Tidbit learning during iPhone development
Turns out that any program running in the iPhone simulator that connects to a server has in its user agent string the name of the application (really the XCode project name). Like so:
'HTTP_USER_AGENT': 'BrowserPlay1.0 CFNetwork/438.12 Darwin/9.7.0 (i386) (MacBook3%2C1),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)',
By: Colonel Nikolai
Thu Jul 02 12:26:57 CDT 2009
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Filed under: technology->software->apple->cocoa->iphone
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•Comment•
On Hitting The Wall
So here I am. Jobless and dreading the next gig. Never happened before. I just quit a gig that paid well because I was literally dying on the job. I'd stopped sleeping. I'd gained 7 pounds in 3 months. I'd stopped caring about anything except how I was going to get out of the job and do something else until I finally realized it was such a toxic situation I just had to get out of the job and sort things out on the outside. This in the middle of the worst economy I've seen in my life. Way to go, man.
Granted the gig in question was one of the worst places to work in the area: Huge, crappy legacy system. Waterfall process. Trailing-edge engineering. Utter asshole boss. Stupid HR policies. Long commute. Ugly, windowless cube forest. Lotta fake smiles on your co workers, knowing that you know that they know that this place is ass.
But since leaving, I've found that while I've already lost 3 pounds, have gotten a few good nights' sleep in more than a fiscal quarter, have a few projects bubbling away, some that are ready to pay some cash, but not ready to replace my income: I still have an unanswered question. What the hell am I going to do now?
By: Colonel Nikolai
Wed Jul 01 19:24:46 CDT 2009
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Filed under: technology->software->newgig
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Unit testing bashing rebuttal
I came across this posting a bit ago. Go ahead, read that and come back. I posted a comment as follows:
Full disclosure: You will take TDD out of my cold, dead hands, buddy.
I have worked on both types of systems: those without or with less than 50% coverage and those with tests over 50% covered. I'll take the latter any day of the year. Of course either system is significantly worse if the tests were written after the code was written. Test First, man.
Certainly there are mountains of tests out there that are poorly written by people who where simply checking a box on a list of things they are supposed to do when they write code. This is not the fault of TDD, though. And when I look closely at the kind of testing you're doing, I'll notice that the practice of completely isolating the unit by mocking out all of its dependencies is one of the easiest patterns in unit testing to get wrong. The reason for this is that it's too easy to "bake in" to the test deep, questionable assumptions about your architecture. So maybe your problem is that you're just doing it wrong. Might I suggest at your next job (because this one is not long for this world, sorry to say), you begin by writing the tests first and you mock or fake at the logical or physical system boundary instead of directly up against the unit in question.
So, in summary, I think you might be saying "unit tests are bad" because you have crappy unit tests.
By: Colonel Nikolai
Tue Jun 30 17:10:46 CDT 2009
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Filed under: technology->software->design->tdd
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•Comment•
My Buell Adventure Grant Application
My Buell American Adventure Grant application looks like this:
- Describe your ultimate American adventure ride including destinations and planned route:
My first stop would be East Troy, Wisconsin, to see the Buell factory and maybe even meet with Erik Buell and ask him some questions that might have nothing at all to do with motorcycles! I would then travel on to Cahokia Mounds, a few miles west of Collinsville Illinois, to see a site of one of the most sophisticated prehistoric native civilizations north of Mexico. I would then travel to the centers of the Anasazi civilization in the US: Mesa Verde, Colorado and Chaco Canyon, Arizona to examine the workings of this culture. I would then want to visit the center of the ancient Hohokam culture, to the west of the Anasazi, at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, near Coolidge, Arizona. Then to the center of Aztec culture in Templo Mayor in modern Mexico City. Next to the origins of the Olmec culture, in southern Mexico; places like La Venta and San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan. From here I would want to travel to one of the centers of the ancient Mayan civilization to Caracol in Belize. From here we cross over into the southern hemisphere to find the center of the extinct Chimú kingdom: Chan Chan. These were a people living near the north coast of Peru conquered by the Incas only 60 years prior to the Inca empire being conquered by the Spanish. Then the final destination Caral, near Huacho, Peru close to the Pacific ocean.
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What are your reasons for going on the trip?
From my home state in Minnesota, I would take a route through the Americas with a final destination of Caral, near Huacho, Peru. Caral is the site of the oldest city in the New World; yet discovered only in 2001. Thought to be established some time around 3000 bc, Caral is located near the northeastern corner of Peru, not far from the Pacific coast. My journey would be to rediscover some of our history; to look at peoples who have come and gone, to look at some of the things they believed and thought, some of the problems they faced and perhaps examine more closely their fate. I think it's time we reflected on how really lucky we are to have the kind of civilization we have, and to start to refocus our energy on what changes we might need to make to prevent experiencing a similar fate as these past cultures did. By driving a motorcycle, we are forced to look at the world differently than we do in a car; a more direct experience that jars our consciousness into thinking "outside the box". Something Buell has never stopped doing. I think the idea of Buell fits very well with this scholarly, slightly nerdy approach to the Great American Road Trip: by crossing the continents on a Buell, we will take a journey into ourselves as a people to find an undiscovered country and perhaps a new way forward.
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What is your level of riding experience?
I've been riding since I was old enough to have a permit, so I guess that makes it about 25 years. Prior to that I was building my own mini bikes and go carts with what I could scrounge around my home town. Last summer I went on a 4000 mile trip from Minnesota to California and back alone on my motorcycle, camping along the way. I'm a software engineer, with as past life as a filmmaker (with a BFA in media arts). I have a lot of experience growing up and in the boy scouts camping, hiking and living outdoors. With an Ohioan father and a German mother, I've lived overseas for 11 years of my childhood, speaking both German and English in my home growing up.
By: Colonel Nikolai
Mon Jun 22 13:35:55 CDT 2009
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Filed under: technology->hardware->vehicles->motorcycles->buell
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•Comment•
Milan Kundera quote:
“High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.”By: Colonel Nikolai
Sun Jun 21 12:40:12 CDT 2009
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Filed under: arts->literature->kundera
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