afongen

Henrik Gemal’s Using Mozilla in testing and debugging web sites makes me realize just how much I take for granted in Mozilla. Sure, I give a silent thanks whenever I use the JavaScript console, Venkman, or the DOM inspector, but until now I hadn’t really given any thought to how nice it is to have detailed control over my cookies, colored HTML source, and detailed page information.

Cool things that I didn’t know about:

• LiveHTTPHeaders, a tool for live access to HTTP headers on pages you visit. A far sight handier than, say, a telnet session or Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer, although those certainly have their uses.
• View Selection Source (described in the article).
• Cache manager. Enter about:cache in the location bar.
• Configure Mozilla with about:config.

Granted, I no longer use Mozilla for casual browsing at home (I switch between Safari and Chimera), but I do use it as an ever-more-indispensible development tool.

Hydra is a decent text editor in its own right, but what makes it interesting is its collaborative editing feature: just click on the “share” button and you can allow others on a network to edit the document right along with you. Click the Rendezvous button and share over an ad hoc wireless network! Too damn cool.

They mention extreme pair programming on their home page as one possible use. I wonder how it could be used in the classroom…

First Chimera had to be renamed Camino for legal reasons. Now I see that Phoenix must be renamed, too, also for legal reasons. What gives?

Oh, this reminds me. When I was working for The Roastery, I took a call from a guy who was wondering how long we’d been in business. When I told him, he just sort of sighed, then explained that he owned a shop in Missouri or Montana or somewhere like that, also called The Roastery. He’d been told the company name was unique in the country. “Well, thank you for your time,” he said, “now I have to go kick my lawyer’s ass.”

At least he was good-natured about it.

Unit Testing in PHP.

And if you’re not convinced: Top 12 Reasons to Write Unit Tests.

And what do you know, the latest issue of The Perl Journal has an article on “Test-Driven Development in Perl.”

I have very much been enjoying the serialized interview on artima.com with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, authors of The Pragmatic Programmer. In particular, the first segment rang true: “Don’t Live with Broken Windows“.

As soon as something is broken—whether it is a bug in the code, a problem with your process, a bad requirement, bad documentation—something you know is just wrong, you really have to stop and address it right then and there. Just fix it. And if you just can’t fix it, put up police tape around it. Nail plywood over it. Make sure everybody knows it is broken, that they shouldn’t trust it, shouldn’t go near it. It is as important to show you are on top of the situation as it is to actually fix the problem. As soon as something is broken and not fixed, it starts spreading a malaise across the team. “Well, that’s broken. Oh I just broke that. Oh well.”

I picked up the book at the library a few weeks ago and devoured it. It’s very good, I learned a lot and have much to think about. I’m not ready for everything in the book, especially the latter chapters, partly because of the situation in which I work, partly because of where I am in my development as a programmer. So much of it, though, just resonated with me. They just plain make sense and have some great ideas. Read through the interviews and you might see what I mean.

It’s been especially interesting to me as I’ve been working with code that I wrote a couple years ago and realize just how far I’ve come in my programming practices. Sometimes I look at the code and wonder, “What was I thinking?!” Other times I just look at it and go, “Oh yeah, that made sense, but I’ve figured out a better way of handling that now.” It’s kinda cool. When I read “Don’t Live with Broken Windows,” I had just come across a comment in some oldish code: “Not the best way to handle this, but it’ll work as a proof of concept. Clean it up before it goes into production.” Of course, it had been in production for over a year. Heh. So i cleaned it up.

I don’t do so much of that anymore: I try very hard to take the time to get things right the first time, while at the same time avoiding premature optimization. The trick is balancing this against the unreasonable timelines I must usually work with. It’s been satisfying to realize that the code that I write under these conditions is far better than it was even a couple years ago. I’m confident that what I learn from The Pragmatic Programmer will help even more.

The Return of Hobbes, in which it’s demonstrated quite clearly (almost painfully) that Jack and Tyler in Fight Club are in fact Calvin and Hobbes from, well, Calvin and Hobbes.

I feel like watching the movie again now. Which is too bad, since I really, really did not like it.

Dang I wish I could think of a reason to use MapServer. Here I am, just a couple miles away from its birthplace, itching to go to their first MapServer Users Meeting, and I have no real reason to use the software. It just looks so damn cool. If I worked for the DNR, that would be one thing: they do all sorts of stuff with it. But no. I work in higher ed. Not a lot of call.

Let me think. Maps to campuses? More detailed network status maps? I dunno. Let me know if you have any ideas. It won’t likely be nearly as cool a work-related expense as buying an iPod to bootstrap an XServe cluster, but it might be as close as I get.

A librarian speaks out against the USA Patriot Act.

And surprise! The USDOJ and FBI are drafting a sequel to the USA Patriot Act that would authorize even broader powers to infringe on civil liberties. An interesting provision would add a minimum of five years to criminal sentences for knowingly using encryption technology while committing a crime. This would likely discourage use of encryption for legitimate purposes.

On that tangent, I just came across WinPT, a collection of GnuPG tools for Windows.

I’ve always assumed that obfuscating email addresses on web pages was an exercise in futility. Something like HiveLogic’s Enkoder is probably quite effective, but simple things like replacing each character with its equivalent HTML entity (e.g. e for e) can’t possibly be. I figure we have to give some credit to the spambot writers: they can’t fall for trivial deceptions like that forever, and no doubt some caught on years ago.

A recent study demonstrates otherwise. They set up hundreds of email addresses, each used for a single purpose, and tracked the received mail over a six month period. As expected, addresses made available on public web sites received the most spam. What very much surprises me is that email addresses obfuscated either using HTML entity or human-readable equivalents (e.g. “username at domain dot com”) received no spam.

This is bound to change, but it still catches me off guard. Of course, in the situation I face at work (dozens of people maintaining web sites over which I have no control, no chance of using either of these techniques consistently), it really doesn’t matter. I figure I could either filter email addresses on all outgoing pages, which isn’t worth the overhead, or write something that periodically spiders the site and “fixes” pages. Neither option is really worth the trouble. What I can do is try to prevent spambots from hitting our sites in the first place. Lotsa fun to be had there.

Hey Matt, if you’re reading: how about this for a discussion at April’s meeting?

We went to see Paul Hintz play at Black’s Ford in Wayzata last night. Paul is my favorite local guitarist, actually one of my favorite guitarists, period. When I worked at the Roastery and we had musicians play weekend nights, he was the only one I made sure I was there for. He’s great.

Turns out he plays Black’s Ford about every month, so I have something new to look forward to in our remaining time out here in the ‘burbs.

Oh. The food’s great, too. I’ve been there for lunch a number of times, but never for dinner. They used to have the distinction of being the only place in Wayzata you could get a good espresso (Maravonda). I have no idea whether that’s still true, but their dinner specials were spectacular.

Good food, great jazz guitar. Could it get better?