About developer's lifestyle

I'm now just a year and two months in my professional software development career. But before that I was a PC superuser, so basically I know my way around computers... better then most computer users.

For me buying/setuping/installing/assembling/whatever with a computer is a simple and effortless task. Even software development, which is the hardest thing that I've been doing on a computer (next thing is recovering a Bob's crashed system ... full of malware), isn't really that hard because it's interesting and complex enough for it to be challenging but not impossible. And I like a challenge :)

EDIT: Basically fixing a crashed system IS the hardest thing. Developing is easy :)

In other domains outside of project management, software engineering and all computer related stuff however, my situation is not as shiny :)

One of those lacking things is the amount of real-estate I have. Nothing. I only have a car (a good one) :O

Buying one? I really think something is wrong there. I think this world is set up for it to be almost impossible if you are a normal employee of a normal company. Yes, I'm still early in my career (very early, but light years in the software engineering field, I'm afraid) compared to other jobs currently on the market, and the country I'm living in doesn't really respect my kind of work so my options are not that good. Actually, they underestimate it and call software engineers "weirdos" and "nerds". And that we only sit and type and click and make money. Because we're not selling something or lifting heavy objects doesn't mean a software engineer's jobs is easy.

A common misconception (in Croatia).

It's hard.

And it's damn hard if you do not understand exactly what you're doing and have excellentmental abstraction and concentration skills. Otherwise you'll just see a bunch of text connected with dots and a lot of brackets. We are not underpaid, but the salary doesn'tscale well. For example a software engineer in Croatia has double the salary of a shoe salesman or saleswoman, but works at least ten times harder. The mind quickly gets tired.

This is true with all creative and mental jobs. For example, cooks need to think hard about the ratios of the spices, ingredients and amount of food they need to cook. Hairdressers need to think how to cut the hair for it to look good, create a mental image, imagine the process how to get there, and not to make mistakes because you cannot undo over cut hair, or to have a wrong idea of the hairstyle the customer wants... hard stuff. And not valued right.

I'd give the cook at least ten times bigger salary then the shoe salesperson. I'd give the hairdresser at least ten times bigger salary then the shoe salesperson. I'd give anyone that needs to professionally concentrate more that four hours per day at least ten times bigger salary then the shoe salesperson.

But this is not the way the world works and I surely live in a dream world. So what I want most is to get the work valued right. The effort and the results. In the meantime - fail.

There's hope, still

In a hopeless underpaid world you cannot really buy your own real estate and enjoy it. You need to either have a respectable and profitable company that makes a lot of money, and after paying all the taxes, have enough money to buy yourself real estate. You need to work your ass off!!!!!
Or you inherit some. I'm not that lucky either. So the only option for me to have my own place is to work my ass off. That's not a problem while I'm doing the job I like. I can always rent a place and live there :). Buying one is not an option unless the two before-mentioned things happen. Never an option.

Having a rented place is very flexible, and I think it works great with my current line of work. A developer is mobile, flexible and remote. As long as you type code, it really doesn't matter where you type it from. So you can be anywhere where there's an Internet connection. So I don't need a fixed place to live. Only a place to live. With an Internet connection, of course.

Decisions, decisions

Karma has it hard. Especially when I'm surrounded with people that do not understand our line of work. And that it's the kind of work that's not fixed in any way, but extremely agile. We don't need a fucking real estate to call our own. We only need a car to travel, and a place with the Internet connection. And that's OK :)

We will not be bound. That will be all.

Having more real-estate isn't always buying more

Something unprecedented happened yesterday - I somehow started liking my Hackintosh.

So how did this happen?

It's the virtual desktops. And the way you go around with them. Snow Leopard and Lion (as well their *nix Linux bastard relatives) have an option to use virtual desktops. That's probably one of the must underrated features that an OS Shell possesses. AND WINDOWS DOESN'T HAVE!

So me being a software engineer with woman-like power to coordinate multiple activities (proven), I can quickly "switch my context" between multiple activities and remember "my last state". Like app switching on mobile platforms :)

Virtual Desktops

It's like behaving that your place has more room than you actually see, and you are able to access it quickly.

So let's imagine a user called Bob. Bob is a standard PC user - there's a guy I know that is behaving like "Bob", so I'm going to use his behavioural pattern as a starting point. And Bob likes his computer. Because it can help him listen to music, chat using his favourite chat service, surf the web, check the mail, use Facebook, etc. So to do all those things Bob has to:

• Have Chrome or a-browser-of-your-choice opened, probably with multiple tabs
• Have a music player window open
• Have a chat window (or windows) open
• Have a mail application open
• I dunno, maybe a word processor window open. Something.

So he already has 5 or more windows open. His idea was to do all this stuff in parallel. But even if he has a large screen (like a 27" screen, but he's Bob, so he probably doesn't have) the OS Shell main screen is going to get cluttered. And switching between apps will either make you move your mouse around a lot to switch apps in the app controller (Windows users call this "Taskbar"), or work your fingers with Alt + Tab or Command + Tab or whatever equivalent your OS Shell uses, but you may not get the app that you want immediately. And the time you need to access the application screen is around 1-3-5-7 seconds. It will give you the effect that you're racing against time if you quicky try to respond a chat message, update your status or change the song or read the news or ... well, whatever. And that's NOT OK, it can make you nervous.

Solutions? There are a few I know of.

• Buy and connect another monitor. You'll have more space, and you can also use one monitor for frequently used stuff that you need to see all the time. Like Chat boxes, Facebook or Twitter updates, a movie (if you can work and watch a movie at the same time) et al.
• Use OS Shell features to round up app windows. For example, in Windows 7 you can shake a window to minimize all other windows and the same action to revert. Cleans the fucking place :). Also see OS X Exposé, works hell of a lot better than anything Windows OS' offer.
• And the crown jewel - virtual desktops.

I have a picture for you people:

This is the Mac OS X "Mission Control" feature in Lion. What does it do? It rounds up windows on all desktops. It's a combination of Exposé and Spaces. "Spaces" is the Virtual Desktop feature of the Mac OS X from the previous versions. So you round up windows on virtual desktops (by some rule, I don't know) and switch desktops by hitting keys on your keyboard or set a shortcut on your mouse. You can now see everything - and seeing everything gives you a great sense of omnipresence (a "god" feeling?). Powerful stuff. 

Before Mission Control you could combine Exposé and Spaces. That also worked great - but now you can save even more time since with the same keystroke you activate both window switching and desktop switching. And that's OK.

So basically, you create virtual desktops, put windows on them and switch them using shortcuts. It's different than switching application windows, because if you can align your windows on desktops (one time operation) you can switch multiple applications simultaneously using a single keystroke or operation. Now that's VERY OK :). I'm addicted to that. And Lion has it easiest. That's why I started liking *intoshes :)

GC.ReRegisterForFinalize(this);

And at the end, all I'm saying is that Bob can make his job easier if he decides to use virtual desktops. If he's a Windows user, I'm afraid he's stuck to mediocre virtual desktop apps that actually complicate things. But does that mean him buying a Mac? Or building a Hackintosh? Installing Linux? I personally don't give a falling-star's-ass about what he's going to do. I have 4 operating systems on my PC, 2 of them have virtual desktops, Bob is responsible for his actions - I'm just giving him a choice :)

Learn to switch context fast. The brain can work multiple stuff if you make it do it. It'll help you multi-task!!!

That would be all, Number One.

Hudsoning (The Start)

Today it's about Hudson.

Hudson is something called "the continuous integration server". It's used to automatically builds code projects (web applications, mobile applications, whatever) for what-ever-purpose-you-need. So you configure Hudson to build you a project from source code (or source repository).

What is it exactly?

It's basically an WAR file (a Java servlet executable?) you start on any PC that has JRE installed. It attaches it's web interface to a socket on your computer, at the port 8080. You can access it from anywhere using Chrome or a-browser-of-your-choice (avoid IE, it has some font rendering issues) if you know the hostname, so using:

localhost:8080

you connect to the it on your local machine. For example, using

somehostname.somedomain.com:8080 

you get to connect to it from anywhere where there's an Internet connection. If the WAR file or a service is running on that computer, of course. I'll go to the differences later. If you think that's OK :)

A little bit of history with me and Hudson

Running into this tool in my software engineer career was a coincidence. Since I started working for Where Inc. and it's Windows Phone 7 project, some Chinese testers configured a project on Hudson (very badly) to make builds of the app every 5 minutes if there's a change in the SVN repository. It worked good while we used the old repository and the branch naming scheme that was hardcoded in the Ant scripts (which I didn't have access to, so I discovered this when I finally got access). Also using Ant for building a .NET project? You must be joking. 

Next up, I was in charge of the project's technical details (the former software engineer in charge got transferred to a more important project). So as first order of business, I needed to fix the build server, because I changed SVN repositories and project structure. Of course, the build failed to build. And that's NOT OK.

I had a day to get the data of the server, learn Ant scripting, do a lot of RTFM-ing just to figure out what these Chinese folk were doing. Now imagine a turning rainbow wheel....

... after which I got it ready, finally. The general idea was to only hardcode the procedure. Source and destination directories, SVN revision numbers, build paths, changelogs and all other stuff was either given as an external enviroment variable through Hudson or using existing enviroment variables from Hudson. Like SVN version build. Or workspace path. And finally, I was ready to say "And that's OK". But not yet, it seemed to complicate itself.

The Chinese folk also made a small Java console application that modifies the AssemblyInfo.cs file and WMAppManifest.xml file that replaced the minor version and revision numbers with the SVN revision number. AND THAT APP WAS SO VERY MUCH HARDCODED. That most certainly wasn't OK.

Rewrote that small Java console app to use Java properties info file paths, AssemblyInfo.cs and WMAppManifest.xml file pats as command line arguments in precise order. And through Hudson I gave the Ant scripts those file paths which then were used by the Ant script to run the console app and modify those two files. Except the procedure, nothing else wasn't hardcoded. And finally, that was OK.

Branching? Easy. I cloned the Hudson project, changed the SVN repository path to point at the branch, and I got the build.

Migration to Git (TBC)

Interesting stuff happened 6 months after. We migrated to Git, and after transfering the project from SVN to Git, I had to transfer Hudson too. No problem... Really. Except for these two:

• How to get the project from Github? It used the authentication method with a passphrase, and Hudson didn't have the option to input a user name and password, even after installing the plugin. FAIL.
• How to get the revision numbers? Git uses hex hash numbers for commit numbers, while SVN uses a simple decimal number. FAIL^2.

I'm afraid I've already taken a lot of time from my working hours to write this so I'm going to stop for a moment. To be continued... to keep you reading more :)

GC.Collect();

Stay tuned for Part Two! I'll put screenshots of the Hudson setup with instructions to make a build of an WP7 Application. WOW, new stuff! 

Is it fun? It is for those who want to know. And that's OK :)

Hackintosh and input lag

It's enormous!

You really cannot believe it's there. Even if I use a massive CRT monitor the mouse still lags (although not as much). I can really "feel" input lag because I was a FPS player and I can figure out the slightest twitch... pretty epic, but useless :)

But what's really strange, nothing in Windows and Linux.

Somehow I couldn't get to the root of the problem. USB drivers perhaps (kexts)? I tried installing Logitech drivers for the mouse, and the lag is less obvious but still there.

Then, VOILA! The problem is in the crappy mouse acceleration and pointer smoothing algorithm that does the job so badly you cannot really get the "feel" for the mouse cursor. The pointer behaves strange, compared to the Windows' or Linux's mouse smoothing method. After a simple shell command:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

The acceleration is gone. Let's rejoice :))

Perhaps it's a matter of getting used to? Sure, a smart man wrote something about Windows vs. Mac Font smoothing system. Mac users like Mac smoothing, and Windows like Windows smoothing. Then that must be the case.

OFFTOPIC HERE:
I personally like Windows method. It's much sharper than the Mac OS X, and it's more readable on screen. There are many blog posts about the Mac OS X vs Windows, so I'm not really going into anything here. But of course, you must always see both sides of the medal. So I blame nobody, OK? And that's OK :)

BACKTOPIC HERE:
But I'm not really ready to accept that solution just yet. I'll continue research.

If that happens on a real Mac with Mac OS X and it's Magic Mouse (the lag and crappy acceleration method), then I'll personally call an Apple Genius guy or girl and explain him or her the Smoothing algorithm and the math behind all that to make him or her feel bad and buy me a real Mac!!!!1111oneleven

Maybe I just want a Mac? I won't say that I don't want one, but I just currently can't afford one. And that's NOT OK :)

On PC multimedia

So lucky me, I bought a soundcard (not really lucky, I spent $100 on it)

It's the one CNET said it's like, the best consumer sound card that you can afford (let's not include those that cost like, a $1000). I wasn't wrong when I bought it, but I'm not very satisfied with it.

Sure, It's a good card. The sound is great, the drivers are good. It's PCIe so I don't have to worry about future upgrades (thank you Intel for making this happen... albeit too late). Has ASIO out of the box, and the driver download was a few clicks in Chrome or a browser-of-your-choice.

So what's wrong, huh? Nothing really.

It's a Certain-Taiwanese-Company's Certain-Implementation of the CMedia Oxygen HD Sound chip. Sounds familiar ^^. It's that card...

BUT WAIT :)

Cons. Or what I call "the fun part" :). I'll be formal and objective here, so let's avoid Fanboyism.

• Takes a floppy power supply. Not really a con here, but my cables got messed up in the case -.-
• It doesn't work in Lion (yes, I have a Hackintosh, check my twitter. But more on that later)
• It works in Linux. Works-ish, I had to waste my 5 Mbit Internet connection to get myself some PulseAudio control centers to fix Right Channel balance. Screw balance. I want to stream Youtube. It's multimedia. Damn.
• The sound quality is not as good as it should be. It's better than the ALC888 on my board, but It's not THAT better. Perhaps it's the speakers... so no major placebo effect here.
• I don't have $100 anymore. Could have bought me some decent shoes... Or go to Zagreb and back...by plane.

I'm not cheap, but really. Give me something better for the price.

And since I started exploring iOS development on my Crackintosh, I cannot play music or movies, or relax, take a break. No sound you see.

But me being smart (well, you have to see that in person), I had a Bluetooth USB dongle and connected the Bluetooth headset... the sound is awful, but at least it sounds. Also, the onboard chip doesn't really work good on a Crack-a-Mac, so basically I don't have ANY sound on speakers. And that's OK.

Boring mute Macrack. That actually annoys me most.

So after this rant, I played some music on my $100 soundcard using $150 speakers. Did I get motivation from the music? No. So that value's also gone. So what's with the extra power that the sound card needs to have?

blogPost.Finalize();

The moral of the story: If you want better sound on your PC, it's not just buying the soundcard. It's arranging your room that has the PC (so you can normally position the speakers), then buying good Hi-Fi speakers and THEN buying the soundcard to fit all those needs. The soundcard with which you can calibrate the output, set up the equalizer and do other Hi-Fi Voodoo and Mumbo-Jumbo.

Hi-Fi's overrated. For the most part.

I really just want some value for the price. And that's OK.

It's alive

So the blog is finally here. I picked Google blog because it showed up first @ Google. Oh and yes, I have an account.

If you continue reading, you might find some interesting IT stuff here... this is just the beginning.

Mostly, you'll find generic solutions to some standard issues found while developing apps and using the computer.

I'll try to keep it fun and educational :)

Thanks everyone! :)