In Valid Logic

A while ago, I traded up from my XV6700 to a Motorola Q as a result of some of the charactistics of the 6700.  After using the Q for a short while now, beginning to wonder if it actually is any better.  Here are some of my complains with it:

• It doesn’t autodetect when my bluetooth headset is around.  If I go away and come back, I have to manually go into the Bluetooth Manager and reconnect.
• Battery life with the standard battery sucks.
• Often times, when I am on the phone for a long period of time, the display and keypad will essentially stop responding.  The phone will be working, but I can’t get the display on, can’t hang up, can’t do anything.  Have to pull the battery and restart it.
• Often times, the phone will just die on me.  I will go to check email or something and the phone will be off.  And pressing the power button to turn it on doesn’t work.  I have to pop out the battery, put it back in, and then power it on.  It is starting to do it more often.  I don’t know if it isn’t holding a charge or what, but it shows it as charged, and often does it when it has only been off the charger for a short time.

Perhaps it is just time to get a Blackberry.

Had an odd happening when I went out to lunch today.  I went to get a sandwich from Togo’s, and this ensued…

- Walk in and this guy who just finished paying recognizes me.

Him: “Hey!  How’s it going?”

- Puzzled, should I recognize him?

Me: “Good, how are you?”

Him: “Good.  I think I have a package for you.”

- Package?

Him: “334, right?”

- At this point, I finally notice he is in a UPS uniform.  Then it clicks, he is the UPS delivery guy!

Me: “Cool!  Will probably see you later!  Merry Christmas!”

Was a little thrown off at first… you wouldn’t assume your UPS guy would recognize you if you casually ran into him.  I was surprised.  Anyway, I did have a package… it was my copy of Community Server Quickly.  Be posting more once I have a chance to dive into it.

Found out today that a CardSpace module for FireFox has been released by Kevin Miller.  The previous FireFox module wasn’t actually for CardSpace, it is a separate implementation of the same Information Cards spec, but not compatible with the Windows CardSpace metasystem.  The new extension actually brings up the CardSpace interface and allows you to use the same cards that are accessible through IE.  Very cool!  Now I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything by using FireFox 2.0 instead of IE7 (sorry IE).

Another cool thing, Garret Serack also post some javascript code for detecting CardSpace support in the browser.  I had an early version of his snippet, but never got it all wired up correctly for Community Server.  Now, I think I’ll have to take his latest snippet and update it.

[via Mr. Hanselman]

Here is one way to instantly get your software knocked of my list of programs I use…

Last night, I was going to check out a free schematic and PCB design program I’d heard about called WinQcad.  My usual process for testing out some new software is to first install it in a virtual machine under Windows XP just to see whether or not I like.  Then I will sometimes install it under a Vista virtual machine to make sure it is compatible (it compatibility is in question).  Then if I like it, and it works on Vista, I install it on my actual PC.

So last night, I go to install WinQcad on my XP virtual machine.  By default, it wants to install to C:\WinQcad.  No thanks, I prefer to not put programs in the root… I prefer the Program Files folder.  So I change it to “C:\Program Files\WinQcad”.  It installs fine, but then when I go to run it, I get this little message:

This is absolutely ridiculous.  First of all, spaces in file names and folder names has been common place since Windows 95.  Even more, the Program Files is widely considered the default install location, and has been since it came about in Windows 95.  That was 11 years ago.  Come on!  If you haven’t taken the time to updated your application to work with commonly accepted norm that is 11 years old, why should I take the time to even try out your software?

Sitting here working on some code for my little project (after getting my little development board working last night) and was cleaning up some sample code I had downloaded when I realized exactly how obsessive I am about code formatting.  Here are a few things just to give you an idea:

• Tabs, not spaces for indenting
• Brackets around code blocks begin on new lines, not on the same line
• Space around assignment and comparison (ie, i = 0 instead of i=0, and a == b instead of a==b)
• No space before statements (ie, if(i) instead of if (i))
• Spaces before comments (ie, // comment instead of //comment)
• Clean consice function names (I love camel case, but hate the “m_”, “s_” style stuff… boo!)
• Short, precise functions (KISS = Keep It Short & Simple, break down your functions, short and to the point, no monolothic/does-everything functions)
• Grammar and spelling – ok, it is code, so it doesn’t hurt anyone, but I don’t like seeing grammatical or spelling errors in code

Can’t think of anything else right now.  I always configure these kind of rules into ReSharper and always clean up any sample code I download and plan on making using of.  For myself, it goes a long way to increase readability.

What are you obsessive about in your code?

For a while now I’ve been using Subversion locally for version control on some of my small projects, but recently realized that I’ve been using it in a way that many people may not know is possible.  I use Subversion without actually having a Subversion server anywhere in sight.  How is this possible?  Simple!

A Subversion repository is merely a set of files that hold all the information about the files, changes, and even users.  The Subversion server is merely a gateway between the client and the repository files.  If you take out the server and point the client directly the repository files, it will be right at home!

Some of the advantages of using Subversion this way are:

• No software to install, configure, eat resources, or open any ports!
• Flat file based.  Want to move your repositories elsewhere?  Just move the files!
• Can place your repositories on a NAS device, USB drive, even USB memory stick.  Since there is no software, the NAS device doesn’t have to have a built-in Subversion server or any junk like that.
• Wanted them internet accessible.  I have my repositories placed on my NAS device, so if I am out and about and need to get an update, I can just VPN into my home router, and then access it on the NAS device as if I was at home on the network.

So how can you configure Subversion to work this way?  Follow these steps:

1. Install TortoiseSVN.  It rocks.
2. Go to a place where you want the repositories to reside.  These will not be your live usable files, these will be the files that are a part of the repository file structure.
3. Create a new empty folder and use the name of the repository you want to create.
4. Go into the folder, right click, and go to TortoiseSVN -> Create repository here.  Choose the Native filesystem.
5. Go to where you want your live, usable files to be and create a new folder for them.
6. Go into the new folder, right click and go to SVN Checkout.  The URL of the repository will follow the “file://” pattern.  Your base URL is “file:///” (yes, three slashes).  From there, you will use your standard file path, leaving out any semi-colons (:) and changing “\” to “/”.  So if you created a repository at D:\repositories\test, you would use “file:///d/repositories/test”.  If you created the repository on another system or on a NAS device, where your address would normally be “\\nas-device\repositories\test”, you would use “file://///nas-device/repositories/test” (yup, 5 slashes).

One important thing to note about using Subversion this way is that there is limited security when working this way.  Anyone who has access to the files will be able to get the files and make check-ins.  If you wish to limit access, the best way would be through filesystem permissions.  Additionally, on a network share or NAS box, you could require user logins to get access to the files.  Another thing is that user tracking uses the username of the user on the Windows machine.  You can still track who checked in what, but it gets the username automatically, without doing any user authentication on the repository.  It will ignore the repositories conf\svnserve.conf and conf\passwd settings.

The URLs you enter may not be the clearest, but this is by far the simplest way to get up and going with Subversion for your own personal use.  My own repositories are kept on my NAS box, accessible from both my desktop and my laptop, and can even get on it remotely by VPN.  All with zero install and configuration.

Today, SP2 for Community Server v2.1 was posted (announcement on communityserver.org).  This is mostly an update for a collection of bugs and issues that have been found since SP1, but it does also include the MetaWeblog API update to support newMediaObject that we had previously released.  Definitely check it out if you’ve experienced any of the issues on the list of changes.

The recent revivement of my interest in embedded systems prompted me to rejoin this mailing list I used to subscribe to several years ago.  It has reminded me just how much mailing lists truly do suck.

A while ago, I was reading Jeff Atwood's post on flat vs threaded discussions and how threaded discussions can often become fragmented.  The same thing goes for mailing lists.  With mailing lists, you don't get this threaded view like Jeff refers to in his post, but you get threaded conversations going where one person is replying to something earlier on in this thread, and then it goes off on a tangent, while others on this order portion of the thread are trying to be productive.  In my opinion, the signal to noise ratio is far too high.

On Community Server, we went through a lot of this thinking as we developed some of the add-ons, such as Mail Gateway and the News Server for CS.  Email and NNTP are great tools for communication, but horrid for communities.  You come to them as a new viewer and are thrust into the middle of current topics and long time members with no sense of the past.  There is no friendly interface, no way to easily jump back to earlier messages in an ongoing thread, you often get rude responses when asking a question that has apparently been asked before, but you had no way of knowing that because the archive/search functionality is horrid or non-existent.  The sense of community often comes from the length of involvement, which is hard to break into as a new user.

The web is a far better medium for communities.  It allows for a more personable and welcoming interface through the site design.  Better welcoming for new users through introductory information, FAQs, sticky posts, etc.  A flat view of threads helps limit fragmentation (limit, not eliminate).  Coming into an ongoing topic, you readily have the previous messages to help you catch up.  With the archive and elaborate search features, you can look up previous topics to find information you may need without having to ask.  Added personalization allows an easier welcoming to the community.  Add signatures, avatars, and easily jump into ongoing threads though a richer archive view.  Easier integration of multimedia such as images, in my opinion, is more welcoming.  IE, post pictures of the weekend project you were working on and get comments and suggestions from others outside.  Sure, you can do this with mailing lists or NNTP, but it is not in the same way, or welcomed the same, IMO.  See a bunch of posts you have no interest in?  Don't click on the thread!  With mailing lists, you still need to sift through the emails, as you still end up with all of them.

Anyway, that is all for my rant today.  Down with mailing lists, up with web forums.  Or better yet, up with web forums augmented by mailing list functionality (ie Community Server + Mail Gateway).

Mike Gunderloy just posted a review of ClearContext 3.0 over at Larkware News, which reminded me, I’ve been meaning to post about ClearContext 3!

I’ve been using 3.0 for about a month now and absolutely love it!  Before Vista RTM’d, I was using their beta version with Office 2007 B2TR.  I was impressed with the beta, and I’m even more impressed with the final version (though some of my pains before were probably also from the Office 2007 beta).

If support for Office 2007 isn’t reason enough for you to take the plunge and upgrade, then rest assured that there are several new features to make it definitely worth while.

First, topics in ClearContext are now linked to categories within Outlook, making it far easier to have a Getting Things Done style setup by having calendar items and tasks more easily linked to your topics.  Very happy to have this!

Second, the message view within Outlook now has a small pane at the bottom of the message for the RelatedView within ClearContext.  This shows a collection of information that is instantly available for the thread.  Need to jump back to an earlier message in the thread, but already filed it?  Scroll down the Related tab a bit and see the entire list of messages in the thread, as well as any appointments or tasks created from it.  Also can get access to the ActionView (list of action items you created from the thread) and the History (see when messages were received, when you replied, when topics were assigned, etc).  I’ve been using this feature more and more, as we regularly have long ongoing threads that I might need to browse though, and I like to regularly keep my inbox sorted so it is nice and slim.

And finally, with threads, you now have the ability to unsubscribe from a thread.  Often, there can be long threads that don’t pertain to you, or you aren’t interested in and don’t want to hear the Outlook chime every time you get a new message from it.  Simply click the Unsubscribe button and ClearContext will automatically move all the messages to the “ClearContext Unsubscribed” folder, keeping them out of the way from you main inbox view.  Then later on, you can go to the unsubscribed folder and browse through the messages, delete them, or simply file them to an actual category.  The one thing I’d love added to this feature, but haven’t seen yet, is the ability to specify when you should re-subscribe.  It would be nice if you could set come keywords to that when they showed in the message body, it would resubscribe you.  IE, it someone mentions my name in the thread, I would want to be resubscribed to see if it is now something I need to pay attention to.

There is probably much much more in 3.0, but these three are kind of the biggies to me.  Overall, the upgrade is well worth it, and definitely a huge addition to 2.x.  Now, I’m curious what might be in store for 4.0…