Dev Dawn

Aussie DevCon was, in my opinion, AWESOME. A raging success.

I’m going to have a run down, going in-depth, as far as my memory and notes allow .. but here’s a quick taste.

We had some great presentations, the food was superb, there were pool tables, we got to put Russ over the C7-Grill, and Capesoft wowed.

I can honestly say, that we (me and the Crew) walked away better developers.

Most importantly, we got to meet and get to know people. Other Clarion Developers. And this, my friends, is most wonderful. I’m not going to name everyone, but EVERYONE who went, greets and salutations. Drop us a hello here, send a message.

Tony and David produced a quality show. Many and more kudos to you guys. It was seriously the high point in my short development career. Probably will be till the next DevCon we go to .

Anyway, I’m babbling away without direction yet. I’m going to go through the whole weekend soon, and don’t want to shortchange this.

Also, I managed to, after beating him up a little with those Mickey Mouse gloves, get an interview with Bruce Johson (and Jono Woodhouse for the second half). This will most likely be split into a number of segments. It’s about 50 minutes long, so I’d like to put up some bite-sized chunks. Also i’d like to transcribe it down, in some form , so yeah. Might take a little time.

More later. Nuff Said.

May the WAC and LAC rule the world ..

We’re jumping cities to attend the Aussie Dev Con this weekend. Am getting quite excited, pumped, hyped .. it’s like the night before Summer Camp. Booyah!

Anyway. Will be conducting at least one interview-type-of-thing down there, plus lots of other stuff hopefully. Looking to see what other people are doing. Look at methods of development, how people create their ideas, if people are excited about the future of development, looking at different paths … it’s gonna ROCK!

Anyway. Hype-Monkey out.

Dabble could be what to web development what Clarion is to desktop development. Big call. That’s why it’s a “could be”. It’s hard to compare in reality. The pre-release product is already hyped way past Clarion, being on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, winning awards, getting blogged. That sort of stuff.

• Dabble.
• Check out this video.
• Here’s their blog.
• Thanks to this post from Tad.

This is pretty cool. From my kind-of-watching-to-very-interested viewing of the video, it seems their creating something to do what Clarion does, or any other rad tool. Easy manipulation of databases.

This kind of experiment (Web Interface stuff) could prove extremely powerful. In terms of development work, and output. Removes any of the desktop issues pretty much.

Of course, there’s gonna be issues. Hopefully the guys who created Dabble will get the air time they need to launch a product .. that, and actually bring the goods to the table .. of course, from the video, it seems those goods are pretty far along.

Here’s to seeing where this goes. I’m excited, not Hype-Monkey status, more Interested Watcher.

Till Next Time,

Last night I was doing some contract web work, and discovered just how easy it is to put some redirection into place. I realise this will be bread & butter knowledge to most webfolk.

If you have more than one (or maybe even just one) domain name that is pointing to the same IP, and you wish to redirect the user based on the address they typed, there is a simple way.

Following is the code that I knocked up last night. It works for files in the same directory (the include), and for places outside (the header redirect).

One NUB mistake I made was putting my initial comments in html comment at the top. Bad Bad Bad! The header function has to come before any html. Man alive. No0b. Newb.

< ?php
/*************/
/* index.php */
/*************/
/*
Created: 06-04-19

/* CatchAll ... this doesn't have to be the main Index, but is for the moment */
else {
include('index.html');
};
?>

There you have it. Not much to it. This assume that apache (or whatever server) will take a gander at the index.php file first. If it doesn’t, you can either change the way apache looks (want to put the .php first in the http.conf file (i think that’s the one from memory), or just don’t have any other index. files … if you have an index.html, change it to indexmain.html .. or something along those lines.

Cheers, thanks for listening, you’ve been a wonderful audience,

I’ve spoken about this topic before, probably at length, so if you are bored please venture into another of my self-deluded ramblings of grandeur.

Anyway.

Last night I was struck again with how much our dreams can differ from reality. Except this time the lesson hit he over the head with far greater clarity.

One of the best skills in development (learned & innate) is to be able to dream with reality.

Corny I know. But true.

1. You cannot build a dream without reality.

How many times have I launched into a project that in my mind looks so awesome, and then a few days later it drops away into the recesses of memory? More than I remember.

It’s so important when considering what we do that reality plays a healthy part. No doubt I’m preaching to the converted, as I think it’s probably something that’s learnt very early on in the piece. Although I guess if you work in a massive development team, then perhaps it’s something that isn’t an issue. Not sure. Depends on your role I would imagine.

You cannot build an accounting system knowing nothing about accounting. Been there, massively failed that.

Having an idea for a book/tv show/movie/comic, having real characters in your mind, a story that you think is pretty awesome, with a massive twist at the end, doesn’t mean squat. Been there many times. Have a bunch of single-page word documents to prove it.

Thinking I can still (mentioned this one before for sure) play for the Wallabies (or at least the Waratahs), dreaming of the tackles, the ball runs, the rapturous applause of the crowd and the accolades of team-mates .. doesn’t measure up to the reality of an un-skilled broken body.

I think you get my drift.

But wait, there’s more. Actually, no .. there is hope. Great hope.

2. Reality is half the journey.

As important as reality is, you still need to dream. It’s the balance. Even if it’s someone else in the team doing the dreaming, that’s okay.

I’m a dreamer. For sure. But I believe I can get to the stage where my understanding of reality is as alive as my dreams. It’s getting there. I’m more aware of the pitfalls of launching into new projects. I work with a bunch of devs that have a lot of experience with the reality of dreaming.

So don’t stop dreaming. I’m not going to. But I’m striving every day to better my vision (super-power). My clarity and understanding.

Which leads to the third, I guess conclusion point.

3. Dreams aren’t really going to dry up.

I have to be prepared to let dreams go. That’s just the reality of the situation. It might be putting them on the shelf, or just completely canning it.

And you know what? It don’t matter. There’s plenty of stuff gurgling away in my brain all the time. Ideas come and go, it’s the character behind, the breeding ground, that allows them to form .. not the objects in and of themselves. At least, that’s what i reckon. It’s not that you’ll never have another good idea again, because you shouldn’t be thinking that thought in the first place.

It’s like when one of my ideas gets shot down by someone else. Of course, I feel like I’ve been hit with a 2by4 with nails in it (ha ha), but after the momentary pain, I laugh. It’s good. It makes my next dream/idea a little better, thinking about how to form it in a way that answers the critical skills others have, and I am growing.

Anyway. Getting long-winded.

You know what I’m talking bout.

Cheers,

Welcome to the intial release (in a pre pre pre alpha form, ha ha) of Projman .. a Project Management System that allows you to access your Todo’s from anywhere you can access the web.

As it is an initial product, the extent of it’s functionality is small. Basic. But the potential is there I believe.

One exciting aspect of this “project” is that it showcases the wonderful NetTalk 4 (WebServices).

I have had some trouble with child browses, but Bruce (i believe i read this somewhere) is on the ball, adding support for this very shortly (if not already). Once I can get them working, the functionality will expand (think Sub-Tasks, very important).

Edit: After checking the latest version of NetTalk 4 .. these are indeed implemented. So the next version of Projman should include them. Nice.

Visit the Projman page, or just download it.

Cheers,

p.s.

As of 0.1.0 you must point your web browser to 127.0.0.1:88 .. a future version will allow the user to change this.

p.p.s.

There may be an issue with the Install. It could be that I’ve missed a dll that is inherent to clarion. It’s harder to test for, because no “errors” come up telling you what dll is missing.

If only we could build our dreams.

Jamash would be my baby.

It wouldn’t be actual applications, but rather technology. It would combine all the methodologies I’ve learned over the past couple of years along with all the stuff I’ve/We’ve dreamed of. A clean structure for plugins. Unparalleled User Interface. Error/Action reporting & logging. Simple (but powerful) interface between the web and desktop. In fact, it would bridge the gap like nothing before it. You could develop single systems, client/server, or even a super-structure of nodes and leaves throughout the world.

Jamash would be the grail, for myself at least.

I guess I’ve never thought about that kind of long-term achievement within software development. I mean, I’ve got plenty of dreams, but never crystalised into that kind of purpose.

Jamash would do that. It could be a gaming platform, because that’s really one of my secret unfulfilled desires. Secret Ha ha.

Jamash.

Say it slow. Say it loud. Jamash.

It roles off the tongue.

Jamash.

Yesterday was a long day.

You know what I’m talking about.

There were a few uglies that reared their head in the project. I was sure I’d smashed them to pieces before. I knew there was an answer.

So, obviously, instead of actually utilising the problem-solving skills I’ve worked hard at the last few years, my brain froze. Following is the conversation I had.

It’s hopeless. Nothing is working. It’s all a shambles. I can’t get anything to work. You may as well go home and take a nap. Mmmmmmm, chicken and chips.

Also, here’s an awesome rendering of my state of mind:

So what was the solution?

There’s lots of fancy names. I simply use :: DeTransCombuSegmeFreeTationalism .. or:

Stop. Break things down. Take a look at each piece in the puzzle.

It was around 5pm, which is the best time to come back to a problem. I’d done some other work for a few hours. So I then went back to the teaching of sensei .. or something like that.

It took approximately .. about .. 2 minutes to find the problem. Actually less, but implementation is added into that .

Just to show I’m not a one-picture-man-band .. here’s the after shot:

So, to everyone who bullrushes into problems (like I did), not thinking, not using the methodologies that work so well .. please continue! Makes me feel okay .. heh heh. Well, no, don’t continue. Take a leaf out of my hard-learned book.

It’s always better to discipline your mind to run in certain patterns of problem-solving. Always. So that even the small problems are done in this way, examining them, breaking them down, looking for the far-reaching consequences.

Anyway, as our favourite admantium bone-covered mutant hero has been known to propound .. ‘Nuff Said.

If you’ve ever wondered what the ideal breakfast is for coders (and yes, i mean breakfast, although many of us probably have it around lunch time) .. then wonder no more.

Read on McDuff.

Not much wording for this post. But the pictures speak for themselves. And the cook was none other than the coding commander, Mr Bill. He can cook, he can code. What else is there?

I’d like to talk about a real estate search web site I have been working with;

http://www.homehound.com or http://www.homehound.com.au

In terms of web technology it is the best in Australia with aerial photos and transparent street map overlays ala Google Earth style satellite photos – except these ones are made with planes I think.

Now obviously a web search site has to work well, and have reliable and comprehensive data ( homehound.com has all the major franchise real estate listings in Australia more or less ) – but there is also value in having fancy features, particularly from the web customers point of view.

I wonder which is actually more important? I mention this because Google has a broader version of the same or at least related issue to homehound . Google of course has to have a good search engine to of got where it is – let’s not debate chicken and egg – but rather which is now more important to users, the fancy features Google now provides on the back of the ad revenue (like Google Earth and GTalk). Personally I appreciate the special features more, I can get a half decent search anywhere but some of these free apps are pretty special.

Google. Like public TV we get content in return for being exposed to ads – a pretty old model really. Although the adtext down the right on GMail that reads your email to give you ads related to the words therein is getting a little scary!

— Adam