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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Whose computer is it?

I sold my soul the other weekend. I have been without a decent music player for a while and I seen the price of an iPod drop. I checked out the state of iPod Linux and thought that I might be able to get by. I have tried iTunes before when I won the iPod shuffle and wasn’t very happy with it. I was using a winamp plugin to put music on it.

The 80gb iPod video presents a different problem. How do I get games and video content onto the damn thing.
So I installed iTunes again. Put some music the old way. Turned off music sync.
Downloaded Happy Tree Friends videos and they look great.
I’ve got some linux pod casts happening and I thought all was great.

I looked through the menu items and found “Add folder to library”. I was intrigued. Looked it up in help and found that it stored a ‘pointer’ to the actual folder. Fantastic I thought. So I added my music collection.

Wrong.

Stupid thing goes and touches all of my files and makes some modifications to the headers.
I know have to change the files back so that my backup routine isn’t out of sync and work harder at getting linux on the thing.

-= Comments
1. pimaster | December 11th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Or I could have taken logical approach and tried it on a smaller scale.
In my defence, I did try to get it running under VMWare, but I think I had some troubles with passing the USB connection through.

2. Gatesy | December 13th, 2006 at 12:30 am
I never liked the iTunes way much, either - especially the "keep my library organised" option; unless you’re starting from scratch, that’s a killer

3. Xavier | December 22nd, 2006 at 11:47 am
Have you tried RockBox? Not sure if they’ve got it running on the newest of new versions, but it was stable on the 5th gens.

4. pimaster | December 22nd, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Thanks for the tip. From the web site "Nano 2nd gen and 80GB Video 5.5th gen are not supported" so I’ll keep an eye on it.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Yet Another Coding Oversight

So I’ve been writing a fair bit of code lately. But I haven’t done it in a while.

I wrote this beautiful bug:
[java]
checkItem = result.get(item.getNumber());
if(checkItem == null)
{
result.put(item.getNumber(), new ViewItem(item));
}
checkItem.getDetails().add(new DetailsView(details));

No need to know what Items and Details really are. You can think of items having details if you need to know: let’s see how long it takes someone to spot it.

-= Comments
1. Zooba | November 29th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
The last line will always (attempt to) execute regardless of the check for null above it.

Since I don’t know what the intention is I can’t suggest a solution. I’ll also avoid starting a ‘why not do it this way’ discussion

Monday, November 20, 2006

Tis been a while since I bought a new game

.. and today I bought two.

Half Life 2 Episode 1. Installed at 3:00pm, and have just finished playing it (Midnight) (9 hours minus tea and some time to help my dad). Fantastic game. Zombie killing. More Zombie killing. General puzzels to break up the Zombie killing. Watch Zombies take out combine (and vice versa) and clean up the rest. There are also a few areas where you get to admire all of the scenery which takes your breathe away at 1920×1200 with all the perty features turned up.

The other game is Lego Star Wars 2. I’m hoping that it is as good as the first and plan on finishing most of the levels with my brother. It should take a little longer than a day to complete though.

-= Comments
1. Zooba | November 19th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
I hate finishing games that quickly. That’s why I buy my games from EB; if I finish it too quickly I can return it and get another one

2. pimaster | November 19th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Episode 1 was meant to have a play time of around 5 hours. I haven’t been dissapointed and I don’t know if you can return a game that is activated on steam (depending on how brain dead the cashier is) as the game is tied to my account forever.

And just out of coincedence, I did buy it from EB

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Looking forward

So I went out today and spent some cash.
2×160 gb hard disks. This time I will raid1 them. Installing windows as we speak and everything is running sweet.
1xIDE/SATA enclosure for the good disk that came out of the machine. Set it up and I will be able to use it for many things.
1xnew old keyboard. Found another keyboard which is almost exactly like the one I had. It has a ps/2 plug instead of dim. But the keys are dirty. Doesn’t matter though since I plan on pulling it apart and just using the circuitry.

Opera news:
Friday 24th is when I want to go.
There are $50 tickets available, but I think I’m going to have to go for th $80 set so that I can be a little further center.
These seats are in the balcony. The floor is just a little too expensive for something I may not understand.
I’ll be looking for people to confirm early so I can get the seats.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Another loss for me

A month after I lost my keyboard, I lose a disk out of my RAID 0 array. I haven’t gotten over my keyboard and it does this to me. I know things come in 3’s, but if anything happens to my screens I may just lose it completely.

Don’t panic too much, I was able to boot it up after 4-5 hours of trying and get the last of my data off the machine. I had a backup from a couple of days earlier, but I wanted to backup the 14gb of Steam Apps that I had.
So I spent most of a day trying to re-install windows, only to finally realise that the disk I was installing onto was the bad one. Poo. Switch disks around and try again. I know have to go and “reset” my life. I also need to go out and buy another disk.

I have started working on a new project on site. We have just been setup with newish sort of machines (P4’s without HT or dual core, even though the sticker says HT. Might be a windows 2k thing). I’m almost liking the keyboard, except the stroke feels too long. I’m tempted to go out and get something close, because living without the windows key is almost killing me.

In non-geek, social news - I have no friends who are able to come see an Opera with me. They either have things to do, have no money or are trying to save.
Just wondering if there are any others in the crowd who may be interested?

-= Comments
1. Andrew B Coathup | October 11th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Buy a new keyboard. Everything has to have its autumn.

A hard drive is just a hard drive. If you have the data, that is what matters. (I am a wee scared I have lost my email in my recent perge on my laptop)

As for the Opera. If you want to go, buy two tickets and take a friend who you will enjoy going with. You will have a much better time with a friend with you, and all it costs you is two tickets rather than one. That is the price for having poor friends. And as for Opera …. :p

2. Matthew Delves | October 11th, 2006 at 10:03 am
I might have to play the finance card. Though I am always a fan. Let me know when you are going to see it and I might be able to drag some friends along with me.

3. Mark | October 11th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Will you be wearing the cape to the Opera?

4. pimaster | October 11th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Last time I decided to just go with the Top hat, white gloves and cane. The funniest thing was that an older lady come up and stated that if I had a cape I would have completed the look.
The friends I was with thought that I paid her.

Yes, I think I’ll be wearing the cape and handing it in to the cloak room.

Friday, September 8, 2006

In mourning… for my keyboard.

You were purchased 15th November 1996. You started out by wearing gladwrap to keep your beautiful plastic clean.
You survived the bashing of Fury 3 and Hellbender; but your gladwrap did not. We had to replace it constantly.
The next few years were gentler as the computer you were attached to was used more for homework, and games moved more to mouse input.

On the 3 of June, you were abandoned as I required a computer that travelled with me. At the time I was unable to find a converter to change your dim input down to a ps/2 connection. You still served well on internet gateway you were connected to.

In January of 2005, I breathed new light into you with the purchase of a new machine and finally finding the converted I required. You were smooth from start to finish of Half Life 2. You were a pleasure to code on during Advanced .NET and easy on the hands when it came to large documents.

Towards the end, your shift and control keys would stick, causing much frustration when I couldn’t type the words I was after. Your 0/Ins key would also get difficult to push. This never bothered me though, because I could get you going again just by tapping each crtl, alt and shift key. I could never bring harm to something so faithful.

I cleaned every key on you twice in your life, lovingly wiping each corner with a tissue and tee tree oil. I would often pull the hairs and dust out of you with a screw driver.

Last weekend, I thought it was worth cleaning you out from the inside. So I removed you from my desk and blew you out with my air compressor. When putting you back together, I was shocked to find you did not work.
I found out that there was one tab that did not going back under circuit board. So I had to work out how to under the screws that were non-standard. Finally got them out and had to cut slits in them to get them installed again.
Then I noticed the wires were loose on the connection to the circuit board. So I placed some strands of cat5 cable in there to hold the clips in place. When trying to cut the cord, I got your wire. I tried to solder the wire back to the clip, but crushed the other end. I tried to solder the wire straight to the pins on the board, but the solder wouldn’t stick. I removed the pins from the board; unfortunately I scored the board doing it. The wires then broke and frayed as I was putting the wires on the board. When I got one in place, I tried to solder it there but again, the solder would not stick where I wanted it. To my disgust, it went over 3 tracks that I didn’t want it to go over.

RIP Keyboard: 15/11/1996 - 6/9/2006

I am now looking for a replacement. Same brand would be great.
Part Number g83-6104LPMUS/ 00

http://www.nationalbarcode.com/Cherry/Cherry%20G83-6104.htm
Seems to have them, but the enter key has changed shape.

I’ll go looking for a keyboard this weekend, but I would appreciate any input from the community if they could help me find a replacement. Key placement is important.

-= Comments
1. Xavier | September 8th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
My reward for mastering Colemak is http://www.daskeyboard.com/

Maybe for Christmas

Monday, August 14, 2006

Gallery effort - not of coding importance

I decided to throw togather a page that contained the collection of my capes. Funny thing is that I haven’t taken a picture of me in all of them.

There is a also a picture of me with my star on, which I “earned” at work the other day.

I figured if you were going to make a fool out of yourself online, you better do it properly.

I’m also just started some meaningful categories. I don’t know if I should go back through my posts and fix them up.

-= Comments
1. Andrew B Coathup | August 14th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
If I was recruiting and googled your name (along with Swinburne) it would bring me to Byte Club (well a cached copy of the forum) and eventually pictures of your cape.

(I always do this for prospective employees, finding nothing is worse than nearly anything you can find)

I would laugh, and think this guy is a bit of a nut, but I would read your blog and you would have already created a positive impression.

Get the rest of your photos up.

2. pimaster | August 17th, 2006 at 12:50 am
I’ve had a lot of different views about acknowledging the cape. The guys at Herald and Weekly times would say that it is something that I would have to discuss, because that is who I am.

I had a long discussion with someone from Telstra, who said that it was like sleeping with a teddy. It’s something you did when you were younger, but you should grow out of it.

The funny thing is: at the time I had just bought my code monkey which now sleeps at my bed head. And I divulged this information and he wasn’t impressed again.
I tried to ask why you would stop doing something unless you had a good reason. If wearing a cape or sleeping near a monkey puts a smile on your face every now and then, why stop?

There is also the other thing: It is who I am. If I stop being the "hero" I enjoy being, what is left for me?

I’m glad you approve of the move. For future reference, if any prospective employer comes across this comment, if you don’t like me in the cape then the chances are that I wouldn’t like the environment that I’d be working in and this blog has saved us both a lot of potentially wasted time.

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Stupid spammers

Sorry people. Looks like my account has been the target of some spam lately.

I have upped the rules on commenting. Hope I haven’t caused too much pain in the latest comments list

-= Comments
1. Matthew Delves | August 7th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Have been doing just that for a while. I too hate spammers and think they are the scum of the Earth.

2. Zooba | August 7th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Same here. I’ve started disabling comments on posts after they’ve been up for a while. This seems to be an automatic feature of some software, I wonder if WordPress has something similar?

3. Thushan Fernando | August 8th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
spammers suck, most are bots, i’ve kept mine disabled from last year but only recently enabled mine again after i realised some bots dont quite understand the need to travel to another link to post a comment (previously we used .TEXT which had a post comment form on the page much like ByteClub does now…) moderation does help but occasionally several bots will navigate through and find a post form….

someone should start a WoS (War on Spammers)

Saturday, August 5, 2006

Can’t use regex as response

Must abuse posting privledge
I think I hold the key to Xavier’s problem

<([^/][^>]*?[^/])>(?!.*?</\1>)

-= Comments
1. Xavier | August 4th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
This will incorrectly match normal tags too though?
Input:blah
Output: blah

2. Xavier | August 4th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Oh wait, I get it now. It will also match unclosed divs and such, which (I think) I want the parser to do because it closes them properly, where as it closes img tags as if they were divs, which is wrong.

I want it to only match img,input,…whatever I put in my post

3. pimaster | August 4th, 2006 at 10:12 pm

<((?:br)|(?:img)|(?:hr)|(?:script))[^/]*?>

Althought the script one isn’t handled well since sometimes it can be part of a pair, and sometimes it isn’t.

You could try pairing it with the orignal !\1 check, but I had trouble when there were two open scripts and only 1 close script.

Thursday, August 3, 2006

Attempt at pretty code

I don’t think I’ve got it shorter, it does look slightly different.
I was aiming for something clean, but there is a small problem about renaming the first version.
This also doesn’t leave an original someName. Everything would return someName_1 and so on.
It probably needs a check incase there is no . in the file name.
[php]
$VERSION_SEPARATOR = ‘_’;
$EXTENSION_SEPARATOR = ‘.’;

function getNextFileVersion( $fileName, $toDirectory )
{
$toDirector = dirname($toDirector) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;

$versionPos = strrpos( $fileName, $VERSION_SEPARATOR);
$extensionPos = strrpos( $fileName, $EXTENSION_SEPARATOR, $versionPos);

if( $versionPos > 0 )
{
$version = substr($fileName, $versionPos + 1, $versionPos + $extensionPos - 1);
}
$iCantThinkofABetterNameForARandomHack = ‘’;
if( false == is_numeric( $version ) )
{
$version = 1;
$versionPos = $extensionPos;
$iCantThinkofABetterNameForARandomHack = $VERSION_SEPARATOR;
}
$name = substr($fileName, 0, $versionPos);
$ext = substr($fileName, extensionPos) . $iCantThinkofABetterNameForARandomHack;

while( file_exists( $toDirector . $name . $version . $ext )
{
$version++;
}
return $name . $version . $ext;
}

- Edit a little bit later
I was hoping to add a track back to Mark, but it didn’t work the first time….

-= Comments
1. Mark | August 3rd, 2006 at 10:53 am
hmm, so that’s what a real programmers code looks like..

I still prefer the explodes / implodes to break into arrays.. rather than using substrings - I guess it’s just personal preference.

I really like this part.. It makes the looping part of the code very small. It’s a little more readable too with good variable names as opposed to my obscure arrays $file_name_parts and $file_name_inner_parts

while( file_exists( $toDirector . $name . $version . $ext )
{
$version++;
}

Will your version handle a filename with other ‘_’s in it.. e.g. my_broken_filename_with_too_many_underscores.jpg?

2. pimaster | August 3rd, 2006 at 4:15 pm
I think so. Didn’t get around to testing it. If I wrote it in java I would have included JUnit tests.

Have they come out with PUnit framework yet?

I only used substrings because I thought it would have made it shorter.
I was thinking of using a regular expression, but my mind was wandering
implode vs substring could be personal. I was thinking that substring might be quicker. (But I might be splitting hairs)

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Broken Chair take 2

Some of you may remember my original complaint about a broken chair.
No problems, next door neighbor helped in fixing it.

Chair broke again. This time one of the legs decided it just wanted to give way. It happened when I was trying to turn my computer on, so of course I fell of it rather awkwardly.
So I went out and bought another one. It’s currently sitting a bit higher than the previous chair, but I’ll make it comfortable.
Also have to get my "groove" back into the chair

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Word on Generics

Had another java programmer here at work point me at a page complaining about generics
Ken Arnold’s Blog

And because I was interested in the possible performance issues that might be associated with generics, I wanted a read.

But it turned out to be a discuss about the difficulties of using generics. I read the article and I didn’t understand what his problem was. It seemed like he was using generics wrongly.

I though generics where meant to be an aid to prevent typecasting from items. A way to gaurantee that when you put something in of a certain type, it will come out as that type without typecasting.

There was one line in there “Right now, there are some idioms that you cannot code without a type-safety warning, such as creating arrays of generic types”
Unless I’ve missed something, isn’t

List<Thing>[] myList = new ArrayList<Thing>[5] ;// *

All you need to do?

*Code may not compile. I don’t think I’ve set Eclipse for 1.5

-= Comments
1. Matthew Delves | July 25th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Whilst I am not a big fan of idiot proof code, it does make for more stable programs if and when it is used properly. Surprisingly someone who would be assumed to know Java would not be able to grasp the concept of Generics and convey it to others.

Simplifying code

It has been a while since I have written a good simplify post. It has also been a while since I’ve posted several entries end to end
[java]
String fileName = file.getName();
if (fileName.endsWith(someValue)) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}

[java]
String fileName = file.getName();
return fileName.endsWith(someValue));

Now I know it could be shortened to one line, but then things start looking a little long. If it was c# with properties, I might have gone with it.

-= Comments
1. Lucien | July 26th, 2006 at 11:07 am

The one liner for that isn’t so bad.

return file.getName().endsWith(value);

At least you didn’t start with:
[java]
String fileName = file.getName();
if (fileName.endsWith(someValue) == true) {
return true;
} else if (fileName.endsWith(someValue) == false) {
return false;
}



That’s the kind of newbie code I *love*

2. Mark | July 26th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
This one with css is a classic

border-top-color: #000000;
border-right-color: #000000;
border-bottom-color: #000000;
border-left-color: #000000;
border-top-style: solid;
border-right-style: solid;
border-bottom-style: solid;
border-left-style: solid;
border-top-width: 1px;
border-right-width: 1px;
border-bottom-width: 1px;
border-left-width: 1px;

The amount of times I see the above code is stunning..

border: 1px solid #000;

3. Matthew Delves | July 26th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
There is something always beautiful about simple code. It is easy to follow and as long as you know exactly what it does there can be less bugs.

4. Lucien | July 26th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
With the CSS example, I expect it’s auto generated by some tool (not the tool sitting in front of teh keyboard).

doesn’t make it any more acceptable. And since humans inevitably have to go in and tweak it when it’s not working, it just makes out job harder.

5. Clinton | July 26th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
I’ve seen a few tools "expand" css rules because they internally expand them to implement each feature (aka firefox+web developer -> css view etc).

A neat css tidy tool at http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/i but the informed human is still the elegant solution…

6. Lucien | July 26th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
What about an elegant human designing an informed solution?

7. Mark | July 27th, 2006 at 10:54 am
No, an informed designer building an elegant solution.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Windows XP Pro Software Raid 1

Somehow at work, I managed to let myself assist in the management of the hardware at Hyro. Hooray for me.
The last guy was a windows only man. When a computer died the other day, and chckdsk /f didn’t work he was out of options. I come in with a linux cd and hey presto, some data is readable (It seems that it is a nasty disk).

He is an artist, and I know his plight. He needs the speed of a local disk, but probably should back it up somehow. Things change that often that keeping tabs on backups is a pain.

So I thought, haha, give the man two disks and see if Windows will do a software raid. Both disks are probably crap, but at least they shouldn’t fail at the same time.

Spent most of this morning googling. Came across this interesting forum:
short-media forum

It was a kind of yes / no thing. The only way I was going to get an answer was to actually do it.
Fired up VMWare, worked out how to add a second disk, shrunk the first partition with some linux tools and loaded up disk management. I was able to create a striped volume, not much else.

Maybe it was because I was running without any service pack. Fired that on and tried again, still no luck.

I remember reading that it may not be possible with a disk that holds the operating system: a limitation of the software perhaps, so I bung in a third disk and give it another go, carefully reading all of the screens again.

[hmmm, seems I no longer have a copy of the image that was here]

Here is the magical screen where 5 = 3.
I don’t mind sticking up for Microsoft sometimes, but it’s this sort of thing that makes it hard.

Just about to try the hack over here, but I think sleep might get the better of me.

Funny how sometimes you can go months without posting, and then two big things come across your lap.

-= Comments
1. Clinton | July 21st, 2006 at 2:44 pm

When i realised i couldn’t (easily) do software RAID (2-disk mirror) on a non-server addition of XP, I purchase an Apatec SATA RAID (1210SA) card ~$80 AUD and it’s been really good. Yeah - i know it feels crazy to buy hardware when the software should be able to just *do* this (stupid policy for this feature I feel)… but using a hardware solutions has actually been a good result.

It was also pretty easy to plug-in the existing hdd (with XP pro installed) into the card etc. and not lose anything (i had backed up everything as that was a real concern Second disk got mirrored up and apart from some extra heat from two drives me checking on the disk health (SMART hidden from the direct interface now) I’m happy.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Unfriggin believable - Source Game

http://storefront.steampowered.com/v2/index.php?area=game&AppId=922

Check out the new portal game that is to come with Half Life 2: Episode 2
Drool.

Now that is game play that might make me go out and get a credit card so I can have this game as soon as it is released.

I waited before DOD:S came out in a box, I’m waiting for Episode 1 to be boxed, but this just looks to good to pass up.

Sunday, June 4, 2006

Syn

Ack

Just a quick post to say that I’m still alive, just overly busy.
I’m still working long hours at work to get things done.

My birthday just went past (30th May) so I’m now a young 22 (Everyone that wishes me a happy birthday is older than me and wishes they were 22 again).
I got my Graduation Certificate back with a beautiful frame and Red Dwarf 8 which had me in stiches last Sunday.

I went to a karaoke deal Thursday night to celebrate and Friends 22nd birthday, and stunned everyone with a solo to the Time Warp. I know have to work out whether I want to go again.

Looked at Clintons new blog role page. Still a little dissapointed that everything seems to be on the one page. Other than that it is looking good.

Going out this evening to see the Gondoliers. Should be interesting.

Just a note on my programming skills. I haven’t done any hardcore programming for so long. I did a small development change and completely feked it up.

[java]
if(something.length > 25)
something = something.substring(0,25);
if(null == something)
something = “”;


The thought was there to build a nice solution, but it would appear as though my brain was on holiday.

-= Comments
1. Andrew B Coathup | June 5th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Nothing like checking for a condition after an exception would be raised. :p

2. Clinton | June 5th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Happy birthday! (well wishes *thrown* after the event… :~)

…as for my test blogroll… sorry!, (bit it is “work in progress”! - aka dump everything, badly, and start culling back to what we *really* want… feedback welcome.)

i’ll see if i can do some improvements tonight (after some AI assignment marking and after digesting all the blogroll comments - which just look like a brewing browser war… ;~)

Friday, May 19, 2006

Working towards goals

It’s late, but coding for byteclub is so much cooler than coding against tagets and having to deal with business units.

I’m actually working on some of the Tyler 2010 goals. The first step I’m almost at is separating all the content from the various blogs into a single list. Then this list can be used on various pages.
Making use of the MagieRSS library(?) that is already in place. Almost feels like when I do a query on my page, it kills the cache for the live page and visa versa. Should I be worried?

The page which shows me the variables: Test Rss
The page which give some output of the blogs: Blog Listing

It’s almost at the point it could be sorted and used, but I thought I’d get some sleep before I make any biggish decisions on how I want to achieve it.

Blog on!

Of Google

Just finished reading Xavier’s Blog about google, and thought I’d post the Web ToolKit link.

Beth S just emailed it to me, so I went off at her about how she should have a blog to present the information to the world. Her excuse was that she doesn’t want to be labelled as a “Nerdy Nerd Nerd Nerd”

I say suck it in Beth and share the wealth!

–Edit 6:30–

I think the links screwed up. Hope I haven’t caused to much problem by re-editing.

-= Comments
1. Xavier | May 19th, 2006 at 12:09 am

Tell Beth from me I already think of her as Nerdy nerd nerd nerd, so it wouldn’t make much difference. Besides, she’s got a coding position, right? She should be blogging. Blogging is more communal than sitting alone by yourself coding. Yeah, you tell her that.

2. Lucien | May 19th, 2006 at 9:41 pm

You tell Beth from me (and Clinton) that we are going on a recruiting drive soon. The goal? Increase the number of ByteClub bloggers. So if she’s got something to say, she should be saying it on ByteClub.

She knows my email address. It would only take a minute to set up her account

3. Beth | May 20th, 2006 at 6:20 pm

Can you imagine me sitting at a computer for any amount of time and not talking? What are you going on about me not being communal? I’m the most communal person in the office. Ask the people who can hear me from the other side of the building

I really don’t have anything useful to say, despite the fact that I talk so much! Really! I haven’t even tried the google tool kit, I’ve only browsed around the demos and sighed at the beauty of it all. Oops, just after I typed that, a big rubber stamp came out of the sky and printed the words “Super Nerd” in bold black letters on my forehead. Damn.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Lucien is the man

Round of applause for Lucien and his faithful sidekick John (or is it the other way around) for getting my shell access to work. Why didn’t it work? Don’t know. At this point I’m happy to go with the good and ignore the bad. Just got to get the public_html folder working. I have instructions, must have followed em wrong.

I’ll get there.
But first (unfortunately) I have to do work tonight so that I’m free to do some other work tomorrow.

Who came up with the idea that work is good?

-= Comments
1. Beth | May 20th, 2006 at 6:32 pm

Luciens always been my hero!

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Pants down and a spanking

26 days since last post. There is a reasonable reason for this. Apart from the full time work I’ve been doing on Project A, my boss came to me and said he would really like my expertise on Project B. 3 weeks later I find that Project B seems abandonded by Company Z. They deployed their own software packages, built the business logic, got it running and ran away.

What they didn’t check was that logs fill up at 60gb a day (only a 70gb disk) and after a little bit of time after deployment, things stopped. They fired all the developers on the project and said “Hmmm, how do we get this to work?”.

In steps Hyro. We swing away for a week. We work out that solving this riddle would require the source to the project. It took a week to acquire. The companies that Company Z produced the software for started jumping down my neck. "It’s software. Surely you can fix it cause you’re software guys".

That week we were able to identify the problem. Two pieces of software using the same port. You’d think outta 60gb of logs, a port problem would be at the head of the messages.

So. I have had no time to myself. Put away too many hours last week, plus I have to travel ~2 hours a day to get there and back again. Talk about a waste of time when it is precious.

But I’ve made the 3 months probationary period at Hyro and they are proud to have me on board. I have beaten their record for getting up to speed and managing Project A. Previous record was 9 months. I’m on 3.

A while back we got a resume from someone who was willing to work for free to get the experience. He had a masters in IT. We put him through the java test and he didn’t score very well. The boss had already made his mind up that he wanted to see what he could do so we hired him. We also paid him. Didn’t need him working 2 jobs. That would be unfair to his ability.
It came down to: He wasn’t able to solve problems on his own. Refused to try google for answers before asking someone else. Made working on code as a team difficult. Didn’t take much advice from others. Didn’t have very good communication skills.

Here’s hoping it’s not another month between posts

-= Comments
1. Zooba | May 10th, 2006 at 12:57 am

Congratulations on setting the new record

2. Andrew B Coathup | May 10th, 2006 at 7:02 pm

Yay monkey achiever. That makes you a big swinging monkey.

Have you considered moving closer to the city? I once lived ten minutes drive from work (unless you crash your car into the receptionists car on the way, which I did once, funny story). It was great living so close. At the moment you have 2 hours of dead time.

Hmmm, hiring rubbish people, I am going to try to avoid that.

3. pimaster | May 11th, 2006 at 10:53 pm

I don’t think I’m interested in moving out. I pay next to no rent. Food is always cooked and my old folks are great company. My brother isn’t too bad either when he gets some sleep.

If I moved out it would probably be too expensive to live on my own. Then the security of my hardware becomes an issue.

I have the laptop with me most days, but I never get a seat to use it on. 17″ hardly stays in your ‘zone’.
Just need to find a way to relax and make the train time ‘down time’ for the brain. At least then I would be ready for work / sleep.

4. Beth | May 20th, 2006 at 6:31 pm

Congrats russ, I’ve made my 3 months too, now its a lot harder for them to fire me, lol… actually, what can I say, they love me I throw scrunched up bits of paper and planes at my work mates while I’m waiting for stuff to build and deploy, I talk and laugh loudly with everyone, I set up Word AutoCorrect to write silly things when someone types the word “the”, I feed them biscuits and fruit, I make sure our project manager doesn’t have too much to drink at farewell lunches, I even answer the phone when the receptionist isn’t in. And as an added bonus, during my free time, I write a bit of code for them. As you can see, I’m indispensable.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Where have I been

I don’t think I let the masses know where I went after Uni. So here is the speel.
Towards the end of IBL last year, I got an email from Ashley at HotMagna. He said that had heard I lot about me, and was wondering if I would be would be interested in a position there. They handed over the web address and said have a poke around.
At the time, I had just been given the kick in the pants from IBM, and was interested in wasting my time on Web Development on my own under the name of Infinite Precision.

But I said what the hell, it’ll be interesting for the interviewing practice.

They gave me the 30min phone interview. Basically just asking how I tackle development in general, and a few “text book” style Java questions.
I was slightly dissapointed in some of my responses. My simple answer was that I had been doing Delphi for 4 months and C# before that so the specifics of Java had left me.

A couple of weeks later a receive an email. They want to put me through their test. Most of it was a rehash of the questions they asked over the phone, and two coding tasks.
I hadn’t done database interaction in a long time, so I wasn’t able to do that.
The other task I did. I wasn’t proud of it’s design, but it was only a small task.

They were quite intrigued at how I interpreted their instructions. We had a chat about how a design can sometimes be inhibiting if you are venturing into new territory and a couple of other things.
Get a phone call a while later that they want my skills. I wasn’t over the moon about it because I really wanted to follow my own web dev thing.

But I started.

I was placed on the Toll acount. They have a system that manages all of the scanned documents from parcels that pass through the various scanning stations. The IT isn’t that difficult to grasp, but it does take time to get a complete understanding. The hardest part is the politics. The kind of thing that can really kill a love of developing.
Funny thing. Toll stocks have almost doubled since I’ve started working there. I’d love to think that I was the cause of it

So, to prevent the brain from going insane, Dave and I are trying to get some movement in the Web Dev world. He is suffering a little in his job. Has no tangible result from the work he does. We have a few clients that we will meet. A meeting with Telstra has to be re-arranged. We want to find the cost of hosting our own server. We feel it could be a selling point to small businesses if they only have one point of contact for all their online accounts.

Last weekend I went away. Probably for longer than I should have since I have been trying to get over a cold of some sort. I don’t mind the 9-5 job, but when you leave home at about 7, get home at about 7, it leaves little room for anything but sleep.

-= Comments
1. Xavier | April 24th, 2006 at 1:07 pm

Rather than hosting your own server (or getting a dedicated one), you may be better off reselling (or having a “preferred”) hosting. Then you don’t need to manage the specifics of maintaining it and can focus on actually making web sites. You can still be the single point of contact - just refer through to the hosting company.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Ooooh, Perty new machine

Dell 9400.
Dual core 2ghz
Dual Channel 2 GB 667mhz Ram
80gb @7200 rpm HDD
17″ @ 1920×1200


-= Comments
1. Andrew B Coathup | April 12th, 2006 at 12:59 am

*jealous*

2. Clinton | April 12th, 2006 at 2:12 am

what - only 80Gb? Seems so under-spec… (also slightly green)
:)

3. Xavier | April 12th, 2006 at 12:27 pm

> 17" @ 1920x1200
That’s … sharp.

4. Matthew Delves | April 16th, 2006 at 9:22 am

Buy a mac next time. Apart from that, looks like a nice boxen.

Sunday, April 9, 2006

Linux woes

I was talking to a friend at 2600 and found out that he worked for Dell.
I thought that I might as well ask if he could get my laptop that I purchased some 5+ years ago put it my name. At the moment, Dell think the machine is stolen and won’t give me a replacement power adapter from the crap batch that release long ago.

I had a look at his site and seen that it was pretty crappy, and asked him what was going on with it. He said he put it together it 2 minutes and wasn’t very proud of it. So I started throwing something together in PHP. His current site was in asp. My plan was to write in PHP, change stuff over to ASP and hand it to him and hope there would only be minor changes required.
My next thought was blow it. Mono does asp (I refuse to use IIS any more), I’ll get that going.
Downloaded, installed. Works ok standalone. Now I had to get it working with Apache. Got that compiled and installed but it doesn’t really work yet (haven’t looked into why).
My next thought was the instructions seem more plentiful for linux. I want to run linux, best I make a move.

Went out and bought a 200gb PATA disk. Formatted into enough fragments. Backed up some stuff from my main disk and started with the linux process.

Now, the first hurdle is the first two disks are SATA, sda and sdb and raided together at the hardware level as a raid 0.
Third disk is sdc.
When I started the install, suse10 warned me that these two disk are in a raid set, and the installer doesn’t know how to deal with them in the 2.6 kernel. I was ok with this. I wanted it all installed on sdc anyway.
Got to the partitioning stage and set up all the partitions on sdc to how I wanted them mounted. But I couldn’t see a way of telling the process to completely ignore sda and sdb. So I chickened out.

Removed disk sda and sdb.
Re-installed.
Got the dual head working. Got networking working. Looks sweet.
Put sda and sdb back. Windows still boots.

Then started work on how to get NTLDR to look for linux.
Found pages on it:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dual_Boot_from_Windows_Bootloader_(NTLDR)_and_why
http://www.highlandsun.com/hyc/linuxboot.html

The first thing I had to do was get linux to work out it is actually on sdc instead of sda when it installed. I think I’ve fixed that up in grub and fstab.
I then re-installed grub on sdc just to make sure that it knew it was there.

dd sdc and sdc1 to two separate files, because I’m not sure which one I should really be using. Set it up in boot.ini for Windows, rebooted and tried both. After futsing around a bit, they now both say:
“Windows was unable to find \system32\hal.dll, please re-install it”

I’m a little confused at this point since linux is meant to be booting once I select it from the list, not windows. I haven’t got around to searching this on google yet, I think it’ll be my next step.
I didn’t want to put this on the net yet because I would really like to figure it out for myself. I am open to short one liners like “Check file xyz for something or other” but I don’t want full instructions at this point.
Also need to give this blog some content, rather than just commenting others

There is the little linux man whispering in my ear, “format all disks and just go with linux”, but I’m not prepared to give up Windows just yet.

-= Comments
1. Zooba | April 8th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

Format all disks and just go with Windows

2. Lucien | April 9th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

I currently have the Ubuntu linkux distro running on my second HD. Windows is still my primary OS, and the one grub boots to by default.
they both live happily together on my system, but then I don’t have a raid

The Ubuntu installer is VERY nice. Nicest linux install I’ve ever done.

The draw back with Ubuntu is that it’s aimed at end users, not developers, so it doesn’t come with a lot of dev stuff I assumed would be there. But the package manager is so nice to use that installing anything else is simple. Ever for a linux retard like me

3. admin | April 9th, 2006 at 5:59 pm

Zooba is that little voice inside my head.
Lucien, I tried installing Ubuntu, but I had trouble setting up the network. I propably could have for it to work, but suse10 picked it up quicker.

4. Xavier | April 10th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

Are you sure you’re selecting the right hd in grub? I know it does it kind of a strange way. Sounds weird that one of your entries is trying to get into windows.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

l33t

How cool, my blog entry has an actual pi symbol. I feel so special.

I was working on Zork so very long ago and I actually came up with some question that I would like to ask peoples.

If I make this a service, that people connect to. Does that mean all the detail about rooms, and objects be stored in a database instead objects. Do I only interact with the database, or do I keep details about room ‘in memory’ until a person leaves a room.

I’ve probably skipped over a great lot of detail (Do people still remember Zork?). But I want to enjoy some popcorn.

-= Comments
1. Zooba | April 3rd, 2006 at 11:29 pm

Yes, I remember Zork

Keep in mind that even if you store the details in objects, the objects will still have to be stored in a database. Possibly this is a level of abstraction which is easy to achieve and convenient for this purpose, perhaps not.

Since multiple people will conceivably be using the room (similar to a MUD - maybe look for some code for these) you need to be careful about who keeps what information. In my experience, usually the server maintains everything and input/output is echoed to the client.

As usual, it is possible to produce this without using OO techniques at all, though it may require a greater stretch of the mind, since this is a problem that lends itself to OO. However, a RDBMS could also easily be used. It basically comes down to what you are used to and how much abstraction/performance loss you’re prepared to live with.

2. Andrew B Coathup | April 4th, 2006 at 7:09 pm

What is the most efficient, what is the most scalable?

What works for ten rooms? for 100 rooms? for 1000 rooms?

What works for ten users, a 1000, 100,000 users?

Use the database with sensible caching. That is my two cents.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

It’s alive!!!!!!!!!

Is it time to let the blogging begin again?

First news: I’ve ordered a nice new Dell Laptop for work. i9400, 17″ @ 1920×1200, 2gb 667mhz Ram, 80gb 7200rpm, dual core 2ghz, and a shiny nVidia 7800GO.

Problem: Dell have run out of 7800’s. My machine sits idle until they are brought it. I’ve been waiting 3 weeks to hear news that they want to ‘upgrade’ it to a ATI X1400, and they’d do it at no extra cost (BAH!, goto hell. I want my expensive card!) Should arrive in a fortnight or so. Gar.

-= Comments
1. Andrew B Coathup | March 29th, 2006 at 7:05 pm

Welcome back. It is good to be home