Older blog entries for berend (starting at number 153)

Tried to improve the HTML interface for my legacy integration engine the last two weeks. Javascript compatibility between the three major browsers, Mozilla, Opera, and IE is still low, very low. Gave up on Opera 6 and bought Opera 7. A lot better. What was interesting is that it is possible to do some nice tricks in HTML now. Refreshing comboboxes for example without resubmitting a form.

Expect to see a lot more Javascript the next weeks. Have to write some tree mapper window or field to field mapping code with it.

Joab Jackson has written a good article about Eiffel. When he approached me, I admit I was a bit sceptical what kind of article it would become, but it's good and complete. Job well done.

Gone live with a FAQ about the protest against the ARC rates increase. The ARC has hit the poor and elderly especially hard. If you are on a pension and you suddenly have to pay hundreds of dollars, or even more, every year, imagine that! No way to increase your income, or perhaps you can work at McDonalds or so. And the rates will go up the next 7 years. Anyway, that's the idea. This council will be voted away in the biggest turnout next year. But the protest wants to have the rates reset this year. I'm quite confident that goal will be reached. There's just too much socialism and communism in New Zealand at the moment. Why can't the government leave people alone to live there own lifes and catch some criminals for a change?

Had a bit of a trouble driving home yesterday. Went to the Tae-Kwondo grading, but that was far out in Papakura. The light of the city isn't so stark there, so when I returned, the stars were overwhelming. Couldn't keep my eyes from the milky way, while they should be at the road. Won't see them real close any time soon I'm afraid.

My Linux crashed again. Happens too often lately. It seems 2.4.21 is less robust than the already not so robust earlier versions. After a resume, it's very prone to hang after a few keystrokes. And the problem I had since the earliest versions is still there as wel: loosing my mouse. I quickly had learned to use gpm, so I could restart it and get my mouse back. But what could I expect? Both Linux and Microsoft developers use the same tools, the same language. Only the developers themselves could make a difference. Microsoft can hire the best developers, so I really don't see how Linux could be a difference here. They're hiring 5000 new people it seems! And do more eyes look at the Linux source? How many thousands of Microsoft developers look at their source? This is not gonna work I'm afraid. And now I stop, reboot is completed. Let's see if IBM's supposedly log based file system hasn't screwed up my system. Another piece of code that never worked for me.

Time is up for my Gobo Eiffel parser tests. Expat is the fastest parser as we already knew. And interesting differences between Eiffel compilers. Huge differences. Hadn't expected that. And SmartEiffel is really the fastest. Something other experiments I've done already had hinted at.

Mark Steyn is at it again: you'll enjoy this.

Last week I released the final beta, so I thought, of xplain2qsl. But today I did a lot of work on certain constructs with Boolean that didn't work with Microsoft SQL Server. The problem is that Microsoft SQL Server doesn't have a Boolean data type. And assigning the result of a Boolean expression to a value didn't work. Took me more time than I expected to fix it. So perhaps I should do another release candidate. But as I don't get much feedback, I might as well skip it. Anyway, have to run all the tests again, as I had to touch a lot ofcode.

And problems with my XRTDS tool. Get a segment violation on a realloc. Somehow memory is being overwritten. A pure Eiffel world would be preferrable, but interfacing with CLI and your OS is a necessity unfortunately. Perhaps built-in checks in my STDC_BUFFER to see when memory is overwritten? I suspect it happens in ecli, but let's not point fingers before I've figured it out. And I have to give a demo tomorrow, so that means figuring it out before then, oops.

Recently I reinstalled Falcon 4 with the latest patches. It is simply amazing. Now try to land the thing without crashing, sigh.

But that lead me to some internet browsing. And to the Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar. One of the reviews on this ehhh, well, you can hardly call this a joystick anymore, said:

Combat flight sim fans can be divided into two camps: the clinically insane and the well-equipped clinically insane.

I thought that was a bit over the top. But it is true I found out. I stumbled upon another review by Mark "Frugal" Bush. Just a few quotes:

The Cougar on the other hand did not prompt me to install it and fly but rather to sit and admire it. I spent hours on my sofa just holding it, studying it and enjoying it for its form rather than its function. ... Today I even found myself detatching the handle so that I could watch TV with my comforter in hand. I also find myself polishing it before leaving my seat for any length of time (hehe I have since discovered that James also does this, spooky again). The feeling of the smooth cold steel in your hand really cannot be described.

It's time I get that joystick myself, I definitively want to be in camp B!

Just started watching John Doe for a couple of eposides. Started to become really interested after Illegal Alien. And then you start browsing on the Internet. And then you read that the show is already killed. Great. I seldom watch TV (this was the only hour in the week I did) for months. What are those TV bosses really thinking? I'm entirely out of sync with the commercial types it seems. But as long as they think that letting T'Pol running around asking for sex brings the viewers back, I'm afraid we're not getting closer for a long time.

I just have to add this is already the second time in a year. I also liked Total Recall 2070. A show I even stayed home for.

I have told those guys twice that the title in the browser has the year 2001. Mistakes like that underscore the theme of this conference perfectly: Measuring and Assessing Software Quality. Let's just hope they pay more attention to the contents of this conference. Following up on bug reports must sure be the first thing when you want to improve quality. Or do they just want to measure and assess it?