Category: Software

Micro Victories

2008-12-11 rolfje 1 Comment

Trophy The last few weeks I was frustrated about not being able to write any code for the project I am on at work. My days are filled with email, spreadsheets, documents, discussions and distractions. All important stuff, I’m sure, but none of it has got to do with actual coding.

I tried to write code during the evenings for that project, just to get my kicks. Two things happened:

Frustration grew, because I feel that this is the kind of work I should be doing during the day.
As I worked the late night hours, I realized I could never get it all done because the blocks of work were simply to large and required too much research to be done during a few evenings.

J-Fall 2008

2008-11-13 rolfje No Comments

Last wednesday I was at J-Fall 2008, a fairly large event for Java programmers in the Netherlands. This event is organized by NLJUG. You can read some of my notes on the different sessions in my public evernote.

Transporting Oracle CHARs over a dblink

2008-11-04 rolfje 1 Comment

At work, we’ve got two Oracle databases and a Java web application. One of the tasks of the web application is to copy tables over from one database to the other. Last week we ran into a funny problem which turns out to be an Oracle bug.

I’ve posted a question about this last week on stackoverflow.com but it seems that not many people are affected by this particular problem, or at least not many people know the answer to this particular little problem. We set out to tackle this and we did.

Read More “Transporting Oracle CHARs over a dblink” »

Software

The Three Great Virtues of a Programmer

2008-10-05 rolfje 1 Comment

I ran across this wiki page which has a nice piece on the virtues of a good programmer. I found it so recognizable that I decided to copy it over for you to enjoy:

“We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.” — Larry Wall, Programming Perl (1st edition), O’Reilly and Associates

Laziness
The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book. See also impatience and hubris. (p.609)

Impatience
The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris. (p.608)

Hubris
Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience. (p.607)

(The original context can be found at
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris)

Fun, Software

Attention to Detail

2008-09-14 rolfje No Comments

As I explained earlier, I think it is really important to go beyond the specs. It’s really important to put care and attention in your product. The new version of iTunes has a great (little) example of what I mean. I use Itunes to play music through both the computer speakers and a stereo in the livingroom, connected to an Airport Express.

In iTunes 7, when I added the Airport Express to the set of outputs while playing a song, the music stopped, and after a while resumed playing through all the selected outputs. I never minded the short silence, and was amazed at how Apple got all the outputs to play perfectly in sync.

In iTunes 8 things changed a tiny bit. When I select the Airport Express, the music keeps on playing on my computer, and after a few seconds the music also starts playing from the speakers in the living room. An still, the music is in sync.

It’s these little things, the amazing attention to detail, that give Apple products a tremendous “perceived value”.

That, and the Genius button ofcourse. 🙂

Apple, Software

A Bigger Time Machine without Changing History

2008-09-07 rolfje 104 Comments

I had a 160GB drive holding my Time Machine backups. Because I wanted to backup external disks, and still wanted to be able to travel about a year back in time, I bought a 1TB USB disk. Stephen Foskett wrote a great article about how he migrated his TimeMachine backup to a larger disk, but it’s lengthy and misses one essential step.

I decided to give you the short version, this blog post describes how I migrated Time Machine to the new disk without losing any data in 11 easy steps.

Apple, Software

OSX: Formatting a 1TB USB Drive

2008-09-07 rolfje 7 Comments

I just bought a Maxtor Basics 1TB drive, and found that I could not seem to format it using the Leopard Diskutility. Then, I found this page which contained the golden tip. I’ll save you some reading:

Open Apple’s Disk Utility
Click on the drive (not the partition in it, if there is any), and select “Partitioning”.
Select “1 partition” and then press “Options”.
You’ll see that “MBR” is the default, which is what’s causing the problem. Select the middle option “Apple Partition” and you’re good to go.

Screenshots included. It’s in Dutch, but the location of the buttons are identical for all languages.

Apple, Hardware, Software

Remove formatting from clipboard

2008-09-05 rolfje 1 Comment

In Windows, there is a great tool called “PureText” which sits in your tray, and can remove formatting from copy/paste actions if you want to. In stead of pasting into notepad, and then copying it again, you now can use the Windows-V combination to paste without formatting. It works in any program, and I’m a fond user of this little gem at work.

In OSX, you can do this with a key combination, Option-Shift-Command-V. Besides being the silliest and most awkward key combination ever to do a simple paste-action, it does not always do the job properly. I found this great tip where a simple applescript removes formatting from the items in your clipboard.

Apple, Software

Macbook Pro Screen update issues

2008-08-18 rolfje No Comments

My wife has this great Macbook Pro 15″, and I “don’t mind” using it every now and then. I noticed that when running on batteries, screen updates are a bit strange:

When scrolling down a webpage, the page get garbled. Scrolling the garbled piece out of the window and in again sometimes fixes it.
When resizing a Finder window, the icons in the window flicker a lot, you can see them being cleared and redrawn.

I noticed more people having these problems on several forums, and I also read that resetting the PRAM could fix it. Well, I just reset the PRAM and it seems to have fixed it, indeed.

I used the method mentioned on Apple’s support page, which tells you to shut the computer down, and boot it up holding the command, option, P and R keys. As soon as you see it shutting down after you’ve started it up, release the keys.

This is all I did, and it seems to have fixed it.

Apple, Hardware, Software

Turn your iPhone into a Drive

2008-08-10 rolfje 1 Comment

My Nokia 6300 behaves like a flash or thumb drive when I connect it to a computer using an USB cable. I think this should be standard functionality nowadays. Cellphones are replacing the Filofax and MP3 players. I can read mail on my cellphone, take pictures and movies. It contains an 4GB memory stick, sometimes even more. So why do I need to carry this silly thumbdrive with me?

Apple, Software