A new year, full of promise and hope… January 12, 2010
Posted by codified in Uncategorized.Tags: new drive, new everything, new hope, new technology, new year
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… that’s my take on it anyway. In retrospect, 2009 wasn’t the great year i hoped it would be, despite the economic downturn. Sure, we got spanking new versions of Ubuntu Linux and Microsoft finally came up with a worthy successor to Windows XP, Windows 7 – and last but not least – I got myself a new HTC Hero with Android OS on it.
On the downsides, it turns out that I feel somewhat disillusioned in terms of the technology year 2009 :
There were no notable breakthroughs, at least in my opinion, when it comes to software development or other areas of my interest : VS 2010 is still in beta, MVC 2 framework is still in beta, .Net 4 is still in beta, Windows mobile 6.5 got mixed reviews, the race between linux distros seems to be leading nowhere and HTC isn’t following up on new Android development on the Hero… I didn’t get around to tinker much on with my Arduino and other electronics development. There’s still no agile project management tool that satisfies my needs (either they’re too complex or too simple) – the one that came closest in 2009 is OpenGoo and Pivotal Tracker. And not to forget – my PS3 went down just before christmas holidays with a blinking red light… aww..
Also, the economic downturn caused some of our projects to come to a screeching halt and was clearly part in making my employer suffer somewhat, although a sane economy previous years has kept us from going down. This might sound bad, but in fact it will present the company (and others in the same situation) with new challenges and opportunities. Furthermore, it will also create new possibilities for our clients as we hunger for more work. It means that we will try to strive even further and harder for our clients. My employer, Informasjonskontroll AS, has been around since 1969 and we’re going to exist in 2069 as well if we get things right.
Now, a new year, 2010 in particular, might hold so much more promising things and these are some of the things I’m looking forward to :
- New clients and projects at work
- Visual Studio 2010
- New versions of Ubuntu
- The arrival of true tablet PC’s
- HTC Hero update(?)
- Getting even more agile in my projects
- Getting around to enforce TDD on my projects – the whole project
- Get going on my hobby projects with Arduino and Processing
- Post some more relevant stuff on this blog and twitter?
- To get my PS3 fixed
Anyway, those are some of my hopes and ambitions for 2010 on the techy side of things. There’s a lot more to do and look forward to…
Merry x-mas everyone December 26, 2009
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All the best wishes for the new year!
Ubuntu 9.10 Sound Problems using Spotify under Wine November 10, 2009
Posted by codified in Linux.Tags: 9.10, alsa, pulseaudio, spotify, ubuntu, wine
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After I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10, I experienced some trouble with playing sound using Spotify under Wine. The sound stuttered and even disappeared. Spotify reported that it had trouble with the soundcard.
After some searching, I found a solution that worked, for me at least…
Change Wine config to use Alsa driver.
Uninstall pulseaudio :
#sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
If pulseaudio is still running, kill it off – or restart your machine. This corrected my trouble with playing music on my machine – hope it might help you as well…
[Edit] It might be useful to know that the pulseaudio volume control toolbar-applet will disappear when doing this. I’ve installed the ALSA mixer instead and that works okay for me.
[Edit] @FiferKen, @Ad & @robin : Tried the tip about installing Wine 1.2 – this works just great!
I removed the old Wine and installed the beta from the repository. Then I re-installed pulseaudio :
#sudo apt-get install pulseaudio
This enables the volume gadget in the taskbar again – and it just works… nice…
Thanks for the tip and all the feedback!!! Case closed!
Cool tool for mobile app dev October 28, 2009
Posted by codified in Development, Mobile.Tags: android, Development, iphone, Mobile
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Found this article, Rich Cross-Platform Desktop Applications Using Open-Source Titanium, at Linux Journal on a tool called Titanium some days ago and just had to try it out.
Titanium isn’t your ordinary IDE, instead it seems to be some sort of boilerplate-generator, packaging and deployment facility kind of application development environment. You build applications leveraging your html, css, javascript, ruby and/or python skills. The article title on LJ suggests this environment is for desktop apps, but you get support for creating apps for IPhone and Android smart phones as well.
The fact that the applications are based on html, css and javascript opens some new possibilities for leveraging current skills from web application development – which is nice. You get access to some included javascript libraries, such as JQuery and YUI, but there’s no limit to which libraries you may use in your app.
As I just recently got myself a HTC Hero, I just had to check this out. I’ve been playing around with the Android SDK for some time (almost from the first public release) and doing apps in Java – which is cool by itself. But when it comes to quickly whip out simple apps or creating rough prototypes, Titanium is quite another game. It’s easy to get going and if you’ve done your share of web, css and javascript, you’re up and running in no time.
Anyway, impressed with the initial trials with this cool tool, I recommend having a look at it. Check it out at http://www.appcelerator.com/
I’ll try to follow up with another article with samples from my trials…
Refcards and cheat sheets September 25, 2009
Posted by codified in Development.Tags: cheat sheets, design patterns, Development, frameworks, refcards
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I’m on a reading spree here and thought also I should mention that I think the “refcards” or cheat-sheets at DZone are awesome.
These thoughtful pieces of documents contain quick reference and useful tips on programming languages, design patterns, application frameworks and more.
Enjoy!
Google eBook : How to make your websites work September 25, 2009
Posted by codified in Web development/design.Tags: design, functionality, thoughtful, web
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The Code Project newsletter today came with a interesting link to an article at Digital Inspiration about a new Google e-book release called “How to make your websites work”. Recommended reading for anyone involved in creating or maintaining websites. Common sense and thoughtful implemented functionality will help your customers help you.
Books! September 16, 2009
Posted by codified in Uncategorized.Tags: books
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Hey! This is a great tip for those who wants to do some self-study : I discovered a great ebook site the other day, BookBoon.com. The selection of books isn’t the greatest at the moment, but they’re adding new books all the time it seems. The great thing about this is that the books are free.
From the site : “At BookBooN.com you can download free books for students and travelers in PDF format. All the books can be downloaded without registration. Our ebooks are legal and written exclusively for Bookboon. They are financed by a few in-book ads.“
I can live with that and as far I can tell, the books are quite good. I’ve started reading “Concepts in Electric Circuits”, which suits me right now when tinkering with my Arduino projects.
VMWare Server blues September 10, 2009
Posted by codified in Linux, Technology.Tags: tricks, ubuntu, virtualization, vmware
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This is mostly a note to self, but might be useful for others as well. I installed VMWare server (the free edition) on my Ubuntu 9.04 machine. The installation went just fine, I just defaulted most answers during the installation process. However, when trying to login to the administration console, I discovered that it required the root user for login. What?!?! No way, Hosẽ!
After some searching, I found that I could edit the VMWare authorization file :
sudo vim /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml
Here you’ll find a reference to ‘root’ username. I changed ‘root’ to the actual user I’ll be using for this and then I restarted the VMWare service :
sudo service vmware restart
Then I’m in business again with my own username and password. I couldn’t find anything about this in the docs. I’m sure VMWare is aware of this and it would have been nice to include this tip in the official documentation.
Norwegian Developers Conference 2009 Impressions June 24, 2009
Posted by codified in Agile, Development, Thoughts.Tags: Agile, architecture, lean, ndc, ndc2009, tdd, Thoughts
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Last week I had the opportunity and pleasure of attending 2 of 3 days at the Norwegian Developers Conference, for the first time, I must admit. The overall impressions are quite good, although I could wish for even more “food for thought” on some of the sessions I went to.
The introduction on the first day with Anders Norås, rapping “You down with NDC?” was fun, but quite frankly, too early in the morning.
The keynote with Robert C. Martin, “Are you a professional?” was a real boost. He talked about all the stuff we developers, architects should know, master and do in order to call ourselves professionals. The main focus towards the end of the keynote was test-driven development and clean code. This an area I try to get better in all the time and to me, this keynote was reassuring and inspirational.
On the first day, I attended two sessions with almost the same content, Hanselman and Bolognese, although Hanselman had a broader agenda with his “Deep Tour of .NET 4″ than Bolognese’s “The Future of C#”. I bit my mark on the primary news on .NET 4 and C# 4.0 with support for dynamic data type and parallell extensions. The point that MEF is going to be part of this is also very welcome. I’ve used MEF from CodePlex on a few occasions and find it incredible to work with.
“Black Belt Ninja Tips ASP.NET MVC” with Phil Haack didn’t do that much to me, but it was interesting enough. The standing impression after the session was that it lacked some of the “ahah”-stuff I would like to be shown.
The last session I attended on day one was “Zen of Architecture” with Juval Löwy. This one turned out to be quite interesting, where Löwy talked about the IDesign [his company] Method. Although notthing revolutionary, the simplistic approach to architecture and design appealed to me and I would recommend anyone interested in architecture and design to check out the IDesign site.
The third day, I chose to spend with Mary Poppendieck and her sessions on Lean thinking. I’ve heard about her and the lean-way from co-workers and on the blogospere and thought that I’d better not miss this chance. I attended all sessions but the last one on “Great People”. Anyway, what I experienced was this lady talking about lean thinking, using various stories from her own experience and from the work with the books she and her husband has written. Although interesting, I have to admit that I probably missed the point somewhere in-between all the stories and examples. I’ve decided to buy some of her books to see if I can get a grasp on what she’s really talking about.
When talking to my colleagues, who attended other sessions, I got the impression that I might have been better off on one of those session in terms of value for money, but in the end I feel I got my share.
In the end, I feel that it was great to be at the conference and I hope to be able to attend next year as well.
Did you attend NDC 2009? If so, what do you think? What was the best sessions in your opinion?
Arduino, here I come! June 10, 2009
Posted by codified in Development, Hardware, Technology, Uncategorized.Tags: arduino, duemilanove, ideas
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Last week I ordered an Arduino starter kit. I have wanted to do this for some time and now I finally got around to actually get one. Only thing with buying stuff online – instead of buying from a store, taking the stuff with you as you leave, you will have this painstakingly period of time waiting for the package to arrive. I love it – and hate it! The moment I pushed the confirm purchase button, I wanted the package to be on my doorstep. This is why there always will be a need for local stores – I (and probably many with me) hate to wait to get stuff…
Anyway, finally, “the stuff” arrived! My Arduino Duemilanove starter kit.
One thing that struck me was how easy it was to get started. Download the software (I’m running on Ubuntu 9.04), plug in the Arduino using the USB cable, fire up the Arduino IDE and off you go! It just worked, right out of the box. The Windows installation had one more step – installing the USB serial driver – otherwise from that just as easy. High five to the Arduino folks! Keep up the amazing work!
After having played around with this sweet little piece of hardware, checking out the samples, mounting various components on the breadboard, I find myself wondering where to go next – or rather – what kind of project should I start with?
I’ve always wanted to build my own robot, with wheels, motors and sensors – maybe even a camera – I haven’t decided on what purpose it should have yet.
Or should I just jump into this autonomous RC – helicopter idea I’ve had for a while?
Or, maybe I could create a traffic counter (to monitor how many cars that passes by during a day outside my house, to collect arguments for getting the politicians build a pedestrian field). That thing could even measure the speed of the vehicles.
Or I could simply build my own weather station.
Or… The possibilities seems endless, given some minor cash expenditures and a bit of work. If I can manage to decide on a project, I’ll be posting progress and results here. If you have suggestions on things that would be useful (or not so useful), kind of cool (although not too advanced) to build I would be grateful.
