Recently (in the past couple of weeks) I’ve started using Remember The Milk as I have been seeing it on and off on LifeHacker. I went at it zealously at first (as I usually do with these things) and imported all my tasks from work and home. However now the rosy blush has ended and the cracks in the services is now appearing.
First is the inability to create sublists. There are things that need to be done on the house (oil squeaky door, etc.) and then there are my personal programming projects. Ideally they are my personal stuff so they would go in the personal folder. They are also separate from each other so they should get their own folder. You can create new folders but the limited real estate in the layout means that more than a couple of additional tabs you wander off into the realm of multi-row tabs which look horrible in any application. This situation would be solved by sublists but RTM doesn’t support this and the development team doesn’t seem to be forthcoming with dates/roadmaps.
The next major problem is the lack of dependencies. Simply you can’t have one task depend on another. The closest I have come to this is order by numbers. But that doesn’t solve the dates. Example: A bunch of features got put back to the release after next for the program I am working on. They all depend on some functionality that won’t be ready in time for the next release. So I need to put them back to after the release date of the next version. That means I have to shift the times individually because of the next problem.
Time-shifting isn’t supported. You can select multiple tasks, and set the same date for all, but you perform simple maths operations on them. You can’t select a bunch of tasks and say “+1 week” and have all the dates jump by a week from their due date. This seems to have partial, but incomplete, support.
Next problem is how priorities are handled but I can see how this is a tricky subject because people would have a different idea of how priorities are handled. In my book a high priority item with a completion date in September is less important than a low priority task with a completion date of tomorrow. However RTM displays high priority tasks before all others, so task priorities aren’t used.
Which brings me to my next gripe. The editing of a task is via a drop down list. Why not buttons? Most Web 2.0 (how I hate that term) apps have buttons that act like their desktop counterparts, so why not RTM?
One under developed feature is the email reminder. You can set a daily reminder of tasks due that day. The next day you get another email, but it doesn’t list any overdue tasks which are probably more important than the tasks due that day. Admittedly it’s open to debate which is more important, but overdue tasks should be listed along with the due tasks.
The final gripe I can think of, and one that a member of the RTM team commented on, is the syncing with Google Calendar. Now the idea of a calendar with your tasks on is sublime, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired with RTM stating that it is a limitation with Google Calendar and out of their control. The problem is that every day, even days you don’t have due tasks, have a big image of tick on it. Now a tick has the connotation that there were tasks but they are all complete. Also a glyph on everyday, even when you don’t have a tasks looks very cluttered. It would be nice to have only an image when there are tasks due and the image changing with the priority. I suggested an exclamation mark with colour of the priority, and overdue being the same with a clock behind the exclamation mark.
They are the gripes and some can be worked around, but the questions are: Do other task lists have these features and how can I get all my tasks from RTM to that app? Do any other todo lists have these features?
I know I shouldn’t complain because RTM is free, but I am willing to pay a small amount for a subscription to something that I found usable and user-friendly but at the moment if they started charging for usage, I wouldn’t be forthcoming with the green.
Been merging code bases at work, from several forks to one. I was hoping to get this done after we install TFS but my boss wants it done before we do our final check in to PVCS 5.3, which is his prerogative. It falls to me, however, to perform the merge, and I am doing the merge blind – that is I don’t know what the code does, and there is no one to ask.
So what tools can I use? Well PVCS has a code compare tool, which I guess can be used, but given that even the most basic check in is fraught with dangers I am loathe to use it. Any source control that requires you to manually hack a file isn’t to be trusted.
So I did what I normally do in situations like this where the tools I have around me aren’t up to the task, or are found lacking. I hit SourceForge.
There I found WinMerge, which is simplicity in itself. A very nice interface, and wonderfully intuitive, unfortunately it get’s confused easily, especially if the two files being compared are disjointed (bits swapped or moved). This was my primary tool in performing the changes. Also there doesn’t appear to be anyway of taking both section changes into a single file.
So the next tool I found was KDiff3 which is a lot more robust, but with an awkward cluttered interface. In WinMerge you select the two file you wish to merge and then use Alt-Up/Down to cycle between differences. Then you use Alt-Left/Right to decide which side to keep. Very easy and very quick.
KDiff3 uses Ctrl-Up/Down and puts the merge changes into a third file. The GUI isn’t as nice or as clean as the WinMerge one it is a more powerful tool. However to select the changes you have to use Ctrl-1/2/3 (KDiff3 supports 3-way merges) which while doable with one hand means twisting, and with a lot of changes in a file makes it a good candidate for inducing RSI.
Now my advice would be for WinMerge to use the KDiff3 engine (from browsing the mailing list that would require a rewrite of most of WinMerge) or have KDiff3 use the keyboard layout of WinMerge and steal some of the visual designs from it. Both a good tools in their own right but what is stopping them from becoming great tools they both have.
February 12th, 2007 :: graham.reeds
Categories:
Life ::
WorkWas informed today that as my project is coming to its end that I will no longer be kept on at my current employers despite me hoping that they will. The parting is amicable and they have given me a copy of the system that I will hopefully have up and running on my home machine soon.
So if you have need of a C++ Programmer who happens to be a HTML/CSS guru, then you can get in touch with me easily. Contract or permanent considered, north-east of England. CV available on request.
Microsoft has finally updated Internet Explorer and with it the way it treats items it views suspiciously – in particular my ActiveX control I am working on. This update not only affects IE7 but also IE6 which I have running side-by-side on my system.
What makes this update note-worthy? If you set the Security Options set to ‘lowest’ for the trusted sites and set the all the ‘prompt’s to ‘enable’ you still get asked if you would like to run the ActiveX control. Twice. It also downloads the ActiveX control. Twice. That’s 1.8mb total for the ActiveX control instead of 900kb and twice as long to initialise.
It probably has something to do with the authentication routine (you are challenged when you try to access the page with the control on it) but before IE7 was released the prompt and the download only occurred after you were challenged.
December 6th, 2006 :: graham.reeds
Categories:
WorkThis is what I spent this morning doing and this afternoon writing up the steps. My line manager was kind enough to allow me to post the document about what is needed to be done since we had to find a couple of “gotcha’s” out the hard way. Some of this information was gleaned from here and here.
It’s currently here as pure unformatted text. Once I get the chance this evening I will tidy it up a bit.
Installing IIS6, PHP5.2.0, MySQL5.0.27 and Mantis1.0.6 to Windows 2003 Server R2 Standard Edition
Files needed:
IIS 6.0
- Insert the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition CD into the tray.
- Click Start » Control Panel » Add or Remove Programs.
- Select Add/Remove Windows Components from the left-hand sidebar.
- Select Application Server in the Windows Component Wizard.
- With Application Server high lit, click the details and check ASP.NET.
- Okay everything until you are back to the wizard. Click next.
- If you get a Files Needed message, select the drive that the CD-Rom is located in and click OK.
- Click OK finish installation.
- To test the install, open your browser and type http://localhost/ into the address bar. You should see a This page is under construction message.
MySQL 5.0.27
- Extract Setup.exe from the zip file and run it. Ignore the warning messages from 2003 Server.
- Select Typical Setup and click next until you get to the sign up step. Select Skip and complete the installation.
- In the Configuration Wizard pick Detailed Configuration from the first option screen. Click next.
- Pick Server Machine on the next screen. Next.
- Select the Non-transactional for database usage. Next.
- Pick the first option (Decision Support (DSS)/OLAP). Next.
- Make sure both options are checked at the next screen. Next.
- Use the standard character set. Next.
- Allow MySQL to install as a Windows Service and launch automatically with Windows.
- Set the root password to ‘#######’. DO NOT ENABLE ROOT ACCESS FROM REMOTE MACHINES AND CERTAINLY DO NOT CREATE AN ANONYMOUS ACCOUNT.
- Execute Settings.
MySQL GUI Tools 5.0r6
- Start the install by running the installer
- Accept the terms and conditions, the install directory and complete setup.
PHP 5.2.0
- Extract the PHP 5.2.0 zip to C:\Program Files\PHP
- Extract php_5.2.0_mysqli_5.0.27-win32.zip to the php installation directory.
- Copy libmysql.dll to WINDOWS\System32 directory.
- Rename php.ini-recommended to php.ini
- Open php.ini and uncomment cgi.force_redirect and set it to 0 (zero).
- Copy php_browscap.ini to php\extras and set the path to it under browscap.
- Set session.save_path to php\sessions. Create the directory if needed.
- Set the extensions (or replace them with this list):
extension=php_mbstring.dll
extension=php_bz2.dll
extension=php_cpdf.dll
extension=php_curl.dll
extension=php_dba.dll
extension=php_dbase.dll
extension=php_dbx.dll
;extension=php_exif.dll
extension=php_fdf.dll
extension=php_filepro.dll
extension=php_gd2.dll
extension=php_gettext.dll
;extension=php_ifx.dll
extension=php_iisfunc.dll
extension=php_imap.dll
extension=php_interbase.dll
extension=php_java.dll
extension=php_ldap.dll
;extension=php_mcrypt.dll
extension=php_mhash.dll
extension=php_mime_magic.dll
extension=php_ming.dll
extension=php_mssql.dll
extension=php_msql.dll
extension=php_mysql.dll
extension=php_mysqli.dll
;extension=php_oci8.dll
extension=php_openssl.dll
;extension=php_oracle.dll
extension=php_pdf.dll
extension=php_pgsql.dll
extension=php_shmop.dll
extension=php_snmp.dll
extension=php_sockets.dll
;extension=php_sybase_ct.dll
extension=php_tidy.dll
extension=php_ffi.dll
extension=php_xmlrpc.dll
extension=php_xsl.dll
;extension=php_yaz.dll
extension=php_zip.dll
- Add the install path for PHP to the user environment path.
- Add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PHP\IniFilePath=C:\Program Files\PHP to the registry.
Mantis 1.0.6
- Extract the Mantis install files to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\mantis.
Integration
- Stop the MySQL server. Open my.ini and change the root database location to d:/db/mysql5.
- Copy the original database files/directories from the old server to the MySQL data directory (d:\db\mysql5\).
- Create a new user, mantis/mantis, in MySQL Administrator. Give it full rights to the Mantis DB. Restart MySQL.
- Start IIS Manager. Add a new website to the server using C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\mantis as the location.
- Check all boxes for permissions, ignoring any warnings.
- Open the website properties (right click » properties), select the Home Directory tab, click configuration, click add. For the executable browse for php5isapi.dll which is located in the php install directory and give the extension as .php. Set ‘Limit To’ to GET, POST, HEAD.
- In mantis\config_inc.php modify the following lines:
$g_db_username = mantis
$g_db_password = mantis
$g_database_name = mantis
- Open IIS Manager and under Web Service Extensions set the name to PHP ISAPI Extension and set the required files to php5isapi.dll.
- Add index.php to the list of default content pages in the Documents tab.
- Turn off the internal firewall in Windows 2003 Server.
- Restart Windows 2003 Server.
- Start your browser. Enter http://localhost/admin/ into the address bar. Select Upgrade Your Installation, then Upgrade Now. Perform Basic Upgrade and the String Escape Fixes afterwards.
Fin.
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