5 Screaming Marys…
…and no-one liked them (at £4 quid each)!
Faster than a speeding bullet!
From a job posting:
Please note, this role is to start ASAP. There would be a chance to start earlier.
29C outside and…
October 1st, 2011 :: graham.reeds
Categories: Life
Categories: Life
…Tesco are putting the Christmas stock on the shelves! Hard to feel festive when it is hotter than the Mediterranean!
Disney vs Disney
I have been to EuroDisney aka DisneyLand Resort Paris. I have now been to DisneyWorld aka DisneyLand Resort Florida so can compare the two.
- EuroDisney is smaller than DisneyWorld.
- EuroDisney rides are more extreme than DisneyWorld.
- EuroDisney queues are quicker than DisneyWorld.
- EuroDisney seems more expensive.
- DisneyWorld staff are way more friendlier.
- DisneyWorld has more varied rides.
Apart from the oppressive Florida summer heat (92°F/33°C with 85% humidity) you could of been on Main Street in EuroDisney: Every other shop was merchandise and if it wasn’t merchandise it was food. Still dollars but Euros instead of USD.
Please Amazon…
…stop using HDNL. I have finished reading a book. I then decide to order some more from Amazon. Since Jeff Bezos has direct access to my bank account I pay for next day delivery service (aka Prime). So it was on early Friday morning (think 00:00) I decided to order not 1 or 2 books, but 7 (voracious). Amazon said, that, by ordering these books they would be with me on the 16th, which is a Saturday. That would mean they would turn up at an empty workplace (making it hard for me to collect them from the depot) or I could have them delivered to my house. So it was my house I picked. These were duly dispatched on the Friday (think 15:00) and would be with me on the 16th, delivered by the HDNL. I haven’t had good experience with HDNL. In the past they have failed to deliver stuff to my house and sent it back. Said they had sent it back but had delivered it to my neighbours house when I was actually at the depot being told that it had been returned and even refused to give it to my wife because the card didn’t have a name on it and the bill she took was her mobile and was in her name, not mine (lets ignore the address is the same and shall we?). The craziest was when HDNL made 3 seperate deliveries to our work place with 3 seperate vans to deliver 3 copies of Windows 7 on the launch day.
Anyway, I work in Manchester. Therefore I will not be in during the week. And unable to collect my books. So I have nothing to read and HDNL will probably send them back before next week end like they have done in the past and the first I will know about it is the credit note I will receive.
Please Amazon, stop using HDNL or give us the option.
America
Two things about America I never got used to: toilets and taxes.
Taking the former first, to me a toilet filled nearly to the brim is blocked. In America (or Florida at least) the toilets are full to the brim by default and then flushing drains the water away (in a nice whirlpool effect) at which point it refills. Seeing a full toilet is disconcerting. Also I wonder what sort of evaporation occurs: The room I was staying in listed the temperature as 75° F on the wall (which is 23 in UK money and felt a lot less). Surely that body of water with that much surface area must loose quite a bit?
The latter is to do with taxes. Take when I was moving into a new ‘apartment’ (self catering). I ask how much per night. The lady says ’49 dollars’. I say I would like 3 nights and hand over $150 in travellers cheques. She looks at me like I am mad and asks where the rest of it is. Apparently it is $49 plus taxes. And this is not an isolated incident. This happened a lot of times (even for a bottle of water). Why can’t you tell me what the cost is including taxes? I have to pay that amount anyway, and not being from around those parts I haven’t got the foggiest what the tax rate is and therefore have no idea what the final amount would be.
Finally the joke used to be that as soon as an American found out you were British they would immediately say Monty Python and ask if you knew the Queen. Now they mention Monty Python, Will & Kate and finally Jeremy Clarkson. Jeremy Clarkson?! As one of my American friends said: It’s a weird cultural niche that man has carved out for himself.
Shuttle Launch
Back at work now after spending a week in America (should of been two but for work) for the final launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. An amazing experience and such a shame that due to a mixture of mismanagement and meddling it will never be seen again.
(And my apologies for not updating for such a long time.)
Improving Legacy Code
My suggestions to a client on improving their legacy code.
Initially:
- Move all source code from VSS into TFS.
- Ensure all code needed to compile is within the workspace.
- Ensure all dependencies are correct so compilation of any one module will automatically compile needed dependencies for that module.
- Add UnitTest++ (or CppUnit – whatever floats your boat) to project.
- Add Log4Cxx to project – more man-hours have gone into writing this than your own system.
As you develop new code or extend older code:
- Move the logical projects into folders. Create another physical project alongside this project. Usually you will call this Test or Tests.
- For each module you are editing in add a c++ source file in the test project. Format for this will be Test.cpp.
- Write the test for the part you are changing, this should be as concise as possible. See Feathers “Working Effectively with Legacy Code
” and Kerivsky “Refactoring to Patterns
” books for tips.
And eventually:
- Use Msbuild for automated building of source. This will build all code, every time, and warn of errors and can even bundle things into installers, etc.
- Turn on treat warnings as errors and fix.
- Get a static analysis tool and slowly fix the errors (only about 20 are relevant – the rest are pedantic).
- Make everyone use “Convert tabs to spaces” and set to 4. (HICPP)
- All if and else statements must be enclosed in braces, even if a single line. (HICPP)
- Apply SOLID principles to code (Single responsibility, Open/Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface, Dependency Inversion).
- Evangelise to others in team.
Others:
- You should be able to get ~1,500 unit tests per second.
- Some things you can’t test (UI, threading) so try to separate code from logic at test that (DoSomethingUI and DoSomething, and read The Humble Dialog Box).
- It will seem at first you will be writing a lot of extra code with tests and refactoring, but stick with it.
Did I miss anything?
Long time…
It has been a long time since I posted. Mainly due to work and a lack of excitement to write about.
I am writing this on my HTC Desire phone which less than 24 hours ago deleted all my text messages, some 6,000 in total. Most were boring ‘What time will you be home?’ type messages but some were important (pictures of my cat that passed away earlier this year, addresses, etc.).
This fault has been around since 2009 and if you do a Google search for ‘android deleted all text messages’ the amount of results are frightening. The issue on the Android issues forum has 760 (at the moment) posts complaining about this problem but it has only been given Medium priority. Part of the problem is that people don’t have the sdk installed to get the debug info once it occurs and since it seems entirely random it is nigh impossible to reproduce.
So I now have a backup plan in place (shouldn’t the message system have that to begin with?) but no way of recovering those lost memories.
I think I have been burnt too many times by Android now. Apple have had a few problems but nothing as major as deleting all a users texts and when Apple do have publicized issues the are fixed fairly quickly.
Formula One
I thought briefly about getting up to watch the F1 but decided that I would record it and watch it a more humane hour. So at 9.30 I got up, made a strong cup of coffee and sat down to watch the F1. Then, thanks to a delayed start the beeb decided to switch channels late in the race. My Sky+ box isn’t intelligent enough to detect this so I missed the end of the race. Never fear – that’s what the BBC iPlayer is for – making the unmissable unmissable. So at the end of the recording I fire up my PC, head over to the iPlayer site and guess what. They have Part1 available and the Forum – the extra hour that analyses the race and gets interviews with the drivers around the paddock – but not Part2. And they didn’t tack it to the end of Part 1 because I checked.
They’ve had 4 hours so far to get part 2 online and even less to get the forum uploaded – yet they managed that. Where is part 2?
Update 15:14: Part 2 is now online but not available to download – and my Sky broadband is appalling at streaming video.