. I wonder what they use to figure out the scale, the middle of the map?

Wow

I can't help thinking of the following quote when I read stories like this one.

"They that give up liberty for security deserve neither" - Benjamin Franklin

I found one of the comments in the slashdot story interesting.

I was on a Star Wars set!

Well, I wasn't really on a Star Wars set, but when I was watching Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones tonight I actually recognized one of the locations as some place that Laura and I have been to. It's the scene where Anakin returns to Naboo with PadmÈ called, well, "return to Naboo". It's a place in Sevilla, Spain called Placa Espana. google map, my pics 1, 2, 3. Really cool. ;-)

What's up...

I guess that no one knows what I have been up to lately since I really have not been communicating. My bad.

So, Laura and I went to Europe for a month. I've been meaning to blog about it more but I've been busy since we have gotten back. More on that later. There are pics up that you can look at if you want here and here. Take a look at them now 'since I think that I may loose our yahoo! account.

When we got back we both got sick. That wasn't fun. But at least it didn't happen while we were away. It's much nicer to be sick in your own home than in a foreign country where you don't speak the language.

We got back on a Sunday, I took Monday off, and then started my new job on the Tuesday. It's more of a transfer within the same department doing the same sort of things. I'm still doing J2EE, but using a slightly different tool set. Bottom line: I'm having fun and working way too much.

Laura was offered a job (elective? studentship? whatever) working with kids. A really good opportunity. But it's in London which means I miss her and am trying to keep the apartment clean (unsuccessfully so far). So between weddings, family get-togethers, birthdays (Happy B-day VR!!) it looks like it's going to be a busy time.

So, over all I've been neglecting my friends and family and I apologize. I'll try and do better, please be patient. ;-)

Oh ya, welcome to my 501st post on this blog. Yay me.

Simple math

I heard people say that a test suite isn't really useful unless you have 100's of tests. First off I don't agree with that, I believe that it is useful with the very first test, but that's getting off track.

Let's do some math. Let's take a low-ish number of tests that someone could make in a day, let's say 10. 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, that's 200 tests / month per person! So if you are coding very slowly, by yourself you'll have a suite that is "worth it" just after 4 weeks. If you are in a team of 2, that you hit that point after 2 weeks. In a team of 4 people, if you go a week coding without writing tests, you have long passed that moment.

Why do people still not use test driven development? I honestly don't know. I guess they just are not test infected. *sigh*

What do you say?

We were at a wedding recently that they didn't do the "normal" clinking of the glasses thing to make the bride and groom kiss. You had to come up with a limerick to get them to kiss. One guest (relative) came up with one that ended with something like "we're glad that this marriage isn't gay" (rhymed with "USA" which is where they were from). Maybe it wasn't intended to come out as gay bashing, but that's how it seemed to us. We were tempted to answer that with our limerick but it would have been too confrontational and a distraction from the whole reason for being there. So I've decided to blog the limerick that we didn't feel we could say there (which was too bad).

We're Canadian, Eh?

And we think that gay is okay

So get with the now,

'cause acceptance is how

to stop hurting people this way

Managing my pics

Now that we're back from Europe I want to start putting notes with the pictures that I have taken and put together album(s). I used JAlbum before and was impressed with it, but it has drawbacks.

1) if I am going to go through the trouble of adding descriptions to the images, I want that info stored with the file itself as metadata and not in some properties file.
2) Pictures that I take all have the date / time that they were taken encoded with them already. I don't want to have to organize things myself manually. I want it to build pages blog style with the pictures sorted by date / time divided up by days with a calender between them. What I think would be great if you could say "create new album between this date and that date, use only files with location of Paris" and it would make that album using the descriptions you already labelled the files with...

So far with my research I can't seem to find any tool that will help me out yet. I maybe able to make a skin for JAlbum that will serve my purposes though...

First off I need an easy (and free if possible) way of tagging all my info. So far what I have read is to use Adobe Photoshop Album but I don't really feel like shelling out 70-120 $ at this time. I thought that maybe WinXP would have something built in but this is not so since they tell you to make an elaborate folder structure to organize things. *sigh* It always seems to come down that the hard problems for people now are managing large collections of digital media.

Any suggestions?

Update:
I found some after searching for "photo management". Article
Picasa
Flickr

What worked for us

Now that we are back from Europe I'll be blogging about where we went to, what we did, what worked / didn't work for us, and what we really found interesting. I'll do a breakdown of the cities later on one by one as I have time.

First off, if you are travelling across timezones I would plan your first day in detail as much as you can and then some. I wish that we had more detail for our first day, but I don't think that would have been possible. Go over where you will arrive in the city, where you will be going, how you are going to get there, what passes you will have to buy, etc. We asked the info people what we should buy and they didn't really layout the most cost effective option for us. Lesson learned. However, we did try our best and wrote down as much info as we could from home, but it didn't really mean much to us while we were here.

Second, if you are planning to "choose your own vacation" like we did I would get a really good book in the Lonely Planet line. We had the Mediterranean Europe one and it was really worth the cash we paid for it. It gives a quick break down of cities and has places to stay, things to do, places to eat / drink. It was just awesome.

At the start of the trip we thought that the maps and the phrases that were included in the book were enough. They were not. We wished that we had more phases at our disposal, especially restaurant phrases and translations.

Maps were easy enough to come by. When you come into a city / town there is usually a tourist office in the train station or whatever which provide excellent (usually) maps. The tourist info offices usually provide great, up to date info about where to stay in a price range, where to do laundry, etc. But beware: one thing that burned us several times is that if someone doesn't know the answer they may just point you in a (random) direction and then you are someone else's problem. If you feel they are sketchy on the details, they may not know.

Maps are great. But not all streets are equal even though they look the same on the map. In some places like Spain or Portugal "streets" can be a stair well or a small dark alley piled with garbage. In Canada there are street signs at least on one corner (by the curb) with what the streets are. In Europe they have them labelled on the buildings. If you are on the other side of the street it is very hard to see the signs if they are not hidden by a tree, awning, painted over, faded out, etc, or there at all. Some times the street will change it's name (without a label) for 20 feet of the street. It can be very hard to find things in older sections. Tourist maps also don't have sections labelled as "sketchy area, don't go here" on them either. If you start to walk into an area you don't feel good about, turn around and find another way. Pretty simple.

Okay, that's it for this one. ;-)

Back in town

Well, it's been a great four weeks but I am back in Ottawa again. Jet lagged... I'm taking today off before I start my new job tomorrow. I'll be getting my pictures in order and making some kind of photo album if I can't find one.

I sort of want the album to build itself using the metadata for comments, organizing by date taken etc. We'll see what I can do / find.

Anyways, I am going for a nap... oie.

Two Years

Wow, I can't believe that it's been 2 years already. Time flies along when you're not paying close enough attention. It's been a great 2 years though. I would not have thought that I would be here at all... it's strange how things work out some times. Awesome.

Happy Anniversary! :-D

Moving on

Well, today was my last day at a job that I have had for almost a year and a half (I'm transferring to a different but similar position). I'm a little sad and a little happy at the same time. The product that I am leaving I was involved from (almost) day one doing the coding, env. setup, user requirements, testing, testing, load testing, testing, feature development, testing, beta testing, user testing, release, bug fixing, bug tracking, testing, ... I could go on but I won't. :-P

I feel like it's my "baby" and I've seen it grow up till the first big release and be used on a daily basis as people's main tool. And that's big. It was time to move on though because even though we had a great relationship with our users and everyone, it felt like it was the "right time". I needed new challenges.

It still blows my mind how much I have learned in the last 17 months. It was a wonderful experience that I don't think that many people would ever get straight out of school. It's time to round out my skill set a bit more and find and overcome new challenges. I'm excited. ;-)

It has been done

As it was written, it is now done. Ah, the joys of owning your own hair cutting tools... ;-P

Funny money

I've been around coloured money for a while, but I was surprised by the Euro. Not that it's different colours or has a holographic strip, but that the bills are actually different sizes. Strange. The bigger the bill, the bigger the denomination. Not that I have seen a large sample to based that hypothesis on. I guess that's a good system for seeing impaired people. I just thought that was pretty cool.

*Shudder*

One of the fuggly-est sites that I have seen in a loooonnng time. Looks like something from '92... yikes.

Star Wars - RotS

The other day I went and saw Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith while waiting for crappy tire to switch a wheel for me (I couldn't get it off myself). Overall, a pretty good movie. Lots of action, lots of lightsabers, lots of great special effects. The thing that I liked best about it? How it tied everything together. Now it makes sense how and why Anakin fell from grace. The whole story line feels so complete now, it's great.

What didn't I like? Well, there were many times were it didn't flow as well as it should of. I kept on thinking "oh, they cut out another scene there". Hopefully when it comes out on dvd they will all the scenes that they cut out and it'll be a smoother film.

Another wonderful thing? Jar-Jar didn't speak. ;-)

Maintenance starts Day Zero

Something came to me the other day when thinking about software development. Developers usually want to work on "new development" rather than "maintenance". Maintenance is usually thought of as dealing with someone else's shit. But what is maintenance really? Isn't it just fixing bugs, adding features, making it run faster? What's new development? Isn't it just fixing bugs, adding features and making it run faster from the previous iteration? So what's the difference? I don't see any. I think that the difference is just perception of the problem.

It's a perception of new development that you can hack it till it works, toss it over the fence to someone else to maintain it and fix it. How do we fix that? Maintenance starts on Day Zero. You expect that at any time you are going to pass it along to someone else to maintain it, or you will be "stuck" with doing it yourself. That's one of the benefits of writing tests, specifically unit tests: you are always in "maintenance mode". If we can get rid of the idea of being able to hack and have someone else being responsible for it later; if everyone takes a long term view of software; I think that software over all would be in a lot better place than it has been in the past.

It's all coming off baby! Yay!

I have figured out what I am going to do with my beard while in Europe. Shave it off. You got that right. I've had the face fuzz for almost (or more???) than a year now. When I actually do it, I'll take a before and after shot and post it just for the fun of it. ;-)

New Nintendo

One of the things that I love about the old console games is just how much fun they are. What I would love if I got a new console would be to play all the old games that I love so much. Well, it looks like if I am in the market for a new console I'll be able to play those games with the Nintendo Revolution. Nice. ;-) I can't wait to be playing Dr. Mario on a console with 512 Mb of memory on a HD TV, neither of which I now have. One day it will be mine, oh yes... ;-P

Funny

Funny thing seen today on the walk to work:
A seeing eye dog with a sign on it that read "Do not pet me while I'm working". I guess every one has to keep a professional image. ;-)

Howdy partner!

How do you describe someone that you are living with? It's more than a girlfriend / boyfriend, but not a formal marriage. The term that I have heard used lately is partner. I've even heard someone refer to his wife as "my partner". Know what? I really like that term. I think that it's a good umbrella phrase for many different types of relationships while still being descriptive.

Yikes...

I guess even google can mess up, even with the best intentions.

Double click hell

Moving people into the "web world" from being used to a fat client can be "interesting". I don't think that paradigm shifts are ever easy. When you're on one side it's hard to see from outside. Most people that I know who use web applications only click links and buttons once. Some fat clients *cough* Notes *cough* require you to double click for just about everything. Trying to get people who are so used to double clicking to just click once can be hard. So hard.

Where this can prove problems if you have something like "delete record 55". If you are using IE for your browser, it can submit that to the server twice and if you don't guard against this your app will blow up, espically when it makes sense to for it to be an error. Stupid IE. Better browsers don't submit to the server until the page has finished reloading.

The hard part about this sort of thing is when you are testing and debugging your app, you might not even consider double clicking on links. I know I didn't. It's just not something that I would do. But it's going to be one of the first things that I try when getting a weird bug report. You can use something like a Synchronizer Token too... if I have any advice for any kind of workflow app, I'd use those everywhere. *sigh* Just venting...

05-05-05

I just noticed that today's date is 05-05-05...
[END random thought]

Textpad rocks

Long ago I gave up using Notepad for editing plain text. Pete showed me the wonderful tool TextPad which I've used ever since for non-heavy editing. It's fast, it's easy to add colour highlighting, it's just a great tool. Today makes me happy about it because I just found another very useful feature.

I've been going through apache server logs to trace the path of users. The log files have all the ip addresses mixed throughout in chronological order. However I want to look for one person (ip address) and see their path through that. I was using grep among other things to "process" the logs. However that's not needed if you just want to sort! If you hit F9 it comes up with a dialog where you can give prams to sort by (for us it was IP address then date). Zip! It was done. Very fast. Ahh... I love it when the tools I love give me more reason to like them. :-D

Trust No One (including yourself)

No matter how good people are, everyone makes mistakes when working on a software app. Software usually fails on assumptions like with Y2K. SO, if you have assumptions in the programs you write, you should have tests that verify that those assumptions are true. If you are installing on a different env. you should have tests to verify that the env. is good: that you can connect to your database, that any dependencies hold true. It's not because of distrust of others that you should write tests like that. It's always about identifying the problem and addressing it "yesterday". It's not a blame game, it's taking responsibility.

Now, as anyone can guess this is about me today (isn't it always?). I wish that I had built some tests better to identity all my assumptions. I have a lot, but today that wasn't enough. Lesson learned.

XXPP

Aleks sent this to me and I couldn't resist posting it. Do you like XP programming? Like pair programming? Then this chair is for you. Nice. I just hope you don't have to sit with someone who weighs too much more than you! hahahaha....

Ugg...

I feel crappy, but not crappy enough to stay home / go to the doctor. Just generally icky and not able to focus. I hate things like this where I feel hot and cold at the same time. To top it all off my sunburn from last week is peeling. Note: don't wear a black shirt when your skin is peeling off, it makes you look like you have really nasty dandruff. :-(

Figured it out

I've figured it out: I've got a drinking problem. No, it's not alcohol. It's whatever is close to me when I am stressed. That's why I drank so much coke when I was in school. I've been trying to get away from coke and not drink too much coffee. My new weapon of choice: water. This morning in like a 3 hour span I drank a coffee and over 2 (or 2.5?) L of water. I'm swimming. I just have to make sure that wherever I sit when I am working hard I am closer to water than I am to coke. ;-)

Some days...

Some days I don't think that I need a coffee. I'm secure enough to admit that I am wrong on those days. :-P

Going to be far, far away...

Summer is getting closer and that's making me excited. Not because it's going to be warm and beautiful here, but because this summer Laura and I are going for a trip. We're going to France, Spain and Portugal. I'm really excited because this is the first time that I am really leaving this timezone. That's one of the main reasons why I bought a digital camera before Christmas this year. I think that it'll be the longest vacation that I will have taken since I was 14... I'm very excited and figured that it was time to start telling more people. ;-)

QotD - April 13, 2005

Stolen from /. of course:

Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad.
-- Christina Rossetti

Training day

There are many different ways to measure software to give you an idea of the quality of it. Even though many of these metrics provide hard numbers, the answer is still soft. You can't perfectly compare one app's stats against anothers. e.g. App A has 80% code coverage, App B has 79%, so App A is better quality than App B => wrong.

One of the my fav. indicators of usability of software is how many "training issues" an app has. That's a way to describe the gaps between how the average user thinks the software should work the first time through and how it actually works.

Assume a user base of 100. The first time an issue comes up you document it (of course) and let them know what the work around (proper use) is. The second second or third time you put it in an FAQ. If it happens 4 or 5 times it's time to think about a redesign because it's just not working. For any application, if 5% people reported having problems will a part of the app, that's a great indication that you designed that part wrong.

Training like other things (manually testing) isn't something that you want to do because it's one of the more expensive parts of software. It's always a great idea to figure out how to spend less time and effort of these areas. That's why there is automated testing. And that's why you do usabilty testing / beta testing to figure out where these "training issues" are and reduce them before you move to a larger audience.

It's all about the test / feedback loop.

Fingerprint? I'll find somewhere else thank you.

It appears that if you are not from Canada and trying to get into the USA you will have to submit to being fingerprinted. Now I have nothing to hide, but I don't think that if I was from a different country I would go to the US if I could go somewhere else. Would you go to a country in Europe if they "demand[ed] a fingerprint from all [non-Canadian] foreign visitors"? Crazy. I wonder how long before foreign visitors are submitted to an interview with help.

Interesting

Really interesting comment on /. today about comparing programming languages. Usually people don't write so well or clearly on slashdot.

School award for me. Huh?

Today my parents and I received separate letters inviting us to an awards ceremony at school. Okay, I was never a great student but (I think) that I wasn't that bad either. The weird thing is that I have not been registered there since Dec. 2003. I think that my diploma says that I am "class of 2004", but I never took anything there in that year. Did they some how screw something up that there is over a year of delay between me last being there and getting an award? My guess is that it's a mistake, but I'll call tomorrow and figure out what it's about.

Update: I called and I got on the "dean's list" or something like that. If you get 8.0+ for 2003-2004 then you should have received the letter. I think that I just squeaked an eight by rounding, but that's alright by me.

The good, the bad, and the inconsequential

They replaced our toilet and shower head and added a "window restrictor" like I mentioned before. If you can guess from the title there are some high points and some low. We got a toilet like Ryan had mentioned where it's got a high pressure plastic tank and goes "boouh" every time it flushes. It sort of sounds like a far away sonic boom. From now on I think that I will refer to it as the poo canon vortex.

The bad thing is the shower head. I'm all for being good to the env., but I still have to get clean. I went for a shower last night and after 20 minutes of frustration I left the shower slightly damp. It wasn't a pleasant experience. I am going to get a new one and swap it out asap to something that I can actually clean myself with. *grumble*

The other thing that they installed was a "window restrictor" was was a little piece of metal screwed on with an allen key so that you can open the window 4 inches. Now in the summer I want to open the window all the way so I took it off. I'll replace it before we move out. I couldn't understand why they would put those on windows "not over the balcony". I thought that it was to prevent people from jumping which is dumb because they can just go out to the balcony. My mom suggested that it's probably to prevent kids from falling out by accident (which makes sense).

Now off to waffles and shower head shopping.

40 users != the same user 40 times

If you are going to do load testing it doesn't make any sense to generate a load that doesn't follow actual use. It's dumb and it'll point you in the wrong direction. Garbage in, garbage out.

We ran into that when doing some load testing with jmeter. At first we didn't know how to make our thread group use different logins so we just hard coded one login and created a bunch of threads. Not how the app will be used and performance was less than happy for me. Acceptable but not happy.

So today and yesterday I figured out 2 different ways (other than one suggested to me by Peter) to simulate different logins. The first was to add a user defined variables, add two rows (login / password) and just create more columns of users. This was okay for about 2-15 users, but as you create more the columns keep on shrinking and it's really ugly (bug). The second was to get CSVRead working (which was a bi%ch) and just have a file with user names and passwords. Much nicer and cleaner. ;-)

Aside: if anyone is having troubles with JMeter __CSVRead function, to get it working for me I had to take out the spaces between the function arguments (after the commas). *sigh*

Now with a more realistic load our app is handling a much better load and we are able to take a look at the real places in our app that are bottlenecks.

Next steps are to model different realistic situations so there are no surprises.

It's about knowing the tools

One of the things that is becoming more apparent to me all the time is how important it is to know the tools that are out there and how to use them. Just about everything that I have to do someone else has had to do before and has built a tool to help them out with it.

Right now I am learning how to use JMeter. Everything that I want to do with it (so far) has been done before, I just have to figure out how to use it. One thing about it though, it's definitely a developer made for developers (god, I hate swing).

The same is true for the other tools that I use. The trick is figuring out how to use them. That's the first trick. The second one is knowing what other tools are out there. The third trick is knowing when to use what tool. Now I'm not saying that I know all the answers, but I am definitely trying to figure it out as fast as possible.

Nice house in Carp

If anyone is looking for a house in Carp, I hear that there is a nice one for sale now. Tell all your friends. ;-)

Go Firefox go!

It looks like people are continuing to switch to Firefox. Which I love because there isn't many days that I don't curse IE. Mostly lately I've been cursing IE because it allows multiple form submissions while Firefox seems to guard against this on the client side. Nice.

I never knew you could do that with js

I found a site about javascript that had some cool things that I didn't know you could do. I always assumed that you had to do js "The separated way", I never knew that you could beyond that. Neat.

It's hard to turn your brain off...

One of the things that I find hardest to do is to turn off my brain when I get home. I keep on thinking about the problems that I have been dealing with at work. I do research at home. As I am trying to fall asleep, I keep on thinking on how I can change the code to fix open bugs, how to track bugs better, how to improve the build process, what ways our users could break the app by weird work flows and guard for that...

Ahhhggghh!

Maybe if I had a boring job I would be able to leave work at work, but I like what I am doing. *sigh* Ah well. I'm going to go back to bed and see if I can fall asleep this time. :-|

Wow

While watching The Hour (great show) they showed a commercial that they won't show in 47 (?) US states. It's by a group that wants to stop landmines world wide. Watch it.

I just think that people in developed nations have no clue what it would be like to live in a place like that. I have no idea. Still, I don't understand how anyone can support landmines.

Ewww...

Today I found out something gross. The worlds most expensive coffee is recycled through a cat. Nasty. Worse than coffee beans puked up by wild weasels. *sigh* I guess people will eat / buy just about anything.

Update: I changed the links so they default to English. My bad.

Why bother?

I often wonder about people when reading a how to and they set a env variable, and then the next step they do something but don't use the var!!! What's the point? *sigh* Here's what I am talking about:

==> set MAVEN_HOME Env variable:
[MAVEN_HOME=C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Maven 1.0.2]

==> Add Maven bin directory to path:
[Path=C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Maven 1.0.2\bin;]

Blogs are bad?

There is an interesting story on slashdot about how blogs are so much worse than libraries. Well, wouldn't any non-professional thing not "stack up" to something that people with professional training do? This blog isn't ever meant to be anything more than a brain dump and let people who know me what's going on in my life. If you read anything here and think that I am full of shit, well then you're probably right. But like anything, this is just a personal view to be taken with a grain (chunk?) of salt.

I have to link to one funny comment about the story. Most of the time people tear each other apart on slashdot, but people still do leave insightful messages.

Load testing

One of the things that I am working on is load testing. My hope for it is that we can figure out what the breaking point of our app is. I don't care if it's in or out of spec that it breaks, as long as I can figure out at what point it melts down. Mind you, it'll be wonderful it is melts down way out of spec (melts down with 1000 users, we say we support 100 kind of thing).

I guess it comes from my time testing software. I just enjoy breaking it, even if it's my own. ;-)

The Wailin' Jennys with special guest ZoÎ Lewis

Laura and I went to a folk festival last night with some friends that invited us along. Ya, you did read that right. It was good. I really enjoyed the opening act of ZoÎ Lewis. She was super high energy and lots of fun. I ended up buying her album Small is Tremendous which is pretty good, if a little short at 11 songs.

The featured act was The Wailin' Jennys. They were very good, sounded great and well polished, but I found them too "folksy". Not really my style of music. Ah well. But what a great sound. My favourite part of their act was the last song where they shut off the mikes, got off stage and just sang together. That was awesome. I'll look around and see if I can find a copy / words for the song. I think that I did on this page under the "Good-Bye, Good Luck, God Bless You" section (but the music file they linked to sounds nothing like what I heard last night). I'll keep looking. ;-)

Power consumption

After a surprisingly high power bill for the last 2 months, I am looking into where all the power went. One thing that I have done differently the last month was leave my linux box on all the time. Since the bill came in today I want to figure out how much a desktop computer costs to keep running all the time.

I found a site with some power consumption numbers that I decided to use. I looked at other sites and they had similar numbers.

So I did some calculations. I wanted to figure out how much cost per month, so I figured how many hours are in 30 days (720). The cost on the bill is 0.047 $ / kWh. I multiplied those to get the cost per kW in a month to get 33.84 $ / kW*month.

Then I get these numbers:

style="text-align: left; width: 100%;">







style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">low


style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">avg


style="vertical-align: top; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">high

	colspan="3">Power consumption in kW
desktop	0.03	0.07	0.15
CRT monitor	0.07	0.09	0.12
total	0.1	0.16	0.27
cost per month	3.384	5.4144	9.1368

This doesn't explain the large bill... so I'm going to run an experiment and not have the box on all the time and see what the bill is. I really want to isolate what device is using all the power...

Another shuffle

Is it just me or does the government spend a lot of time just shuffling around jobs?

Home Buyers' Plan

The Home Buyers' Plan helps you out if you are buying a home for the first time. You can take money out of your RRSP (tax shelter) and then repay it over the next 15 years. Interesting. Just one thing, when did I get so old that I'm interested in things like tax shelters, RRSP's, and buying a home? *sigh*

Better way to get properties

If you are using properties in a java app, you might want to check out this article about loading properties "smartly". Struts does it, but I didn't clue in that it was build in to Java to do easily.

Pass phrases?

After finally finishing an article about how you should ditch passwords for passphrases (from a /. story of course) I have a couple of questions. The first of which being: If people don't type too much, how are they going to enter in a 42 character phrase (getting case and specal chars correct) if all they are seeing is stars?? **** And then what happens on the 5th incorrect login? You get locked out? Nice.

Damn, I choose NTFS

When I got my external drive I formatted it as NTFS. Little did I know that NTFS doesn't play very well with linux. There are tools that will help you to read from the drive, but they tell you not to write to the drive. Damn. I guess it's not as portable as I thought.

I guess I can either move everything off the drive and re-format it or I just do any reading / writing through a windows box. It'll probably be better to use it as a backup drive anyways. Ah well. Now I guess the next steps would be to get a new (big) drive for my linux box. I also want to get a new (non-super-crappy) monitor, but those things can wait. We'll see.

Stupid easy dinner: Lentils And Spinach

Tonight I made something that was very yummy and (best of all) stupid easy to make. With the things I have in the kitchen, I googled for a recipe and got Lentils And Spinach. Tasty! Of course I didn't stick to the recipe too closely, so I added a whole bunch of curry and chilly powder as well as other spices. I served it on a bed of rice and Laura suggested some cottage cheese which really added to it. I should have taken a picture of it for a food photo diary but it wasn't really the prettiest dish. Mmmm...

Low flow

They have posted a notice up in my apartment that next month they are going to replace all of the toilets, shower heads etc. in the building to "low flow" efficient models. First off, that really surprised me but it must be cost efficient to do that in the long run. Second, I am not looking forward to having to flush at least twice all the time. That's my experience at work.

After doing a quick search, it looks like old toilets used about 3.5 G vs the new ones that use 1.6 G (or less). At work they are 1 G (4 point something L) per flush. If on average you have to flush twice, then they are still saving water. *sigh*

I just wish that there were able to design and build toilets that flushed right the first time. I keep on imagining the engineering team and how they all this fake poop at their disposal and adding it to their "test toilets" in pipping bags like you ice a cake with. I wonder if they have a computer simulations too? Maybe this is like the early automotive industry and soon we will have better toilets like the ones in japan. Who knows. One thing that I do know is that this isn't a new issue and people who really care like Dave Barry have been "lifting the lid" on this issue for a while now.

I'll post again when the new fixtures have been installed and after some "field testing" to see if they suck, or more importantly flush.

Funny

A quote from a slashdot story that I just had to share:
"The UK is known for many things, great food, a wonderful climate and beautiful women." Well, clearly...

NL or NF (or NFL? hahaha...)

One thing that I have come across today is the fact the the ISO code for Newfoundland and Labrador has changed from NF to the more politically correct NL. Why iso codes have to be politically correct is dumb to me, but must be important to someone else. This problem has bitten me today and I'm still stinging... *sigh* Who knew ISO codes changed much?

Adventures with class loaders

One problem that we have been discussing around work I wanted to share with everyone else at of a point of interest.

Lets make an example: you are a group that is hosting lots of J2EE applications. Some you have control over the source, some you don't. A lot of these apps will use common jars like log4j.

There are two things that you can do now:
1) put all the jars in a common location on the server
2) have each app including the required jars they need

Both setups have advantages and disadvantages. If you go with #1 then you have a common place for jars but you run into headaches when App A needs log4j version 1 and App B needs log4j version 2. This also means that you have to make sure that the server setups are exactly the same or apps will blow up if you move them from one server to another. The applications are no longer as atomic. And every time you want to change a shared jar, you have to do a full regression on all the apps that use it. And then you may not find the bugs at all until a weird case comes to the surface.

So you go with option #2 and have each app include what they need. Things are good, the sky is blue, the birds are singing, the applications depend less on the server setup and don't conflict. Now, of course there is a hitch: static classes.

Both App A and App B use log4j. App A uses an old version that has a org.apache.log4j.Constants class that has 2 static members in it. App B uses a version with 3 static members in it. You test both apps on developer workstations and everything is great. You load them to the server where they are both in the same JVM and everything is melts down.

With the class loader it checks if a static class is already loaded. If it is, then it doesn't bother to load them again. This means you are stuck with whatever version gets loaded first. Both versions may be incompatible with each other. The applications are no longer so atomic.

What's the solution to this? I don't really know what you could do other than putting the apps into different JVM's, but I'm still thinking about it. ;-)

Note: I don't know if there is a log4j constants class like that... I was just making one up.

One of those weeks

This has been one of those weeks that it feels like I am trying to push water up a hill... *sigh* At least it's the end of the week. Sometimes it helps to read something funny.

Stuts 1.3 and EJB 3.0

If anyone is doing struts stuff out there, here's an interesting read about 1.3 and the "Chain of Command" and another thread about the new EJB 3.0 spec.

Family Doctors

The following is part of an email that was sent to me:

There are currently 1.2 million people in Ontario without a family doctor.
Patients are waiting forever for appointments to see specialist and for
diagnostic test. Canada's diagnostic equipment is so old, that some is
similar to that used in 3rd world countries.

The Ontario Medical Association is trying to bring attention to this matter.
We have set up a website www.supportourdocs.ca

On this website you will find information about the current problems and
also have the ability to send a letter to your local MPP, the Minister of
Health and Mr. McGuinty. You do not even need to write the letter. If you
click on the area and fill out your name, address, postal code and email
address and hit submit, a pre-written letter will pop up and you can send
it. If you do not know your MPP, you can find it out on the site as well.

It is easy. It is simple and it will help. We need to make the politicians
accountable.

Please help by doing this and by forwarding this email or one in your own
words if you prefer, to all appropriate persons in your address book.

Ontario's doctors are trying hard to look after you with limited resources
but it is getting harder all the time. We need your help.

Map Quest is dead

One of my stand-by's for the longest time had been MapQuest but it looks like it's time has come with Google Maps. Such a slick interface, no long refreshes... sweet. I just wonder how it handles on dial up...

Just more evidence of Google doing better than anyone else out there in whatever they try. I guess there is a reason why they only hire the smartest people.

Valentine's Day Poetry

For all the computer nerds, I think that I have found a fitting t-shirt gift for your SO. Ahh, the stupidity...

Update: For those that need some background info

What would your title be?

One of the things that you can have control of when working in a small team is your own title. Now, since I am on the bottom of the heap and no one reports to me I can't take any title that I have too seriously. So after getting a new member to our team and giving her the title of Project Alchemist, it was decided that we should all have fun titles. It was suggested that I can be Development Grand Poobah which I really like.

What title would you choose for yourself?

Super Bowl Commercials

For those who only care about the super bowl for the commercials, they are on the net like all good things. ;-)

The Long Tail

This is something that a co-worker pointed out to me: The Long Tail. It's about online sellers (no, not me) and how the market is changing. I'm not going to explain it more, I'll let you read it. ;-)

Auschwitz Orchestra

A few days ago now Laura and I watched a special on cbc (?) called HOLOCAUST - A Music Memorial Film from Auschwitz. It was touching, well put together and just an amazing special. One of the things that I never knew before was how they had a Auschwitz Orchestra made of inmates. People who were made to play for other's amusement; to make an appearance that things were "okay" at the camp... every time I learn something more about Auschwitz I feel ill and am scared by how cruel and evil people can be to each other. It's frightening.

And what is one of the only ways to make sure that it doesn't happen again? To remember that it has happened. To watch for the signs that it is happening or could happen again if we continue down the path we are on. I guess the only way to keep track of the potential evil inside us is to keep it in front of us where we can see it and not to push is away "out of sight, out of mind".

Funny

If you are somewhere you have sound and probably not at work 'cause you'll be laughing, check out when Richard Simmons showed up to Who's Line Is It Anyways. Too funny... (click on the "watch movie button"). Very funny...

On a totally unrelated note, the word of the day is boondoggle.

JAlbum

Now I have a digital camera I would like to put the images somewhere people can see them (family really). Ideally I would like to be able to upload them remotely to my computer, have it create thumbnails / gallery etc. by itself. I was going to play around with jpg metadata and maybe make a plug-in for Durham, but I'm pretty lazy (which can always be a problem). Then I did some searching and found a library for metadata extraction in java for digital pictures. Still too much work. They linked to something that looks really promising: JAlbum. It seems like it's a nice tool for the desktop and "it's a JavaBean" so I can put it in JBoss. ;-) Sometimes you just can't beat a little laziness...

Coverage tools (again)

A roving reader pointed out djUnit for doing testing and coverage at the same time in Eclipse. I tried it out at work for a couple of minutes on WSAD 5.1.2 but it didn't show any lines in the file. I suspect that it doesn't play nicely with WSAD (right now) since IBM has their own everything doing stuff. You couldn't even change what java version (to 1.4) the test server used without upgrading.

I'll play around with it later "when I have time". Before that I'm going to get JBoss running at home and play around with stuff by myself. It's all time though... there's about 1000 things that I want to do, but I think that I have time for only 2.5. *sigh* Ah well. I'll probably look back at myself in 10 years and wonder why I didn't do more with all my free time.

Chimeras

After reading a story about how far science is advancing and what all sorts of *wonderful* things that they are able to do to animals like mice, I couldn't help but think of The Secret of NIMH. How soon before things that are created in a lab, whether animals, bacteria / viruses, machines or something else, take over the world. I don't think that I'd want to be around for that.

Sure thing

Pretty soon I will have to deal with one of the things that is sure in this life: taxes. Before living at home my dad has always done it since he just bought sw and would plug in the numbers. Now I think that since I am a "owner of a business" I should be more involved. It would be a good idea anyways to keep a closer track of my money so I can kick myself in the ass if I am wasting it on anything.

But the thing is, I don't really want to deal with taxes. I guess that's me and just everyone else alive. Ah well. I'll probably pick up some sw soon so I can deal with this because it's more complicated than before. :-|

Stupid people

Why do some people treat work differently than home in the bathroom / cleanliness area? Why is it "okay" to make a gross mess at work and not clean it up? &@*%@*! People who make messes at work that they wouldn't make at home (or would clean it up if they did!) should be stuffed into a sack, dragged out back and beaten with a stick for a while. Or they can just do "bathroom duty" by cleaning up messes for a while. Grrr.... I just don't understand people sometimes...

Hotmail went bye-bye

Dammit. I didn't check my hotmail account enough and it was killed. I had to recreate it again, but I lost all my mail in it. I used to check it all the time with Outlook Express, but since I switched to Outlook, the version that I have can't check hotmail. *sigh* I just have to check it more I guess... blah. I hate checking things manually. That reminds me, I should check my uottawa alumni account so it doesn't go dead too... Oie.

Constant time test suite

One strange thing that I have come across lately is that our test suite at work seems to be running constant time. I have more than doubled the number of tests in our suite since I last wrote about it (I think) and it takes about the same amount of time. Humm... I've got a bottle neck somewhere. But it's a weird thing none the less. I just thought that it was funny: double the amount of work, and it still does it in the same amount of time -> it can do infinite amount of work in the same amount of time. Hummm, well maybe not.

Not funny

It's not funny to have a fire drill on one of the colder days of the year. But at least I could get my coat (unlike some people) and get over to TH. ;-)

Interesting

After following a story from slashdot and the article it linked to, I was interested by the third last paragraph:

However seductive the present might be, writing for the Web is writing for the ages, not just for the moment. (People who post stream-of-consciousness entries in their weblogs, for example, might want to consider that they're also writing for managers who might hire them in twenty years.)

Humm... interesting and scary at the same time. I don't think that I will change my "style" (i.e. brain dump), but it's something to ponder none the less.

Materials the new wave?

After reading articles about how they found a new plastic that is able to convert more solar energy to power (from slashdot of course) I keep on thinking that the "next wave" will be materials. By the time we die the clothes that we wear will be very different than the ones that we had when we were born. We already have clothes that are coffee resistant due to being treated on the nano level. In fact I am wearing some right now.

When will your whole outfit be a network? Pretty soon at this rate, and it'll be charged when you are in light, and cleaned with just water. They'll probably put RF tags in your socks so that you can find that missing left one. You're glasses will "paint" on your eye your daily plan and you'll interact with your "personal agent" just by thinking about it since your hat will be able to read you brain waves... cool stuff. Sci-fi stuff, but coming to a GAP near you soon...

Crazy weather

Did anyone see the weather for Thursday??? Plus nine in January! So much for skiing and skating! Everything will be a mess. *sigh*

Back on the run

This morning we went for a run... it was so good to run again. We went down my favourite path under the Queensway and along the Rideau river, but it was hard going 'cause it wasn't plowed at all. At one point we switched to a plowed path, but that quickly dumped onto a street that led to a station with a lot of road graders / plows, so that wasn't the best route. Got to figure out something better. It's much nicer now that the roads aren't so icy and nasty.

We went skating this weekend and I figured out something: it's not my skates, it's me. However I stand in my skates (we bought new ones that I have since returned) I seem to put weight on a pressure point and quickly start to feel nauseous. They cause me huge amounts of pain. Which sucks, because I think that I would love skating all the time. I enjoy it, but I can only do it for like 10 minutes which pisses off anyone who I go with 'cause they just start to get warmed up. *sigh*

So the plan now is to get cross country skis and just do that. I know that I can do that. The only problem is finding skis long enough since I am so tall. We'll see. Until then I'll just keep running at part of my routine so that I actually do it. I feel great today after my run... I'm so charged. ;-)

Hard to get back into a routine

I planned yesterday to go running today at lunch. I didn't bring anything into the office and just sat on my ass talking at lunch. *sigh* I find it very hard to change my routine in any way sometimes.

As I see people run by outside my heart just drops. I know that I can do it. I know that I should. I just have not. I know that I'd feel much better if I did too... Sometimes I just want to kick myself in my ass, but my leg doesn't really bend that way.

Happy Anniversary to me!

It's been one year since I have started work. Weird because it doesn't feel that long at all. I really felt that I have learned a ton in the last year and had some really great experience. A good way to start off a career.

What to build...

One thing that I want to do is build something with Java 5 (or 1.5...), but I had a hard time using a language if I don't actually have a purpose. I need to think of a small project that I can do, something simple.

One possible small app that I just thought of was something that I had to do in first year engineering. You had an island that had an oil slick somewhere on it. The "oil" defused based on what the concentration to every side of it (N,E,S,W). Depending on how "stable" you want to compute the contamination, you iterate for different amount of times.

Does anyone else know of something simple and easy to play around with?

Party like it's 2005

I'm back to work now it's 2005 and it's good to be back. I kind of wish that I was at home for another week, but that's another story. What have I been up to? Lots of family, lots of food. I was able to get together with some friends I have not seen in a while, so that was good. And to Laura's glee, I put up 20+ pictures and our window blind so our place now feels more "homey".

I also read The Da Vinci Code: Special Illustrated Edition which was well worth the extra money for the pictures. It was a really well written book that I just flew through. It's nice to read for fun again. I keep on wanting to set aside time to just read but it always feels hard. There is always more stuff to do, like seal up the windows. Ah well.