Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2018

It's a shame. And a wasted weekend.

For some reason I've been trying to save my underpowered iBook by turning into, by hook or crook, a decent Java development platform. Hey, I really like my iBook. Great battery life -- I've used it for three hours taking notes in a class and still had 50% battery life left -- great applications (from Safari to MS Word to the iApps), super size for a true portable, great 802.11b reception; the iBook is very nearly a dream laptop. But Java on OS X is seeeelow, and as evidenced by my attempted move to Jikes last week, I'm trying hard to get around its limitations.

Well, I've gone nearly as far as I can go now. I've tried using Linux to get a Java 2 VM on my Apple hardware that's fast enough for me to code without turning grey.

Don't take this lightly either. I'm a Linux illiterate. Reallly am. Had LinuxPPC installed on an old StarMax for a while, but I don't know nearly enough about Linux to compare my skills to anything resembling the ten stages that come before mastery. But Yellow Dog Linux has finally gotten to the point that even I can install it easily.

Quick note: You do not have to reformat your entire hard drive to install YDL. I hate that the installation instructions have said that for so long. If you had more than one partition on your drive already, you just blast one of the partitions (goodbye, Classic! For the moment, anyhow) and go to it. I haven't had any troubles at all. YDL 2.3 is installed and running, and I'm posting from Mozilla 0.9.9 via YDL right now. Moz is just one of the many apps that are installed by default.

So I've installed IBM's PowerPC version of their Java 1.3.1 and downloaded Netbeans. I was hoping like mad that this Linux JVM wouldn't have the same speed issues OS X has. Mac OS 9 runs quickly; it just never had a Java 2 VM released. And YDL runs pretty quickly. Windows are a little slower moving around than OS 9, but much faster than anything I've seen in OS X. I was optimistic.

No reason to be. Netbeans moves even MORE slowly than it does in OS X. It drives me crazy. I suppose there might be a better windowing system that could speed things up, but looking at top (an app that keeps track of what apps are taxing your processor) while Netbeans was working leads me to believe that the problem is in the Java GUI widget implementation, not the underlying OS. Blackdown's VM might be worth a shot, and perhaps an older Java 2 VM in general (the one from IBM that I'm using is 1.3.1). There's always hope.

On the plus side, YDL looks great. Great suite of apps installed by default, from Mozilla to Abiword to Ximian Evolution. I think Linux is finally ready for the typical poweruser's -- though certainly still not your grandmother's -- desktop. This was by far the easiest Linux installation I've ever seen. Performance outside of Java is really impressive, even on my slow hardware. Mozilla on YDL downright blows Mozilla on OS X away. The Office replacement applications are finally pretty mature. KDE 3.0 is modelled after Windows a good deal, and you're quickly familiar with where everything should be located. It's a great package, and it's always neat to think I got it for the price of downloading an iso via ftp and burning it to CD.

So YDL is a nice OS, which I'm happy to see, but in the end is just another OS to me. It's also the one with the fewest reasons for me to learn. I think the only advantage it has over OS X for me, other than a bit more speed in places where I'm not dying for more, is the ability to customize exactly what's going on. Never want to use the mouse again? That's Linux for sure, not OS X. We'll see.

At any rate, hopefullly I'll keep OS 9 off of the iBook just long enough to play the Linux version of Railroad Tycoon I purchased years ago. I've really been looking forward to playing that game.

Finally got a few seconds today to play with Java again at home. A few items of [debatable] note.

1.) My trialware application is embarrassingly past my self-enforced release date. After all the harping I do about good software management, this is really egg on the face. Nobody to fault but me.

I've actually had an app I was fairly comfortable releasing for quite some time. The main hang-up (and this isn't an excuse) is deciding whether I should form an LLC or an S-Corp by which to release the application. Afraid I'm simply not brave enough to go it as a sole proprietorship. Called a lawyer, and was told the two are close enough that I need to ask my taxman which would be better in my particular situation. No appointment with the taxman until the end of this month, so the release is going to be awful late. Again, totally my fault and quite embarrassing, but I'm betting I'm not losing millions by not being out in the market just yet.

2.) In the past two weeks while working my new day job, I've been using the iBook exclusively to check email, surf, etc, as that's about all the free at-home computer time I've had. The Mac really does provide a superior environment for typical PC computer uses.

It got to the point that I'd forgotten why I hated developing Java on my Mac hardware. I'd even remembered that I wanted to try Jikes, IBM's Java compiler, in place of Sun's javac. Jikes is reportedly much much faster, and I was of the opinion that it could make my iBook a usable, if not superior (and I do mean "not" here), platform.

Well, in my entirely unscientific, count the seconds in my head benchmark, jikes is much much faster. Jikes completes a clean build of my app in less than half the time javac does. Really a nice step up, and the Jikes-compiled version of the app seems to run just fine.

Unfortunately, after using Netbeans on the iBook for a while, I discovered the compile time wasn't the real/only issue. Editing in Netbeans on the iBook is slow, but bearable. But compiling a recently edited file in Netbeans still takes too long to sit through using my 500 MHz G3. Netbeans first checks to see what objects have changed (which takes it quite a while), then compiles (much faster now!), and then, if you asked it to, executes the file you just updated (ick). This last part is the part that I forgot. No matter how quick the compilation, I've still got to wait for Apple's JVM to start up my Swing GUI, and it's just butt slow. Dropping from 7 seconds to 6.8 seconds (just to throw a random example out there) isn't that much better a user experience.

So I went back and fired up my 2.0 GHz Gateway and Eclipse for the first time in two weeks. Much faster than 4x as fast as the iBook, and that's without Jikes on the PC. Oh well. Just burned my Yellow Dog Linux install CD. Maybe that'll be faster... *sigh*

3.) Turns out telling Netbeans to use Jikes to compile your files isn't as obvious as it should be. To use Jikes in Netbeans, open Tools, Options, then look under Edit (?? why it isn't set in "Compiler Options", I don't know), Java Sources. Switch to the pre-configured Jikes option there.

4.) Getting mad and accidently holding down "ctrl-option-Apple-8" in a fit of rage inverses the colors of my iBook display. It's like a black light. Neat. Also somewhat maddening trying to figure out what combo of keys I need to press to get it back (turns out it's the same, but I didn't know I'd hit them the first time!).

5.) Java's BoxLayout is really pretty neat, if only because it seems to be the only layout manager that pays attention to "setMaximumSize" like you think layout managers should. Really a step up from the useful but often none-too-professional-looking results you get from GridLayout. Unfortunately the BoxLayout only does one row or column at a time, which makes it less efficient for putting a great number of widgets on one container.

That's about it for today. I'm still taking a collection for a dual-proc Mac if anyone's giving.

title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.	descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003
In lieu of a true blog today, here's part of an email that I sent to somebody who sent me a link to this cross-platform game developer diary entitled The Whys and Hows of Porting Software: Hrm. Afraid that wasn't a very good set of articles/diary entries, imo. The reasons given for writing something xplat were pretty unconvincing. Luckily the last reason was supposed to be irrational, but the other reasons didn't seem to have a good handle on the market. And I think the things he suggests doing in his programming tips are nice, but boil down to the same things I have to consider when I decide whether to code something in Java or VB6. In the end, I can't think of a single good reason to use Java for my apps other than my irrational appreciation of the Mac and a silly feeling that I'm Doing Things Right by also being able to release on Linux. If your choices are make ten apps for 95% of your potential customers or use the same time to "hear the choir sing" while you make five portable codebases (that still aren't ported), well, it's easy to see which wins out in a "rational world". I have bouts of wishing I'd used VB for [my trialware app] quite often, but can luckily convince myself that "at this point" it'll be easier to keep the codebase I've already got. posted by ruffin at 2/26/2003 07:14:00 PM
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Tuesday, February 25, 2003
"It's planned obsolescence, "buy or bye", embrace and discard, all for the sake of squeezing dough outta my turnip. It's not new to Mac users, but Apple's getting uncommonly good at it." I wrote that? Back to work. posted by ruffin at 2/25/2003 11:23:00 AM
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How to remove a new line from a field in Crystal Reports version 7 (horribly complicated! :^D): `if InStr({Student.Address}, chr(13) + chr(10)) > 0 then left( {Student.Address}, InStr({Student.Address}, chr(13) + chr(10)) - 1 ) + right( {Student.Address}, length({Student.Address}) - InStr({Student.Address}, chr(13) + chr(10)) - 1 ) else {Student.Address}` posted by ruffin at 2/25/2003 11:16:00 AM
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Future blog topic posted by ruffin at 2/25/2003 09:38:00 AM
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Monday, February 24, 2003
Two notes today. First, Sybase SQL Anywhere has its limitations. It reminds me of when mySQL didn't allow nested queries, though not nearly that basic an omission. Luckily I found someone else report the same issue without resolution or I'd think I was going crazy. I can't tell it any better, so I'll just paste the usenet post here: `create table joe ( x int, y int, z int ) go select x, count(y), count(z) from joe group by x go select x, count(distinct y), count(distinct z) from joe group by x go The last select statement fails on ASA 6.0 on Windows NT. Why? (For what it's worth, it works in Oracle 8 and SQL Server 7).` For someone who's come from SQL Server, this is a big let down. Kludges galore!!! Second issue is that I have nearly given up on working in a company that will allow me to "purely program". If you're in a job where you're working on projects 90+% of the time, let me know. And by that I mean not waiting on the customer to turn in data or dev docs or what-have-you. I just want to make things that provide solutions to problems. Tired of having to help people figure out exactly what the problem is, as well. (That's whiny. Musta be a long day.) posted by ruffin at 2/24/2003 06:37:00 PM
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Saturday, February 22, 2003
A couple of links I found while cleaning out ye olde inbox. How to use security certificates with vba -- These aren't legitimate purchased certs, so they're untrusted, but for testing and even for deployment in an unprofessional fashion, quite useful. [see note below -- 3/11/2003] And perhaps the longest random post I've ever seen on USENET, that's actually quite funny. Can't say I've read it all... PRACTICAL DECONSTRUCTIVE CODING, an essay in the critical theory of computer science, Edward G. Nilges 11-16-2001 [I don't like to edit posts I've already made, but in this case I will add a quick addendum. It turns out, upon further inspection, Mr. Nilges was not trying to be either funny or random, but is quite serious. I believe the following quote (quoted by Mr. Nilges in the post above) cuts to the quick of his point: "Human beings are the subjects of their world and not just its objects." - Theodore Adorno, KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON I think the point is well taken, and one that I hope to study some more in the future. Mr. Nilges critiques current software development practices in that they really do treat the programmer as an object and not a person. I'm not going to pretend I see all of the facets of his arguement, but I do think simply the fact that I feel I don't have time to research these posts, and would instead continue googling for how to make widget X in VB6 does nothing but support his point.] posted by ruffin at 2/22/2003 09:32:00 AM
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Thursday, February 20, 2003
I've been bragging on Mozilla as the best currently developed product for Mac OS 8 and 9. Welp, I'm a few months behind anyone in the know, but it looks like Mozilla is no longer being officially developed for Mac OS 8-9. Why not? Apparently because AOL doesn't see any reason to continue to support that platform and would rather concentrate on viable, forward-looking platforms. This really isn't surprising. I like what AOL is doing with Mozilla/Gecko with AOL 8 on OS X, and I hope doing it helps serve as a testing ground for using Gecko on Windows and ultimately on an AOL-branded version of Linux (if there was ever anyone who wished the OS was commoditized...). It's a good business move. Mozilla on OS 8-9 isn't going to make anyone any real money. Still, for some reason I was taken back. I think I have an irrational belief in the immortality of open source software. Heck, the source is open! How could it ever die? If somebody, somewhere knows how to type "gcc" we should always have Mozilla, everywhere! (Yes, I realize the build is quite a bit more difficult than that, especially for Mac Classic.) Even more so, I somehow got to thinking that the copyleft movement couldn't be influenced by the capitalist world. GPL'd and other, less restrictive, open-source software, would continue to take a progressively larger bite out of pure capitalist markets. Yet here it was -- capitalism was trashing a legitimately large open source project, Moz on Mac Classic. It's a strange turnabout that caught me off guard. I often wonder who has time to work on good open source projects -- you know, how does Stallman afford his daily bread? In the case of Mozilla, the people with time are the people who get paid to make time, it seems. The worlds most certainly do collide on a two, not one, way street. Without Sun, I doubt Netbeans would take another [giant] step forward. Certainly there are others. I wonder how important Red Hat's bottom line is to the progress of Linux. I would venture "Not very," but it's not as automatic a response as it was before. At any rate, I do hope somebody strips out Gecko and reframes that for OS 9. I'm not too upset about losing the trappings (Mail, Chatzilla, etc), but there's no reason not to put that source to good use and let Mac OS 9 stalwarts continue to enjoy the evolution of the WWW. If someone doesn't hop on it quickly, however, I'm afraid AOL's decision will have killed one of my favorite open source projects. posted by ruffin at 2/20/2003 07:32:00 PM
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Welp, for all my bragging about how the Mac is a great OS for personal computing, I have found a bug of sorts. My iBook (running OS X 10.2.whatever) gauges how long the battery's going to last on the current battery load per [some unit of time]. If you're burning CDs, then, say, it might predict that a battery that's at 70%+ of full charge is only going to last a few more minutes. This makes the iBook panic and drop into "deep emergency sleep" mode (not the real name, of course -- I hope). [Update: I clicked the button on the battery and it says I'm almost out of energy, so it might not have been lying. Regardless, I have had it go to sleep before from burning CDs, and I've only burned two and a half on the battery this morning.] posted by ruffin at 2/20/2003 09:31:00 AM
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Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Appleworks 6 is a nearly worthless application. This is something of an about-face for me. I've always enjoyed using Apple/ClarisWorks since MacWrite until now, but it's always been mostly because it gave me a no-nonsense word processor with Word compatibility. Well, now that's all it is, because an app as simple as Apple's TextEdit edits rtf's fairly well. If you remember my rtf rant from a while back, you'll know the format isn't exactly as xplat as it should be, but between TextEdit and WordPad (on Windows) who really needs a fancy, $100-$300 word processor any more? Does anyone remember typewriters (or at least SpeedScript)? I'm a little tired of Word's grammar rules anyhow. Look, help me spell, but much more than that is cheating anyhow. About the only thing Appleworks is good for is reading an Excel or Word file when you happen to catch one online. Now that I've blasted my OS 9 partition for time being, and with it Appleworks 6 (Carbon), I'm finding there are plenty of good stand-ins for that as well. posted by ruffin at 2/19/2003 08:57:00 PM
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Fired up WinXP yesterday or the day before and got a message saying it wanted to move all the icons I had on my desktop that I hadn't used (including IE!) to a folder to unclutter the real estate. I said yes, of course. Nice little "every corner tucked" feature there. The Yellow Dog Linux experiment continued a little today, not wrt Java (that was a total loss; need faster hardware, I guess) but with Mac-On-Linux, which allows you to run OS X in a window inside of Linux. Now that'd be neat. Unfortunately installation didn't go as hoped the first try (told you I was a Linux illiterate) so it's shelved for now. If I could get mol working and YDL was more laptop friendly (not even a battery meter that I can see! I'm scared to see what putting it to sleep would do. Doesn't video mirror to my monitor with the iBook 2001 either), I could see using Linux a bit more often. As I hinted at last time, the speed of everything but Java is quite a bit quicker than what's going on in OS X. iPhoto would be about the only thing my family would miss, and hopefuilly mol could have that covered. posted by ruffin at 2/19/2003 08:40:00 PM
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Tuesday, February 18, 2003
`'NOTE : AT THIS POINT IT APPEARS THAT IN THE FOLLOWING YOU MUST USE ' .FormulaFields INSTEAD OF THE DOCUMENTED .FormulaFieldDefinitions` Never a good thing to see in the code example section of the help documents of a third-party application's API that's mission critical to your job. (This in particular is from the "Sample Code - FormulaFieldDefinition Object" section of the developers' help file for Crystal Reports version 7. The help file's name is "developr.hlp" if you need help finding it.) posted by ruffin at 2/18/2003 10:32:00 AM
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Monday, February 17, 2003
Interesting new download at the Microsoft Developer Network called the Visual Basic 6.0 Code Advisor, which will "scan your Visual Basic 6.0 projects to ensure they meet predetermined coding standards. The Code Advisor can also suggest changes and best practices to ease your migration from Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET..." I've never quite understood why MS wants everyone to use interpreted bytecodes for every app they make. It makes everyone's app easily decompilable. And VB.NET is simply not VB6. Why leave all these VB6 experts behind? Some people and, more importantly, some applications don't belong in the realm of web services and the rest of the .NET overhead. These people should stick around in VB6-land b/c it's the best tool for the job. And with that means don't bother coding for VB.NET. I haven't used the app, and it might just say don't name a string myString$ and to use myString As String instead, but conceptually I'm not a big fan of the app. If you are going to use VB.NET, use it now. If you're using COM and the rest of the "past generation" of MS programming techs, don't bother changing the way you do your business. posted by ruffin at 2/17/2003 04:21:00 PM
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Sunday, February 16, 2003
It's a shame. And a wasted weekend. For some reason I've been trying to save my underpowered iBook by turning into, by hook or crook, a decent Java development platform. Hey, I really like my iBook. Great battery life -- I've used it for three hours taking notes in a class and still had 50% battery life left -- great applications (from Safari to MS Word to the iApps), super size for a true portable, great 802.11b reception; the iBook is very nearly a dream laptop. But Java on OS X is seeeelow, and as evidenced by my attempted move to Jikes last week, I'm trying hard to get around its limitations. Well, I've gone nearly as far as I can go now. I've tried using Linux to get a Java 2 VM on my Apple hardware that's fast enough for me to code without turning grey. Don't take this lightly either. I'm a Linux illiterate. Reallly am. Had LinuxPPC installed on an old StarMax for a while, but I don't know nearly enough about Linux to compare my skills to anything resembling the ten stages that come before mastery. But Yellow Dog Linux has finally gotten to the point that even I can install it easily. Quick note: You do not have to reformat your entire hard drive to install YDL. I hate that the installation instructions have said that for so long. If you had more than one partition on your drive already, you just blast one of the partitions (goodbye, Classic! For the moment, anyhow) and go to it. I haven't had any troubles at all. YDL 2.3 is installed and running, and I'm posting from Mozilla 0.9.9 via YDL right now. Moz is just one of the many apps that are installed by default. So I've installed IBM's PowerPC version of their Java 1.3.1 and downloaded Netbeans. I was hoping like mad that this Linux JVM wouldn't have the same speed issues OS X has. Mac OS 9 runs quickly; it just never had a Java 2 VM released. And YDL runs pretty quickly. Windows are a little slower moving around than OS 9, but much faster than anything I've seen in OS X. I was optimistic. No reason to be. Netbeans moves even MORE slowly than it does in OS X. It drives me crazy. I suppose there might be a better windowing system that could speed things up, but looking at top (an app that keeps track of what apps are taxing your processor) while Netbeans was working leads me to believe that the problem is in the Java GUI widget implementation, not the underlying OS. Blackdown's VM might be worth a shot, and perhaps an older Java 2 VM in general (the one from IBM that I'm using is 1.3.1). There's always hope. On the plus side, YDL looks great. Great suite of apps installed by default, from Mozilla to Abiword to Ximian Evolution. I think Linux is finally ready for the typical poweruser's -- though certainly still not your grandmother's -- desktop. This was by far the easiest Linux installation I've ever seen. Performance outside of Java is really impressive, even on my slow hardware. Mozilla on YDL downright blows Mozilla on OS X away. The Office replacement applications are finally pretty mature. KDE 3.0 is modelled after Windows a good deal, and you're quickly familiar with where everything should be located. It's a great package, and it's always neat to think I got it for the price of downloading an iso via ftp and burning it to CD. So YDL is a nice OS, which I'm happy to see, but in the end is just another OS to me. It's also the one with the fewest reasons for me to learn. I think the only advantage it has over OS X for me, other than a bit more speed in places where I'm not dying for more, is the ability to customize exactly what's going on. Never want to use the mouse again? That's Linux for sure, not OS X. We'll see. At any rate, hopefullly I'll keep OS 9 off of the iBook just long enough to play the Linux version of Railroad Tycoon I purchased years ago. I've really been looking forward to playing that game. posted by ruffin at 2/16/2003 07:40:00 PM
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Saturday, February 15, 2003
Finally got a few seconds today to play with Java again at home. A few items of [debatable] note. 1.) My trialware application is embarrassingly past my self-enforced release date. After all the harping I do about good software management, this is really egg on the face. Nobody to fault but me. I've actually had an app I was fairly comfortable releasing for quite some time. The main hang-up (and this isn't an excuse) is deciding whether I should form an LLC or an S-Corp by which to release the application. Afraid I'm simply not brave enough to go it as a sole proprietorship. Called a lawyer, and was told the two are close enough that I need to ask my taxman which would be better in my particular situation. No appointment with the taxman until the end of this month, so the release is going to be awful late. Again, totally my fault and quite embarrassing, but I'm betting I'm not losing millions by not being out in the market just yet. 2.) In the past two weeks while working my new day job, I've been using the iBook exclusively to check email, surf, etc, as that's about all the free at-home computer time I've had. The Mac really does provide a superior environment for typical PC computer uses. It got to the point that I'd forgotten why I hated developing Java on my Mac hardware. I'd even remembered that I wanted to try Jikes, IBM's Java compiler, in place of Sun's javac. Jikes is reportedly much much faster, and I was of the opinion that it could make my iBook a usable, if not superior (and I do mean "not" here), platform. Well, in my entirely unscientific, count the seconds in my head benchmark, jikes is much much faster. Jikes completes a clean build of my app in less than half the time javac does. Really a nice step up, and the Jikes-compiled version of the app seems to run just fine. Unfortunately, after using Netbeans on the iBook for a while, I discovered the compile time wasn't the real/only issue. Editing in Netbeans on the iBook is slow, but bearable. But compiling a recently edited file in Netbeans still takes too long to sit through using my 500 MHz G3. Netbeans first checks to see what objects have changed (which takes it quite a while), then compiles (much faster now!), and then, if you asked it to, executes the file you just updated (ick). This last part is the part that I forgot. No matter how quick the compilation, I've still got to wait for Apple's JVM to start up my Swing GUI, and it's just butt slow. Dropping from 7 seconds to 6.8 seconds (just to throw a random example out there) isn't that much better a user experience. So I went back and fired up my 2.0 GHz Gateway and Eclipse for the first time in two weeks. Much faster than 4x as fast as the iBook, and that's without Jikes on the PC. Oh well. Just burned my Yellow Dog Linux install CD. Maybe that'll be faster... sigh 3.) Turns out telling Netbeans to use Jikes to compile your files isn't as obvious as it should be. To use Jikes in Netbeans, open Tools, Options, then look under Edit (?? why it isn't set in "Compiler Options", I don't know), Java Sources. Switch to the pre-configured Jikes option there. 4.) Getting mad and accidently holding down "ctrl-option-Apple-8" in a fit of rage inverses the colors of my iBook display. It's like a black light. Neat. Also somewhat maddening trying to figure out what combo of keys I need to press to get it back (turns out it's the same, but I didn't know I'd hit them the first time!). 5.) Java's BoxLayout is really pretty neat, if only because it seems to be the only layout manager that pays attention to "setMaximumSize" like you think layout managers should. Really a step up from the useful but often none-too-professional-looking results you get from GridLayout. Unfortunately the BoxLayout only does one row or column at a time, which makes it less efficient for putting a great number of widgets on one container. That's about it for today. I'm still taking a collection for a dual-proc Mac if anyone's giving. posted by ruffin at 2/15/2003 10:45:00 PM
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Thursday, February 13, 2003
Just a quick note to say I'm still using Crystal Reports pretty much 90% of my work-days this week (counting making the SQL to run the reports), and I'm going to take back half of the bad things I've thought and said of it. That half would be the reporting half. It's much much easier to turn your SQL into a report in Crystal than it is in ASP/vbscript, VB, or in an Office application with automation. The stock reports aren't bad, they are perfectly aligned for your 8.5"x11" paper, and the bulit-in translators to pdf or html or Excel aren't too shabby. Slapping a Crystal Report onto a VB6 form is quite easy with Crystal automation, and the Seagate site has an example project that makes it as easy as cutting and pasting (and modifying just slightly) some code. The "data entry" side stinks, however. Never, ever, ever use Crystal Reports to actually put together a report. Use the Crystal SQL Query designer to paste in some SQL you wrote in a text editor or isql client, turn that into a query, and then use that query to create a report. You can even access a stored procedure that returns a result set directly from the report designer as if it were a simple table. This, of course, means you can use cursors, even external applications if you want to get really fancy, and the sky's the limit for applying your SQL skillz. The bottom line is that you can get the report as close to perfect using just SQL and [your back-end of choice] and then let Crystal do the simple formatting and a few totals for you. And if you're using Crystal and you don't know SQL, well, start learning. Speaking of isql clients, I've been using Squirrel SQL daily now to access a Sybase back-end via the JDBC-ODBC bridge. With the jEdit plugin (two links), Squirrel really becomes the best isql client I've ever used (which is nearly saying something, as I've been using SQL for over four years now). It's nice to move to a MS-sellout shop and to use a Java-powered, open-source client to run queries directly against their database. I might be using Outlook for email now, but I'm using the Squirrel to get real work done. posted by ruffin at 2/13/2003 07:48:00 PM
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Saturday, February 08, 2003
Ever been talking *NIX and wondered what a window manager really does? Well, if you were too lazy to take the two words apart and see if what they mean separately has anything to do with what they mean together, like me, this post should still get rid of you confusion. posted by ruffin at 2/08/2003 07:59:00 PM
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Welp, I'm back to doing whatever the boss tells me, and right now that means use Windows about nine hours a day, five days a week. Right now I'm learning the products' database schemas so that I can create custom Crystal Reports and write little custom shindigs with vba & VB6. Crystal really isn't that bad. It's not fun, mind you, but as far as making quick reports that easily export to pdf, Excel, and something that looks a little like html, it's pretty efficient. And do note I'm not using Crystal's tools to set up the data for my reports. My typical set-up is using VIm to hack up and save some SQL statements that I'll slap into a Crystal query that I'll then slap into a report. If your SQL's good enough, you won't spend much time in that horrible, mouse-o-centric Crystal Reports environment. So we start with VIm, which eliminates a lot of mouse-strokes. Here are some key ways in Windows to get rid of others. Some of these I only recently found out, embarassingly enough. Windows-M: Minimize all windows to the taskbar. Windows-E: Open Windows Explorer [without expanding your home drive to your preferences directory] Windows-F: Open the Windows search screen. Alt, space, n: Minimize the current Window (doesn't always work, like with many Java apps, for some reason) Alt, space, x: Maximize the current window Alt, space, r: Something I can't remember offhand (on Mac at home, thankfully) And, of course, if you somehow can read this (it being online) and you don't know what alt-tab does, well, try it. In Crystal: Select a widget. Shift-arrows make it bigger and smaller. Control-arrows move it. If I could only tab from one to the next, I'd be in business! Overall, though Crystal's keyboard transversal support is some of the worst I've seen. That GUI -- and probably the whole app -- really needs a facelife. I have not tried version 9 yet, and hopefully there's an improvement there. WIth all this, I only have to grab the mouse to do a few things in Crystal Reports, and most of my day I have my hands right where they belong -- on the keyboard. posted by ruffin at 2/08/2003 07:07:00 PM
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Friday, February 07, 2003
Was happy to see today that Outlook's web interface works great in Safari. Outlook as an email client does strike me as a bit strange. Having vba in special function apps, like the ones I worked on in my previous job (ArcView and ArcIMS) and now in my new 8-6er (The Raiser's Edge) seems to make some sense for me in some strange way. I don't think I might mandating Windows when you're using expensive niche software. $150 for an OS isn't a big deal when companies are spending thousands just to get the software they want installed on their hardware. But something as ubiquitous as email seems somewhat tainted by having MS-specific extensions from formatting all the way to vba macros. Email should be free of MS's predatory-esque practices. At the same time, the vba hooks mean that I should be able to do something about all the wacky, MS-specific things that MS thinks an email client to do. From wrapping quoted pastes and adding ">" prefixes to intelligently parsing "Outlook Rich Text" to plain text, it's all open and available. Now if only the same could be said for our Exchange server, which apparently isn't set up for IMAP4 or POP3 support. I can't even telnet into port 25 to play with the SMTP server, if there's an SMTP server of some sort in there. Aggravating. All that said, I've been experiementing with Squirrel SQL when putting together reports with that MS sellout app at my new job. Nice open-source, Java app overall, though "--" comments don't seem to work right now. Guess that'd be an easy enough thing to add to the code, eh? :^) The final bit of news is that I've given up on a new Mac. Hopefully the new iMovie (and maybe a devideon drive if things go well) and possibly a new hard drive for the half-GHz iBook will be enough to tide me over a while longer. The whole, "Let's upgrade 2x867 with 1x1000" just didn't do it for me. My "sector" of the Apple market got the short end of the stick with the latest upgrades, so I suppose it's time to do some voiting with ye olde pocket. As reported before, with Safari, OS X seems much faster in daily use, and other than incredibly slow Java compile times, the iBook, with its great software selection (when including open source software and the iApps), newly improved "consumer app" speed (email, browser, and word processing), and the true four-plus hour battery life really is a great laptop. Buy a new one that can use Quartz Extreme. They're not too shabby. posted by ruffin at 2/07/2003 12:14:00 AM
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Monday, February 03, 2003
Welp, started the new job at the "150th largest software development company in the world!" (cue music) So far there's only been one real revelation: Though I thought I was working at a Microsoft sell-out shop before, where we used IIS for our web servers, Microsoft SQL Server for our database servers, made customized plug-ins using vba and apps with VB6, and everyone and their brother used Internet Explorer to anything related to the web (that is, everyone who knew how to open a URL outside of their email client), I wasn't close to how bad it could get. Where I work now there isn't an application that doesn't talk Microsoft, it seems. Before email was done through Netscape Communicator (4.7!). Now it's Outlook. Scheduling was done through Meeting Maker (which, I might say, is a decent app for companies of about 150 or fewer employees and is awfully cross-platform, available on "Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, Java, Palm, PocketPC and RIM Blackberry"). Now we use... yep, Outlook. In fact, looking at Outlook's settings, we[ at the new company]'ve stopped using email standards like IMAP4 and now use some wacky Microsoft Exchange crud. Oh, I'd heard of Exchange before, but it never really occurred to me that this was not a simple embrace and extend but a complete replacement for standard internet techs. The server's got me signing in via my NT permissions, not a separate email login and pwd. I'm sure there's some way to talk to the server like it's an IMAP4 server, but it didn't jump out at me quickly. I'm even scared to change settings to have my emails sent in plain text! (But, of course, not so scared that I didn't already do it.) It's bad enough that I could envision myself installing Gaim (which I probably won't; these guys are real sticklers for time management, which is a good thing, I think) and IM'n a few people before I have the IT infrastructure folk show up with my manager to give me a stern ultimatum: Switch to MSN messenger or start looking for another job!!!. On the trialware front, I'm stuck between an S-corp and an LLC. As soon as the taxman gets back to me on which is better news for my particular situation (and I finish up the help section, admittedly), the app should be ready for sale. Woohoo! posted by ruffin at 2/03/2003 07:24:00 PM
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Sunday, February 02, 2003
May have figured out why Apple put a single processor in their new entry-level Powermac in spite of the fact that it's a huge step down from the previous entry level, dual processor, 867 MHz G4 Powermac. Let's say you've got $1500 to spend on a Mac (or that you would spend, whether you've got it or not). You don't want the iBook b/c it's only got a G3 in there. Heck, let's say you want a Superdrive and that means G4. You look at the Powermacs to get pretty good hardware (ie, better than the iMac) around that G4 at the cheapest price possible. Build to order and you can get a Superdrive-equipped, single-proc Powermac for about $1650. Not bad, I guess. But you start thinking, hey, while I'm here, what about these new Powerbooks? For "just" another three-hundred bucks you can get a 12" Powerbook with a Superdrive. How close are the two? Well, the bus speed's the same. The processor isn't even 15% slower. You can get a great laptop that'll rival the hardware of the Powermac you were looking at for $300! It's like a Powermac and laptop for the price of one computer! Now you're "sexy cool"!!! -- (c) 2001 Steve Jobs. Anyway, that's about (minus the "sexy cool"; to me the rationalization is, "Buy the Powerbook and then you can sell the iBook on eBay. It's like the Powerbook is ($700-$300 == $400) cheaper than the Powermac!") what I keep thinking and have to keep telling myself I'm an idiot for considering either machine. Let's face it, if you want speed, you need the two processors. Apple isn't producing the only dual-proc home-use hardware for nuttin. If it weren't for the horrible customer service reviews at versiontracker (okay, and the fact that it'd literally take a day to burn a 90 minute DVD on my 500 MHz G3), I'd nearly buy a devideon drive (an "external superdrive" with iDVD-esque software -- that runs on a G3!) for $400 and call it a day. posted by ruffin at 2/02/2003 12:31:00 PM
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Saturday, February 01, 2003
Might later want to come back to this article about Bayesian filtering with some open source Linux tools. The email client used in the article, sylpheed-claws, seems to have a pretty good attitude for an email client project. It claims to value "Quick response; Graceful, and sophisticated interface; Easy configuration, intuitive operation; [and] Abundant features", which, in theory, is a good thing. The author of the first article also describes the performance of Sylpheed as pretty good, even on his, "Pentium II-300 with 160MB RAM, running Slackware 8". Now that's a good set of specs for a developer. If you're happy developing on that, you've done your homework getting a good software suite together. This also hopefully means that Sylpheed is following along the same tack as Apple's Safari browser. The number one priority is speed. I've been more and more impressed with OS X the last few days with the perceived speed-up I've been getting simply by using Safari. Every help page, every link from another app opens up Safari, combined with faster page rendering when surfing and bam -- everything seems to running more quickly. The new updates for iPhoto and iMovie (according to some schmoes on Slashdot) also give much better performance on relatively slow Macs (the post in question saying they're using a G3/350!). If that's true (and I'm cleaning up enough space on the hard drive to update now), my iBook will have gotten quite a bit faster this last month. And it's a good thing. Short of the DP Powermacs I tried out at the Apple store when I had a chance to drop by, not a single piece of hardware could even run iPhoto at an acceptable clip. If compile times for Java classes weren't as bad as ever (ok, and if I had a Superdrive), I'd stop thinking about getting a new Mac today. posted by ruffin at 2/01/2003 10:05:00 PM
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