I was just using Links, the fantastic text web browser, while SSHing into my home machine, when I accidentally discovered that I can use the mouse to navigate in the text screen! How does this even work? I don’t know, but I sure wish Emacs supported this feature.
I’m starting a new project at work, and for the first time I’m writing Unit Tests for each piece of code. So far I’ve been using the excellent NUnit and NUnit ASP libraries for testing web apps in C#, which is so far the only framework I’ve found for testing web pages. (If anyone knows of any other frameworks for writing unit tests for web applications in other languages, please inform me via the comments link below.)
So far, the process has been slow. It’s taken me three days to code what I might normally have done in a day. Part of this slowness is learning how to use the Unit Test framework, but the other part is writing the tests, which in my case can actualyl consists of more code than the application itself. But you know what? I think it’s working out for me. It’s quite nice to make changes and be able to run automated tests to see if I errantly introduced any new bugs into the system.
The main trouble with unit tests is the time issue. I think the proponents of XP (that’s Extreme Programming, not Windows XP), of which Unit Tests is a part of, assume that the software you’re writing is important and should be bug-free. But sometimes you’re just writing software for a few users, and if there are bugs, you just work around them. Or sometimes you don’t really know what direction your coding will be in, and when you refactor the APIs, you also have to refactor the tests, which makes the job take twice as long.
At least, that’s my initial take. Maybe I’ll change my mind after a few more months of writing unit tests and discover it’s actually quite painless and easy. In the meantime, I sure do love clicking on the “Run” button and seeing those green lights.
We received Christmas cards from our Chinese relatives (sister and niece). The cards are in English, but once again the writers forgot to turn on the spell checker. Here are some examples:
1st card: If you wish hard enough, your Christmas dearms really will come ture.
2nd card: It looks like the Santas are obscuring parts of a holiday message, but I can’t quite make out what that message is.
Inside of 2nd card: Presenting me with your heartly miss and suitably bless?
Everyone in the geek world seems to be effusing praise for the latest Lord of the Rings movie, but I can’t gather the strength to care. I watched the first movie and, honestly, found it dull. I tried to read The Hobbit once but put it down halfway through.
Simply put, fantasy doesn’t interest me. For that matter, so does “space and rockets” science-fiction. No, what really gets me going is hard science fiction that shows humans interacting with what the future might actually be like. Minority Report and Gattaca are two excellent examples; The Matrix is also pretty interesting.
Maybe it’s due to my love of reading; the two things Minority Report and Gattaca have are excellent stories. And you know what? I’m willing to believe that Tolkien books were great stories back in the day, because they’re highly original, but years of derivative stories about orcs and goblins have simply worn me down.
The movie I’m waiting for right now? Paycheck.
Now I’ve had my Powerbook for a couple of weeks, I can comment on my overall impressions of the machine.
First, getting the Powerbook over the iBook was worth the extra money, in my opinion. I keep reading about features that are in the Powerbooks that aren’t in the iBooks For example, when you attach an external monitor to the Powerbook, the external monitor gets used as additional window space, which allows you to have two full-screen applications up and running. On the iBook, once you plug in that external monitor, your laptop screen goes black. Also, the Powerbook has an internal temperature gauge while the iBook doesn’t.
Now, I haven’t even used the external monitor yet, but it’s those small touches that make me glad I got the “deluxe” machine. Far too often I’ve settled for the cheaper one only to learn that it doesn’t do this or that.
Finally got Panther 10.3 in the mail last week and installed it. True enough, it is a major upgrade from Jaguar 10.2. It’s definitely faster, and the eye candy seems both more subdued and yet more pervasive that before. For example, when you double-click on an application, the application icon gets larger and more transparent as if a cloud of smoke is coming towards you, for only a split-second. It’s fast enough to not be intrusive but cool enough to make me smile. Same goes for Expose, which is very cool although not particularly useful since I don’t want to have to use the mouse to change application windows. However, the alt-tab feature copied from Windows is a must-have, and in typical Apple fashion, they manage to do it better than Windows does by making the icons extremely large and clear.
Lastly, I didn’t mention this before, but I also got an Airport for wireless networking. Now I can hack from every corner of the house, and it works even better than I thought it would. I can curl up on the couch and access my Linux box over NFS and/or X11. It’s a hacker’s dream, and I couldn’t be more happy.
This morning, while I was riding my bike to work as usual, my bicycle chain got caught up in the gears and broke. I knew if I had my chain tool with me, I could have fixed it, but alas I did not. I was about half-way between home and work, so I decided to start walking to the office. I figured it would take me about an hour. Luckilly, the weather is relatively warm today, about 45 degrees, and even though there’s a very light rain it’s not bad.
After about 15 minutes, another bicyclist comes by and asks me if I need anything.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a chain tool, would you?”
“As a matter of fact…”
The guy pulls out this “all-in-one” bike tool that has a little chain tool as well. We remove the broken chain link and re-attach the chain to the bike, good as new. His name was Mark, and I thanked him profusely. I rode the rest of the way to work without a problem.
Mark, in case you ever come across this entry, I’m truly grateful you were out and about and willing to stop. Thank you.
I knew it had to happen sooner or later. Here is an example of a pop-up “window” that Mozilla can’t block. Rather than spawn a new window, it uses JavaScript and CSS to create its pop-up. Unless you turn off JavaScript entirely, it’ll be much harder to figure out how to block this, I think.
I’ve actually been wanting to sit down to try to code this myself for a while, but haven’t really had the time to indulge in such evil proof-of-concepts.
Since I’m speaking about good pieces of free software I use, let me also point you to Why You Should Switch to the Mozilla Firebird browser. It’s replaced Mozilla as my primary browser, only going back to it when I need to use its DOM Browser (which is excellent, BTW) or JavaScript debugger when doing webpage development.
I’ve started using Open Office instead of that other office suite at work lately, and finding that it’s actually a pretty nice package. I’ve used it under Linux in the past and found it to be a bit clunky, but under Windows it runs very smoothly. I haven’t had any problems viewing Word or Excel documents so far.
I’m surprised more businesses haven’t migrated to it — they could easily save several hundred dollars per employee — but as this recent editorial by Roblimo argues, there aren’t any marketing dollars behind OpenOffice while there are million$ pushing the other office suite. Little wonder, then.
My 12″ Apple PowerBook arrived yesterday. I had my sights set on the new G4 iBook for the longest time, but in the end decided to splurge for the PowerBook. It’s a very sturdy machine, and typical to Apple, has a lot of little touches, like the slot-loading DVD/CD-ROM, that make using it a very enjoyable experience. Unlike other manufacturers that just seem to slap together a bunch of parts, you feel like every single aspect of the machine has been thought about and well-engineered. My household computing setup is finally coming together!
Unfortunately, it shipped with version 10.2 instead of 10.3 of the OS. I was able to order 10.3 for $20 from the Apple Store (since I bought the machine after 10.3 launched), but it’s still a hassle and an extra expense (I feel) I shouldn’t have to make. On the plus side, I should get a nice boxed set of 10.3 in the end.
I also got a free iSight webcam with the machine. Anyone else have one of these and want to try using iChat AV someday? (After I get 10.3 shipped to me, of course.)
Also, would anyone be interested in buying my old G3 tower? 350Mhz, 448MB of RAM, and 26 Gigabytes of disk space…say, $350?