Author Archive for jba

Been a while

Published on November 15, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

My end-year’s resolution is to post more frequently about more cooler stuff.

In the mean time some things that I have been working on lately:

  • Been loving Jenkins as a CI tool for our ASP.Net e-commerce system at Amblique and it’s associated  plugins
    • Haven’t really gotten to the stage of uber customisation and it’s already proved incredibly invaluable
  • Been preaching the ways of systematic, thorough, documented testing since I started at Amblique, with early results a-showing
    • Only a matter of time before we go full ball to automate our testing system, most likely using Sillenium
  • On the subject of testing systems been playing with and appreciating jmeter as a performance/load testing system
    • Just don’t go tyring to run a full ball performance test using the java UI, or you will bring the testing machine to a grind and get some really dodgey numbers
      • instead use the command line version
      • make sure to only have one listener/reporter (maybe the agregate report)
      • and pass in parameters like thread count (user count) and thread loops (test iterations) using the -Jproperty_name=value arguments
    • Oh and don’t try and use it to performance test Ajax ui’s, JMeter uses an html-as-xml-dom inspection approach to extract and test for assertions, and so doesn’t actually remote a browser (i.e. no javascript ability).

 

Looking for ASP.Net Mid-Level Developers

Published on August 29, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Hey guys, at Amblique, we’re looking to recruit several Mid-Level ASP.Net Developers.

To quote, the Atlassian guys, if you’re reading this blog then you probably already have the attitude we are looking for, but basically we want someone with a passion for application development on the web, who appreciates and understands where all the relevant web standards fit into the bigger picture, and who has serious experience working with the MS ASP.Net web stack (legacy or MVC).

Experience with SVN and some form of CI is an advantage, and SQL Server Experience is a must.

At Amblique we make websites that actually make our clients money using a in-house e-commerce system and the latest online development best practices. So from my perspective, we’ve got it all, the best pragmatic use of the right theory, in a market that is asking for results.

See the attached JD – Amblique ASP.Net Developer Roles - JD August 2011 (116).

Add a comment below or apply directly over on our website:

Why Rounded Corners are Easier on the Eyes

Published on August 22, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Cool post from Shanemo formerly of Microsoft DPE fame:

Some experts say that rectangles with rounded corners are easier on the eyes than a rectangle with sharp edges because they take less cognitive effort to visually process. The fovea is fastest at processing circles. Processing edges involve more “neuronal image tools” in the brain [1]. Thus, rectangles with rounded corners are easier process because they look closer to a circle than a regular rectangle.

New hang out

Published on July 6, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , .

So it’s been a while since I posted, and I realised I hadn’t made a post about my new 9-5 hang out.

Yep, I’ve changed roles again, and am incredibly excited to be working as the new Technical Director at Amblique.

Amblique do agency-type work, but work that is specifically focused on their custom built ASP.net ecommerce and content management system, so it should be a little bit less fast paced than Gruden was.

Needless to say, I will miss the great bunch of people over at Gruden, but I am definitely looking forward to putting my skills to use with a fantastic team that has immense potential and luxury of a little more focus that is afforded to a business with a specific product/market segment to target.

Rosetta stone of mobile development for WP7, iOS, Android

Published on April 7, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Cool link with a side-by-side comparison of WP7, iOS, and Android development features and classes from a mono (C#) perspective.

iOS WP7 Android
“View” XIB (Interface Builder) Xaml axml
UIViewController PhoneApplicationPage (codebehind) Activity
n/a (UIAutoResizing) StackPanel LinearLayout
UITableView ListBox ListView
UITableViewCell ListBox.ItemTemplate n/a (any view)
UITableViewSource n/a (binding, IEnumerable) BaseAdapter
Navigation “Controller” NavigationController. PushViewController() NavigationService. Navigate() StartActivity()
n/a (object) Xaml Uri Intent.SetClass()
n/a (object properties) Xaml Uri querystring params Intent.PutExtra() .AddFlags()
n/a (object properties) NavigationContext .QueryString .TryGetValue() Intent .GetXXXExtra()
Threading InvokeOnMainThread Dispatcher.BeginInvoke RunOnUiThread
“Model” C# .NET objects – shared thanks to Mono on iOS & Android. Also WebClient, Linq, Generics, Xml, Serialization, etc… :-)

And while we are on the mono subject, they just released a Mono droid update, which means they now have comprahensive tool chains for C# development for the following systems, iOS (including app store), Mac (including app store), Android (including app store).

A HIG (Human Interface Guideline) for Android development?

Published on April 5, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Found over on mobilecrunch, Mutual Mobile have have put out what their impression of a HIG doc for Android should be: Android Design Guidelines.

Cory Doctorow on kids and privacy.

Published on April 5, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , .

As a technology aware parent I’ve had to try and make up my mind on where I sit with my kid’s use of the internet and other ‘look at me’ technologies that are rapidly saturating the environment that I am bringing them up in. I think this video by Cory at TEDxObserver does a great job of explaining where I think I’ll end up with my kids when the time comes to teach them about privacy and technology.

Link from boingboing.

Awesome autonomous UAV with onboard Kinect

Published on April 1, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I secretly wanted to do this myself when I had the expendable income and time to buy and assemble a quadcopter and a kinect, especially since seeing the quadruino thing the other day. But now looks like I’ve been beaten to the punch

Is Samsung shipping Keyloggers on their laptops?

Published on March 31, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: .

Now I was thinking about the Samsung S9 Laptop, but if this post on network world is true (and I waited till someone reputable like boing boing reposted it), then I can easily say I will never ever be buying any electronic product from Samsung again.

Installing keyloggers on your customers machines and not telling them is just plaing wrong no matter which way you slice it.

Update:: Samsung denies it.

About me widget updated to work with WordPress 3.1

Published on March 23, 2011. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

As mentioned here, the about me widget was broken in Wordpres 3.1 for a number of key reasons, which I had to fix;

  1. WordPress changed the way they bind the save event in the widgets.php form to use the jQuery().live(‘click’,…) call

    This subsequently caused my plugin to not be able to selectively unbind and rebind just the save button click event of the about me widget. Instead we had to unbind all the widget save button click events – due to a quirk in how jquery live() and die() methods work, and then bind a custom click event to all the widget save button click events, and then check the source widget that raised the event, so if it is the about me widget it then triggers an mce save and then calls the functions from the original save button click event.

  2. The version of tinyMCE shipped in WordPress 3.1 has an updated triggerSave() function that forces the form postback when called.

    This has the annoying sideaffect of breaking the ajax widget save event. So I changed the click event of the widget save button to call tinyMCE(editor).save() instead, which doesn’t force a form postback but does cause the rich text from the editor to be saved in the textarea.

So without further ado, I give you the latest version of about me widget, v2.2, compatible with WordPress 3.1.

Same disclaimer as for the last time I fixed the widget to work with WordPress v2.9.x.