Morten Nielsen

JavaScript

Home automation using TellStick and Linux

I got a Tellstick [http://www.telldus.se] for Christmas together with some Nexa remote controllers for the lighting at home. I knew that this type of project needed to be started immediately or else it would just loose it self in a drawer somewhere. So I added some tasks

AppEngine

YubNub command to go to Python documentation for Google AppEngine

I just created the YubNub [http://www.yubnub.org/] command: pygae [http://yubnub.org/kernel/man?args=pygae] It just opens the python documentation for Google AppEngine. Unfortunately the search for AppEngine docs searches both Java and Python, so this just goes direct to the documentation.

AppEngine

New AppEngine SDK 1.4.0

Apparently there is a new SDK out tonight [http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/12/happy-holidays-from-app-engine-team-140.html] ! It’s version 1.4.0. I had to mention it because apart from the really interesting Channel API there is a new “Always on feature” which, even though it costs money is a

Books

Review: The Power of Pull

I recently finished reading The Power of Pull [http://www.facebook.com/powerofpull] a book describing how the world-wide adoption of the Internet is changing how we generate value as individuals and in organizations. The pull that the book talks about is a different kind of pull than what I’

People

A pull process

While reading The Power Of Pull, [http://www.amazon.com/Power-Pull-Smartly-Things-Motion/dp/0465019358] I came to think about push and pull processes. Now the definition of these is not the same as a push or pull process as used in that of lean processes, instead here a pull process regards

Design

Bananas!

During Android Only [http://swdc-central.com/androidonly/index.html] Erik Hellman from Sony Ericsson explained how they create their Android Phones. During his talk he mentioned that they put all phones through a monkey test. Where a phone has to sit for days with random input on the phone, without

Android

Refactoring of logging rules

I’ve been working on a logging system for RemoteX Applications, the system is going Live any day now. (In fact since this post will be scheduled it might already have). So I started out doing the code as straight forward as possible, but it quickly started to nest if-statements

Making errors easy to fix

As we start developing services to be hosted in a cloud like system, things change in how you manage your service. What happens when an error occur on a remote system? Can you log on to the system to collect all necessary information to correct the error in your development

js-analytics

Added free trial to JS-Analytics

Just as the title says I added an automatic free 30 day trial for new projects created in JS-Analytics [http://www.js-analytics.com]. Feel free to play around and any feedback is appreciated.

AppEngine

Rolling back failed AppEngine deploys in Hudson

In a previous post [https://www.morkeleb.com/2010/09/13/setting-up-ci-on-hudson-for-python-based-appengine-apps/] I mentioned how to set up a build that deployed to AppEngine using Hudson. I’ve been using such a build for a while for JS-Analytics [http://www.js-analytics.com] but its frustrating when the deploy operation fails

UI

Some companies have the same look and feel

Sometimes its hard to spot the difference [https://www.morkeleb.com/img/Somecompanieshavethesamelookandfeel_78B6/image_3.png]

Books

Stress and TDD

In Blink the author describes that there is an optimum peak of performance in regards to stress. What happens after that peak is reduced performance, inability to act on details and tunnel-vision so on. In programming this means we will see the end goal, often the finished functionality according to

AppEngine

Setting up CI on Hudson for Python based AppEngine apps

This post describes how I for JS-Analytics [http://www.js-analytics.com] use a Hudson build server for Continues Integration, publishing to Google AppEngine on successful builds. The build currently does just two things: * It runs all my unit-tests and calculate code coverage on them. This step is to ensure that

entrepreneur

On selling

I had a great discussion earlier. In essence we moved all around the field, but just before it ended we discussed the topic of selling. My father always said he is surprised that I am working with Software Development, he always thought I’d work in a more selling role.

Books

Blink

I recently finished reading Blink. It’s about how we are programmed to make quick decisions. The driving force behind prejudices, but also our inherited ability to make quick and accurate decisions. It’s funny, the book was mentioned in an episode of “In treatment”, and 60 seconds later I

Books

Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

I finished reading Agile Testing, on the recommendation of Mary Poppendick. It’s a thick book, and it took me longer to read than I originally thought it would. I found it too long, to be honest. It covers both testing and agile principles. For me a better fit would

Google

Specifying tests

The latest post [http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2010/08/test-driven-code-review.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/RLXA+(Google+Testing+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher] on the Google Testing blog is quite interesting. Philip Zembrod discusses the readability of code developed by TDD and found that

Shuffle

Synchronizing Tasks in Shuffle

As of the writing of this blog post there I’m finalizing the last part of how the new synchronization. The changes to Shuffle is that we introduce a hidden state for Tasks, Contexts and Projects. Hidden entities are in essence deleted, but the state is maintained even when it’

AppEngine

Testing on Google AppEngine (Python SDK)

Testing in Python and Django is pretty straight forward. However I wanted to write tests that assert email sending, URL fetching and other external sources. Making sure the intended code is executed and allowing me to write fuller tests. These external actions are accessed through Google’s API, and there

MSBuild

MSBuild fails to compile WPF with: error MC2000: Unkown build error '…' does not have an implementation

My initial solution in this post was WRONG, it just changed the compile order of our build which made the error occur later after other issues were resolved. I’ve updated the post accordingly. I’m sorry if anyone had to read this post twice. We have been struggling with

Books

The Checklist manifesto

[https://www.morkeleb.com/wp-content/image33.png]When Mary and Tom Poppendick was in Stockholm a few weeks ago, Mary recommended the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. And now I finished reading it. In general it was a good read. Since it’s American it tends not to be very

Thoughts

On Google-TV

It hit me last night that Google’s move into the TV-market has a significant meaning to where the Internet is heading. I work with distributed systems, flaky connections and clients capable of being online to collect data to then take it offline. Most clients work with the assumption, you

Telerik

Localizing Telerik components

We’re using Telerik [http://www.telerik.com/] components in some of our software at RemoteX. Telerik components are localized using resx-files, but we don’t use resx-files so we need the localization to work with our system. So this is how to do it: First we create a ResourceManager

rant

Warning rant: Programs that set search-provider and default homepage

Seriously! It was frowned upon in the 90s, and major software providers are still doing it? I recently had to reinstall my system since my Visual Studio likes conflicting with itself. It seems like I’m re-installing Windows every 2-3 months with this rate. (alright, it’s measured on a

Design

Working at the right level of abstraction

At RemoteX [http://www.remotex.com] we have been a bit unhappy with the code produced to create our REST-service using WCF. The problem is that you have these contracts that you specify. These contracts then build up a web-service end-point using the WebGet and similar attributes, to create a