Curious Creature

So the guys were discussing version control systems and Joe was talking about SVN. Tor was talking about Mercurial. The only thing they were talking about was stuff that, quite frankly, really doesn’t matter all that much because any revision control system is going to allow check-ins, etc. Obviously thats the point Joe wonders how dangerous is it to use Mercurial since you’re not checking in to a central repository. You might lose something! Joe…just a note that the same thing is true of SVN if you don’t bother checking in your code
But all this really doesn’t get to what I think is the most important point: what is the merge model like in Mercurial? In SVN when you are merging changes from branch to branch (and in branches I’m including trunk) you have to be really careful with making sure you’re getting the revision numbers right. This is no better than CVS. Sure SVN does most things better than CVS but in this important case it does nothing to make the process better.

I have yet to read about how merging happens in Mercurial. I wonder if you have to track revision numbers as in SVN.

At work we’re looking at Accurev which has a pretty smart model for merging changes. Obviously any merge is going to require some careful checking when you have multiple changes from multiple people to the same area of code but Accurev makes the rest of the process much easier. They use the idea of streams, which are sort of a combination of an SVN branch with workflow attached, and when you merge code you are promoting it to streams higher in the hierarchy. You still have to worry about overlapping code areas, no way around that, but you don’t have to worry about tracking revision numbers.

Now if we could finally get off of CVS….

Wow. I really wanted to love Mediamonkey. Actually I do love Mediamonkey because it’s a damn fine piece of software. There are some warts like the fact that the newest version, 3.0, has a link to the Yahoo Podcast directory when that service was discontinued back in October of 2007. That is a minor thing though.

The biggest wart, and the reason I can’t use the software, is the iPod syncing. It “works” but there are glitches all of the time like artwork not being set properly for albums (I had Benny Goodman looking out at me from a Telemann piece for instance). The iPod “fast scroll” feature where you get the letter of the alphabet pop up when you are scanning quickly through the playlist doesn’t work right because for whatever reason when Mediamonkey syncs it isn’t making the iPod ignore “The” in band names. I get no indication that the iTunes-purchased song I just synced won’t actually play back on the iPod. It will play back just fine in Mediamonkey itself however.

So, even with all of the great features that Mediamonkey has, I’m heading back to iTunes simply because it works better with my iPod and that is just more important to me because my music collection isn’t big enough to bog down iTunes. If the Mediamonkey guys could fix that stuff I’d pay for it in a heartbeat but that day hasn’t arrived yet

I hadn’t used the Spring form tag library before and decided to give it a shot for a small test form I was creating. I am using a subclass of SimpleFormController to return a simple list of value/name pairs from a database call to populate a select/option list in the HTML. I figured it would be easy enough to return an ArrayList as my command object and that is populated with HashMaps of the key/values. Oops. Doesn’t work.

It appears that I have to create an object that holds the list (or maybe a list of objects with fields that are the items I need displayed in the select dropdown). It’s too bad that I can’t do it the way I want with that tag library Since this is a throw away screen though (I suppose the controller is as well) I’m not going to worry too much about it

Updated!!!

I’ll keep updating this page as I find more tools since this seems to be one of the more popular pages on this blog.

Thanks,

Jason

One thing programmers don’t generally know is good design techniques. You can usually tell when a programmer has created a UI because they’re ugly and difficult to use. There are exceptions to be sure (Romain Guy for one). For those of us that aren’t as blessed I present here a list of color pickers that allow you to pick harmonious color combinations for web sites, etc.

• Added 03/06/2007:
  Kuler
  From Adobe and pronounced “cooler” this is a fantastic color chooser. Not only can you create your own color scheme using a very intuitive color wheel but you can also search on the hundreds of color schemes people have already generated to find something quickly. This is a fantastic resource.
• ColorJack Sphere or more generally ColorJack.
  This is another fantastic color resource. Sphere is another easy to use color wheel with options for both the traditional RYB color wheel as well as the standard RGB model. There are many algorithms to choose from (triad, complementary, etc) but the really unique thing about this tool is the ability to see how color blind people interpret colors. Very cool stuff. ColorJack also offers a service similar to Kuler where you can see color schemes others have created using the Studio tool on the website.
• Colors on the Web
  This site is more than a color chooser (one is available from the Color Wheel menu option) as it also gives user-created color schemes, forums, writing on color theory, etc. It’s a fantastic resource for those who want to learn more about color.
• Color SynthAxis
  OK. This is a real designers tool and complicated but damn is it cool. I believe it is best explained by the tutorial.
• Added 11/25/2007:The Color Wizard

The interesting thing is that tools such as these are coming out of the woodwork these days. At one time Harmony, a Photoshop plugin for the Mac from Hot Door, was the only thing available. They now recommend Kuler and their own application hasn’t been updated in years. My how things change.

I’m being forced to run CentOS 5 at my new job and there is a bug in the graphic boot screen where once the boot process is complete instead of getting the graphic login screen you get dumped back to a virtual console. Hitting Alt-F7 brings up the graphic login screen. This bug is documented here.

The fix I tried was to install the Fedora Core 7 version of the RHGB package which fixed the issue (and caused another one…more on that in a second). That fix is located here at rpmfind.net.

In CentOS 5 the graphic boot process itself is glitchy on my Dell laptop (Precision M6300). However it doesn’t cause any problems and I do get the graphic login screen as I should.

I keep coming across people using “learnings” as a word in documents. Here is an example (scroll down to the bottom and you’ll spot it). Just a note for the incompetent: “learnings” is not a word. Go look it up in the dictionary…I dare you. See what comes up? “Learning”.

If you want to sound like Borat then keep using “learnings”. If you want to sound competent try “lessons learned”.

Jeffrey Zeldman really does have a wonderful way with words. Check out his recent iPhone experience.

I’ve been having an issue for the last several days where I have not been able to multi-select files in Explorer in Vista. Keyboard shortcuts didn’t work either nor did the Select All menu option (grayed out).

It would appear that this is a known issue and the problem is that the defaults for certain types of file dialogs where you should only be able to select one file are getting set for all folders. Unfortunately none of the fixes worked. Those fixes were:

1. Remove the Bags registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
2. Do a reset folder options under Folder Options->View in Explorer

But I did find a fix and it is listed here along with the script that fixed the issue:
Can’t select multiple files in Explorer

Incidentally I do not have Vista 64. This problem can happen on the 32 bit version as well.

Here is the script I used to fix the problem. It is the same one referenced in the link above but I had to rename the file to have a .gif extension. Please rename to .vbs to run it.

Fix Single Select

GoDaddy.com recently raised their prices pretty significantly and I’m not too happy about it. I have several domain names with them and the privacy options plus the domain registration itself is getting pretty expensive so I decided to look elsewhere and came across 1&1 Internet. .COM registrations there are only 6.99 a year and you get free privacy options plus email, etc. Hmmm….do I pay godaddy over $9 or 1&1 6.99. Not a tough choice I’ll be transferring my other domains to them when they are up for renewal.

OK well maybe not. But based on the way Apple’s email to me crowing about iTunes Plus options on the iTunes store makes it sound you’d think they’d gone to mp3 format for those selections. I quote:

With high-quality 256-Kbps AAC encoding and no DRM (digital rights management), the iTunes Plus catalog is the largest DRM-free catalog in the world. And that means you can play iTunes Plus music on any iPod or other digital music player and an unlimited number of computers.

“Play music on any iPod or other digital music player” (emphasis mine). Surely they jest. The only other player I know of that currently plays AAC is the Zune. Apple certainly chose interesting phrasing. It sounds on first reading that these files will work with any player, iPod or otherwise. On second reading I’m not sure what they’re saying.

Whatever the case woe to the person who buys tracks off the music store only to find out that they don’t actually play on most other players save for the iPod lineup.