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ForkLift
There are several apps which I come back and forth and deciding if it fits into my usage pattern.
ForkLift is one of them.
The first thing to intrigues me in using it is the 2 panel display. I’ve been grown up from the DOS and Norton Commander is my preferred way of file manipulation. There are several offering of apps on the Mac platform that enable this but I like ForkLift in several way.
First, I can create “Groups” on the left panel. For instance, I can crete a new group for work and drag all work folder as a short cut. Then, there’s a built-in app delete tools. I can remove application that I no longer needed easily. Also, the lower panel provides information that I need at times, one of them is the size of the folder. And the integrated “Connect” capability let me transfer file to my remote server in the same application.
Yet, there are some features which I want. I use terminal a lot, and I hope there’s a short cut to let me open a terminal and change location to there. Alternative, it would be nice if they provide a shortcut key to copy the filepath.
I’ve mentioned I like the “Connect” option but I couldn’t find a protocol that I used a lot – SAMBA. When I need to connect to the SAMBA share, I need to do it in Finder and switch it back to ForkLift.
I’ve found it can be bought in a discount from MuPromo. Go check it out.
Product Promotion – Learn Objective-C on the Mac
There are several website that offers daily deals which I will check everyday, Apress is one of them and today, they are offering a one day promotion on the above mentioned book.
You can own the ebook of “Learn Objective-C on the Mac” for US$10 (regular price is US$27.99).
Product Promotion – Timeline 3D
I love MacWorld, definitely because of the keynote by Apple (sad that it’s gonna be the last one this year) for the new product announcement. Apart from that, vendors will usually offer special promotion in this period.
Today, I came across a very nice offer from BeeDocs. They are offering a big discount on their flagship product – Timeline 3D, which usually cost $65, is now offering to user at a special price of US$30.
I tried this once sometimes ago and love it. But I encounter some problem in using it, which Andy reply to me promptly and turns out it is the driver from Logitech that break the software (to be precise, that driver render Growl from working properly).
If you need to draw some timeline, go grab it before it goes away.
Size Does Matter
HA, don’t worry, it’s not a SPAM.
What I am talking about is the size of screen estate.
Have a look at these images and you can tell.
I’ve bought my own Dell 2408WFP lately and the increase in screen estate enable me to open both an IDE and a PDF reader at the same time! It’s a joy to work but I am still finding the best way to organize the windows.
Anything tips from your guys?
The Netbook Era
2008 is definitely the era of netbook – low cost but under power laptop, which is good enough for day to day internet surfing and light enough to bring along.
I keep hearing a voice telling me to get one and finally, I could resist this temptation and place my hand on this.
The price of a netbook varies, some could be as costly as a low end notebook but in general, the specification for most of them is more or less the same. As a secondary machine, I prefer to spend less on it, although there are some drawback (which I will talk about it later).
The brand “Hasee” might be unfamiliar to most of you as it is a manufacturer in mainland China. The specification of the machine as follows – 80G HDD, 1G RAM, 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 10.1″ LCD (LED Backlit), 130 Megapixel webcam and it all costs me US$346.
It comes with no OS and I am having Ubuntu 8.10 running on it just fine (with most of the drivers available except the webcam), the only draw back is the size of the keyboard. It’s small when compared to the others (HP M1000 offers the best keyboard btw) but I couldn’t complain for the $$$ I am paying.
It serves very well as a browsing machine but I found that the resolution (1024 x 600) hinders the using of IDE application since some of the menu items cannot be shown properly in this resolution.
Before MBA comes down in price (or given a refresh in hardware specification), I will settle my desire in having a small notebook with the Hasee.
Offending key in /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/known_hosts
After upgrading the SSH package due to security issue in Debian, I noticed that I cannot connect back to my machine through NX Client.
The error message is an offending key in the known_hosts. I suspect it is due to a change of the key and thus, when I connect back to it, NX thought the server is compromised.
By deleting the entries in this file resolved the issue.
Finding the right user to test your software
Over the years of development on my product, I have been working with different batches of tester. And I have noticed some good time, as well as some bad time with some of them. I noticed a “trend” that lead to my different emotions.
I feel fruitful and respected when I work with tester who is knowledgeable. The “knowledge” I am referring to, is the understanding of the domain that the software is dealing with. One analogy I can thought of, is the necessity to recruit driver in testing out a car. You won’t find someone who don’t know how to drive a car for testing.
OK, I hear your voice. You say the test is biased if the user is already “contaminated”.
I would agree if the test is focused on the perception on something intangible. E.g. the color should be used or where the submit button should be placed. But if the test require the knowing of the mechanism, it falls into another dimension.
What’s more, if your test is composed by a league of such user, I could not imagine how diversify the feedback will be. Each of them will likely to represent the personal preference of the user and what matter worst is, these user will likely NOT to be the same group of user who gonna pay and use your product.
Developing software is an art, but spotting the right gang of people to give you feedback is even so. Now I will go back to my cave and meditate on the next features to implement.
Case sensitivity in namespace prefix affects XML Signature Operation
We were diagnosing an exception thrown in XML signature validation.
<Cannot check signature – Current Node: [#document: null]>
After digging around, we noticed that the XML in process is referencing an element with the name space value in different letter case.
The name space is declared as follows,
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV=" … >
But in the transform, we reference the element like this and turns out to be failed
<ds:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/…>
<ds:XPath>
not(ancestor-or-self::node()[@soap-env:actor=\"urn:oasis:names:tc:ebxml- …
</ds:XPath>
</ds:Transform>
Did you spot the difference? Yes, it’s the case of “SOAP-ENV” declared in the Envelope to be upper case but the one referenced in the transform is in lower case.
Once it is fixed, all works.
Low end dedicated server vs a powerful VPS
Lately, I am having an “itch” in owning a dedicated server, which enables me to install VMWare Server and run multiple of virtual OS. All to satisfy my control freak deep within.
But most of the subscription plan are expensive. You can find dirt cheap bargain but the “server” they are offering is even slower than the PC I have at work.
I have finally found a reasonably priced plan (around US$79) which offers a Dual Core CPU with 2G RAM and 320G of HDD space, not bad in terms of specification. Right before I click the “order” button, I came across this discussion thread, VPS vs. Dedicated – New Benchmark Results. Reading it through and noticed the availability of a benchmarking scripts.
I downloaded the script and have it run on my 2 VPS account, to my surprise, one of them is having a benchmark result 6 times faster than the other! And I am amazed to notice the result of some VPS plan is very close to the dedicated server which I am interested to order.
After a bit of struggling (on money and necessity of course), I opt for a VPS replacement on my slow account instead.
Below are the benchmark result for your reference.
VPS#1 : 241.8
VPS#2 : 164.7
VPS#3 : 29-30
My PC (Core2Duo E6600, 2G RAM, 250G HDD) has a benchmark result of 423.3
Interested to try it on your machine? Download UnixBench v4.1.0 – WHT Variant now!
The unit testing for the web pages – Twill and Selerium.
Unit testing the web application is not a new problem. But unlike the close counterpart of unit testing in Java, where JUnit is the de facto standard, there isn’t a methodology that is as common.
I am trying out Twill and Selerium today, both of them has been around since 2004. The two are both scriptable and differs in two aspect.
- Javascript support
- Browser integration
Twill cannot support javascript, for instance, you cannot script it to enter the date value through a popup calendar.
It works in plain text mode so you cannot test out the cross browser functionality.
You can get more information from their web site
Having said that, it is very lightweight and it can integrate nicely with your CI framework.
Selerium address the opposite aspect, the javascript support enables you to test the functionality of your heavily AJAX web pages. You can even use the fiefox extension to create the testing script.
Can’t follow what I am saying? Try it out yourself from this URL.
Selenium Functional Test Runner
Oreilly has published an ebook of the Short Cuts series which gives you a quick good read on these tools. Check it out from here
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