Cool Code v Working Code
By Martin English | October 25, 2006
Developers and Administrators under the age of thirty have no idea why old farts like me are sceptical of the productivity claims, why we roll our eyes at the hype and buzzwords that sell books and consulting engagements, about the amzing new programming language / technique / methodology du jour. Occassionally, it’s because we’ve seen it all before. IBM systems running multiple operating system instances ? Sounds like good ole MVS to me….
For example, the current state of play is that Sun’s JRuby team (Sun hired key Ruby developers Thomas Enebo and Charles Nutter, back in September) has just released JRuby 0.9.1 for Java, with version 1.0 is expected in due course.
Apparently, going from JRuby 0.9.1 to 0.9.0 apparently brings a 50 to 60 per cent performance improvement (just how slow was it then ?), improves support for Ruby on Rails and for including Java classes in Ruby; delivers various design refactorings; and fixes some 86 Jira bugs. According to Thomas Enebo,
JRuby is going really well.
And Microsoft has just hired Ruby guru John Lam, to help it add dynamic scripting languages to the Common Language Runtime platform. Apparently, he created RubyCLR as an alternative to Microsoft’s C#, so this suggests that Microsoft could soon deliver Ruby as a complement to it’s release of IronPython (which is Python for .Net). There’s certainly a rich choice for dynamic programming enthusiasts these days.
The problem I have is that delivering systems fast is popular, until the business finds out:
- that what it gets doesn’t align with its requirements well,
- that the cost of development pales into insignificance besides the cost of support,
- there’s no traceability
Of course, better dynamic languages may help but they’re still not really the real issue, as far as I can see., For example, customers and employers are thinking about ITIL and IT governance).
The real issue is that there’s No Silver Bullet. It’s an important essay from way back in 1986, by Frederick P. Brooks (he of Mythical Man-Month) that has been repeatedly proven.
Programming consists of overcoming two things: accidental difficulties, things which are difficult because you happen to be using inadequate programming tools, and things which are difficult, which no programming tool or language is going to solve. An example of an accidental difficulty is manual memory management, e.g. “malloc” and “free,” or the singleton classes people create in Java because they don’t have top level functions. An example of something which is actually difficult is dealing with the subtle interactions between different parts of a program, for example, figuring out all the implications of a new feature that you just added.
Improvements in programming languages can eliminate accidental difficulties, but after you’ve done that, you’re left with the actual complexity of software development, so the No Silver Bullet theory basically warns us to expect diminishing returns from new technologies. I’m not really doing justice to Brooks’ argument, so if you haven’t read No Silver Bullet recently, I would highly recommend it.
Topics: Languages, People, Productivity, Work, blogs / podcasts | 2 Comments »
Cluetrain manifesto
By Martin English | October 24, 2006
The entire text of The Cluetrain Manifesto is now available online.
Topics: People, Productivity, blogs / podcasts | No Comments »
Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense
By Martin English | October 16, 2006
Heroic leaders are a disaster. Seventy per cent of mergers fail. In most organisations, financial incentives cause more problems than they solve. There is no connection between high executive pay and company performance (well, there is – the wider the pay differentials, the lower the commitment of the less well paid). The main result of many consultancy assignments is another consultancy assignment. All ’silver bullet’ or ‘big ideas’ on their own are wrong.
These are not theories, but facts. Yet companies trip over themselves to buy others, launch change initiatives, introduce pay for performance, flit from one big idea to the next – and pay their CEOs stratospherically. It’s hardly surprising so many go belly up. If doctors were as cavalier with the evidence, a lot of their patients would be dead and many medics would be behind bars.
Amazon link – no referrer code !!
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Set up a personal, home SSH server
By Martin English | October 11, 2006
How to set up a personal, home SSH server
Why SSH?
- Unlike a home web server, SSH is read/write, meaning you can get and put files on a server with it.
- Unlike a home FTP server, SSH is secure. All the transactions are encrypted and cannot be sniffed.
- Unlike a VNC server, SSH alone doesnt let you drive your computer remotely, and it is also secure and encrypted while VNC is not.
Topics: Code, Productivity, Technology | No Comments »
Opensource CMS blogs e-commerce groupware Forums etc
By Martin English | October 7, 2006
www.opensourcecms.com is designed to give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world.
The site provides an administrator username and password for every system which allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything. Each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours.
At the upper left hand side of your screen you will see a clock that is counting down. What it shows is how much time is left in this two hour demo window. Once the clock hits 00:00:00, opensourceCMS.com will shut down and the demos are completely refreshed.
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Web-Developer Server Suite: WAMP [Windows, Apache, PHP, MySQL], ASP, JSP, Perl, SSL – DeveloperSide.NET
By Martin English | October 5, 2006
DeveloperSide have a comprehensive set of install packages for building WAMP [Windows, Apache, PHP/perl, MySQL] systems, including guides to making wordpress and phpBB work.
Topics: Productivity, Technology, blogs / podcasts | No Comments »
Include SOME Google Gadgets Into Any Page
By Martin English | October 5, 2006
Google has announced that some of the gadgets available for Google Personalized Homepage can be embedded into any web page. The list of the gadgets includes: Google Calendar Viewer, Google Calculator, US Traffic Information, Moon Phase, Picasa Album Viewer and more. This way, you can enrich your web page with live information.
Google gives an example of usage:
“For example, lets say you are in charge of your club soccer teams website, and you want to add a current weather forecast so your fans can plan for your games or you want to include a daily brainteaser on your site without having to come up with something new everyday. Google Gadgets lets you do this easily. Just visit the directory of “Google Gadgets for your webpage” to find gadgets that youd like to add to your own page and select your preferences for how the gadget will appear on your page. Then, copy and paste the HTML from the window into the HTML code for your own website. Its an easy way to get the content you need and want without spending hours writing code”
Previously, some gadgets could be included in Google Page Creator if you selected the experimental features.
Here’s an example (called babelfish):
Topics: Code, Productivity, Technology, Toys, blogs / podcasts | No Comments »
Top 10 Lies told to the Naive
By Martin English | October 5, 2006
For freelancers / contractors, in the end, working commercially, being a terrific artist, designer or technician is about half the task. The other half is “the business”, chasing work, chasing money, chasing client commitment, keeping up to date ….. Sure, you can outsource some of that to an agency, but then you have to manage the Agency – finding an agent you can work with, sending you to interviews you’re not suitable for, etc.
Along those lines, here’s a link to Top 10 Lies told to Naive Artists and Designers. It’s written from the perspective of a graphic designer, but can be applied to the people who post those threads about starting a hosting company, starting an at home IT service company, or even going contracting.
Topics: People, blogs / podcasts | No Comments »
Creating a Static Front Page in Word Press
By Martin English | October 4, 2006
For various reasons, you may want to present users with a static page, but still use your word press themes etc. Happily, there’s a WordPress plugin, Filosofo Home-Page Control, that does easily, without manipulating your code or editing.
- Install plugin.
- Choose which page to be the home page.
Thats the functionality I’m using at the moment.
I’m also experimenting with the appearance of a subdirectory – not really much use for me as this blog appears under the playpen directory anyway, but for the sake of science and to while away another SAP install…
- Install plugin.
- Choose which page to be the home page.
- Declare the directory you wish for your blog.
OK so that’s a tiny bit more complicated… It even double checks the structure for permalinks, and tells you how to create a home page template.
BTW, doing this without a plugin is covered in the wordpress documentation at Creating a Static Front Page.
EDIT: as it turned out, the virtual subdirectory link is usefull… It lets me put a link to ../playpen/blog over in the sidebar, so that every page can go straight back to the latest posts.
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Ten Business Myths
By Martin English | October 3, 2006
Venture capitalist Ron Garret has posted a list of eleven (despite the title) common mistakes entrepreneurs with a technology background make. A common theme is that good ideas sell; in reality, what a customer wants sells. By extension, having a Ph.D. and holding a patent are not particularly helpful if the intended end-user does not have the same level of understanding of the widget as the creator does.
Topics: People, Productivity, blogs / podcasts | No Comments »
incoming RSS feeds on wp
By Martin English | September 29, 2006
Shaolin Tiger’s “How to Use RSS Feeds on Your WordPress Site”
from Adding RSS Feeds to WordPress
One issue I did come up against is that although you can put Template Tags and PHP code into a Page Template, you cannot put these into the content of a Page and expect them to run. This meant I had to use a PHP evaluating Plugin (example: RunPHP) to enable the < ?php randomFeedList() ?> feature of the Feed List plugin.
EDIT: October 10
I’ve completely revamped how I use this plugin.
- I have a WordPress Page with it’s own template (page_rss_parent), that is an exact replica of my standard Page template except it incldues the Dynamic Ajax Content from www.dynamicdrive.com. As you select a link to a particular RSS feed, this Page loads it dynamically.
- The RSS feeds are each in their own page, using the FeedList plugin . These pages have their own template ( page_rss) that has no call to sidebar or footer. This is because these pages will be loaded into a DIV on already already existing page, with the header, sidebar footer etc already present.
- I have another page that is the parent of the pages with the RSS feeds. This means I can exclude this page (and therefore the underlying RSS Feed pages) when using wp_list_pages in my header.
- I don’t need the runPHP plugin.
Next step is to write it up as a plugin. The big issue is where to store the RSS feeds:
- If I store them in WordPress as Pages, you’ll need to do the wp_list_pages hack described above.
- If I store them in another table, it raises issues of tidiness and compatibility with later versions
- If I store them as a text file in the plugin directory, there’s issues around the read/write permissions
from http://arstechnica.com – arstechnica.
- feature: True story: the making of the Terminator's laser-sighted .45 pistol -
One of the most striking images from The Terminator was the weapon he carried and used in his first attempt on Sarah Connor's life: the .45 Longslide, with laser sighting. Who can forget the scene in the gun shop? The gun was likewise such a striking presence on screen it was used on the film's poster. There are T-shirts dedicated to the gun.
Terminator was released in 1984, and while laser sights on weapons are common now, when the film was first shown the red laser was able to communicate something subtle and powerful to the audience: this is a machine, deadly accurate and futuristic. It made the Terminator seem other-worldly and terrifying. At a party during CES, Deputy Editor Jon Stokes and I bumped into some representatives from SureFire, a company that specializes in tactical flashlights. We talked about some of our favorite moments with technology in cinema, and The Terminator came up.
"We created that laser!" I was told. They told me the gentleman who built the prop was named Ed Reynolds, and he was still with the company. More than a little jazzed about bumping into a fun part of film history, we knew we had to get the full story behind the Terminator's gun.
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- HTC lawsuit came after warning by Apple to handset makers -
Apple COO Tim Cook's warning from early 2009 wasn't the only one that handset makers received before Apple sicced the lawyers on HTC last week. According to a research note from Oppenheimer analyst Yal Reiner, Apple began warning top executives at companies such as HTC and Motorola in January that it wasn't too happy about seeing allegedly iPhone-related IP showing up in proposed new products.
According to "industry checks," Cook's comments last January during the quarterly analyst call—that Apple "will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal"—were taken seriously by the likes of LG, Samsung, and even Nokia. Though the Palm Pre openly flaunted multitouch capabilities (what most handset makers believed were at the heart of Cook's warning), its sales numbers haven't proven to be much of a concern for Apple so far.
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- MRI's successes put the brain on trial -
A typical neuroscience paper (or a typical report on one) is a laundry list of structure:function relationships between brain regions and the mental tasks they perform. The amygdala deals with registering rewards, the hippocampus handles memory, and so on. These relationships have been the result of over a century of work, starting with rare cases of brain injury and building through modern medical imaging, which can detect ever-smaller lesions and associate neural activity with specific cognitive processes. Doctors routinely rely on the combination of brain imaging and structure:function relationships for diagnostic purposes, but is wider society willing to trust it in the courtroom, where it might make the difference between guilt and innocence?
That question was handled in a rather unusual manner at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: a mock trial. Most other panels consisted of a set of scientists who each gave a fairly standard presentation. This one was presided over by Louis Rodriguez, an Orange County Superior Court Judge, and featured a law school professor and a practicing attorney, each with a neuroscientist as an expert witness. Although the proceedings were heavily scripted, anyone who's sat through a jury trial would recognize that they were a reasonable attempt to approximate a normal courtroom experience.
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- Facebook's location feature expected to launch next month -
Facebook is allegedly planning to roll out location sharing capabilities next month, once again playing catch-up to other services that have gained popularity thanks to location data. The rumor comes courtesy of anonymous sources who have been "briefed on the project" speaking to the New York Times, who said that Facebook will announce the feature at Facebook's annual f8 conference in late April.
The company's plans for such a feature have not been entirely secret—Facebook hinted at location features when it updated its privacy policy in November. Like other postings made to Facebook, location information will only be made available to the people you decide to broadcast it to.
"When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post," reads the policy. "If we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate."
The location features will come in the form of an API for third-party developers and from Facebook, according to the Times' sources.
The feature will undoubtedly be popular among many of Facebook's 400 million users, as it has already proven itself with other services. For example, Twitter added geolocation to its API last year, not to mention that Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Latitude, and Loopt have all built their success solely upon the use of user location data. Needless to say, it's not something that will be new to the Web, though it probably will be new to a sizable chunk of Facebook's audience. Let's just hope the company rolls it out the right way, as implied by its privacy policy, and doesn't end up broadcasting everyone's locations to the world by default.
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- Microsoft browser ballot gives Opera, Firefox a boost -
The Microsoft browser ballot released this month to Windows users in the EU is already doing Microsoft's rivals a favor. Two of the major competitors to Internet Explorer have seen an increase in downloads, while the other two are not willing to share data. We contacted the makers of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera; here's what they had to say.
Opera, the Norwegian browser maker that first filed a complaint with the European Union in December 2007, accusing Microsoft of violating EU antitrust law by bundling IE with Windows, is pleased with the progress its browser is making. "Since the browser choice screen rollout, Opera downloads have more than tripled in major European countries, such as Belgium, France, Spain, Poland, and the UK," an Opera spokesperson told Ars. The company said it currently did not have more detailed numbers but plans on sharing more as they become available.
Mozilla, which has a particularly solid foothold in Europe, was slightly more specific in the progress it was seeing with its browser downloads. "Early data suggests 50,000 to 100,000 new users chose Firefox as a direct result of seeing the Ballot Choice screen," a Mozilla spokesperson told Ars. "We expect these numbers will increase as the Ballot Choice rolls out in additional countries and will share updated metrics as they become available."
Apple did not respond at all, and while Google was happy to respond, the company wouldn't get specific: "We generally don't share download stats on that granular of a level," a Google spokesperson told Ars. The company did not respond to a follow-up question if Chrome saw an increase in number of downloads period. While Apple and Google haven't said much, we think it's likely that both have also seen a bump in the number of downloads of their browsers. Hundreds of thousands of users who may not have known of a world outside of Internet Explorer are being confronted with the alternatives.
The browser ballot will be presented on Windows computers across the EU for at least the next five years. Microsoft's rivals are, however, already pushing to have it appear outside of Europe as well.
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- The Internet of tomorrow: 100Gbps to your house by 2030 -
Google's recent announcement of a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home testbed has communities across the US salivating—but imagine what the Internet might be like if that connection to your home were even faster. Say... 100Gbps. In less than 20 years, such speeds will be possible, but only for companies who installed the right sort of fiber architecture.
The UK telecoms regulator Ofcom commissioned a lengthy report on the future of fiber (PDF) (or "fibre," in this case) from the firm Analysys Mason. In it, the company sketched out the future of fiber capacity with a pair of handy charts. Both are clear: between 2025 and 2030, shared fiber tech will be able to offer 10Gpbs to each user; individual fiber can offer a full 100Gbps. Whether ISPs will support it or not is a separate question.
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- FileMaker Pro goes to 11, admits people like spreadsheets -
Apple subsidiary FileMaker has released version 11 of its flagship FileMaker Pro database. The updated software purports to make building and maintaining databases even easier, while acknowledging that many users are accustomed to using spreadsheets for database purposes by including pivot table-like reporting and Excel-like charting features. FileMaker Pro Server has also been updated, dropping the simultaneous client access limit for the Advanced version.
FileMaker Pro already laid claim to being one of the easiest cross-platform database tools available, but the company added additional features designed to enhance that ease of use. The Quick Start screen has been improved, offering clear ways to begin a new database. You can start from scratch; import existing data in tab or comma-separated files, Excel spreadsheets, or Bento databases; or choose from a number of Starter Solution templates. A new invoicing template has been added in version 11 to make that common business task practically a plug-and-chug operation; customer data can later be linked for other purposes.
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- European Parliament unites against 3 strikes, ACTA secrecy -
The European Parliament is fed up with the secrecy surrounding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Today, representatives from all the major parliamentary coalitions introduced a resolution demanding that the European Commission release all negotiating texts, inform Parliament about the negotiating process, and absolutely refuse to countenance any sort of "three strikes" Internet disconnection penalty for online copyright infringement.
The measure comes up for a vote tomorrow and looks set to pass—it has the support of all the important groups in Parliament, including the EPP, S&D, ALDE, and the Greens/EFA. One notable supporter: Christian Engström, the Pirate Party's lone MEP in Parliament, who aligns with the Greens/EFA group.
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- Microsoft begins rolling out redesigned MSN homepage -
Microsoft today began rolling out its new MSN homepage, but not everyone will be getting it at once: the update will trickle out over the next few weeks to the site's 100 million US customers. The software giant is touting the new version as "its most significant homepage redesign in over a decade." It comes with a new MSN butterfly logo (which complements the Bing logo), a larger Bing search box and tighter integration with the search engine, local information from a new feature dubbed MSN Local Edition, as well as the addition of three social network streams: the Windows Live "What's New" feed of course, Facebook, and Twitter.
The above was previewed in November, but Microsoft says the redesign includes more than 30 updates that are based on 70,000 pieces of customer feedback. These new features include TrendWatch, which highlights the day's top trends and movers on Twitter, Hyper-local Tweets, which uses Bing to highlight tweets from your location (available on the new Local Edition), and My Cities, which allows you save up to three cities to keep up with your friends or family across the entire country in your MSN Local Edition.
Microsoft says it has seen double-digit increases in Bing search queries coming from the new homepage thanks to changes that make the decision engine more prominent. As for the MSN Local module on the homepage, the software giant says it is driving over 50 percent more traffic to the MSN Local Edition and that the main module on the new homepage also received over 50 percent more clicks than the original homepage. Microsoft made improvements to these sections based on the data it was seeing. For example, the company says the social networking additions were welcomed with open arms, so it has made sure the default social network tab is the one that the user frequents the most.
The real test, not only for the servers but for the designers, will come in the next few weeks as the majority of users start to see the new version. As we've said before, we think the new look is much cleaner than the old version, but—as Facebook knows all too well—users aren't always happy with huge revamps of major websites.
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- Plans for .xxx top-level domain pop up again -
The .xxx domain is back on the table. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will reconsider the top-level domain during a meeting in Kenya this week, nearly three years after it was shot down and nine years after it was first introduced as a way to identify pornography sites and hopefully confine them to their own Internet red-light district.
The .xxx domain was first proposed in 2001 and approved in 2005 for exclusive (but voluntary) use by the adult entertainment industry. The idea was to provide a place for porn sites online that would be explicitly obvious from the domain, which would not only help consenting adults find the sites, it would also help parents and corporations better block access to them.
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Topics: Code, Productivity, Technology, blogs / podcasts | 1 Comment »
Use Excel to make a timeline
By Martin English | September 20, 2006
The Microsoft Education Center has a good step by step tutorial on how to make a timeline in Excel.
Whether you’re looking to make a somewhat involved chronological timeline, or just a simple from Point A to Point B kind of deal, this tutorial’s got you covered. Create a Timeline in Excel [Microsoft Education Center]
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