Programming and other thoughts

New game sort of

2012-01-11T07:19:00.001-08:00

Started on extreme doodle paper toss. Toss the paper in to the bin but its a puzzle game.

Idumppod2backup

2012-01-08T02:13:00.001-08:00

This software uses a new package system that allows the program to be portable on thumb drive and no longer needs an installer. We have had to submit the exe to Norton as it has flagged the program as a virus. We will need to do this for all our new releases going forward. The problem Norton has is that the exe package loads the contents of libraries and work files to memory during startup and this is a method some viruses use.If anyone gets a notification from an anti virus program when running any of our products, please let us know.

Norton Norton Norton

2012-01-08T02:04:00.001-08:00

Almost 2012

2011-12-29T01:58:00.000-08:00

Its been so long since the last blog entry that I thought I would try and keep it up and in good shape for 2012.

The problem with time is that there is not enough of it in one day. If we could live forever, move to Venus then one day would last 224.7 earth days. Yes, a long time for your next birthday but at least we could get some work done and get time to update blogs and have a social life J

2011 was a slow development year for EscSoft due to many other projects in the works for other companies in Banking and Game industries. In early 2012, all of our products will receive an update and even iDumpPro, which has not received an update since 2007. We are working to bring all of the products to run as stand-alone with no installer so that they can run from a USB stick for portability.

It was a sad day for me when Steve Jobs passed away. Having seen a picture of him 6 months prior, I would have given him weeks not months so he did well to hold on. Very interesting his comments on the point of death repeating the words “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow”. Did he see God or an iPhone 6.0? I have always been a huge Apple fan from the time I wrote my first program on an Apple IIe for our local Council while at college. I admire Steve for his drive and not giving up on his vision and Woz for his genius in the first place for creating the Apple computer. I think my last iPhone will be iPhone 5 because it’s the last one Steve had personal interest in (his personal touch). As with most, if not all Apple products, Steve would have the last word on what would stay or go. While we will still have the design genius of Jonathan Ive, any committee involved may drive products in the wrong direction. I hope not.

Wishing you all a happy holiday and best wishes for 2012.

Start of March

2008-03-08T04:01:00.000-08:00

Bought another watch this month, a Seiko Sportura kinetic Titanium to replace a Seiko watch I was given as a Birthday present 12 years ago. These watches last a long time, need no battery (self wind) and keep the time. The price is high at around $900 but you get what you pay for.

On the day job side, things at the bank seem to be going crazy. They are so obsessed about saving money after the prime mortgage marked collapsed that they are getting rid of lots of really good teams in the UK and giving the jobs to not so good teams in other countries which have cheap labour. The workload does not decrease and the pressure on teams has now reached breaking point. I can see a lot of customer impact coming in the next 12 months as projects with very poor design will be going in to production. What makes me mad is that our management know we will need to divert most of the team to try and keep things going (we support many businesses in the bank), but are too scared to stand up and try and make them see the customer impact coming. Banks are happy to keep disasters quiet as long as customers do not get affected. So the next time you call your bank and get “All our operators are busy, call later” is just one example of a badly designed system not being able to cope with the data, yet hardware upgrade is not an option because it costs money. All the while the bank pleads poverty and gives most staff no pay-rise or bonus for working most of last year 7 days a week, yet the people at the top and dealers still get a nice increase. To me this is too greedy but most banks I know are the same or worse. There is one Swiss bank I know which intimidates staff to work at least 12 hour days when their contract is 9am-5pm. I am only still here because I have been with the group nearly 15 years (working for different banks within the group) and I like some of the people I work with and when they eventually get rid of our team, I should be a fair compensation.

Now on to my EscSoft work…. I almost finished the cover art import program which I hope to release in beta form in the next week. I also started to re-write iDump in .net to get used to the syntax. I will get it working and then pass the source to Andie to make it look better if he wants before releasing. Also looking at other tools to write in .net starting with a version of the iPod Cover Art Import, a program to copy music between iPods including the cover art and then a new version of iDumpPro as a full media library.

The last few weeks I have watched documentarys on SAS, Future Weapons and history of War, Pirates and treasure hunters. Films, Stardust (again) and Signs.

It's Feb already

2008-02-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

We are in Feb already and seems like the year is going to wiz by.

Lots happening at the bank with application upgrades and working on some VB script code to check internal IBM Websphere MQ object settings which will also validate/remove unknown user accounts.

I have spent a little time working on my program which will download and install album covers on the iPods.

Hot tub heater and pump is being sent back to Canadian Spar for the 3^rd time in as many weeks. Every time the unit is delivered, it’s been smashed by the delivery company. I think once it has been repaired again, I will have to drive to their office and collect it myself. Courier companies in the UK are really crappy these days. I used to order items to be delivered before noon the following day but most of the time they are not delivered until after or they get stolen and have to wait for a reorder. Sucks!

Andie has found a place to live in Australia but because he has no internet, he has to drive-by hack a wireless network so he can collect email. He does not like it but the only other way to access the internet is via the local library but that way is limited on what you can do.

Went to Uncle Andy’s funeral a couple of weeks ago, very sad but cousin Peter gave a lovely speech on how his father helped him and what a really nice person he was. Last Sunday we went to the graveyard and laid Andy’s and grandmothers ashes to rest. It was a very emotional time for all. I said to Peter as we stood by my father’s grave (he died in 1995 aged 49) that unless people go through loss of a loved one, they can never truly understand the pain you feel inside.

At Andy’s funeral, I met a cousin whose name is Darren who I have not seen since 1993 when we were down in Cornwall on holiday. I have now found the video of the trip and will put it onto DVD and give him a copy. So many relatives in this video who are no longer with us. Also need to get him some copies of Jethro DVD’s as his mother dated this famous English comedian and he mentions their family in some of his joke stories which are very funny. Darren has not seen them so I am sure he will have a laugh and its something he can tell his friends about. During this Cornish trip, we stayed in an old holiday cottage which used to be my great grandmothers home. Every night at 11 am, we would be in bed and hear a knocking noise coming from the middle bedroom. Same noise every night, same time. When we mentioned this to one of our great aunties, she said that noise came from Jacks old bedroom and started after he died. Then my great uncle Derek proceeded to tell us about the day Uncle Jack went out hunting and managed to shoot himself in the stomach with a shotgun. How he managed to do this is anyone’s guess. He was apparently involved in a love triangle which went wrong. Derek found him still alive and brought him back to the cottage and he died in his room the same day. My cousin Paul who was listening then told us that when he was 10, he was in the cottage and was waking up the stairs and saw uncle jack at the top looking down at him. Some of the family have been in a paranormal investigation team for a few years now so if the cottage is still used as a holiday home, we may book it out for a week to see if uncle jack is still there.

Not much else to talk about this week. I watched South Park on MTV the other night while my mother was staying over. She is very religious and never swears. It was the episode where Cartman gets tourettes. I have never seen my mother laugh so much. She just could not breath it was so funny. Talking about mum. She is writing a book on her life and he travels around Canada (she’s Canadian) and talks about each of the many towns across the country. When it’s finished, I will take a few trips out there to visit these places she talks about and will make a mini travel documentary.

Also watch the film Control which was about the life of Ian Curtis in the band Joy Division. He killed himself in 1980 aged 23. It’s a really moving and wonderful film, even though it’s sad. It was shot in black and white which made it feel more authentic. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SaSosKEu4U

Some good TV on at the moment. Journey man, Lost, Reaper (Kevin Smith!), Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes.

Busy start to Jan 2008

2008-01-14T11:32:00.000-08:00

Busy week

It’s been a very busy week working on iDumpPro. Album art now imports to the 2007 Nano and Classic iPods which looks nice with the cover flow. Interesting bug though…. These iPods will display a cover from another album sometimes if the album cover is missing. It’s a shitty firmware bug which I hope apple will fix in future.

I will create a tool in the next few weeks which will focus just on adding covert art to iPods; Nano, video and classics. Fixed a lot of bugs in version 2.3.0 and hope it will run more stable now.

Work at the Bank has been interesting too. Spent some time working on a new project called Turquoise which is a new trading system for 10 large banks in Europe. Also working on systems in Europe and Egypt for set-up and security lock down.

Another family member died on Sunday 13^th Jan, he will be sadly missed. Without his encouragement I would not ended up in the computer industry. My fondest memories were looking through his collection of computer magazines and playing with an assortment of circuit boards. He amazed me at an early age when he built a computer from a kit (UK101), and then I knew what I wanted to do. He died at the young age of 61. This week we were going to put our grandmothers ashes into the ground so two sad events coming up.

Films watched this week were: Rise of the foot soldiers which is a British gangster film set in the 80’s/90’s. I used to live near the places which were in the story so it brought back memories. Also, watched American Dreamz with Hugh Grant, 300 which was too weird and some comedy with Al Murry (great British name).

On the technology front, I’m looking to getting a ThinkPad X61 tablet instead of an HTC Shift. I feel I need to be able to use it for programming as well as making notes. Also the Shift is still not available to buy. I have an NEC T400 tablet but it really sucks and is slow. If you use one, you have to have a keyboard too.

Andie left for a long drive from Sydney to Adelaide in Australia where he will work for a while before moving back to Sydney. I will probably pop out there this year and take my daughter/wife for the trip. We may do some .net coding for a couple of companies but will wait and see.

Happy new year!

2007-12-31T18:24:00.000-08:00

Woohoo its 2008!

I got my self totally drunk on a Dutch drink called bessen, which is like a black current lacquer.

These last few days have been ones of lots of coding… working on iDumpPro.

Went out today and bought another iPod, a 160gb Classic.

Now I have available to test a 2nd gen nano, 3rd gen nano, 2nd gen mini, 5th gen iPod video, iTouch and classic. Still not able to get into the iTouch because Apple wants to be hardball.

I have to confess a few things…. I love Apple’s history, I love the way Woz built the apple I,II,Iie systems…. They were the first systems I wrote commercial software on. J Thank you Woz. I love the way Woz left Apple and became a teacher and still is…. Teaching students the wonders of computers and he even buys Macs for them out of his own money. I hate the way Steve Jobs became a tyrant and treated people like shit. Being a person who believed (or still does) in Karma, he has a lot of payback to do but thank God he now recognises his own daughter Lisa. If Jobs did not come back to Apple, they probably would have sunk by now. I used to own a Mac, could not get over the fact it did not have a right mouse button. Sold it within 6 months of ownership. The only thing I think I have in common with Steve is the view that programmers are artists. When we first think of a program to write, we see the finished article in our minds eye; a fully usable program and then we do the boring bit of coding the thing. A friend of mine is a professor in Computer Science and he like me sees everything in 3D within the mind, its like creating models in full colour, rather nice.

Ok update on iDumpPro, have now been able to work out how to get the FirewireGuid value from the iPods when mounted (connected) and can now correctly hash the iTunesDb on the iPod when songs are copied and db updated. Today I ran a test by importing 1400 songs to the Nano 3g and 7108 songs to the Classic model. After disconnecting the iPod, all entries appeared in the iPod menus…. So much relief…

The big problem now is getting the Artwork album covers over to the new iPods. On using existing Unix code converted to run under windows, it does not seem to want to play. Still trying to figure out why the iPods will not display the cover artwork. When a user rips a cd into aac or mp3 format, I could imbed the album cover in the music file and this would appear in iTunes when you select the track and “GetInfo” and also will display on the iPod video but I want this image in the “Cover Flow” on new iPods. I will spend the next week on this but need to release the new version with new iPod support ASAP and it would be a shame if I missed out the cover art in this release.

What else has been happening this last week…… Brother in-laws father died last Friday and was buried on new-years eve (31st Dec 2007). Makes you think about people you love when someone dies. Make sure you have no problems with people you love as you cant say sorry when they are gone. I still miss my dad who died in 1995. The most touching moments of the day of his funeral were when the funeral cars stopped outside his office and all his work colleagues stood in front of the building giving their respects and then when in the church and looking at the RAF flag over his coffin. So much more I should have done when he was alive and I never spent time discussing current affairs and other interesting topics as I was too busy chasing woman and drinking/hacking.

So what’s new for 2008….. Once I get a good stable version of iDumpPro running for a while, I will complete the version, which is like windows explorer and also work on the .net update. I want to get a version running from the iPod without an installer.

Films I watched this week were: Star Dust, which was really good… A fantastic story of romance, fantasy and fun. I especially like Robert Deniro playing the part of tough ships captain who liked to wear woman’s pink dresses. I am Legend… A new twist on Vampire type film. Will Smith just gets better and better. Also watched American Gangster…. A little slow and not as good a Casino or Good Fellows.
Its 03:05 am now so nite nite and another update in a few days.

Week up to 22nd Jan and other bits

2007-12-22T03:09:00.000-08:00

It’s the Saturday before Christmas and no more work for a few days!!! I will be coding as I always do but no corporate misery until 2^nd of Jan 2008.

Events of the past week and other things on my mind:

I do 2 jobs, one for a Bank and the other for EscSoft.

On Monday I had a big argument with my manager at the Bank as she rated my performance for the last 6 months as poor but then said my performances has been great for the last 3. In the last six months I have lost four members of my family which, anyone with any emotion who has been in the same position would feel the pain of loss. Looks like this manager has no heart and is a ruthless getter of performance stats. I am sorry I can’t be a robot with no emotion, I am human.

In the corporate world of Information Technology it is very rare to get a manager who is both technically competent and a good people person. My current manager was a normal member of our team who took the senior position because no-one else wanted it and it would probably be better than to get an external person who could be a real bastard. Managers have to do meetings and shuffle paper, us geek techies have fun solving problems and also keep being techies. I always say “What goes around, comes around” so I will wait and see what karma befalls this person.

Previous managers in Banks were Harry who came from a senior position at the IBM labs in Hursley, England. Phil who was a really cool geek and loved to race yachts but went crazy if anyone modified his code (he was a purest in coding – talk to any obsessed Perl coder who loves regular expressions). Then before that there wars Phil the bastard who had no technical knowledge and tried to change everything to “His Logic” and screwed everything up. He eventually was booted out. The manager before him was Steve the Jehovah Witness who attended his church every week and used to keep gifts sent to him by companies at Christmas, stating they were social gifts and not Christmas gifts. This is odd for a so called serious Jehovah Witness as they do not believe in Christmas. Then one year, his wife made him buy a bigger house and one day he came home, the door locks were changed and his best friend had moved in. A few months later, he moved in and married the now ex-wife of his ex-best friend who was far more beautiful so in the end it worked out well.

On a happier note, sales of iDumpPro are constant which is nice and we can now pay the hosting company for the website from the registrations. It’s so nice to (1) have people use your product and enjoy it and (2) not make a huge loss.

On the subject of programming in Windows….. When you write a program which has to perform many functions for example, in iDumpPro, it has its own internal media player, CD reading and writing code, audio conversion code and so-on. There will be systems which it will not work on. A lot of programs will hook into Microsoft Media player but I did not want to do this because each version of Windows is different and having your own audio code should mean more consistency across Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

I have been lucky so far because people have reported bugs and I then work with them to resolve the issue. While the same bug may not appear for other users, it would at some time pop up unless fixed. Thanks to you all.

People who do not program have no idea how hard it is to make software bug free as there are so many factors which can affect the software. When working with 50-60,000 lines of code, there will always be something which will (under certain conditions) misbehave. When I first had a beta of iDumpPro ready, I packed the entire application into 1 exe file so that it could become portable and carried on the iPod. I then tested it under Vista and the whole thing broke. I had to resort to using an installer. I have seen some tools which will install on-the-fly to the PC like a silent installer so that the user will see only the app running and nothing in the background but these tools are $1000+ and not currently in my budget. I started writing iDumpPro on 1^st Jan 2007 and expected it would take less than 6 months but so far its been almost a year. I think my programming estimating formula should be Expected development time (EDT) *2 + 30%.

I will be starting to lean .net programming this week and will create a windows explorer type app first will allow you to drag/drop music files between folders and iPods/CD’s/iTunes. I’ll be keeping it simple so that anyone could use it. If possible I will aim for this to be portable and carried on the iPod.

I am in the process installing Vista/Visual Studio 2005 on my Intel 4 core extreme machine which has 150gb Raptor boot disk, BFG 8800 GTX graphics card, X-F1 Audio and 22 inch 19200x1200 flat screen. I have been playing a lot of “Call of Duty 4” and “Quake Wars”. As Vista runs half the speed of Windows XP, it will be interesting to see if I can play these games with all special effects turned on.

Andie (who wrote iDump) has now moved to Australia and is staying with friends in Sydney over Christmas before going off to Adelaide at the beginning of Jan. I expect he will not be doing much email during Jan so I will monitor the forums.

After Christmas I will put a couple of my laptops on eBay to raise cash to buy the new HTC Shift which is due out in the UK first week of Jan 2008. It has both Windows Mobile which runs for 7 days and Also Windows Vista and all this for less than 1kg in weight. See this link for more info: http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=151160

Welcome

2007-12-17T04:05:00.000-08:00

Hi and welcome to my Blog. Due to my poor memory and age, and having to remember 1000's of things like code and the shopping list, I thought I would put my personal thoughts down in a blog. Not that I expect anyone other than me to read this, but its a good way to archive thoughts remotely as I always seem to be loosing data due to dodgy backups or server/NAS failures. :-)