04.25.06
Posted in learn, byteclub, programming at 9:51 pm by Clinton
“Programmers need to learn statistics or I will kill them all”
(catchy title - i remembered it :)
http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/programming/programmer_stats.html
From the author…
I have a major pet peeve that I need to confess. I go insane when I hear programmers talking about statistics like they know shit when it’s clearly obvious they do not. I’ve been studying it for years and years and still don’t think I know anything. This article is my call for all programmers to finally learn enough about statistics to at least know they don’t know shit. I have no idea why, but their confidence in their lacking knowledge is only surpassed by their lack of confidence in their personal appearance.
There’s also a bunch of other writtings there that I think may interests to other byteclubbers.
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04.12.06
Posted in linux, general at 11:53 pm by Clinton
I kind of thought this would be a gimmick, but the questions are actually well thought out (and obviously including feedback from people I think), and the quiz came up with some good information and results. The act of taking the quiz makes you think about the differentiating qualities of linux distros too, which is a nice thing for an informed code monkey to have in mind.
Anyway, why not head over to the “linux distribution chooser” …
www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php
[Note: I had a slight love show/”perfect match”…”your compatibility rating is”… vision, hence the blog title. Although, knowing what that TV show is dates me… :~)]
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Posted in web dev, byteclub at 2:01 am by Clinton
So what do you use for mysql? Love that command line? Can’t live without a GUI? Web front-end is your thing? I’m curious… here’s some i’ve looked at recently (this ain’t no definitive guide), and so I thought I’d post a quick wrap and ask for further comment from the enlightened byteclubbers…
You’ll notice that there is a pattern of “free” in the above list. Go figure… and hey - tables work in wp!
Now, the good-ole mysql client (CLI) you should know. I read recently something like “knowing SQL with a GUI is like knowing HTML with FrontPage” :~). But we still, we all like a good tool, and you should know your way around this puppy…
The mysql query browser is a new one - I didn’t know about it and i’m trying it tonight. So far, nice. Apparently you can say MyQB? Whatever. You can just type in your queries (it keeps a memory like a web browser concept), or use the tool bars to create a select type query -also nice. You can easily compare result sets and edit records, add new etc. So far my favourite features has to be the “Inline Help” feature (syntax/functions/params) because looking through the mysql.org docs again (for something i’ve used before and “kinda” know the syntax but can’t quite rememebr) is not my idea of fun. There’s also a script editor concept. (Not just multiple queries executed sequentially, but controllable conditional execution - nice.) Turn on the “advanced tools bars” - more buttons. There is a table editor (i couldn’t seem to change the order of fields… doesn’t really matter but) with clear options and some handy drag-n-drop features.
The mysql administrator - it’s an administration tool not a SQL client. So, use it to check the health of your databases, the memory, status variables, replication, backup, restoration etc! Look, it’s a definite advantage over the command line if your not a power (ie remember everything) user. Plus - the graph of load/memory etc a asthetically pleasing :~). You can create projects and schedual backups of your databases… cool. Just a note: the MyQB and this admin tool know about each other (and the command line tool if its available) and you can switch to each respective tool using handy menu links (and the connection details are store so you don’t have to retype that - but not the passwords - its called security!).
DbDesigner4. This probably deserves its own post, because I think its pretty cool. That said, i really haven’t used it that much yet, and only to “reverse engineer” existing db tables to get pretty diagrams of the design. I still have much to learn, so if anyone has used this one and can tell the pro/con features, let me know. So far, i like it a lot.
DbManager Pro - I’ve been using this tool since the dark ages, and so it has a special place to me and I included here, especially when it was (at the time) one of the best windows based GUI table editors/creators i’d found - it really helped me when I didn’t know the syntax etc and could do things graphically instead. However, after some buggy version in the past and UI changes, i’m not so loyal now, but its still a solid tool (and free for non-commercial use, which also limits my preference now).
SQuirreL SQL is a graphica java app to view, browse data, issue SQL command of JDBC compliant databses. It has a generic plugin architecture, but comes with a standard plugin for MySQL (to support “DBMS specific capabilities”). Features: code completion, syntax highlightiing, graphs, script generation etc. (The installer ses IzPack www.isforge.com which I though was pretty slick). Took me a while to sort through the require mysql driver install - that could be easier (but easy for a fluent java/db user i’m sure). As a sql creator/syntax helper, its pretty good, but the install hassels left me tired.
phpMyAdmin (why not phpMySQLAdmin eh?) has been around since the stone age, and has had its share of exploits etc which always makes one wary. However, you can’t deny it’s a very useful web interface to mysql and is so packed with features I often turn to it for a quick alteration etc (if available - and that’s the pinch - it needs to be installed *and* maintained.). Also, it can be slow (hardware/network specific of course). Whenever I’ve set this one up i’ve always locked it up as much as i’ve known how (https, .htaccess, chmod -r until needed etc!). Bottom line I think: very useful, very popular (lots of award etc), strong features. Theme-able too… yikes.
“Short” blog eh? hehe.. well, hope it gets some interest. Let me know what you do!
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04.07.06
Posted in general at 2:11 am by Clinton
Found some fun stuff while developing material for AI. See this list of “real robots” as a small walk in the past. Brought a grin…
http://davidszondy.com/future/robot/realrobots.htm
And if you haven’t seen the “self-replicating” robots at Cornell check that out. It’s really cool…
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May05/selfrep.ws.html
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04.06.06
Posted in general, web dev, byteclub at 1:40 am by Clinton
Yes - it’s there.
Last time I said there were some things I still wanted to complete on the byteclub blog roll, and so it is…
- Posts ordered by most recent - DONE (although an edit to a post also causes update)
- The title of the most recent post showing - DONE
- Checked out the cache settings - DONE
Things still to be done (perhaps)
- Show the number of comments next to each post title
- Create an export RSS feed for those that want to aggregate our aggretated list.. :)
- Get those monkeys showing
- Add more blogs (internal and external)
There is still the issue of a better migration from the old data to these new wordpress setups. I have grand intention to create a wiki entry on how we can do that… (it would be great to still be able to get back the old comments…)
Here’s a call (I think an actual email will be in order) for those that either a) want a new blog on byteclub or b) would like their blog listed on the byteclub roll, then please let me know. There are still some of the past active bloggers that I want to contact, and I’m sorry to those that I haven’t asked yet - you can always contact me first!
In other news, Lucien and I have grand schemes for some unified admin, and I actually think that will happen sooner rather than later, simply because it’s really needed.
Finally, I have updated the code syntax highlighter extension for the swinbrain wiki (and i’ll move the new version to byteclub soon). This was inspired by John asking if the extension could be used elsewhere, and so I decided to add a fix and some features. Short versions: single line works, don’t need to add ‘Y’ all the time (it’s implicit if you specify line numbers - kinda obvious now…) and you can now ask for special “marking” of individual lines, or a *range* of lines… quite swish. :~)
Check out Swinbrain entry and the editing help page for more details if you are interested.
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04.05.06
Posted in web dev, byteclub at 1:44 am by Clinton
The top ten most recent byteclub post!
I had to have it back, and so i’ve spent some time coding once again in the name of happy monkeys!
It’s not quite complete. For starters I haven’t set up 10+ blog in the list :), and I need to tweak the CSS to get those monkey awards showing in IE and others, but the “how will I do that…” stuff is done! I would like to add the title of the lastest post for each blogger, and perhaps a comment count (which can also be gathered via rss).
It’s using MagpieRSS, (which uses snoopy for http client+proxy support). Nicely, Magpie is cacheing feeds (although I want to check the period of caching), but its pretty quick once the initial feeds were gathered.
So - getting there…
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04.04.06
Posted in web dev at 5:19 pm by Clinton
Reading a some material on php+best practices, and saw again the “don’t use short open tags, use long open tags”…. mantra. Eg.
// Do this
<?php echo $print_this; ?>
// Not this
<?=$print_this; ?>
Why why why? Yeah, xml support so that xml embedded in your php doesn’t start some confusion, but PHP is a scripting language for goodness sake, it’s short and it’s nice. Is this just like += ++ etc.? Cryptic for all of a few seconds then away you go. If I need the xml support then I’ll avoid short tags. Done. When I need it, i’ll be clear. So am I now down the path of “bad-practice”?
Well, just to cause a stir, I like short tags.
They’re concise, read well when using php like a “templating language” (another rant there) and I don’t need the all my php files to be xml safe (just print the ‘<?xml’ as a quoted string).
argh.
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04.01.06
Posted in web dev at 1:23 pm by Clinton
Just some quick things to look at, so i’ll post here for reference…
clean up your css (without regular expressions :~)
http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/index.php
V.nice xhtml “cheat-sheet”
http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/xhtml.php
Bug tracking without perl - arrrhmen!
http://flyspray.rocks.cc/mainpage
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