Grammar on my Terms

Standardization

2011-08-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Standardization is a tool used by companies to make their resource pool more flexible. In other words, if project X needs more bodies to ensure it meets a deadline, management has a larger pool to pull from and divert to the suffering project. The other promise is of reliability and consistent metrics; the idea goes -- the more things run and look the same, the better your metrics and repeatability will be.

Large companies that have this mentality forget their greatest asset is the people and the creativity they employ to get their jobs done. Which is why ITIL steers clear of dictating standards and tools and instead focuses on process. A Company with a large palette of tools and good processes is more able to shift with the ever-changing tide of technology. Contrast that to a company that spends years perfecting their ridged toolset and standards; you quickly realize change is almost impossible.

Great developers (and I believe great people) will naturally gravitate to great tools and will insist upon them. (See http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html). This being the case, tool selection is an exercise left to the team but process is the realm of governance. For software developers, If the process is to run a script with a specified install directory to install an application, I as the user care not what language or framework the script utilized, but that it conforms to the install process.

Mocks and Testing

2011-05-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last 30 minutes debugging a mock object. I was running unit tests through the debugger and inspecting the objects I thought the code was calling. To my surprise this well-defined well-used object was returning an un-expected result in the tests. Only later did I realize the test wasn’t calling the real object. It was calling a mock, and the test writer had incorrectly defined the mock result.

This illustrates why I think isolation testing with mocks can lead to a misplaced sense of code coverage. Lets look at some code so I can explain.

Consider the following

RequestContext target = mock(RequestContext.class);
when(target.getParameterNames().thenReturn( new String[]{ "marker" } ));
when(target.getBaseUri()).thenReturn(new IRI("http://localhost:8080/atom"));
when(target.getTargetPath()).thenReturn("/foo/bar?marker=1");

Since we don’t have access to a real RequestContext() it makes sense to mock this out. Its only when we actually deploy our application do we realize the subtle errors here.

The actual call to target.getBaseUri() returns http://localhost:8080/atom/ instead of http://localhost:8080/atom
And target.getTargetPath() returns "/foo/bar?marker=1" instead of "/foo/bar”

Both of these issue are impossible to detect without actually running your code with a real request that returns a real RequestContext().

This illustrates the biggest downside to using mocks for isolation testing, or even isolation testing as a general rule. When you isolate a test with mocks your almost guaranteed your classes are going to pass the unit tests because you are in complete control of the inputs your class is subjected too. In a real world application this is simply not true.

One of the great benefits to code testing is to validate the class works within a certain context. By separating your classes from the context they will run in; you completely negate a huge benefit to code testing.

The need for functional tests
In contrast to isolated unit tests, functional tests exercise your code with a real world context.

Functional tests have the following benefits

1. Broader strokes of code coverage
2. Tracing errors with a debugger can be much faster than sorting through unit tests guessing what part of the system is acting up, and tweaking unit tests
3. Users can submit inputs that cause the error, which can and should be easily turned into a functional test.
4. Confidence your application delivers the service it was designed to provide. The user -- and by extension you -- don’t care if all the classes work as expected in an isolated environment. They do care if your application provides the functionality promised.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not anti mock. I just don’t subscribe to the notation that EVERY class must have an isolation test. Using a mock – like any good tool -- at the right time and for the right purpose is important. Many of the classes we write are better served in a functional test. We still get the same code coverage, and the test is more accurate and less fragile.

The Future of Web Development and the Cloud

2010-07-12T12:08:00.001-07:00

More people are realizing that beyond the hype, the cloud can be a real game changer. But how that effects each tier of the software stack I think is up for some debate. Deciphering the future path development will take is something of a mystic art, of which I will attempt to partake.

I think it was apparent to any one who attended Google IO 2010 that google was really pushing the idea of the browser as a platform. This is a different take on the browser than most of the developers I have daily interaction with. Most of the developers I know don't want the browser to be the platform of the future mainly because of the browser compatibility issues. First its the “Works in Firefox but not in Internet Explorer” then there are the performance issues, network and JavaScript based and I've heard more of my fair share of DOM hate . Having worked with the browser for more than 10 years most developers are left with a very sour taste in their mouth and groan loudly when ever some one states “The browser is the platform of the future!”

So why is Google betting on the browser? It might have something to do with the fact every one that has bet against the browser has lost. Even at a time when most couldn't imagine the browser providing a truly interactive experience Google Maps made its debut and changed everything. But Google has a problem, The browser as a platform can be a very hostile development environment. So it's no surprise Google IO 2010 sessions were flooded with ways to make rich client side applications on the browser simple and less hostile. Google's prize fighter in this effort is GWT. The GWT compiler abstracts away the browser specific issues improves the performance of the client side application and encourages code reuse between client and server. GWT allows the developer to focus on the application experience without all the browser specific worries that are usually associated with complex rich browser applications.

This shift from avoiding client side development to adopting it as the primary development strategy has some interesting consequences. First is the movement of the presentation layer from the server side to the client side. Because of this, the HTML template engine will no longer be useful to modern browser developers. Also, Ajax moves from being a cute way of creating the appearance of an interactive application to the primary way an application retrieves data from the web head. In this new paradigm the web head becomes what is essentially an RPC service. To any one that is paying attention this shift has huge implications for web frameworks like ruby on rails, that have built their framework around server side templates and easy creation of restful web services. What this means is that the bulk of the application is no longer on the server side, but on the client side. This is a big win for scalability as the web head has less to keep track of and is freed to be more stateless, which is just what you want if you want to scale your web application to millions of users.

One last thing this paradigm shift means; SOA gains much more relevance in the web application space. A rich client consuming web services is a match made in heaven for SOA architects. Which in turn is a huge win for IT management as SOA allows IT to be more closely aligned to business initiatives ( But that is a conversation saved for another time )

So what does this have to do with the cloud? Well as it turns out, SOA and the Cloud have a great relationship together. And here I'm mostly speaking about PaaS ( Platform as a service ). Since the design philosophy behind SOA is everything is a service and cloud is a service the 2 couldn't have been more closely matched.

So lets talk about Paas. In the cloud space PaaS is probably the most under estimated and un-interesting to most early adopters of cloud. Most major customers of cloud services are more interested in figuring out how their current software platforms can utilize the cloud than develop applications targeting the cloud platform. The fear for cloud adopters is of vendor lock-in. If you develop applications for Google App engine then you decide you want to use some other cloud vendor, your stuck. You have developed your application for Google's PaaS; and it's not exactly transferable to other cloud vendors or for that matter on premise. This issue alone is the biggest detractor to PaaS. Cloud vendors are just not seeing a lot of traction in the PaaS space, and I think this is the primary reason.

What we need is a PaaS independent platform developers can target which will work no matter what cloud vendor you choose. Funny thing is, this problem has already been solved in the Java world. It's referred to as J2EE and it's associated standards. The idea is that you develop your Java application targeting these Java standards and in theory, your application should run on any stack that supports these standards. So I could develop an application on a Tomcat/JBoss stack, then deploy to an IBM or SUN stack and the application should run just fine.

The Good news is Google recognizes the PaaS issue and is hoping to capitalize on the success of the Java standards in the cloud. In the Google IO 2010 Key note they announced a partnership with VMware to deliver an open development platform that all cloud vendors could implement and allow developers to target a vendor neutral PaaS.

This could be huge, as this vendor neutral development platform could bring more companies to the cloud and truly change the way we look at hardware from a development standpoint. No longer are we worried about how our application will scale within the hardware infrastructure. Developers will be free to focus on the client side user experiences and web services on the server side should just scale as needed thanks to the cloud. One button deployment to a production system can truly be a reality lifting a huge burden off change and release and developers in general.

How PaaS could do this may be the subject of a future post. But for now, I think its safe to say PaaS has a big future ahead of it.

Object Oriented Spaghetti

2010-03-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

The object-oriented model makes it easy to build up programs by accretion. What this often means, in practice, is that it provides a structured way to write spaghetti code. This is not necessarily bad, but is not entirety good either.

A lot of the code in the real world is spaghetti code, and this is probably not going to change soon. For programs that would have ended up as spaghetti anyway, the object-oriented model is good; they will at least be structured spaghetti. But for programs that might otherwise have avoided this fate, object oriented abstractions could be more dangerous than useful.

-- Paul Graham "ANSI Common Lisp"

REST

2009-10-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

Requires the developer to think about ways that users could abuse the public access to some objects. Requires developers to write defensively; Instead of simply focusing on solving the problem space. As an example developers have to think about ways users could abuse the public access to some objects that may inadvertently take down the object service in addition developers may need to think about access restrictions on a per object basis. REST is like giving the world access to your SQL server data and stored procedures, but with a bolted on facade.

In conclusion, If your only goal is to create a web application and you really don't care if your users can access the server controllers; you prob don't need to waste your time with REST. If giving third party developers access to your website data is value-add for your business use REST.

Object Oriented Functional Design

2009-08-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

While on an interview and talking with a co-worker I had to explain my position on object oriented design. I feel a short blog post is in order.

Objects encapsulate state, like a User class might encapsulate the user name and password of a user. Processes act upon that state, processes shouldn't create more state, but only manage the state that is required of the program.

Processes can be expressed best in a functional programming style, however state can not. State can be managed best by encapsulation into objects, Processes do not benefit from encapsulation.

Think of functions as Processes, they usually act upon data with an input and output that needs to be stored somewhere as state, think of objects as the storage of that state.Once we clearly define these relationships, its easy to see a utopia of the 2 concepts is a mix of Object encapsulation for data and state, and functional programming style for the methods that act upon the objects.There are many contenders, but I'm not quite sure any of the languages today offer this perfect mix of objects and functional mix.

In absence of this perfect mix, my goal as a software engineer is to write software in a functional way while at the same time reducing state within the methods and ensuring my methods act only upon the state that is within the object its attached to. Once you start using methods from one object to act upon the state of another object, you might as well not have object encapsulation at all and place the state into global space, as the entire reason you created the objects was to manage the state by using only the methods attached to that object.

This leads to a startling conclusion some might find controversial, Getters and Setters are evil, If you ever think you just cant live without a getter or setter, you may need to rethink your design.

Reflections on 10 Years of Development

2008-12-31T08:06:00.000-08:00

1. Anyone can become a star programmer, it just takes some longer than others.

2. Your keyboard matters, Good typing habits matter.

3. Be balanced, don't believe everything you hear or read, including this. Come to your own conclusions, know that nothing is ever black and white. Don't dismiss the bad ideas, and don't trust the good ideas.

4. Process can be a "good thing" ( Agile, Extreme, Scrum, etc.. ) But it doesn't make or break your project. People make or break your project.

5. Don't choose a language based on how fast it is but instead, how fast you can develop with it.

6. Don't choose a language because there is a large pool of developers familiar with that language. The larger the pool of developers the more likely you will be temped by a fancy resume and hire a mediocre programmer. However if you dip into a smaller pool of developers you know the developers in the smaller pool are there, not because it will look good on their resume, but because they enjoy working in the language. This increases the chance you will get a star programmer.

7. The programmer is greater than the language. This means you can give any language to a great programmer and you will get great code. The opposite is not true, you can't give a great language to a mediocre programmer and expect great code.

8. Your Language matters. Giving the right language to the right programmer can have a huge impact on the success of your project.

9. Not all languages are created equal. Some languages are more powerful than others. The problem is not with the languages, but the people that use them. If we see a language that is less powerful than our favorite language X, we know it's less powerful because is doesn't have feature Y. But if we see a language that is more powerful we don't recognize it as more powerful. We just see a language with some strange syntax and some extra cruft added on. We reckon that it's just as powerful as our language X, but nothing more.

This is partly because we are creatures of habit, but mostly because we have trained our brains to *think* in our language of choice. People don't think in terms of feature Y if their language doesn't support it. hence its not necessary nor needed. This means you could stumble upon the language equivalent of a super weapon, but never know it.

10. Don't think your so special. Don't get me wrong, every one needs to think they are special, but programmers take it to the next level. It's not enough for us to think we are special, we have to display that individuality in the programs we write. Hence we write tools tailored to only our special needs and tend to write our programs in a style that is uniquely ours.

This is the central idea behind Perl, although most people don't know it. Perl allows the programmer to write their code and tools in the most beautiful or bizarre fashion. This only fuels the idea that we are special because we wrote this thing in such a way as only we easily comprehend it. We create these incredibly complex 1 liners or beautifully efficient terse code and we pat ourselves on the back for creating this code that takes any other programmer 20+ minutes to comprehend, We are proud of this because it means we are special and more intelligent than the other guy. Because we *get it* and they don't.

Although this allows us to show off our individuality and show how clever we can be. It makes collaboration difficult if the other programmer gets a head ache deciphering our code. In the end, he won't want to work with us, and will routinely suggest the code should be re-written. Sometimes even naming conventions such as CamelCase or under_score will cause other programmers to request a re-factor. Because it doesn't match the style which defines their individuality. Which leads me into Number 11.

11. Never stop learning. Once you stop learning you die. Seriously... Programmers are like trees. Trees are always growing, they never stop. If a tree stops growing it dies, becomes stiff, brittle and collapses. Programmers are the same, once you reach a point where there are no new ideas that can effect you and your programmer experience. ( AKA you know it all, been there done that ) you become stiff and un-movable. You become the guy no one wants to work with, the OLD guy set in his ways with no room for improvement. Avoid these people at all cost, their poor attitude is infectious.

12. Sleep. There is a myth among programmers that the guy who pulls the all nighter is the programmer equivalent of a bad ass. In the short term you may make significant progress in a 24 hour span, but that is not going to make up for the productivity you will lose recovering from sleep deprivation during the next few days and weeks. A good night sleep is good for your brain and your arteries, especially as you get older.

13. Do something else besides program. I can't tell you how many times I've been enjoying a secondary activity and then Bam, the eureka moment hits. Preforming other activities besides programming exercise different sections of the brain. This not only makes you a more rounded individual but also a better programmer.

There is no vudu

2008-12-22T14:45:00.000-08:00

One of the newet members of the development team at work reminds me of myself when I was new to the development scene. I'll see him mulling over a bit of code or system issue that from his point of view *should* work, yet does not. This usually leads him to the conclusion that the system is preforming some kind of unknown Vudo and that there is in fact nothing really wrong. This is beleived in spite of the the fact he is getting incorrect results.

The truth is, and I came to this conclusion only thru experience; there is no Vudo. The effect does in fact have a cause. You only have to follow the effect to it's logical source now matter in-conceivable the cause could be, it does have a cause; you have only to find it.

The skill you gain from this experience is the ability to diagnose that cause sooner than the guy next to you.

Wow... I'm getting old.

Old is new again

2008-05-13T10:43:00.001-07:00

While browsing through some old chat logs I found this little gem

< brian > hey, please make sure to turn on updatedb in your build script. 
< thrawn01 > should be on by default, but I'll check.
** I sent some messages confirming its on as default on the new boxes **

< brian > life is filled with mystery
< thrawn01 > That is just a nice way of saying u were mistaken
< brian > so, your theory is that someone went to 
          prod4 and sat-svn1 and turned it off?
< thrawn01 > ninjas
< brian > stealthy root ninjas. very likely.
< thrawn01 > indeed.

I also found a qoute from stephen hawking

"The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events 
do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a 
certain underlying order, which may or may not be 
divinely inspired"

I find that I would have to agree.

Ollie has a home (Kinda)

2008-05-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

Ollie now has a home up at Google Code. Unfortunately Google code only supports the horrid SVN repository and not GIT. So I also created a git repository over at GitHub. Because I really dislike the Google Code wiki, I still have the Media Wiki hosted on nates box

So Google code

The Good

Clean Interface
Fast, Responsive ( unlike sourceforge )

The Bad

No Git Repository Support
The Wiki Markup isn't a flexable as MediaWiki ( Example: You can't keep a Camel Case from being a wiki link. Like when I list my Class Objects Utf8Buffer shows up as a wiki link and I don't wish it to! )
The presentation of the wiki is not to my liking. You don't get a Wiki front page, instead you must select a wiki page to view from a list!

Summary
I think Google Code as alot potential, but still does need work before it becomes the 1 stop shop for open source code

C++ Library symbols

2008-03-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

I've looked up this information enough I need to keep it in a place I will not lose it.

To get a list of all the C++ symbols in a dynamic library use 'nm' command. You can get a demangled listing of the symbols by using 'nm --demangle'

Output
symbol types: each symbol type is shown by a letter. If the letter is lowercase, the symbol is local. If the letter is uppercase, the symbol is global ( external )

nm - lists symbols from object files for each symbol the following is displayed:

the value in hexadecimal
the symbol type
the symbol name

How long does it take to install an OS?

2008-01-10T15:37:00.001-08:00

Apparently, 2 days...

Lets start at the top, Mix in a small army of new DL360 G5 servers from HP ( 7 Cores, 6 Hard drive Raid 5 arrays ) and Redhat Enterprise 5 and you get problems. Just before RPM installation begins, anaconda throws an exception and reports the following error.

SystemError: lvcreate failed for /dev/blah/blah
( 100 lines of Goo follow )

Day 1
Someone thinks it's a driver issue. Google reveled someone else seamed to be having problems installing their OS on the same hardware we had, with similar errors. I expend hours trying to verify the updated driver for the array controller was A - installed, B - used properly. Next we notice lvcreate and pvcreate are not included on the ramfs when we access the shell from the redhat installer. So we search for updated anaconda installers ( Still don't know how anaconda creates LVM partitions without lvcreate or pvcreate. "find . | grep pvcreate" returns nada ) I try some other stuff then go home.

Day 2
Brandon pulls the Firmware for the MOBO from the HP website and gets the OS to install. But when we try to duplicate that trick it doesn't work. We note the OS installed on the 200GB array, but not the servers with 600GB arrays. Retraced the steps taken on the 200GB array and duplicated them on the 600GB array servers.... nada. Next I notice a funny looking error at the bottom of the exception anaconda gave us. ( Not sure if it was there pre firmware update )

Read only file system /dev/hda1
insufficient free extents for VolumeVOL000, blah,blah

Google doesn't help much, but then it strikes us we might have encountered some max size of a LVM Volume. ::Google some more::

Synopsis
Turns out an "extent" is the size of a chunk of space allocated on a LVM Logical Volume. According to one site the max number of extents you can have on a single logical drive was 65,000 and if your extent size was to small it might put you over this limit. Anaconda figured we needed a 32MB extent size, What we actually need was 64MB extent. Why this is the case, I'm not entirely sure. ( When I get some more time I will append the answer to this post ). But getting the OS installed involves a 2 step process, 1) Update the firmware on the MOBO 2) Up the extent size of the logical drive using disk druid.

Google Interview Question

2007-12-26T18:10:00.000-08:00

An interesting problem I ran across on a blog the other day.
Quote from the blog....

Given a function which produces a random integer in the range of 1 to 5, write a function which produces a random integer in the range of 1 to 7

This is well-known as one of the so called Microsoft/Google interview questions. There are million ways to solve it.

So here is my Take on the solution.

int rand7() {
return 7 / rand5();
}

You will only get 1 2 3 or 7 using this solution, but the requirements didn't call for uniformity.

More uniform would be

int rand7() {
return (( rand5() + rand5() ) % 7) + 1;
}

A friend of mine was confused with the modulus '%' in this function. The modulus returns the remainder of a division operation. The remainder of a division can never be greater than the dividing number ( in this case 7 ) which means % will always return a number between 6 and 0 ( 0 ... 6 ) which is also why we add a +1 to the result to get 1 thru 7

Spoiled

2007-12-19T10:16:00.001-08:00

I've been living in the land of PHP for so long I have forgotten the basics of pointer arrays and types. For instance this one threw me a loop today.


environ = (char**)malloc(env.size()+1);
count = 0;
    for( list::iterator i = env.begin(); i != env.end(); i++ ) {
        environ[count++] = strdup((*i).c_str());
        cout << "environ[0]: " << environ[0] << endl;
    }

While loading up the environ array I noticed corruption

cout << "environ[0]: " << environ[0] << endl;

gave me

environ[0]: 8`��=/usr/bin/;/usr/local/bin

I also noticed each iteration of my array loading was creating even more corruption on an increment of 4 bytes each. So that when the array was fully loaded environ[0] was completely corrupted. This totally threw me. On a whim I threw away the malloc and replaced it with

environ = new char*[env.size()+2];

and the corruption went away. It was only then I realized what I was doing wrong. I Changed

environ = (char**)malloc(env.size()+1);

environ = (char**)malloc((env.size()+1) * sizeof(char**) );

And all was well. You see malloc returns a void* which is just an 8 byte pointer, But not all types are just 8 bytes, so you have to allocate not only the number of locations you want in your array, you also have to calculate in the size of the type your array contains. When you tell the compiler you want environ[1] it knows the size of char** and increments the pointer 1 * sizeof(char**). So when we allocate memory we have to be mindful of the type of the array, and not just the size.

Because

2007-11-27T11:54:00.001-08:00

Yes because! because I'm not a poet, or a lyricists. Because I'm a software developer. I deal with the facts. Truth, cold hard understanding. Emotions are a mystery, not meant to be understood. Because if I understand them I can ignore them, and to ignore them is to live a joyless existence. One of the best things that ever happened to me was showing up at your door every day, not knowing why. I had this feeling I couldn't shake, or understand. No one can tell you your in love, you just know it, Through and through. Like a disease that is hard to shake, Like the best disease you wish you didn't have but can't live without. It's a part of you, you can't throw it away, you can't give it way, you can't ignore it. Even if it were to grow cold one day, it's still apart of you. Nothing can take away the memory of this love. So ask away, and I'll continue to give you my answer, "Because". There is no other answer, if there is, maybe I'll lose this. Maybe it will disappear into this logical vacuum which dissects the world and places it back together into its logical and well understood mold. I think it would destroy me, because its a reason to live, a reason to work hard, a reason to exist. A reason to put up with the shit this world throws at you everyday. What other reason to continue through this world system if not for this strange unknown emotion which brings joy to this joyless existance.

So yeah, I love you Just because and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Google does it again

2007-11-14T15:04:00.001-08:00

Yet again, I'm continually amazed at how Google can re-invent an idea and make it better. The Interface guys at Google are absolutely stellar. My Picasa Web account has been a much better experience that my Flickr account.

And this little slide show doodad is really slick. After discovering Picasa web I decided to check out Picasa again, but since I run Linux as my desktop only Picasa 2.2 supported . Which isn't anything new. So I downloaded Picasa 2.7 and ran it thru wine. A few glitches at startup, but it ran fine. The feature I was most interested in ( Uploading pictures to Picasa Web ) Didn't work so I was a bit disappointed. This peaked my curiosity for other Linux photo management packages. So I checked out F-Spot and Digikam. F-Spot wanted me to "import" all my pictures, but I really didn't care to make copies of all the pics I've dumped into my "downloads" directory. And the interface just didn't give as smooth an experience as Picasa. Then Digikam, which I've used quite a bit. Also had trouble with my 'downloads' directory. I get the feeling Digikam expected to only see pics in the 'downloads' directory and all the project directories under 'downloads' it mistakenly added as 'Albums'. Despite that, I think Digikam is on the right track, yet still not as smooth as Picasa. I would like an option in both applications to upload pics to a online web gallery ( Flickr, PicasaWeb ). Maybe I'll try my hand at adding such support when I get kde4 compiled successfully.

KDE for efficiency and aesthetics Part 1

2007-11-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Introduction
In this post I hope to reveal some tips I have learned over the years on how you can improve your efficiency with the KDE desktop. But first I must address a few objections people may have to using KDE for efficiency. The first objection when recommending KDE as the desktop of choice is how slow it is. I'll whole heartedly agree when I first began using KDE way back in KDE 2.0 it was visibly slower than anything gnome had. But ever since 3.0 KDE has had an enormous boost in performance. When comparing KDE responsiveness over gnome today, there is a small but noticeable difference in KDE's performance over gnome. I've had more than 1 die hard gnome fan mention gnome has lost its pension for speed recently. If you haven't looked at KDE in a while now is a great time to check it out. The second objection I hear is that KDE is just plain ugly and I'll have to agree. I think as desktops go KDE 3.x has most unappealing default look of any desktop. Especially when compared to gnome. But with a few tweaks and about 15-20 minutes of your time, KDE's power and customization really out shine any other Linux desktop available. Some of the tweaks I'll share I have learned from many years in software development and system administration. Both camps can benefit from theses customizations and tips.

Key Bindings improve productivity
Effective use of key binds is what separates the grok administrators from the Gurus. So any article on improving productivity must include information on effective key bind use. In fact, the best sys-admin I've ever had the opportunity to work with was at his peek performance while in 'eterm' with a plethora of “screen” sessions open. In KDE, Konsole is a wonderful substitute for “screen” and assists those of us with less than perfect short term memory to keep track of what session is for what task.

Konsole Tabs
Managing Konsole tabs should be second nature. Moving tabs, creating new tabs and renaming tabs should all have key binds. A sample key binding setup I use centers around my love affair with vim. ( I recommend vim users check out emacs, it takes some work, but you can get emacs to act like vim, but you gain all the customization power of emacs ) Note: man,less and many other GNU tools all support vim style movement keys so this setup will encourage constancy )

Ctrl+Shift+L   = Change active session to the next tab
Ctrl+Shift+H   = Change active session to the previous tab
Ctrl+Alt+Left  = Arrow Move the tab location to the left
Ctrl+Alt+Right =  Arrow Move the tab location to the right
Ctrl+Shift+N   = New Tab
Ctrl+Alt+S     = Rename Tab
Ctrl+Shift+F   = Full Screen

Practice opening, navigating, and renaming sessions with these key binds until it becomes second nature. Before long manging multiple sessions and multitasking sessions will drastically improve your productivity in the console.

Window management
Key binds for window management is extremely useful as this lessens the need to reach for the mouse further. ( Horizontal and vertical control can be changed depending on how your brain thinks of Vert/Horz in relation to up/down )

Maximize Window Horizontally =  Ctrl+Shift+K ( or J )
Maximize Window Vertically   =  Ctrl+Shift+J ( or K )
Maximize Window              = Ctrl+Shift+K

Practice opening a new emacs/vim window then maximizing the view vertically / Horizontally to improve visibility of the file. Opening new editor windows and Konsole sessions, switching between tasks will never involve the use of the mouse again. TIP: Kwin can remember the location and window size of any given application. A reasonable default location on the screen can help improve productivity if you know exactly where a new window will show up on the screen. To do this, position the application window in the desired location and size, right click the Title Bar select “Advanced” -- “Special Application settings” Enable the “Size” and “Position” then choose the appropriate action for both. I usually select “Apply Initially” as I may want to move and resize the window depending on the task. Click OK, and try opening that application again. As any data entry professional will tell you constancy breeds higher productivity.

Key binds and window movement
On occasion window movement or resize is needed. However many seconds spent placing and clicking the cursor on the 2-3 pixel wide bar that allows window resize and movement can imped the work at hand. ( Not to mention the profanities that fly when your in a time critical situation and you miss the dam bar 3 times in a row and click raise the window behind it obscuring your work from view ). The following binds can help lower your blood pressure and improve your window management proficiency. Once these keys and movements are embedded into your finger memory you will feel as if you've lost a leg if you ever have to return to a Microsoft Windows environment. ( You've been warned! )

Alt + Left Mouse Click = Move the window
Alt + Right Click      = Resize Window

The wonderful thing about KWin ( and other window managers that implement this feature fluxbox, blackbox ) is the location of the Alt+ Right Click within the window determines the type of resize desired. Atl + Right click and hold the bottom corner “region” of the window and you can resize horizontally and vertically as if you had click the corner bar. Alt + right click the center left or right regions of the window and you can adjust horizontally . Alt + right click on the upper or lower regions of the window and resize vertically. Once you realize the speed at which you can maneuver and position windows with this feature you will never look back.

Music management
Ok... So this may not improve productivity, but who among us professionals doesn't have a collection of mp3z to stimulate the brain during long hacking cycles. My player of choice is Amarok. And if you haven't tried it, for anyone with a moderate to extremely large mp3 collection Amarok is the “killer app” of players. I'll not go into the specifics of it's use but a few key binds make it all the more enjoyable to use. The Meta key used here is the “Windows Key” on my keyboard, Some prefer the “atl” or “ctrl” instead. All these shortcuts are modifiable within the Amarok “settings” drop down menu.

Meta + C = Play/Pause
Meta + B = Next Track
Meta + Z = Previous Track

With Amarok running the volume control is a simple as placing the mouse over the icon on the kicker tray and scrolling the mouse wheel up or down. You could bind the volume control to some keys, but I've yet to do so.

SSH Keys
Some administrators swear by ssh keys and some administrators just swear at the sight of them. Your personal experience may shape your view. But nothing beats the speed of logging onto remote systems without supplying a password during crunch time. SCP / SSH are made one step simpler when using ssh keys. Obviously this creates a security risk for your workstation if you don't include a password on your keys. And some companies just don't allow their use.

SSHFS
Forget samba shares. SSHFS is the best thing to ever happen to mountable network file systems and by its very nature SSHFS is far more flexible and much simpler to setup than any samba share. With SSHFS you can mount file systems from any computer on which you have ssh login access. This means all the file servers on your local network and across the internet are all within the grasp of SSHFS. Mounting remote Webservers and Diskspace from work or at home makes this tool a must have for serious administrators. It is sometimes very advantageous to use mc, Krusader, or dolphin to copy and mange files on a remote server. Security buffs will be quick to point out that having all your boxes mounted at your workstation creates a single point of intrusion on your PC. Any cracker that gains access to your workstation now has access to every mounted box on your workstation. So use with caution and ensure your workstation is the most secure place on the network.

Krusader
Now that we have all these wonderful SSHFS mounts we need a file manager that shares our love affair with key binds and customization. Krusader is just such a beast. Anyone familiar with 'Gentoo' ( The file manager, not the distro of the same name) or Midnight commander (mc) will feel right at home with Krusader. I'll not list all the possible key bindings here, but trust me, you can go crazy. Like Gentoo before it, Krusader is very customizable and flexible. The split pane nature of Krusader may confuse new users at first, but once you realize most file copy and move operations involve 2 open file manager windows anyway, Krusader's layout will seam so natural.

Navigation of directories is done with the keyboard. Use the Up/Down arrow keys to move the cursor, Left/Right arrows will navigate up or down the directory hierarchy. Tab switches between panes, and insert will select files. If the current directory listing involves several hundred entry's type the first few letters of the file you are looking for and Krusader jumps the cursor to the first file that matches.

Krusader also has access to the KDE's wonderful KIO style Urls. For example using Krusader you can browse to remote file systems via ssh, ftp, or http. To login to a remote box using ssh ( I f you don't already have it mounted with SSHFS ) Type “fish://username@hostname/path” in the address bar. Enter your user name and password and you have access to a remote file system from within Krusader. You may want to bookmark this location for easy access later. ( Click the “star” to the right of the address bar and click “Bookmark Current” )

Baskets
A good sign of a productive user is his good use of notes for an aggregation of ideas and knowledge. No matter how hard we try we will never be able to remember every single bit of information we need to be completely effective at our job. Some command or operation may only be used once or twice a year and hunting down the answer to a problem you have already solved is just maddening. Fortunately there is a help around the corner. And it's called Baskets. This little tool has single handedly improved my note taking 10 fold. Like tomboy, Baskets are a great way to organize ideas and notes in an organized manner. The website explains it's use better than I ever could. So go check it out! I mean it! go.... and come back when your done.

Leet Promptness
So this isn't exactly KDE specific eather, but it can help while in console land. Copy and paste the following into your .bashrc file

# Leet Promptness
C0="\[\e[0m\]"
C1="\[\e[1;30m\]" # &lt;- subdued color
C2="\[\e[1;37m\]" # &lt;- regular color
C3="\[\e[1;33m\]" # &lt;- host name color
C4="\[\e[1;34m\]" # &lt;- separator color (..[ ]..)  
PROMPT='\$' export PS1="$C3$C4..( $C2\u$C1@$C3\h$C1($C2\l$C1): $C2\w$C1$C1 : $C2\t$C1 $C4)..\n $C3$C2$PROMPT$C1$PROMPT$C0 "

Now open a new bash session in Konsole. Despite the overly flashy look of this prompt it can be very handy. Notice the current directory is listed separately from the prompt and is positioned for easy identification. One feature many may not be aware of is the mouse double click highlight. Move your mouse over the directory in the prompt and double click. The the entire directory path is now highlighted. Now middle click the mouse ( our press both left and right mouse buttons simultaneously ) and the directory will be pasted into the prompt. This can be extremely helpful when moving back and forth between many directories. The paths to your previously access directories are listed in the console and are just a double click away from your mouse copy and paste function. ( FYI, The double click highlight feature is an Xorg feature not specifically KDE ). If you don't like the colors just modify $C1 thru $C4 to your liking.

Gvim tips
There are plethora of vim tips available out on the internet so I'll only list a few that have become invaluable to me over the years.

Centralize Vim Swap files
Tired of seeing tons of vim swap files littered across your file systems? This addition to your .vimrc will centralize all your swap files into one directory. Just remember to make the directory after adding this or vim will complain

set dir=~/.vimswap

Mouse Context menu
The following addition to your .vimrc will give your mouse right click a context menu for copy and paste, I've have found this invaluable when coping and pasting to and from applications ( Java apps ) that don't support Xorgs middle click paste ability.

set guioptions-=T
set mousemodel=popup

Konsole style tabs in gvim
The following bit of code will setup the same key binds as I laid out for konsole in gvim.

nmap  :tabprevious
nmap  :tabnext
map  :tabprevious
map  :tabnext
imap  :tabpreviousi
imap  :tabnexti
nmap  :tabnew
imap  :tabnew

function GuiTabLabel()
let label = ''
let bufnrlist = tabpagebuflist(v:lnum)

" Add '+' if one of the buffers in the tab page is modified
for bufnr in bufnrlist
if getbufvar(bufnr, "&modified")
  let label = '+'
  break
endif
endfor

" Append the number of windows in the tab page if more than one
let wincount = tabpagewinnr(v:lnum, '$')
if wincount &gt; 1
let label .= wincount
endif
if label != ''
let label .= ' '
endif

" Append the buffer name
return label . simplify(bufname(bufnrlist[tabpagewinnr(v:lnum) - 1]))
endfunction

"set guitablabel=%{GuiTabLabel()}
set guitablabel=%t

I hope someone finds these tips of use, I'm sure I'll think of more later, but for now. Part 1 is done.

Abandoning Gentoo

2007-10-31T08:57:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm abandoning Gentoo for good now. It's been off and on for about a week. And If you spend more than a 8 hours during the week to install a working kde desktop. Your OS sucks ( Or you suck, depends on how you look at it ).

A few Highlights.

First getting the kernel compiled. This is a cool idea, Customize your kernel to suit your hardware, yank out all the cruft and you have a lean mean kernel machine. I have done many many kernel compiles but unfortunately on my laptop I don't have an intimate relationship with the hardware, So telling the kernel what hardware I have isn't as straight forward as 'lspci' and choosing the correct modules.

Second, You never know what minor problems you will encounter. I've never really used grub, So I screwed up the grub config several times. After several attempts I finally got the frame buffer working properly. After all that I booted the box with no X, no Desktop, no nothing. And 'df -h' showed a whoping 2 gigs used! 600 megs of which was just for the portage install. On top of that the boot time on this lean machine was 55 seconds! Longer than my kubuntu default install! ( I finally figured out gen-kernel included initramfs and some other stuff I didn't need so I ripped that out and got it to boot in about 15 seconds! )

Third, I finally got the machine to boot with networking, framebuffer, most of my hardware detected. ( Sound and wifi not tested ) So I pull out my shiny new emerge toy and started the kde install. Which unsurprisingly lasted for about 3 hours then suddenly died. Seams portage didn't compile kdelibs before compiling kdenetworking. Fixed that... Got another error. Oh seams portage didn't compile qt-3 with OpenGL support. *Sigh* so much for a un-attended kde install.

At this point I've not used my laptop for anything but installing gentoo for a week. I know I'm at the halfway mark and it just seams wrong to turn back now. But I really don't want to bother with any other unforeseen issues. ( And I know there will be some ) So Bye Bye Gentoo! Hello Kubuntu and kde4 beta 4.

Closures Practical Examples

2007-08-30T14:10:00.001-07:00

Why are closures so cool? Well imagine this example based on a presentation on closures in the Java language link


List parseItems(String line ) {
  List list;
  return Item.map( line, { Item s => list.put( s.uid ) });
}

Do you see what is happening here? First the purpose of this code is to take a string and parse it into a list of items. Next notice we are passing ‘line’ into a function called map() along with what appears to be an anonymous function. But wait, inside the anonymous function there is a reference to ‘list’!. This lexical scoping allows us to access variables defined in the scope of the calling method ( parseItems() ) and use them inside this anonymous function, Which is actually called a ‘Lexical Closure’.
Now you might be saying, why we can’t just do this as a loop? Well, we can… like so.


List parseItems(String line) {
  List items;
  List list;

  // Get a list of the items from the map
  items = ListItem.map( line );

  // Now iterate over the list and get the user id
  Iterator myVeryOwnIterator = items.entrySet().iterator();
  while(myVeryOwnIterator.hasNext()) {
     List e = myVeryOwnIterator.next();
     List.put( e.uid );
  } 
}

Despite the obvious, “This takes more code” there is a lot of boiler plate code to the second example. I mean, you have to call the map() function to get a list, then iterate over the list to get at what you actually want. Which is ‘item.number’. But what if you want ‘item.name’ or ‘item.something’? What typical programmers then do is copy the boiler plate code in parseItems() and create a new function called parseItemsName() which returns a list of names instead of user id’s using almost the exact code but changing only a few lines to get the desired result. Code duplication! ( Unnecessarily I might add ) But by using closures we eliminate the need to use boiler plate code and just use to the map() function in it’s simplest form. If we want e.name instead of e.uid we do this. Item.map( line, { Item s => list.put( s.name ) }); But wait! Our requirements change…. Again! Now we have to get only the user id and names of items that are of a certain age or older. So now with ‘lexical closures’ we can do this.

  
Item.map( line,   { Item s =>
                            If( s.age > 20 ) {
                                list.put( s.name );
                            }
                 }
        );

In our boiler plate example we would have to change each function that utilized the boiler plate and modify, possibly copying even more boiler plate code into another method that limits by age. Bottom line…. More copy and paste. But you say, that lexical closure code is ugly! ( And I would agree ). Anything beyond 1 line lexical closures do tend to look ugly, but what if we add a little syntactic sugar. The following is just such sugar from the Java lexical closure proposal


Item.map(line : s ) {
 If ( s.age > 20 ) {
    list.put.( s.name );
 }
}

Woh! Simple, elegant and easy, me likey...

Sick and houston weirdness

2006-10-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sick today, first time since the move. Being sick does weird things to the way I think. this time around it brought up a weird experience I forgot about during the trip here. On the second trip to San Antonio when we were hauling our stuff in the penskie truck we drove thru Houston at about 2:00 am in the morning. 2:00 am and we hit the first spaghetti junction, and it's a huge one. highways zig zagging across the the skys, multiple exit and on ramps and tons of headlights from cars going moving up and down the spaghetti junction.... No. Wait.. there are no cars.... not a single one. As far as I can see I'm the only vehicle on any of the ramps or highways as we pass. Ok... Just chance. then it hits me. I'm on a highway with 6 lanes 2:00 am in the morning just hit Houston metro and I'm the only car on the highway. Houston has what.. 3 million people? you can't tell me that all 3 MILLION people are asleep at 2:00 am on a Monday morning.

After continuing for a while we hit downtown. No less creepy. Downtown skyscrapers seam dark. a few cars trickle down the now 8 lanes of highway (some of which are police cars) but for most part, it just has this sureal end of the world, nucular disaster, type feel to the place. we hit a few more spaghetti junctions after that all looked the same. It was really creepy. Not sure if that is the norm for houston, but I don't see how that many people could be at home, all at the same time... weird.

Wild on san antonio

2006-09-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

I would have to say we live well within the boundaries of the metropolitan area known as San Antonio. However I have been continually surprised by the number of wild animals I have seen moving on and around the streets near our apartment. Not 2 days ago me and Brandie were on our way home from home depot and we see a 5 point buck ( Male deer, antlers with 5 points ) casually walking down the center of the road and was not startled at all when we slowed and stopped at a near by stop sign.

Last night we had another encounter of a different type. At about 5:00 am Brandie woke to a noise that made her search the house a few times. Until she noticed the noise was coming from our 3rd floor balcony! Next thing I know Brandie is waking me up whispering "Derrick! Derrick!, There is raccoon on our porch!". Sure enough, I lookout and there on the dark porch was what appeared to be a small bear cub at first, Then Brandie made a small tapping sound on the window and the thing turned around. Sitting on our porch was the biggest raccoon I have ever seen, Shredding the garbage bags I had left to be taken down the next morning. At first I was inclined to just let it be, I had no desire to interfere with a extremely large raccoon and his midnight feast. Imagine meeting fat Albert in a dark alley trying to fend him off from the truck full of jelly filled donuts behind you. Then you've got some idea why I was not looking forward to shewing the creature from my balcony. then I realized the mess that would be made, and the likeliness that shredded parts of my garbage would be littered ac cross the ground 3 stories down and on the balconies below me. I flashed the porch light, no effect. Brandie tapped on the window some more, He just looks at Brandie through the window and sniffs, Pondering if she would make a nice dessert. then I shook the door, then a little harder, then even harder. it was only then that he decided it was just too weird and a truck full of jelly field donuts wasn't worth sticking around for, and lumbered off the balcony and down the stairs.

It wasn't until he was gone that brandie looks at me and says. "We should have taken a picture".......

Dylani

2006-09-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

Dylani is sitting here with me, she wants me to play "da game" but I told her I wanted to write about her. She said I should write about daddy, and kylie. She loves watching me play my games. She keeps asking what things are and why my bear died. I gave her the head set and she talked with mom and listend to some NPR broadcasts as I played my games.

All Alone

2006-08-25T08:22:00.000-07:00

Brandie is in Columbus for 2 weeks and I'm all alone. The guys at work play halo (PC) after hours on Friday so I joined in for a bit until my butt was sore ( I got owned ). I then set out to find some local WiFi hotspots where I could get free Internet access. I knew a starbucks was in the area so I started my search there. I came in bought a frap and asked about Internet. Turns out you can't connect unless you have T-mobile WiFi service! After asking around I got a few leads to some possible locations. Then I realized I had no idea where those places were I resorted to what is comonly known as wardriving After sometime I finally come across an unsecured access point called 'steakescape' looking around I see a restaurant by the same name with a large sign out front that says "Free Internet Access!" W00t!

I ordered a philly and whipped out the laptop. The access is decent, I've been disconnected twice so far. Some guy was here surfing he web on his PSP. With his help I now have a few other suggested free wifi spots but this time I have map.google.com as my friend. I Also realized they have a IMAX theatre downtown. I'm gonna try and make the 8:00 showing of Roving Mars tomorrow.

Apartment work and a movie

2006-08-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

Deanna's garage began it's transformation into an apartment for grandpa and grandma Silva sometime about 2 months ago. I helped put up some Sheetrock last weekend but no one came this weekend. Later today found out some of the electrical has not been done so that made running new electrical much harder now that some Sheetrock is up. So I started some work on the electrical today. Hopefully john will show tomorrow and finish the electrical, if not I'll challenge my skill at finishing the job. While up in the crawl space I was sweating so much I couldn't get the electrical tape to stick to the wires!

Now I remember why I never became an electrician.

Earlier in the day I took grandpa Silva to lunch and a movie. He talked alot about his brother and their baseball team. Told me how he and his team beat up a team of cops when they started it. That followed a few other beat um up stories and how much work he could do in the old days. After which we went to see Ice Age 2, (He requested that movie specifically). He had a very hard time seeing in the theater I had to direct him to the seat, but had a great time laughing at the squirrel The movie theater was in worse shape as any Carmike theater, no wonder movies are doing so bad at the box office.

Bow before me, for I am root!

2006-08-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

The only thing I'm not liking here at BSG, is the system admins. They covet “root” access as if it were gold. I mean I have a development box on the server rack to use for “my” development, and I don't have root access! I had a list of packages I needed/wanted installed but the sys-admin was “busy”, after suggestion I could do the installs myself I was rudely interrupted with a swift NO. We don't give out root access here...... Tisk, after that episode I pulled out the box they gave me for my Linux desktop and setup my development environment there. Now I can proudly wear my thinkgeek shirt “Bow Before me! For I am ROOT!”

Downtown San Antonio

2006-08-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

We finally got some time to go downtown and see some of the tourist sites. Brandie seamed to know where she was going, she was busy yelling and pointing, "Turn here, NO here..... ok. backup..... now turn here...." Then before I know it we are parking on top of what looks like someone's roof really close to the highway. After traversing some stairs we came to the eastern most end of the open market. It's off season so not to many people about, but still alot more than I would have thought for off season.

They also have a good deal of older buildings near and around the alamo.

We didn't get to the Alamo, but we made it to the mighty river walk! Eh.... I keep expecting to see the pirates of the Caribbean Animmatronics waving swords from across the stream, er.... river.

We walked down most of it, until we decided to turn into one of the hundreds of restaurants on the walk. In one particular spot we came across a very cold breeze, following the breeze into what looked like and underground temple. We found out it is a Theater that features Ican Heritage films, the lobby has a huge chandelier with Incan carvings all around.

I was really surprised just how many non-american's where in the market and on the riverwalk. I heard tons off different languages. German, French, Italian, Austrailian... No wait, they just talk funny. Mate....

More texas pictures

2006-08-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

I knew texas would be a bit dry, but I didn't think it would be this green. Here is a shot from highway 1604 on the way out to the trailer.

Here is a shot of deanna's neighborhood.

Home sweet home trailer

2006-08-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

Our first night in texas we stayed with deanna and phil, however our following night was spent at Grandpa and Grandma Silva's country trailer. First thing Monday morning we road out to the place. From the outside I quickly realized they had only 1 A/C window unit to cool the entire house. I imagined walking into a trailer that has been un-touched in the georgia heat and humidity and braced for the worst. As hot as it was inside the home, it was nothing like it would have been in georgia. We took everything out of the car and plop'ed it on the bed. I was on the last of 5 runs from the car to the trailer before I even broke a sweat.

The trailer itself was a mess, when they left it, they left in a hurry. Items and clothing half packed and left on all over the floor and the kitchen was a total mess.

But, from the look of the walls and the flooring and most of the remaining furnature it was apparent it hadn't always looked like this and had been in good condition while they were still living in it.

1st night we were there the lights in the bedroom,bathroom went out, and most of the power outlets stopped giving power. We had to run a power cord from one end of the house to the bedroom room so we would have some light while we worked. Brandie did most of the work while I was at the office the next day, she did a great job not only cleaning up, but with the decor.

4 days of work has yielded us a clean bedroom, bathroom and kitchen ( I cleaned the refrigerator, and coffee maker ). Phil came out with grandpa silva while me and brande were gone and got all the lights and power outlets to work!! With the exception of no internet access, I kinda like it now. ( Not enough to give up internet )

Way to proud of Teaxs

2006-08-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

These people are nuts, I mean it's a STATE! There are images, pictures, bumper stickers, and window decals of the state outline and lone star. I passed buildings flying the Texas flag that was 3x larger than the American flag flying on the same pole. Even the local radio stations.... Texas this, Texas that, Buy from us we have been Texans for 5 generations! I Meet a guy at work that just bought a Toyota tundra and it had little Texas symbols on the pin stripe! and again right above the "Tundra" lettering on the door!

Ugh!

Then I heard this budwiseser comercial. So funny, cause it's true.

First Day

2006-08-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

First day at the new office. I'm on the 5th floor with a nice view of eastern San Antonio. It wont do me much good as I'm closing the blinds to keep the glare off my CRT. Yes... I said CRT, not LCD. Seams only employees get an LCD, but I've got the green light to bring my own in until then. My first impression of the 5th floor was.... "Uh, why are most of the lights out" Answer, "This is where all the programmers work" at this moment I have the only working florescent light over my cubical. All others have the bulbs twisted out with only desk lights filling the room or the occasional un-blinded window. ( I'll be disabling my florescent light tomorrow ) :-).

Getting to know san antonio

2006-08-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

After spending some time trying to find a open power outlet in deanna's living room near the cable modem I realized I didn't have a cat-5 cable to hook up the wireless router anyway! Discouraged, I booted up the laptop only to find 5 open wireless access points! ( I LOVE TEXAS! LOL )

Darren (Deanna's daughter 9 yrs old) had noticed the 2 bikes I pulled off the bike rack and wanted me ride with her so she could show me around her neighborhood.

She showed me the park, various dogs in the neighborhood and we chased some butterflys around. After about 20mins or so she announced that this is the longest she has ever rode her bike before and that we should go back. But she promised she would ride with me some other time. :-)

At the house we decided we needed to get out and discover the city a bit. First we located the local Kingdom Hall ( I didn't get a picture ). Then we located my new place of work!

BSG Spans several floors but I'll be working on the 5th floor. Then we located the house out in the county were we will be staying. The AC has not been on for a while so it was much to hot to do alot in the house, we unloaded our stuff and decided to look for some apartments near the new office.

Welcome to Texas

2006-08-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

After leaving Columbus at about 7:30am we arrived at the Texas border around 6:00pm. Just for MEL we got out and took a picture standing next to the "Lone Star"

11:34pm CDT we arrive at deanna's house, rest and sleep.

PS: Audio books are wonderful for long trips.

New Orleans

2006-07-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

Left Columbus yesterday for a new job in San Antonio, Texas. Followed I-10 through New Orleans just to get an Idea of the damage. Most of the damage appears to be on the east side of the city. Trees where bent over or snapped in half, homes where missing siding and windows.

With the exception of the highway most of the roads appeared deserted.

Pizza is a way of life

2006-01-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

Sign On Ft Benning Thrawn01.

After leaving LSI, (well I guess you could say I quit, they still call me, and I still get a small paycheck for the consulting services I provide.) I began life anew in the world of Pizza delivery at PJ's! This profession it turns out was precisely the kind of work I needed to recuperate from the madness that was LSI. Driving it seams has a very therapeutic effect on the stressed mind. Driving on a military base adds to this effect as speed limits are strictly enforced and limits are set somewhere below 45MH base wide! This makes for a nice leisurely driving experience.

The low speed limit however, spurred a new challenge. What is the shortest route to any location in question. So along with my normal Pizza delivery equipment I have a stopwatch, map, pen and paper. Unfortunately my findings were not has helpful as I had hoped. It turns out that Fort Benning roads and speed limits are laid out (intentionally or not) in such a way that you can safely navigate to any location on Main post in about the same time give or take 20 seconds regardless of the route! Oh well.

In addition to driving therapy, The general manager and staff at Papa Johns are absolutely the best bunch of people I have had the privilege of working with in a long time. But as nice as pizza delivery is, I feel the need to get back into the computer world, so as of this moment, the search for a new job is on! Suggestions?

I’m back!

2006-01-09T08:04:00.000-08:00

Well after living the life of hermit, caveman, and pizza delivery dude Thrawn01 has returned! During my hiatus I have done very little in the computer world except for the occasional 3D Game, and e-mail computers became a second rate citizen in my life. And now..... I'm BACK!

Well, the blog is anyway. I'm on a new host now that atomsk has kicked the bucket. Thanks to my fancy shmancy gmail backup script I was able to restore my old blog entires. Unfortunately the wordpress 2.0 database tables are different from the previous version. No biggy, nothing a little SQL code wouldn't fix.

I quit

2005-08-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

Well this is the last time I'll be able to blog for sometime. (Not like anyone read's this stuff) I quit my current employment tomorrow to entertain alternative sources of income. And since (At this time) I have no internet at home. I will be a completely un-wired free spirit. Altho I'll still be working on some programs for a good friend of mine, I think internet access will be limited for the next few months.

Surviving the Internet 101

2005-08-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

I don't completely agree with his ethics, but a good read for newbie's, blonde's, and ignorant people in general.

Eater's Guide to Not Being a Sucker on the Internet

Give clients what they need, not what they want

2005-06-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, I'm a firm believer, most small non-technical companies have no idea what they want their software to do. Oh, yeah they know the basics, give me totals, handle some inventory, help me reduce payroll costs. They might have a few ideas, but mostly from looking at what their competitors are doing. And those competitors didn't come up with the idea, they bought the idea from a software company.

Companies do what they do best, the are in their respective business for a reason, they are good at it! Software companies do what they do best, they are in the software business because that is what they do best, write software! (Well sometimes)

Still not sure what I'm getting at? Let's look at Example #1.

Our company area of expertise is Point Of Sale software, Now the purpose of POS software is to Expedite the selling process, by giving totals, helpful change amounts, tracking inventory as items are sold. We track inventory to make buying decisions easy, and to cut down on theft, since all inventory sold is tracked and money taken is recorded, your employees can't simply walk off with your inventory without noticing its missing.

So we design the software, works great, customer is happy. Then a VP of our client company decides he is tired of hear complaints (getting e-mails) from customers stating they had to wait around for a manager to show up to get a refund of an item. (*Money Refund) So, the VP in all his great wisdom, decides he can shove his problem on the software, instead of on Operations (where it should be, Their company policy is that at least 1 manager should always be on the floor at all times). So he calls his software company (Us) and demands that we grant all non-manger employees the ability to refund items at will. (Which we do, because he payed for it, he will get what he wants)

This "feature" is the single most incompetent blunder we as a company have agreed to implement for a client, You have no idea how many times I've had angry managers call me and imply our software is broken because his employees were/are allowed to steal money. Hence in one misguided swoop our software begins the spiral down to the level of "This software sucks, why are we using this software?"

Example #2

Our POS software supports opening electronic cash drawers that are fitted with a key. This cash drawer keeps a thief out, and limits the employees access to cash when not making a transaction, providing a nice safe place to keep money. Well, X manager at X location seems to have lost the key to one of his cash drawers. So instead of calling the manufacture of the cash drawer and ordering a new key. Manager X and his higher ups decide it would be best to push their lost key problem on to the software. So our company gets called to add a "open cash drawer" button to the terminal. Completely negating the purpose of having an electronic cash drawer in the first place!

These two examples illustrate perfectly the point, "Give Clients what they need, Not what they want". If you end up always giving the client what they want they will eventually hate your software. I know ours does, and the sad part is, they made it that way!

This brings me to the blog entry that started this blog entry. I'd have to say, I agree with this guy completely.

We need WikiCal

2005-06-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

As you might have noticed from my previous post I am quite busy at work. In fact, we are all quite busy at work. Our Remote Install schedule changes faster than you can say, insert word here.

Seeing what the local mediawiki has done for our local office documentation. I can not help from thinking how wonderful it would be to have a WikiCalender. A public Calender that anyone could update. Not like all the current implentations that have the mentaility of "Hi this is my schedule, and only my schedule, don't mess with my schedule!" So if you really wan't to know what is happening on July 4th, you literally have to visit every employees calender to see what everyone is doing. I think this is a very poorly thought out way of organizing a "public" calendar.

Say, I put up a huge White board calender on the office wall. Every one with a Expo, Dry eraser can put, "I'm on vacation, This date" And everyone can see it. They don't have to visit each employees office dig thru their personal organizer looking for a calender with their days off listed. It up on the big "PUBLIC" calendar. If for example. said employee's manager talked with employee deciding that he could infact NOT get those days off. The manager would go to the white board calender and wipe off the date, replacing it with something like, "Fat chance" (Which is usually what would happen in my case.)

Thus the public whiteboard Calender is just that. "Public", So should be the "Public" web calender, or more acuretly, Public WikiCalendar.

Note to Self

2005-06-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

Just an FYI to future versions of myself. If your job ever consumes so much of your time, you don't even have enough time to update your blog. Quit. If your work days become one long stretch of HURRY AND GET THIS DONE, HURRY AND GET THIS DONE, YOU KNOW WHAT, WHILE YOU ARE HURRYING, WE NEED TO ADD THIS FEATURE BECAUSE OUR CLIENTS INTERNAL PROBLEMS MUST BECOME OURS. Quit. If your work keeps you from enjoying what you do most, and your job involves doing what you like to do most. Quit. If your life becomes the above, and your employer doesn't offer you a big raise because of the work you do, and doesn't pay you comp time, and doesn't have profit sharing. Quit.....

So, Why haven't I quit yet?

*NOTE to future self, Shoot past self, if you survive.

Great Hackers

2005-06-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

I read this some time ago, and loved it. Began to think of it again and made a mad search to find it. Posting here for all to enjoy. Great Hackers How to employ them, keep them.

Long time no see

2005-05-03T07:53:00.000-07:00

God it's been almost 2 months since writing in the blog. I've been so busy! Between the embedded project, the roll out of our new processing and reporting system, carmike's accusation of GKS Theatres, and writing a complete concession POS software package. It's been a busy 2 months. I've been almost non existent in #chaos706 and a no show at the meetings.

On a coolness note, we converted our internal documentation MonoWiki to MediaWiki and it's been a great success!

I love the ability to roll out neat,formated, search able, indexed documents that the entire office can use and change at will. Office documentation becomes a living breathing beast, instead of a one man show.

Aight, enough blogging, I still have reports to fix, processing tools to create and a Admin Web interface to complete!

Embedded Linux i386

2005-05-03T07:52:00.000-07:00

I think it was a combination of "Bryce was tired of doing it" and "I was tried of waiting on bryce"

So picking up where bryce left off, the embedded linux on a Winsystems i386 board. Current Specs are i386sx (it's a screamer) 8mb Ram, 16MB of DiskOnChip and a NE2000 Network card. I'm happy to announce the board has builtin IDE and boots a mini linux distro right from the Hardrive. Bryce updated the kernel to 2.6.11 got the DiskOnChip mounted with "NFTL" and introduced me to uClibc, Which is where I took over.

After booting the monstrous beast and mounting a 4MB ram disk for temp files, we have a whoping 2mb ram available for my programs, give or take a few K. Coolest thing about doing an embedded linux system is using busybox This little tool does everything! All in one tightly compacted binary, from which I run my entire embedded linux distro. (busyBox = Distro in a can).

Update

The Project is complete, The LCD Kernel driver is written, The keypad Kernel Driver is done and my application is complete, I'll have to post some pictures.

Formula for a successful startup

2005-03-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

Guest speakers for the 106 Mile meeting where Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer (Excite.com). As reported by Adam Rifkin they had some very interesting experiences to share on the subject of Startups, Employees and "The Power of two"

My favorite questions related to employees and hiring.

Joe: Hiring is incredibly important.

Graham: Being strict with hiring up front prevents lots of problems later.

Joe: Keep your company as small as possible as long as possible. Only hire when you're really in pain. Hire deliberately and slowly.

Rob: How do you hire against such a tough standard?

Joe: We don't need total agreement from everyone that a candidate should be hired, but someone needs to feel really strongly that a candidate should be hired. We look for people who are game changers. Cultural fit is actually the biggest determinant of success, but occasionally we relax that constraint in favor of absolute contribution capability. But yeah, hire no false positives.

Audience: Youth versus experience -- which is better to hire for?

Graham: It depends a lot on the job context.

Joe: I like someone who has graduated in the last 4-6 years. I tend to skew younger because young people have a different perspective and bring a good energy to the place. I like balancing experience with new ways of seeing the world... At Excite we got very lucky in hiring Brett Bullington. He could imagine other ways of seeing the world, and he could spot that talent in others.

Rob: Where is money in your whole thought process?

Graham: Our motivation in founding a company was being in charge of what we do, and working with people we really liked. It wasn't about the money.

Joe: Money wasn't why we wanted to start a company. We were committed to starting a company before we even knew what the company was going to do. On February 28, 1993, we went to a taqueria and talked about all of the ideas we had, and they all sucked. Our desire at that point was just to find something we could do that was interesting. We moved into a house and worked together for over two years -- and didn't hire anybody until 1995. JotSpot happened in a similar process -- we played with a bunch of ideas until we found something we could be very passionate about, and now we've started to grow the team.

Starwars Trailer

2005-03-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

Yes, as I have done with the past 2 starwars movies, I have once again joined the nerds in #starwars on efnet for StarWars discussion leading up to the 3rd and final movie. The chann doubled in size after the OC aired the "Theatrical Trailer" and copies started floating around the internet. And Yes, I downloaded, I played, I saw. (It rocks)

Bringing more drama to the hype surrounding the new movie is the announcement that Ep3 will probably have a PG-13 rating, unlike the rest of the saga which all saw PG ratings. In a interview with 60mins, lucas said "I don't think I would take a five- or a six-year-old to this, It's way too strong." "[The film] is much more dark...more emotional. It's much more of a tragedy, My feeling is that it will probably be a PG-13, so it will be the first Star Wars that's a PG-13."

*Thrawn01 Pitches tent outside Carmike 15

Linux Video Subsystem Revisited

2005-03-01T07:44:00.000-08:00

While I was out of town, Dave Airlie posted to the Xorg list that he has Xgl running on top of Mesa solo!!! This really kicked off several threads about Xgl and the future linux video subsystem.

The Disscusion quickly turned to MiniGLX. Mini GLX is a hack. It filled a specific need when it was created but I'm not sure it's an appropriate base for large projects. EGL was suggested as a replacement.

Brian Paul wrote - An enhanced EGL interface could be a nice clean foundation. Xgl could layer upon it and other people could use it as-is for projects where X isn't wanted. Hopefully, other IHVs would adopt/implement it too.

As the thread continued Adam Jackson mentioned that he already had some EGL interface code, and suggested they should get togeather and collaborate.

This all led up to my favorite post to the list yet. Benjamin Herrenschmidt writes - That leads to one missing piece to ultimately merge the fb layer (mode setting) and the kernel DRM (command processing), which is a video memory manager that is independant from the client (X server).

John Smirl Responds - Now you know why I have been making all those posts about merging DRM/fbdev for the last year while everyone was calling me crazy. mesa-solo has to join DRM/fbdev together to get the foundation that it needs. Some more disscuion insued, suggesting that if we are going to redo the video subsystem "mergedfb" was a nice hack, but not the way to go. But a video memory manager is really needed.

Further down the list a thread about Monitor detection with HAL for Xgl started the whole drivers in kernel land vs User land bit again.

Then Jon Smirl masterfuly steps in with this post.

1) Manipulating the PCI bus from user space has to stop on Linux. X is changing things in PCI config space without letting the kernel know. For example a kernel variable bridge_ctl shadows the hardware bridge

control, the kernel can store bridge_ctl into the hardware wiping out changes X made. X can also make things like PCI ROMs appear in the PCI address space. The kernel does not know X did this. Now a new hotplug device comes along and the kernel assigns it an address on top of X's ROM. Good chance you need to reboot your machine.

2) X is not the only client of video. We have things like framebuffer, DirectFB, etc. Using device drivers for mode setting make this code common to all users. X is often conflicting with these other users.

3) Moving hardware access into the device drivers removes the need for X to run as root.

4) We are fixing the radeonfb driver to generate an interupt on monitor change for things like KVM switches. This interrupt will turn into a hotplug event that can be passed on to dbus.

5) In the XGL model card memory management is handled by the DRM device driver.

When the device drivers are finished all of the info you are looking for will be easily accessible from sysfs. For example to enumerate the video cards in the system use: 'ls /sys/class/graphics' To see what modes the card supports 'cat /sys/class/graphics/fb0/modes' It will be easy to write dbus functions that build the lists from the data in sysfs.

Ely Levi Responds - I just don't see why that code needs to be in the kernel, after all you don't need to be in kernel mode to access that information, and with linux moving device handling to user level with hotplug and udev it only makes sense to get the info in that way. as for pci info libpci is done by kernel people and probebly already knows how to find all that informaiton, I think kernel drivers should be kept as simple as possible as they are very not portable and a lot harder to debug.

Jon Smirl Shoots, then scores - Doing these things in user space requires root priv. The XGL server is being designed to run without needing to be root. The basic idea is to minimize the code that needs to be inspected for security holes. It is much easier to inspect device drivers than the entire X server.

[SNIP]

Parallel arguements exist for why X should not enumerate the PCI bus from user space. The kernel instead provides a hotplug safe way to find devices via sysfs that doesn't need root priv.

The Thread then trailed off on how HAL can support muliple OS's.

Bottom line, the ground work for a new X server that depends on the OS to provide a video subsystem is at hand. Xgl now has a Web Page from where we may track it's progress.

Eh, Long Post. But good stuff!

Web App’s Future or Folly

2005-02-26T07:43:00.001-08:00

Currently my company is deliberating on what development architecture to use for our next software project. Several development platforms have been suggested. Web application seams to be at the top of managements list, so in an attempt to validate and also question my own opinions of RAD on Web applications I began my search.

Below is a collection of articles with differing points of view. Some better articulate my views on web applications, and some make a valid point about the future of application development and the success of some newly released web applications.

Web-apps are the legacy apps of the future

Shame and War Revisited

Long, But well worth the read

Interactive Web Applications with Ajax

Google is good for webdev

The Secret Source of Google's Power

Cool Stuf!!!

2005-02-26T07:40:00.000-08:00

Found an Article About Open Source PBX systems! Very Cool!

SipX - PBX For linux
Asterisk - Another PBX for linux!

Web Applications

Google Suggest
Great Reading, Food for thought WEB applications

GUI Articles

Thoughts on GUI Next Generation stuff

Ok, Found some StarWars Ep III pictures, enjoy

This Stuff Might bring me back to the gnome desktop after all

GoogleOS, Figured someone would make this one day.

Microsoft Shoots self in foot

2005-02-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

I've been out of the loop for a while now. While trying to catch up with the tech news I found this on Slashdot.

Microsoft Closes Activation Loophole The comments following the article are very telling, and really point out the problems with Microsoft’s move.

A few points

1). Microsoft just made owning and using their Operating system more difficult.

2. With Linux desktop just on the horizon this is a very bad move.

3. I don't believe that Linux can compete with XP in the home, but it can definitely compete in the workplace.

4. Novell's Linux desktop is targeting the business desktop, not home users.

5. This move by Microsoft will hurt business/IT departments more than it will home users, hence the title of this post.

In other news, I predict the Linux desktop will be my primary OS on my next home PC. ( Shopping beings sometime fall quarter 2006 ). Linux is already my full time OS at work

"The more you tighen your grip tark, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." --Leia, Starwars "New Hope"

Iraq Kids

2005-02-18T07:28:00.000-08:00

Ok, I was resisting the urge to post this here, but I've still got more Intel gathering to do before I post my findings on GTK layouts. So here goes.

Truly incredible what those kids have gone through and seen.

Iraq Kids

X Rendering Future

2005-02-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

Eatar just shot me a link with a very interesting blog about the future of Display Technology on linux. (I'm hip on the X-org mailing list)

It's always been my hope that X-org would eventually get a really awsome video subsystem for linux and just let the graphic designers go wild! But reading the X-org mailing list always brings me back to reality. X-org just supports to many OS's. It's focused on a video subsystem that can work with the most OS's not just with Linux. And the Linux kernel guys resist the pushes to put the video drivers and hardware access layers into the kernel where they belong (IMHO) ::Begin Rant:: The purpose of the kernel is to give controlled access to the machine hardware, VIDEO graphics is machine hardware!!!!! Let the kernel do what it's supposed to do, and make video drivers for the kernel with API exposure to user space!!!! ::End Rant::

Ah well. I'm hoping atleast they will shape up X-Org into a much nicer beast than what XFree used to be.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah, here's the link that started this blog entry. http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/xrendering Enjoy.

Learning .NET

2005-02-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

Whilst walking down the path devoted to .NET and mono, I managed to pick up 2 excellent C#/Mono books.

Programming C# - By Jesse Liberty

Although this book's target audience is the "Windows .NET" Developer, it includes a plethora of highly valuable information and insights into the C# language that thanks to the hard work of the MONO project is useful across all platforms supported by the MONO .NET movement. Having said that, while reading some chapters my eyes glazed over as he described "Windows Forms" and quickly lost interest. Bottom line, if your interested in learning C# syntax, Inheritance, polymorphism, and C# interfaces this book is for you.

Mono A developers Notebook - By Edd Dumbill and Niel M. Bornstein

This Book is an absolute god send. I was positively giddy about receiving this book, and even more so once I opened the book and glanced at the contents. Core .NET,GTK#, Advanced GTK#, Strings, Reg Expressions, Threads, Processing XML, and last but not least ASP.NET. This book will really get you excited about the MONO/.NET platform. As I begin to peruse the pages the true power and extent of the MONO project really takes hold. Amazingly all this functionality was created and tired by fire in such a short period of time.

O'reilly has really out done themselves with the "Developers Notebook" format of this book. It truly reads as if your standing over the shoulders of someone like "Miguel de Icaza" as he shows you the intricacies of the MONO C# and the MONO platform. Bottom line, this book is a must have for anyone interested in the MONO project!

Ever heard of an “alias”

2005-02-15T16:46:00.000-08:00

Whilest I was perusing the httpd.conf file on atomsk and discovering sheheane.net and a plethora of strange and weird websites all hosted on this box, I noticed alot of this.
ServerName sheheane.net DocumentRoot /home/vudu/public_html ServerAdmin mike@radioinactive.com ServerName www.sheheane.net DocumentRoot /home/vudu/public_html ServerAdmin mike@radioinactive.comwhere it should be like this.
ServerName thrawn01.org ServerAlias www.thrawn01.org DocumentRoot /home/thrawn/public_html ServerAdmin thrawn01@gmail.comAnd just like that, BAM! my blog becomes a repository of useful knowledge.

Testing

2005-02-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

Hey, Lookie here. I have a BLOG! whoda-thunk-it.......

Uh, testing...

Is this mike on....