Articles tagged 'el'
Get offensive like Tet Jun 28 2006
Interesting article from Ted Neward, starting with an interesting analogy, segwaying into a brief history of the Vietnam war, and ending up with the crux of the article being about object/relational mapping, the black art of mapping objects to relational database tables. Interesting concepts and ideas, I’m still reading and digesting much of what the article has to say.
While I’m linking like a link-whore this evening, DHH finally blogs about his ActiveResource sweetness committed to the Rails trunk the other day. His post includes the slides from RailsConf, and the entire concept sparks a load of potential ideas off with me.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, object/relational mapping, objects, database, vietnam, activeresource, rails
Plug In Baby Jun 27 2006
Here’s a good post from Phil Haack about plugins, and making a plugin architecture resilient to versioning. He presents some good ideas, some stuff worth thinking about in there. I’m thinking about and working on plugins loads at the minute, including working on an add-in architecture for Project RIDE-ME. Reading this post though made me start to question some of the terminology, where a lot of the time I’m using “plugin” out of context. The way I now see it, there are plugins, add-ins, and providers. I’m about to refactor a bit of code I’ve been working on, as it is effectively a provider system, for database and logging providers, however I’ve referred to it throughout as plugins, and I feel this is now slightly out of context…
Plugin: something fairly generic, to be able to “plug in” new components to change almost any aspect of an application
Add-in: something that is contained, used more within rich user interfaces to provide a specific bit of UI content or functionality, much more refined than a general purpose plugin
Provider: some kind of general functionality such as data querying, logging, that can be achieved against different sources, hence the need for differing providers
This is now how I’m starting to formalize some of the terms above, and while almost all of the reflection code remains the same regardless, the design of the architecture depends heavily
on which of the above you are trying to achieve.
Technorati Tags: el, plugins, add-ins, providers, c#, dotnet, .net
Farcical Jun 23 2006
Being an Englishman, and following the English Football Premiership as I do, I find the performance of Graham Poll during yesterdays match between Australia and Crotia to be most hilarious. You see, I’m used to the frequent mistakes Poll brings to a football game. And I’m also used to the rather sad prospect of him perhaps being our top football official, our representative to the rest of the world when it comes to officiating a football match. And of course, on the biggest stage, he made a series of blunders that’ll ensure that if by some horrible set of circumstances England didn’t make it to the World Cup Final, he won’t be considered as a possibility for refereeing over the biggest football match in four years.
While I’m here, and as I’ve been quiet on the subject, let’s talk about the England football team. Here’s some quick views I hold over the recent shenanigans:
- we haven’t played that badly when you keep things in perspective - three games, we’ve scored 5 goals, conceded 2, and finished top of our group, while remaining unbeaten
- people who think David Beckham should now be left out of the team as he hasn’t played well obviously didn’t watch the first two group games (or even the warm-up games before the World Cup started) - a large amount of our chances, and thus our goals, have come from set pieces and crosses expertly delivered by Mr Beckham, and the idea that one “lacklustre” game against Sweden should see him dropped is preposterous
- there is such a thing as equilibrium in a team, balance - dropping players, such as Beckham, and indeed Crouch (I’m not his biggest fan, but we’ve never lost a game with him on the field, and in 9 or 10 games he’s scored 6 goals now for England, not a bad international record), could easily upset the balance and have disasterous results
- we all really know England can play better, and I think we’ll see them step it up a gear against Ecuador
- I think Sven has gone mad with some of his decisions though, like taking Rooney off against Sweden so early - some of his substitutions do make you wonder what he was thinking
- I have just read that rumour has it we will play 4-5-1 against Ecuador. Ridiculous. Not a single Ecuadorian player would make it into our team to replace our starting 11 (under a straight 4-4-2 formation), and as such we should be looking to simply play them man-for-man, safe in the knowledge we are better than they are, that chances will come, and that we will take them to pieces
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, personal, football, “world cup”, england, soccer, refereeing, officiating, referee Comments
Hi-Def: highly, and definitely, confusing Jun 17 2006
So I’ve been toying with this post in my head for a few days. I recently bought a Samsung HD Ready 32" LCD TV, and so a week or two ago I decided to get my Mac Mini hooked up to it, using Front Row as a super-duper media center. I soon realised that while the TV touts HDMI/DVI connectors, it really just means HDMI. I’m well aware that essentially, HDMI and DVI are the same signal with different connectors. Why we need two connectors I’m not sure, but certainly DVI-D (completely digital signal) and HDMI are one and the same and so a DVI output from a PC into an HDMI connector will result in a totally digital signal from start to finish.
Now, after my initial disappointment that there wasn’t in fact a DVI connector on the back of the TV, I stuck with VGA (it has a PC input too) until I researched cables and connectors further. I assumed therefore that running using VGA, that HD output from Mac Mini to TV wasn’t possible. I skipped over the fact that the TV picked up on the PC signal, with the Mac switching resolutions to the TV’s native 1366x768 (720p). It didn’t dawn on me that HD could still be possible, as I assumed it needed a digital, not analogue connection.
So onward and upwards… after laughing so hard I thought I was going to break my spleen at the idea of 60 (just over $100 for those across the pond) to buy a gold connector DVI->HDMI cable, I was thinking I’d just give up on the idea, til a trip to eBay came up trumps. 8 (around $14) for a gold connector 2m cable for running from a DVI source to an HDMI connector on a TV. However upon plugging this in and hooking it up to the Mac, it became apparent that the TV and Mac had decided to stop communicating, instead deciding to only offer me some default resolutions (1280x768, 720p, and 1924x1344 or something, equivalent to 1080i). I’ve read that the Intel Mac Mini’s now allow slightly non-default resolutions in order to cater for the native resolutions of TV’s, however I’m out of luck with my PPC Mini (I’ve read about various display tools to achieve the same thing, but am well aware that the wrong settings, especially when talking about refresh rates, can break monitors and TVs).
Long story short, the HD space is crowded with confusion. I’m still not 100% on my thesis that HD will work over VGA or DVI, because its simply based on resolution, so whatever is supported by the TV and output source,will determine if HD is a possibility. I’m still currently using the DVI->HDMI cable, running at 1280x768 (720p), however am not sure if the VGA might provide better quality. And of course, when my Sky HD installation eventually happens (now delayed a further 11 days because of a shortage of boxes), it’ll require the HDMI input, and so I’ll be out of luck unless I buy a switch.
I intended to keep this post shorter than I have, but that pretty much sums up my experience with the integration between HD capable computers and TVs - after all of this, I discovered while playing the test H.264 HD QuickTime videos available from Apple’s website that really my PPC Mac Mini isn’t powerful enough to play HD content anyway - sometimes it just about struggles through, often it chugs and stops and starts making the video, while incredibly detailed, totally unwatchable. I’m now thinking of either a newer Mac Mini, or perhaps even a Windows based media center, more on this later.
It should be said though that Front Row is awesome, and with the Mac also hooked up to my home theatre, I have a simple, elegant way to access and play all of my music collection, as well as the movies, TV shows etc I have stored. It looks truly beautiful on a 32" widescreen TV too.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, hd, “high definition”, mac, h.264, “front row”, hdmi, dvi
Rail Riding Jun 9 2006
So I came across what looks to be a nice little Windows based Ruby on Rails IDE - RIDE-ME. It’s written in .Net which is cool, and while still in its early phases, seems to be looking quite nice. Also, they are looking for C# developers to join the fold and help out, so with my experience in C# programming, and my almost unhealthy interest in Ruby and Rails, I feel compelled to contribute!
Haven’t posted much recently, but there’s a few things I’ve got that I want to post when I got more time, so hopefully over the coming weekend I’ll get it done.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, rails, ruby, ide, ride-me, .net, c#
It's Coming Home May 30 2006
A superb look from the NY Times at the hopes of the England “soccer” team at this years World Cup in Germany. It’s funny to see an outside view of the English way of handling our big football stars, as they aptly describe the hopes we place on our team, and how the media love nothing more than to bring them crashing down. Interesting article.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, football, soccer, “world cup”, england
Sideways Blinders May 27 2006
So it’s been a long time since my last post - far too fucking long. Lots of shit has happened in the month or so since the last time I bothered to blog anything, so expect a good few catch-up posts. In the meantime, some kind of summary is in order.
Last time I posted I was in the middle of a five-day UML course - it was good, I learnt a lot, but I’m yet to really put any of it to use, and so I’m hoping I’ll find an opportunity to do so (where it makes sense, not where I’m doing it for the sake of doing it). Also, the lack of decent modelling tools makes me chuckle somewhat, all of them are either shite, or are too expensive, claiming to be able to practically write the fucking applications for you based upon a couple of class diagrams. That’s not the purpose I want to use UML for - I want to use it as a way to get down on paper the architecture and structure of libraries and apps that I dream up in my head. It then acts as decent system structure documentation. I then build it myself from that, and undoubtedly because code is code, I’ll realise along the way my original structure wasn’t perfect. I’ll amend, re-think, and re-iterate. Agile development seems to work perfectly hand in hand with this idea, small iterations, tighter development cycles. I’m starting to really dig it.
So what else? Well I’ve moved house now - after what must have been 7 or 8 weeks of playing the solicitor shuffle, I finally moved in with my girlfriend, into the house we bought together. It’s been a very busy time, and I’ve loved every minute of it. I’ve built more furniture in the last few weeks than I ever have done in my previous twenty years combined. We’ve been moved in two and a half weeks now, and there are now no boxes, everything is pretty much tidy now, it’s amazing. Actually scrub that, my girlfriend, Andie, is amazing. I’m responsible for getting TV’s, PC’s, audio systems, broadband, telephones (the easy stuff) up and running, but she has been stunning at tidying, cleaning, getting everything in tip-top shape. I’m a lucky, lucky man.
Speaking of broadband, it took longer than it should (fucking monopolies) to get the phone line up and running, but then I got the broadband sorted out fairly quickly, and so now have a wireless network setup with all my machines up and running again. I hadn’t been able to work on anything for around two weeks, so now I’m edging back into it, tackling a few little things first before I delve headfirst once more into my massive bag of ideas and continue working on a few of the big things I had planned before the move.
That’s it for now, expect more soon.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, uml, “moving house”, broadband, coding
A good start Apr 25 2006
Aha, a good start. Arsenal through to the Champions League final. Now here’s what happens from here on in - Middlesbrough win on Thursday, 2-0, to go through to the UEFA Cup final. Both Arsenal and Middlesbrough win their respective finals, claiming a double over European teams for English football. Then to top it off, England win this summer’s World Cup in Germany. Let’s check back in a few months time and see if I was right :-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, football, soccer, arsenal, middlesbrough, “champions league”, “uefa cup”, “world cup”
Commentary Apr 25 2006
Ok comments are back - simply look at an individual post on my blog now, and underneath, an “Add Comment” section has appeared. Simply enter your comment (just a simple textbox for now I’m afraid) and who you are, then hit “Comment!”. I’m going to be doing some serious development on the entire software soon and commenting will be done properly - but for now at least it’s an arbitrary way for any readers wishing to comment, to do so.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, blog, scrawl, personal, comments
Stacked Actors Apr 25 2006
So, day two of the UML course, and it’s starting to get useful. Use cases, leading on to class diagrams, has me intrigued as a coder. I want to get cracking now trying it out on a system I’m designing (designing before coding, wowee!), but upon looking for some decent UML software, preferably a plug-in for VS 2005, I’m most disappointed. Now I understand VS 2005 has some class diagram tools built-in, but while it looks like UML, it doesn’t smell quite like UML (am I missing something?). I really want something that lets me create any of the different types of UML diagrams (such as use case, class diagrams etc), however the only software I’ve so far come across (such as Borland’s Together plug-in for VS 2003/2005) costs a shitload of money. So, I’m going to keep digging, but my options look limited…
1) personal, “free but only for non commercial” or trial versions - basically yucky cut-down tools
2) NetBeans 5, or at least the latest alpha/beta whatever, seems to have some UML diagramming tools - but come on, a different IDE just for diagrams?
3) a separate tool, such as an open source tool - again, I’d prefer it within my main IDE, but oh well…. *sigh*
Anyone have any ideas? As some may have guessed, this is one of the reasons I quickly cobbled together the ability to add basic comments again tonight, benching all of the big ideas I’ve got for my blogging software in favour of quickly deploying a way for my loyal readers (both of you, including that Google search bot) to post any suggestions they may have!
More UML tidbits soon hopefully…
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, uml, modelling, “use case diagrams”, “class diagrams”
Fragile Development Apr 24 2006
Today I did a bit of modelling - data modelling that is. I started my five-day UML course, as I’m attempting to learn the deadly art of analysis. It was actually quite interesting - after Getting Real recently (must get round to finishing that book) I was starting to dispense more with documentation/design diagrams and all that in favour of writing the damn code. However there are times when I need to crystallize my thoughts, gather design details, and really plan more complex concepts. It seems after today that UML, and design analysis, is a good way of doing that. In many ways, the course I’m doing (which is actually object-oriented design and analysis, specialising in UML) does tie in with a few agile concepts - in particular, the idea of smaller iterations of development, and an especially agile process for coping with design/requirement changes. On top of this, the idea of use cases defining functionality, doubling up nicely as easy scenarios for testing, ties in with test-driven development. So while I initially poo-poo’d heavy-handed design, analysis, and UML, I’m finding it refreshing to look at a project from a far more architectural point-of-view - especially when the model-view-controller pattern was brought up as being a Good Thing ™ - something I’ve spent a lot of my spare time working on recently. Over-all: interesting stuff, and expect a few more thought provoking posts (with hopefully even more amusing titles).
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, uml, design, analysis, coding, programming, unit-testing
Safety Apr 24 2006
Ah, guarenteed Premiership football next season after tonight’s victory. Sweet.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, football, fulham
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