http://www.aquarionics.com/category/programming en-gb Aquarion (nicholas@aquarionics.com) Site Admin (nicholas@aquarionics.com) Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:28:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/09/01/Vizzinibugs%2C_Heisenbugs_and_the_vanishing_birthday Heisenbugs are bugs that vanish when you turn debugging on. Schrodinbugs are bugs that don’t manifest until you read the code and realize they could never possibly have worked, whereupon they don’t. These are impossible, yet happen despite this. Vizzinibugs are the single most common type of user interface bug. They are when the user follows an action path inconceivable to the... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/07/03/Softly_softly Yesterday, one of my pet bugs in the Mozilla codebase was finally fixed. Almost exactly one year ago today I mentioned the birthday of Mozilla/Fx’s inability to support Soft Hyphens. After eight years, that’s no longer true Sometimes Open Source does work. http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2006/08/15/Free_as_in_Mortgage_Repayment Okay, so in the first (zeroth?) hashlugradio broadcast, I put forth the view that the OS business model treated the programmers time as worthless. I wasn’t called upon it in the broadcast, but have been since. This is what I mean: I am an individual programmer – not part of a massive company – I believe whole-heartedly in the Free/Open Source Movement. I scratch itches. I... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2006/07/04/Happy_Birthday_To_You Since I have so far missed both parents and both siblings birthdays because I am incapable of remembering anything, it seems fitting that this is a couple of days late. Friday, June 30th was the 7th birthday of Mozilla bug 9101, that Firefox should support the soft hyphen properly, on the basis that not having it makes supporting languages with long words more difficult. Reading seven years... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2006/05/10/Tickybox Tickybox http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2006/05/10/Tickybox function doTickybox(tickybox){ var xmlHttp=false; /*@cc_on @*/ /*@if (@_jscript_version >= 5) // JScript gives us Conditional compilation, we can cope with old IE versions. // and security blocked creation of the objects. try { xmlHttp = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch (e) { try { xmlHttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch (E) { xmlHttp =... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2006/01/06/Simplicity So yeah, new year, newish design. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a start. And the new new design is trapped in PSP until I get a new 30 day trial :-D Simplicity I like simplicity. It appeals to my sense of design, and the light grey with some of the most delicate shading I could make visible is nothing if not simple. The boxes and curves design is lifted from previous designs, but... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2005/04/02/Project_Scout Somewhat to my suprise, I have recieved not one, but two patches to open source projects that I run. That is that gilmae submitted a better install document for AqWiki, and John Meadows has submitted a new version of the viewer file for MusicDB Flush with this success, I’ve started a new project. Well, two. Threeish, really. First, I’ve gone back to the base system that Cantrip... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2005/03/08/Magic One of the things I like most about Python is the lack of Magic things. The way that solutions don’t take the form of “Prefix the argument with a round blue diamond to make the nasal demons put sugar in the coffee” type thing. Therefore, getting the answer “Prefix the connection string with a minus symbol” is something that is reasonably likely to make me want to kill things. http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/12/30/Code_in_C (sung to The Beatles "Let it Be") (I've never found out who wrote this one, or this varient. I've modified it slightly from the text I found) When I find my code in tons of trouble, Friends and colleagues come to me, Speaking words of wisdom: "Code in C." As the deadline fast approaches, And bugs are all that I can see, Somewhere, someone whispers "Code in C." Code in C, Code... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/12/11/Projectiles The Projects Page is back, semi-updated, and using the Epistula design library at last (Only took me two years), also Random acts of Senseless Scripting has also been updated with the new design (It’s been broken since Julyish) and a couple of new early warning scripts. http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/09/27/Coding%2C_Not_going_postal%2C_and_Going_Postal So, today I took time out of my busy schedule to go buy tea. Actually, I wasn’t getting any work done, really. I’m having a small concentration problem since we entered testing, in that the stuff I’m currently working on is Deep System stuff that is interdependant on almost everything else. This means it takes about fifteen to twenty minutes to swap all the various memory... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/09/25/Logging In which Aquarion fixes the logging system. Beware, contains lines of a dangerous width. http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/09/22/Cantrip_Diary_-_ZopeTastic Okay, so my new workplace use Zope, so it’s probably a good idea for me to use that as a framework. I mean, enough people use it for it not to be too bad, right? Dear god does it suck. I mean, Whales though really thin gauze, it sucks that badly. I got it working on my local network after swearing at it quite loudly. It’s own personal religion of “Not Invented Here” is... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/09/05/Instant_Cat_Pictures Since I’ve had my new camera-phone, I’ve been taking random shots occasionally. After a fairly brief stint using Gallery and moblog.co.uk I’ve done my usual thing of writing an Epistula Module to do it a) the way I want it, and b) within my own site. (I started off adapting the webcam module, but that’s bitrotted slightly and was never very good, so I rewrote a whole new... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/06/24/Quick_Bookmarklet What is a bookmarklet? Basically it's a javascripted bookmark that, when you click on it, performs an action. Some might validate the page, some might highlight all the passive verbs in the document, there are loads of them. This one searches the current site using Google. Install it by bookmarking the following link: Search this site http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/03/29/Errands_and_the_End_Of_PHP Got stuff done. In this case, the stuff was of a many and varied nature and involved: Sorting out bank accounts Joining Blockbuster Joining Library Posting Stuff But also: Resolving that I will never again begin a personal project written in PHP. Yesterday, you see, I managed to get PHP5 working on Atoll, my local server. It works fine, from a technical standpoint, it... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2004/02/17/Best_Joke_Ever What do you call a man in sandals? Phillip Flop. Today, I’ve been taught how wonderful Java is, how it runs perfectly on Solaris, and how it should backend onto Oracle. You see, whilst all the interesting people get to go to eTech, I’ve spent today (and will spend tomorrow) at the Sun Tech Day here in Sunny (did you see what I did there?) London. Yay. http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2003/12/21/Muttering So, At close of play Sunday (02:45 AM) I’ve suceeded in writing the istic.net wonderful user system that will consolodate all the accounts on most of the various websites I’ve done. CIN/R has a design, said user system, campaigns, character class, preferences & architecture, CIN/F still needs to be designed then moved over (And probably rewritten, but that’s another job)... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2003/11/25/General_Public_Virus