useless ramblings
I am pleased to announce the immediate release of stjerm version 0.16.4. This version is a maintenance release, which fixes a number of issues:
The new release can be downloaded from GitHub: https://github.com/mrkrstphr/stjerm/archive/v0.16.4.tar.gz
stjerm started out being hosted on gna.org, and I moved it over to Google Code Hosting shortly after taking over the project. That was quite awhile ago, and since then, git, and the git hosting platform GitHub, have become quite awesome. GitHub has an intuitive, beautiful user interface, with fantastic issue tracking, merge requests and overall repository browsing and viewing. Git itself has extremely fast and simple branching built it, as well as just about any other feature Subversion has, but done better.
Because of these reasons, I have moved the stjerm project from Google Code to GitHub. You can find it here: https://github.com/mrkrstphr/stjerm. Feel free to check it out, submit bugs/features or fork it and do a merge request of your own features!
So Doctrine has a Paginator that uses DQL and Zend Framework has a Paginator for paginating whatever the eff. So which do you use, what do you do? Answer: smash them together!
I created a super simple Adapter for Zend\Paginator that uses the Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Pagination\Paginator class:
namespace Application\Paginator;
use Zend\Paginator\Adapter\AdapterInterface;
use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Pagination\Paginator;
/**
* @category Zend
* @package Paginator
*/
class DoctrinePaginatorAdapter implements AdapterInterface
{
/**
* Paginator
*
* @var Paginator
*/
protected $paginator = null;
/**
* Item count
*
* @var integer
*/
protected $count = null;
/**
* Constructor.
*
* @param Paginator $paginator
*/
public function __construct(Paginator $paginator)
{
$this->paginator = $paginator;
$this->count = count($paginator);
}
/**
* Returns an array of items for a page.
*
* @param integer $offset Page offset
* @param integer $itemCountPerPage Number of items per page
* @return array
*/
public function getItems($offset, $itemCountPerPage)
{
return $this->paginator->getIterator();
}
/**
* Returns the total number of rows in the array.
*
* @return integer
*/
public function count()
{
return $this->count;
}
}
Now I have a method in my Repository that gives me a Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Pagination\Paginator:
/**
* @param int $offset
* @param int $limit
* @return Paginator
*/
public function getPaginator($offset = 0, $limit = 20)
{
$dql = 'SELECT e FROM Application\\Domain\\Model\\Entity e ' .
'ORDER BY e.column ASC';
$query = $this->manager->createQuery($dql)
->setMaxResults($limit)
->setFirstResult($offset);
$paginator = new Paginator($query);
return $paginator;
}
Finally, in my controller, I call this method, pass it off to my DoctrinePaginatorAdapter, then hand that off to Zend\Paginator. Boom!
/**
*
*/
public function indexAction()
{
$page = $this->params('page');
$max = 20;
$results = $this->repository->getPaginator(($page - 1) * 20, $max);
$adapter = new DoctrinePaginatorAdapter($results);
$paginator = new Paginator($adapter);
$paginator->setCurrentPageNumber($page);
$paginator->setItemCountPerPage($max);
return array(
'paginator' => $paginator
);
}
And just like that, I have pagination marrying Zend Framework and Doctrine’s pagination wizardry. So simple, even a caveman could do it!
I have purchased several books from Amazon for reading on the Kindle app on my Android Tablet and Smartphone. I’m still old fashioned in that I enjoy holding a physical book in my hands while reading it, but my growing bookshelf clogged with books I’ll likely never read again have me rethinking it. So I’ve purchased a few books and graphic novels, and have read a few older public domain works. But I have a problem with the system.
The DRM is a problem. I understand piracy is also a problem, but we don’t ban steak knives just because they can also be used as murder weapons.
Today as I was searching for a means to strip my Kindle books of DRM, I found several resources with comments blasting the author with piracy claims. One comment even said:
I have no problem with stripping DRM for fair-use purposes. My point is no one is going to use this to take a Kindle book they bought and put it on a Nook, they’re going to use this to pirate Kindle content.
Bullshit. I want control over my content. Is it that hard to believe that I would someday buy a Nook to replace my Kindle and want to read my Kindle books on said Nook?
I have no interest in pirating it. I buy my music, my movies, my books and software. I am a working, responsible adult. And fuck you for claiming the only reason I would want control over my belongings is because I pirated them.
Last night, I received my beta login for Chameleon App, which I purchased on KickStarter shortly after they launched. The basic premise of Chameleon is this: you have various homescreens covered in beautiful matching widgets. The homescreens are time and location aware, meaning that a different homescreen can be shown based on GPS, Wifi access point or time of day. This means you can have a screen for home, work, travel, morning, afternoon and/or evening. Whatever your heart desires.
As I had been anxiously awaiting the launch, I quickly downloaded it and gave it a go.
Since this app was “purchased” through the KickStarter campaign, the first thing the app does is reconcile your registered KickStarter email with your Google Play account email. This is somewhat annoying, but a necessary evil of launching via the Google Play Store, which is probably the best route to go for providing ease of download and updating.
The more annoying and worrisome part of the activation process is that it requests your Google password as some sort of double check process to try to ward off piracy. While Teknision promises they don’t store or use your password for anything other than verification, it’s still scary to give this information up, and may violate Google’s terms of service.
Whenever clicking the home icon, Chameleon seems to take up to 10 seconds to load and show anything. After that, the widgets themselves start loading content. When selecting a widget and trying to resize it, it seems to take a few extra seconds to load as well. Aside from these instances, the app seems pretty responsive: going in and out of the app drawer, as well as paginating the app drawer, seems snappy, scrolling up and down on the widgets and selecting a homescreen all are very responsive.
After running it for around 12 hours, my battery doesn’t seem any worse off than it did on the stock home screen.
This is the part of the launcher that is really going to make or break it: widgets. Right off the bat, admittedly, the app is very light on widgets. The launch included: Weather, News (which sadly doesn’t utilize your Google Reader account), Gmail, Twitter and Instagram. This is a pretty poor showing, but Teknision is already working on new widgets, and even had a few more in their mockups that didn’t make the first cut.
I’d personally like to see other, non-Gmail email supported, Facebook, RSS (Google Reader), LinkedIn, and Mint.com represented.
What is also frustrating is that the widgets don’t have any tie-in with the apps installed on the tablet. For instance, it would be nice if clicking on an email in the Gmail widget launched the Gmail app.
What would be especially nice would be a widget API that allows other developers to write widgets for their apps/services. I heard rumors that this is already in the works. It would be truly fantastic.
Chameleon launcher holds a lot of promise. It’s sweet looking and offers great functionality. I love the ability to sit at my desk and glance over and see a bunch of information really quickly sitting on my tablet. There’s a long way to go, though, and quite a bit more apps needed to really make this shine.
For now, I’m hooked, and can’t wait to see what else Teknision has up their sleeves.
While at a training seminar this week, I overheard one of the participants, during a discussion, mention that he was a manager of software developers. He quickly corrected himself saying “I’m the coach.” Apparently he didn’t like to be referred to as management and the term “coach” seemed to tickle his fancy. This statement literally left me flabbergasted. To me, this translated as “I’m a micromanager.”
Software developers – and I’m sure many other professionals – don’t need coaches. This isn’t Little League. Software developers went to school and were trained in their art. They don’t to be coached to perform their daily duties. They already know what they’re doing, and if they don’t, you shouldn’t have hired them or have done a poor job getting them the proper training. They don’t need someone sitting over their shoulder telling them what play to do next or telling them how the system is going to react.
What developers need from a manager is an offensive guard. Someone who is going to keep other people and other issues out of their way so that they can do their job and advance the ball down the field toward the end objective. They need someone who can take care of impediments for them so they don’t have to, regardless of what those are. They need someone to get all obstacles out of their way so that they can continue to do what they do best: sit down, write code and architect the system.
The team aren’t servants of the manager, the manager is a servant of the team. The butler of the team. Someone who performs actions and does the dirty work to keep the team focused on what they do best, and focused on getting their tasks done.
Developers, and I’m sure just about every other type of worker, needs in their manager a cheerleader. The best managers spend a lot of time cheerleading. Someone who cheers and congratulates them on their accomplishments and when they meet their goals, and someone who uplifts them when they don’t meet their goals (as long as it’s not in an annoying way). This cheerleading extends not only to giving high fives for accomplishments, but also selling the team to the rest of the organization. The managers job is to sell their team to the rest of the company by highlighting their successes.
After a failure, when things have hopefully turned around and corrected themselves, it’s the managers job to sell and cheer on to the rest of the company how well the team solved the problem and rebounded.
I’ve been coached before, I’ve been micromanaged before. I can tell you first hand that it sucks. My no longer being with that company is a testament to that. People need to be treated like they’re the experts. Not some football players who can’t figure out the play on their own. And they need to be rewarded and congratulated for their successes, beyond just earning a paycheck.
After spending a year and half in a hell called Mac Book, I’m finally back on Ubuntu, and couldn’t be happier about that fact. I installed Ubuntu 12.04. Since this version is a LTS, I figured it would be a pretty stable build, especially since Ubuntu seems to take their time slipping new versions of software into their repositories anyway. I thought this was because they wanted to make sure everything was thoroughly tested. But after running into a kludge of issues, I’m wondering if it’s just because their slow.
What I’ve run into so far:
Yes. I know. I only listed three issues. But I’ve only been using Ubuntu 12.04 for a couple days. Who knows what else I’m going to find? The big kicker here is these bugs are 2-3 months old, and some of them are listed as importance low. Alt+Tab not working is importance low? Do you understand how utterly fucking difficult it can be to work without Alt+Tab after relying on it since you quit the pacifier?
This is exactly what people talk about when they bitch that Linux is too raw, too breakable and too error prone to gain widespread adoption. My mother doesn’t want to have to use hacks, scripts or recompile software just to get it to work. When has something as simple and core as Alt+Fucking+Tab stopped working on Windows? It probably hasn’t. Because the developers would have noticed instantly.
This is sad. And I hope it isn’t a sign of things to come with Ubuntu.
In 2008, I took over development of a project called Stjerm from Markus Groß (who himself took over development from the original author, Stjepan Glavina) and, over the years, have slowly added in features, as well as moved the project over to Google Code Hosting from Gna. Then I switched over to using a Mac Book, which essentially halted development.
Now, however, I’ve switched back to Linux and am looking forward to continuing development of the project. My first big push for the project, aside from tackling some outstanding items in the bug reports, is to add in a preferences dialog that will aid in altering the options stored in the .Xdefaults file. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I took over the project, and I’m finally going to give it a go.
Here’s a mockup of what I’m planning to wet your appetite:
One of my biggest (of many) complaints about the Mac operating system is the lack of a package manager. Package managers are my favorite feature of most Linux operating systems. They make it easy to find, install, customize and keep up-to-date most software available for the architecture.
Sure, there’s the App Store now, but that’s a piece* and doesn’t have most of the apps I would want anyway. I’m mostly talking server/command line stuff: Apache, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, wget, etc. There are a multitude of options for third party package managers for OS X, some of them more glamorous and some of them more tedious, but I haven’t really enjoyed using many of them. None of them seemed as nice, powerful or reliable as package managers on various Linux flavors.
Then I found Homebrew. And there was much rejoicing.
Homebrew is a package manager for Mac. It is essentially a system for pulling down source code, configuring and making it, much the same way Gentoo’s Portage works. It’s not much different from pulling down source and compiling it yourself, except it does it for you, and if you’re like me, it’s smarter and probably does it better than I would myself. And it also provides a mechanism for letting me know when there’s new updates and allowing me to upgrade those packages. It’s perfect.
It does depend on having Xcode installed. If you’re on OS X Lion, it’s available in the App Store.
The first thing you should do is run:
brew doctor
Follow all the advice given here and fix all the issues. Trust me. Two days of headaches and agony may follow if you don’t. Then, to install a package, such as PostgreSQL:
brew install postgresql
Boom. Done. Follow the notes given on the screen (if you miss them, type brew info postgresql to recall them) and you’re good to go. Want to see if any packages have updates?
brew update
To update any package listed in the available updates:
brew upgrade [package-name]
It’s that simple. And I like simple.
* Seriously, am I the only one that has issues deleting some applications? Or issues trying to download some, or perhaps apps that somehow get marked as hidden without you doing the hiding? Or just blank buttons next to apps that fail to download? Wtf Apple?
In the United States, we’re dominated by several wireless radio technologies that cellular devices operate on: CDMA, GSM, HSPA, LTE, WiMAX (and possibly more). What’s the problem with this?
I figured that if we were to standardize on a wireless radio technology, it would solve a lot of these problems. So I posed the question to Martin Cooper, the man who invented the cell phone. He raised a red flag about this saying that it would bring competition to a halt because manufacturers wouldn’t have any reason to innovate or compete, because they’re simply meeting a standard.
But I disagree. Standardizing on a wireless radio technology doesn’t prevent manufacturers and carriers from innovating with device specs (speed, storage, screen size, etc) or features (3G->4G, quad-core for gaming, etc). In fact, I think it frees up room for innovation by giving the manufacturers one less thing to worry about and allowing them to pump out a phone that can be sold across all carriers (saving them money having to tweak the device to work for a different carrier).
Plus, it puts more incentive on the carriers to provide better, more affordable service, because it makes it that much easier for me to take my device and cheaply switch carriers if my contract allows me.
Thoughts?