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Posted on 1.9.2008, 13:34 by alcaeus
Posted in Ayumi, Browsers, Firefox, Infler, Work, XDebug
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Yes, that title sums up the past few days. After I managed to find the reason for my fatal data loss last week, I quickly went back to work on it. I changed the function in question (of course, I'd be stupid not to), and just for good measure I treated my computer to a SVN server to back up my work and to have version history. I never got around to doing it before, but I guess that crash was enough motivation.
I also decided to install another PHP debugger. I was using the debugger included in the Eclipse PDT (I guess some tiny version of Zend), and occasionaly I used the DBG debugger included in the Delphi for PHP IDE. However, both were not that good. The Eclipse debugger could not handle global breakpoints, which DBG could. On the other hand, Delphi for PHP was configured to launch every project from localhost, which doesn't quite work with my application, since it relies on subdomains. So I decided to install XDebug. It's free, which is a good thing, but then it's also the only choice besides Zend supported by Eclipse out of the box. With the right configuration in Eclipse I can launch the application with the proper URL, click myself through it and rely on it to stop whenever the first breakpoints turns up. I'm pretty happy with it so far, even though it isn't perfect. Eclipse launches IE by default (I have to check if there's a setting to override it) since it's my default browser. However, I do most of my web development in Firefox, since it has a few better debugging features that I haven't gotten around to look for in IE. I won't use Firefox at the moment though, since it manages to crash my Apache server on every pageview. I have to see what goes wrong, since it's only a simple pageview.
So, what's the progress you might wonder? The installer works like a charm, I'm working on the necessary UCP modules (changing password, E-Mail-address and basic settings) and I'm also changing the style a bit. The current one has too much of a "hospital-flair", which isn't really my thing. It once again will be focused around "blue", but it will be different....just a little bit here and there though. The big changes won't come until I start using it for infler.de
Greetz
alcaeus
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Posted on 26.8.2008, 15:47 by alcaeus
Posted in Ayumi, Work
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It's been a few days since I've almost lost all my work on Ayumi. Since restoring all files I haven't touched it. I looked in the error log to get an idea what happened, but I haven't yet retraced the error, just like I haven't made any attempts to fix some obvious flaws that I got from the logs. It's shocking how much confidence goes out the window when something like that happens. It's one thing to lose all data because of a hard drive failure (which has happened to me before), but having your software go into self-destroy mode is completely different. I'm curious to see how long it takes until I decide that I've been avoiding it long enough...
[edit@19:47]
I finally got myself to work on it again. After (finally) installing a SVN server on my machine to keep track of changes I decided to change the files a little and research the nature of the problem. Once I did, I once again was reminded why I love programming languages like Delphi, Java or C/C++/C# which require you to declare variables before using them. I partly moved the installation code from one class to another, and in doing so forgot to update a few variable names. The variable that used to contain the temporary path for the package files was now empty, and when the installer checked to make sure that there were no remainders of older installations it noticed that the directory was already there....the root directory that was, instead of the temporary one. That's when undefined variables are a bitch. And the consequence? Since I already defined a custom error handler to catch notices and warnings I'm going to change it to die when certain errors occur (for example, undefined variables)
[/edit]
Greetz
alcaeus
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Posted on 20.8.2008, 23:27 by alcaeus
Posted in Ayumi, Work
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Backup (computing): A copy of a file or record, stored separately from the original, that can be used to recover the original if it is destroyed or damaged.
From en.wiktionary.org
I actually meant to write something new way sooner, but then I also meant to write about something else than backups. I just need to write this one down.
It was yesterday that I had enough motivation (and caffeine) to work on Ayumi's update system again, this time finalizing the package builder. I was going to work on the installer as well, but then I decided against it. However, when I was laying in bed wide awake with my girlfriend wanting to finish her book, I thought that maybe I could manage working another couple of hours. At 4am then I had the installer ready for a first test run, a dry run however. That means that it's only going to tell me what it would be doing if I had the gutts to test it right away. Since it was late and I wasn't sure about the quality of my code (it tends to be bad if written between 3am and 7am), I went back to bed and postponed the dry run.
Continue reading 'Backups - and how much they are worth'
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Posted on 31.7.2008, 19:59 by alcaeus
Posted in Cell phone, Personal, Toys
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I finally got my HTC Touch Diamond, so I just wanted to let you know that I'm too busy playing around to write anything useful at the moment. Just kidding, I'll write about it in a little while.
Greetz
alcaeus
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Posted on 13.7.2008, 12:38 by alcaeus
Posted in Browsers, Rants, Work
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Yes, I just felt the need to talk about this a bit. Today's internet world is messed up, not only because of spammers, phishing mails and corporate overlords trying to grab as much data from us as possible. No, it's also messed up because of the browsers we use. Yes, I say browsers because I don't mean one in particular. It's a shame that people are coding web pages to fit one browser instead of sticking to a set of standards which work in most browsers. Why is that?
Continue reading 'Browser support - can you say PITA?'
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Posted on 4.7.2008, 12:48 by alcaeus
Posted in Cell phone, Personal, Toys, Work
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So, technically my contract with O2, my current cell phone provider isn't up until April 2008, but since I'm generally happy there with the conditions I decided to extend the contract already. Well, there was a second motivation to go: The HTC Touch Diamond. As a tech-savvy person who just needs to have every new toy in town I just couldn't resist. My current cell phone lacks many skills modern XDAs have, especially when it comes to appointments. It's just too hard to keep track of all appointments on a screen of 176 by 220 pixels, especially when the application isn't all that great. It just was time for something new, something better.
Continue reading 'A new phone - already'
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Posted on 22.6.2008, 12:42 by alcaeus
Posted in C2, Soccer, Work
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There's a reason why I haven't written in quite some time: I'm dead. Not literally, but so to speak. After taking a 5-day-vacation we had to deal with the European Soccer Championship at the bar. It started out fun, with good attendance, but then there was the first Germany game we showed (we're closed on weekends): Germany-Croatia. The game was at 6pm, which is a good time for us without soccer games, but the game just made it....worse in some ways.
Continue reading 'Soccer championships - can it be any harder?'
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Posted on 22.5.2008, 23:16 by alcaeus
Posted in Laptop, Toys, Wiimote, Work
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A few weeks ago I stumbled over a project using the Wii Remote for things it wasn't originally intended for. Among those are interactive whiteboards, finger-tracking and even head-tracking. Being a guy that just likes a lot of tech-toys around, I couldn't help myself. I just had to get one of those thingies. So, today I got myself my own Wii Remote, after making sure it would work with my bluetooth stack (apparently there are some problems depending on the stack being used; the one in my Latitude D620 works fine 
). What's next? Tomorrow I'm gonna get everything I need to make an IR pen (the first version at least), since my girlfriends brother (Electronics Engineering student) is coming by on Saturday. I have a few ideas on how to improve the original design of the pen (which uses a push-button), and I'll post those once I've gotten some results.
We'll see if I'll be able to modify the software (the entire project is Open-Source) to make it work with two displays; I'd love to have two 22" monitors functioning as tablet devices 
Greetz
alcaeus
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Posted on 11.5.2008, 15:06 by alcaeus
Posted in Vacation, Weekend
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Finally, a weekend my girlfriend and I can spend together, with neither one of us working. Thanks to University it happens to be a 3-day-weekend (Sunday-Tuesday) as well, with only minor errands to run on Tuesday. That said, I'll write down a few things on Wednesday, I'm off to the lake, the weather is just too good.
Greetz
alcaeus
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Posted on 7.5.2008, 11:32 by alcaeus
Posted in Laptop, Tech support, Work
Comments: 0
It was 9am when my cell phone rang me out of my sleep, somehow I once again managed to turn off my alarm clock without noticing it. It was the support technician, who said that he'd show up in the next hour or so. A little more than an hour later, he stopped by, also bringing the new display. Getting the old display out was easy, so was putting the new one in. But when he turned the machine on, it didn't seem so easy after all.
Continue reading 'Gotta love good support, Part 2'
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