No surprise here, move along

So, according to Kevin at GiGaOm, the Samsung line is not seeing an upgrade to Android 4.0

That's precisely why I voted with my feet and chose an iPhone, despite Apple's closed and restrictive nature. Love developing on Android though ;-)

The same has and will continue to apply to the Windows Mobile offerings. I actually started my PDA usage on an IMate back in '04 and loved it, but upgrade was hardware vendor locked and later versions were dumbed down and smaller. Windows 8, lauded as it seems to be may well suffer the same fate

We shall see

What daddy wants

Hmm, I ponder my list

1. Laser Welding machine. Shark with lasers will do (it's just cool OK)
2. Laser pointer that doubles as a soldering iron (Thanks Tim)
3. Inline amp for electric guitar. The thing that goes between the guitar and and the headphones.
4. Flying lessons, or at least an introductory flight.
5. For Rob at EasyStore to get back to me with the quotes for crating, so we can get our stuff.
6. PX4
7. A holiday (A plane, PX4 and shark with laser would make it FUN)

Life

You get two types of rat-catcher coming to the fore when someone invents a better mouse/rat trap.

The one that says:

This is wonderful! It will reduce return visits, allowing me to see more customers and make more money!

This is the person that plays the "Piper" and removes the rats before too much damage is done and saves the apartment complex from being condemned.

Sadly, the more usual case is the person that says this:

This will kill my business because it will make me look less effective and my customers will wonder if they even need me. I must stop it!

This is the person that lets the apartment get condemned, often protesting loudly that it's not their fault. They are the ones who'll resort to political manipulation to try and kill, block or invalidate a product and preserve the status quo. Completely ignoring the value their customers may derive from them using the product.

They have clearly lost sight of the value proposition they represent to their customers. Better tools make you more effective and give your customers choices they may not have had otherwise. If you are blind to that, you will miss opportunities that could, quite frankly, change your life.

Is it not better to leave a trail of successful customers in your wake? So decide if you want to add value or not. If the answer is no, it is time to get the hell out of the kitchen!

SWT Handles giving you nightmares?

So I've been struggling with SWT Handle errors when launching Notes from Eclipse. Seems to be just my machine.

At first I thought the culprit was the MySQL Server running in the background and chomping 42k+ handles

Disabled the MySQL service and things worked for a while, but then the SWT handle errors returned and no matter what I did to the run configuration, I'd end up with either the handle error or a GPF

I was about to reinstal the accursed OS, when I got a chance to swap out the memory and that's worked, for now.

Putting MySQL server back in the mix still kills it, although that might be because I've dropped to 3Gig of memory.

Need to test the memory. Edit - It was the memory!

So in short, SWT handle errors seem to be a wee bit broad and pretty useless error message, so bear that in mind and check for other funky monkeys under the hood.

Picking up OSGI

Want to get up to speed on OSGI?

First, listen to Java Posse's podcast of an interview with the OSGI gurus.

Then go read this list of introductory articles and then this article for balance

Why start using OSGI? Because classpath hell just froze over (in J7)

If like me, you do this all in Eclipse and Notes, read mikkel's explanation of features

Ressurection

OK, time to fire this up again

Some really cool things have happened in the last year or two that have prompted a return.
I moved from SA to the US of A for a spot of technical and cultural exchange.

6 months in and loving it. The kids especially are really enjoying the sense of safety and security that comes from being able to ride their bikes in the street without worrying somebody will kill them for it.

That's not to say there's not been adjustments, there are many subtle and not so subtle ways that Americans do it differently. So from driving on the "Right" side of the road to figuring out where the best hardware store is, has been a glorious voyage of discovery.

Already feel more "connected" by not having my DSL die repeatedly (Telcom thou art not missed).

So, a new beginning on the personal and professional front (that's excluding all the hush hush stuff at work I'm not supposed to talk about but some others have leaked).

Just plain awfull (Holiday Rant)

Decided to go to the eBucks site today to register, and sincerely regret it.

Not only did I have to wait while each keyword list refreshes (I'm on a 1Mb+ line here), but the [Back] and [Next] navigation didn't retain information already captured. So when I had to use the [Back] to correct an earlier choice for Postal Address right at the end, I had to recapture everything.

The error depicted in the image was the last straw, and I gave up, muttering about a certain class of JSP developer being prime candidates for culling.

Idiot JSP developers aside, this sort of UI design was barely acceptable back in 1998 and definitely isn't in the new century.

Unfortunately this is just another sad case of a South African company falling short on the internet because management are just too short-sighted to see the cost-justification of proper UI Design. Yes I can see they got a graphic designer in, but it seems it ended there. Did they actually try using their site on anything other than their LAN?

The tipping point of experience

A little while ago I was reading Jeff Atwood's posts on estimating and managing projects.

Jeff initially deals with Steve McConnel's doghouse analogy and the problems encountered when scaling projects (and by implication, developers) from the doghouse to the skyscraper. That is worth a read, even just to revise.

The bit that caught my eye was where he discussed Steve's more recent build-a-fort home project. Jeff counterpoints the copious evidence of underestimated tasks with pointers to agile and iterative development techniques. Not to apear jaded, but the advantages of of short iterative cycles should, to my mind, be obvious these days. I certainly consider it a bit old-hat, since we were doing it in the AVM at Lotus Consulting over a decade ago.

What I found missing, was any discussion around "tooling", and by this I'm not trying to focus on choosing the right framework, but rather the broader scope of all the tools your team will use, no matter how inconsequential.

Having done a similar fort home project for my kids, I believe it is the perfect case study, perhaps because we are unwilling to sacrifice quality and thus highlight the other aspects. I of course have a ready example to illustrate my point. The culprit of some serious delays, a teeny weeny little star screwdriver bit from a kit.

During construction of The Jungle Gym (fort) I used a drill and wood screws for the smaller stuff like floor planking and balustrades. I had opted for a drill bit adapter that could take both the drill and the screwdriver. Initial tests proved successful and I could drill and screw in fast succession, often with one hand. However, once I was in full swing I noticed that this task took far longer than estimated.

Initially I thought it was due to poor quality screws, as the heads would often strip (I was using a speed adjustable drill since screwing them in by hand was just not an option). Unfortunately there were no other makes available and my frustration grew. Eventually my frustration led to me damaging the bit in an attempt to remove a stripped screw.

Since doing this by hand was still not an option, I did a fair bit of searching, and bought a packet of nondescript screwdriver bits and resumed work. The difference was amazing, I was driving in screws faster than I'd originally anticipate and I wasn't stripping any screw heads anymore. This same screwdriver bit is still going strong a good year or so on.

This seems to have been one of those few times when losing my cool has paid off. After all, how was I, as an ardent non-metallurgist, to have a hope in hell of knowing the difference in the bits? In fact the bit from the kit was titanium coated and should have been superior. The hardware store drones were certainly not in a position to help. So I just chalked it up to good old fashioned experience and moved on.

Then I read Jeff's article and it got me thinking. When do you hit that breakdown point that leads to experience, and can it be brought forward or even to light, without a breakdown? Especially in such less obvious cases?

After much mulling and list making, I've come to the conclusion that there's only one factor, awareness. You have to be aware that such situations can arise and must look for them and their possible solutions. Perhaps even plan for them, or at least the exercise to unearth them. The alternative is to blindly continue until you reach the breakdown point, if ever.

As with most issues in project management, there are many shades of Grey. This is is a discussion on efficiencies, which boil down to cost. But at least you can then make informed decisions and substantiate the trade-off early, rather than make excuses late.

Since I like lists, here are some of the more salient points to consider:

• Your tools might not be equally suited to all phases of a project, be they in-house or vendor sourced.
• The more inconsequential a tool seems, the more likely you are to overlook it's impact.
• If you don't look for it, you may never find it.
• As illustrated above, it may not be obvious until you try something different.
  
• Especially in IT Development, the focus on getting the job done very often blinds our objectivity. Regularly step back and re-evaluate (one of many excellent tips from GTD).
  

PS - Before you think I'm a handyman god, and ask me to build you a fort, I also had the normal sort of delay. Like having to retro fit extra floor supports (joists?) to be able to support the average South African male (as in me).

Never a truer word

John Kay's article at Business Day covers the similarity between the current sub-prime hedging debacle and the 1988 Loyd's re-insurance catastrophe.

He points out that starting with greed moving all the way through self-delusion, honest incompetence through to conscious deception, we end up in a situation where...

Each generation repeats the experience of its predecessors, not in broad outline but in considerable detail.

Something every investor should keep in mind, but his closing words are priceless...

The most costly investment advice of all is the expert assurance that “it’s different this time”.

Of course this should rate right up there with "Trust me, I'm a Doctor" as something to set alarm bells ringing. Not just in investing, but in life in general.

So pay attention next time you hear those words.

New Age Banana Republic?

Have a look at this article and ask yourself, "Is South Africa becoming a Banana Republic?". Whilst definitely adding our own special flavor to the mix, we seem to be following the recipe.

To go from the world's darling fledgling democracy to the current situation, where dissenting voices are silenced, is just the start of a mad slide into a Zimbabwean Hell.

I should point out that this is a constant underlying theme within both National, as well as Local Government. A theme which is gathering momentum as the ruling elite gain confidence in their ability to do as they please.

What is obvious to anybody who opens their eyes and ears, is that South Africans are becoming increasingly unhappy with the Government's performance. But then again, we know that the wishes of the populace are of little concern to such people.

Lets just hope that the schism between the ruling elite and their opponents within ANC is fueled by such concerns rather than a simple power struggle to be the next despot.

Go Rocky!

Wow, was surprised to see that Rocky made it onto the top of the log for the technical section of Linked In's new Answers feature.

Normally the Lotus hourglass doesn't feature prominently in the wider web. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come.

It snowed!

It seems to only come around about every quarter century or so, so we're very lucky to have woken up to a white tableau this morning, even if we're cursing the cold.

The kids of course rushed out to experience their first snow.


Yolande told me later that Kieran had actually prayed for snow a couple of nights ago, so we're now in "careful what you pray for" parental education mode ;)

Patent cold war

The News 24 article on Microsoft's claimed 235 patent infringements within Linux, likened the battle between The Beast and OIN to the cold war. The closing jibe is priceless:

Nobody wants a patent Armageddon on their hands; it would hurt the industry and especially the customers. Microsoft should remember how the real cold war ended, with the victory of the free world and the collapse of the "evil empire".

Silverlight

Scoble chiding Microsft blogger Loke Uie caught my eye and made me take look at Silverlight. Tim Sneath has another entry on the topic.

Don't know enough about it yet, but if the hype is close to reality, it seems to be really interesting and worth some time fiddling.

It comes in two flavors: Windows and Mac. No Linux version, so I don't know how they can claim to be cross platform.

The install size is really the surprise 1.1 MB for the Windows bversion and 3.5MB for the Apple version. Have Microsoft stopped bloating?

Guns and killing

The killing spree at Virginia Tech is most disturbing, as are some of the responses calling for more guns.

I've put down my views on gun control on a comment on Richard's blog entry about the event.

In short, even if you arm yourself and feel safer than if you were unarmed, you'll always be looking over your shoulder, just in case someone gets the drop on you. If you don't, you might as well not have armed yourself in the first place.

People want to feel safe, end of story. They don't want to live in fear for their life, or maintain a permanent state of heightened military alert just to survive.

Update: Just got a call from Yol warning me that there's been gunfire down the road from our house and that it sounded like a war zone. So South Africa joins Israel on that list. Wish I hadn't left the gun in the safe this morning.

Blogosphere manners and politicians

Well, the whole "How to behave in blogosphere" ruckus is still going on, and is getting a bit much.

However I did like Wired's reference to Civility. Go on, follow the Wikipedia link, it's a very interesting read and leads me to another, more local rant.

I think we all understand what is meant by civility, but it's rather important to note that it's an important mechanism regarding governing a democratic populace.

Which makes the irony of Jacob Zuma's recent actions all that more sweet. Now he's not alone, I've personally experienced it a number of times here in Johannesburg. The speed crazed lunatic version (180+km/h) is the most dangerous in my opinion, but that doesn't make their arrogant "get out of my way, I don't care if you have to climb the pavement" cousins any less annoying and threatening.

These "above the law" government officials are a clear indication of where our young democracy is headed. Perhaps they would do well to read the bit about Socrates, and how, even though he disagreed, he remained true to the law and drank the hemlock.

The lesson of Cincinnatus, also referred to in the article, is also relevant and should be noted by our political leaders, but that's a whole other rant.

Google dropped the SOAP!

I missed out on Google's SOAP API. Damn, just as we're getting client side SOAP in R8.

They closed the project in favor of an AJAX API but are still running the server for those already using it, so if anybody has an ID they wouldn't mind donating to me, just to play with, I would really appreciate it :D

This of course means that I will have to find a way to do this using AJAX in the Notes Client, thank goodness Bob's got a new job and will be looking at stuff like this.

Enforced silence

After a week of enforced silence thanks to Telskum's 3 Gig per month cap, I came across Kathy's Death Threat post via Nathan's blog.

Bit of link surfing brought me to another side of the story from Rageboy. RageBoy - HAH! Self-important, bombastic Grandad with a rather lopsided view of life.

Now that personal attack is to illustrate a point, so remember your reaction.

This past Thursday, I was lucky enough to catch Reg Lascaris of TBWA Hunt Lascaris on Classic FM's leadership platform. He had many a useful insight, but one thing stuck and is relevant here, "... always attack the issue and not the person."

If you've bothered to read the links to RageGrandad, you'll see he is all personal attack and no substance. His response to Liz Tay's last questions is the most telling:

1. By his own assertion, he is not in touch with the IT industry. Therefore, in my view, is not in a position to truly criticizes Kathy's work, if at all.
2. He hates Kathy, not her work, ideas or principles. Her personally, and that is just plain twisted.
   

It is far from surprising that he catalyzed the situation and attracted further unsavory characters. Given that he's been around the block so many times, he can hardly feign ignorance, nor even surprise.

So what do we learn out of this? At best another way to identify low quality drivel, even if well written, and filter it out by searching for the issue. At worst, who to "spill" a free (as in speech) beer on the next time you see him ;)

I know this response is a bit late, but hey I'm doing African time here.

Web Services

Julian Robichaux did a set of IBM Articles in November 2006 on using Web Services in Notes.

It's his last article on writing complex web services that I found most useful in demonstrating to the unbelievers that there was a better way to do things than to parse a string for XML.

Even if you aren't planning on implementing web services, have a read. The articles are well written and will definitely open your eyes to the possibilities.

Bluetooth and JSR82

While waiting for news about Dad, I've been playing with Bluetooth and JSR82 using Netbeans 5.5 to take my mind off things.

The only problem is that in the windows world you have to go out and buy a software stack to make your code work. Dongle manufacturers don't supply anything :(

Pain in the backside, because I now feel compelled to investigate further, since there's lots of Linux stuff that's free.

Dad's had the hip replaced, and is recuperating. It was a clean break thank goodness.