Owner: IT Werkz Sometimes URL:http://itwerkzsometimes.com Join Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:29:11 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The joys of boothing software around the park before letting the hapless user have a look at it Site statistics:Click here
Solutions providers systems that go dead 2007-03-13 21:48:25 A friend of mine who I have known for about 3 or 4 years is also in IT. Whereas I work at the end of a project testing software he works at the other end of the project life cycle as a business analyst. And jolly hard he works to. He’s currently working on a couple of projects in Europe and visits the clients to find out the system requirements. Then his job is to determine which of these requirements his company already has software for, or might need some slight tweaking, and which requirements need his company to write software for from the ground up. In all cases trunkloads of documentation is created and sooner or later a programmer gets involved. This is very intensive work.
We talk about our different projects sometimes and I have to admit that quite often when I talk IT with him I can barely map what he talks about to what I do in IT. He’s even tried to get me on-board a couple of his projects but I’ve got a feeling that I just wouldn’t fit and th
Wordpress plugins and a very confusing book 2007-03-13 11:49:44 Tried a few plugins for wordpress blogs in an attempt to replicate this blog. Seems quite straightforward. Find plugin, download it, unzip it, FTP it to the plugins folder on the server and go to the plugins page on Wordpress
and activate it.
Tried a few and a couple worked and a couple failed miserably. I don’t think I was attempting anything too adventurous just a hit counter. No doubt I wasn’t ’running it right’. Will try more later. I’m going to have fun with this.
The book I have been using is just too confusing. Now I have no doubt that the writer is an expert in the Wordpress world but the distinctions in the book for the processing of Wordpress.com blogs, hosted blogs and own hosted blogs are not clear at all. The section on servers was interesting but sent me down a few dead ends. It gave me the impression that I needed to install both Apache and MySQL which I duly did.
Wrong, you only need to do that if you are running your own server. If yo
Software nearly worked OK 2007-03-12 21:52:24 At last we are making some headway with the software at work. The transfer of data from one server to another not-connected server, given a following wind, providing you are going downhill, did just work. I think everyone is a bit surprised.
The transfer of data between servers, when live, will be via CD or DVD but as we don’t yet have the CD/DVD writing software we were able set up a couple of servers on the same box. Therefore when the data had been issued I checked the files were OK and Unix copied them to the other server. What was supposed to then happen was that a cron job, which checks for these files existence every 5 minutes, was to pick up the data file and unpack it into another format. Needless to say after 10 minutes squat had occurred. The cron job was looking for a tar file and what it got and decided to ignore was a TAR file. Amended file name and the file was picked up and unpacked, though did collapse under its weight when it was supposed to send out an email Read more:Software
, worked
Got the full version of Wordpress working 2007-03-12 12:30:29 Yup finally got the full version
of Wordpressworking
on the server. Exported this blog to an XML file and imported it back into the new version. Oddly when I was looking at the Wordpress area for importing from other blogs I don’t remember seeing an option for importing a blog hosted at wordpress.com itself. There was an option for an RSS feed so I fed it the XML export file.
The import thrashed around for a couple of minutes and finally told me it had successfully imported everything. The good news was that all of these entries were successfully imported along with the pictures. The bad news was that, and I’m sure it was my fault somewhere, every picture was also imported as a separate blog entry, all of the comments were lost as were the categories. Worse still was that every entry, including all of the dud entries for the separate pictures were given unique categories, all being blank, a total of about 500.
Removed all of the picture entries easilyy enough, created the
Live Onecare loses own antivirus and a new kernel in SP1 2007-03-08 12:07:59 I have Windows Live Onecare on all three of my machines. One of them a Vista running laptop I hadn’t turned on for about 10 days, till yesterday.
Onecare started when Vista starts and it had a look around to see what the state of the machines security is. And guess what? It told me I didn’t have an antivirus and suggested I connected to the internet to get one.
Eh. Onecare is an antivirus application as well as antispyware and antiphishing and lord knows what else not-very-well-tested additional functionality. So Onecare effectively lost track of some parts of itself. What is it with Microsoft, they’re definitely getting worse.
[digg=http://digg.com/software/Live_Onecare_loses_own_antivirus_and_a_new_kernel
_in_SP1]
Rebooted machine and Onecare this time found its own antivirus and gave me a clean bill of health. Which is more than I can say for Onecare.
Paul Thurrott reckons Vista SP1 will come with a new kernel. That sounds like an operating system upgrade not a
Installing the full Wordpress software - stop 2007-03-08 11:14:46 I was trying to install the full version of Wordpress
on the new hosted server over the weekend and managed to make some sense of the documentation before coming to a shuddering halt on Monday.
I had FTP’d the Wordpress software to the server but would the install.php file execute on the server. Not a chance. Trying to run it confused the server which refused to interpret the php file so instead tried to download it to my machine. Had a look in the file yesterday with Notepad and noticed it, and all of the other php files on the server, had odd looking formatting effectors in them and all of the carriage returns and line feeds were missing. No wonder I was having problems.
Unzipped the wordpress download file again, and again all of the php files had formatting effectors in them. At least that proved it wasn’t a bit of stupidity on my behalf where I may have opened the file in word or some other idiocy (That’s a nice change. Ed).
Will have another search for Wordpress
Agile development, programmers nirvana 2007-03-07 11:49:55 Boy do they do Agile
development here. Incremental releases all over the place. Changes to requirements coded at the drop of a hat. They do Scrum too. Quick little chatty meetings, ‘you finished that code you were going to write yesterday?’, ’can you do that amendment by tomorrow?’. This is developers heaven.
Not that anybody on the development team knows they are doing Agile. They almost certainly haven’t even heard of it. Scrum? That’s a rugby thing, right? No this is development from 20 years ago which just sounds like Agile and Scrum.
When a program has got some unexpected features then the documentation is amended to justify these features. Even though it’s baselined. They find an excuse to review the baselined document and make all sorts of amendments to justify all of the odd behaviours. Not that they will let you know that the documentation has been changed. In fact that’s the last thing they want, you kept in the loop. No it&r Read more:Agile development
Vista’s shelf life of 5 years, Wow 2007-03-07 09:30:09 According to Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott Microsoft will only be supporting the domestic version of Vista
for 5 years.
Aren’t they going to keep supporting XP for that same period too? Therefore nobody has to upgrade to, the barely working, Vista and we can all stick with XP till Microsoft’s next attempt at an Operating System is unleashed and no doubt trashed, providing their PC’s last that long.
Paul Thurrott also said recently that Vienna, the next one, will be shipping in about 18 months. Well that’s a nail firmly battered into the coffin of Vista.
Reverse engineering a bug into a feature, honest 2007-03-06 20:29:25 Just found a nasty bug in the software I am testing currently. It’s an option for a user to move stock from one place to another place. The ‘From’ and ‘To’ locations are selected via list box’s. Whilst doing a bit of ‘exploratory testing’ I found that I could set both the ‘From’ and ‘To’ locations to the same address, which is a bit dumb. The ‘To’ variable should display valid locations apart from the ‘From’ location which would stop any prospective daft processing.
Saw the programmer about this and at first he agreed but then he thought about it some more. And these guys have been getting away with not fixing bugs for years because instead they talk about the defect and talk and talk and talk and eventually manage to convince themselves that it was working correctly in the first place. I was having none of that.
The export and import of data is a 2 stage process. In the first process the & Read more:Reverse
, engineering
, feature
, honest
Latest podcast listening pleasure - Perl 2007-03-06 12:57:12 Have started listening to a Perl programming language podcast and it’s good. I do find that listening to several podcasts on the same subject over a period of time does, just, start to give you an in-site into their world. So for the next couple of weeks I’ll hoover up all the Perl podcasts I can.
It’s also interesting hearing these developers attitudes to other programming languages or development platforms. The Perl guy was having a go at Java weenies and how bored he was at a Java conference. He also had a swipe at the Python people as being ’way too serious’. Interesting.
Also some Perl people are worried about the popularity and success stories of the PHP people and how he thought that in 5 years they would have caught up with the Perl worlds environment.
The .NET 3.0 guys are always having a swipe at the Java guys too. I’m sure if I listened to enough podcasts on enough diverse platforms I’ll be convinced the IT world was at war. Won Read more:listening pleasure
Installing Wordpress on a hosting server 2007-03-06 09:48:50 Installing Wordpress
on the server
is turning out quite fun. Not helped by reading a book which in the same chapter describes the setting and usage up of the basic Wordpress blog software on wordpress.com as well as the setting up and installing of Wordpress on a hosting server
or your own server. And that’s a big ‘or’. Plenty of opportunities for total confusion there.
I have got to the point of running install.php on the hosting server. I know the file is on the server and in the correct directory but it didn’t want to run for a while then when I eventually did get it to sit up and beg the page was not rendered well at all in IE7. In fact it was an un-holly mess. I tried running the same install.php on my home machine and got exactly the same badly rendered page. Hmm.. what I knew was missing on my home PC was there was no Apache web server running to interpret the PHP which justified why it was so badly rendered. But I got the same badly rendered page d
You’ll not get a business analyst for £500 per day…, and a proverb 2007-03-05 12:44:31 That’s what an agent told a hiring friend of mine the other day. Agents getting spinny again. This was for a contract business analyst
with only 1-2 years experience i.e. a junior position. Sounds like a lot of dinero to me.
When I reminded the hiring friend of mine that they’d just taken on a new contract business analyst with 20 years experience for less than what the agent said you would not get a junior person for, he blushed. Needless to say there was an email response to said agent. In the meantime there’s probably another company being sold the same person for in excess of the amount in the title. Give me strength.
If any agent reads this they’ll probably accuse me of trying to brake their business model. Not sure I’m trying to brake their business model, more that I’m just describing it and it stinks.
Ancient Chinese proverb:
If testing is the finding and removal of bugs from a system then programming must be the insertion of bugs into a sys
Getting Wordpress working on my hosting server, and ain’t that a barrel of laughs 2007-03-04 21:43:58 This isn’t for the squeemish. Signed up with a web hosting company, got a username and password and logged on. Stop.
Gee, what are all of these icons for. And there’s a lot of them. Did actually start a blog in an early attempt to mimic this one. Was displayed very few template options and which didn’t include the one I use for this blogg. Tried another template just to see what would happen. Imported the XML file that I’d exported from here and needless to say that didn’t work too good. The template that I did use didn’t include all of the tags for this page, none of those available did, so the import sort of squeezed the controls and text all over the place, most of the pictures were missing and all of the categories went west just for the helluvit.
Did a search for the template I use here, found one, downloaded it, unzipped it and FTP’d it up to my hosted server
. Still couldn’t find it when amending the blog. Phoned the helpdesk Read more:Wordpress
, working
, hosting server
Taking the plunge to host blog on ISP’s server 2007-03-02 12:02:10
Have been running this blog on wordpress.com for the past six months and now realise that this is a bit of a noddy way of running a blog. For a start I’m not able to use a lot of features that would be available to me if it was hosted on my ISP’s server
. Did a search for web hosting which resulted in a torrent of sites.
There were many very competitively priced in the US which were very tempting but if I had to phone up a support desk over there it could be costly. Found some UK hosting companies and they looked good but not quite as cheap. Phoned BT, my ISP, to see what they offered but when I mentioned databases they were a bit flummoxed. Obviously I rang the wrong person but with a company that size its almost inevitable. Got a feeling if I persevered that they’d want to sell me an eCommerce package and charge a lot more. Forget BT.
The SQL Server problems, where I said that it wasn’t completely un-installing itself from Vista has been made right by a r Read more:Taking
, plunge
Vista bugs on a PC with a low Experience Index score 2007-03-01 11:05:17 If you are running Vista
on a low Experience Index
scored PC and you start finding odd behaviours it must be tempting to assume that it’s because your PC is too weak. But as the Experience Index score is based on hardware and not software then this argument doesn’t really wash.
The Vista Experience Index is derived from 5 tests that check the processor, memory, graphics, gaming graphics (3D) and the data transfer rate of the primary hard disk. These scores, currently, range from 1 to 5.9 for each test. Your overall Experience Index score is the lowest hardware score you got for each of the 5 tests. So if your lowest score was 1 for the gaming graphics (3D) and your highest score was 4.2 for the processor then your overall Experience Index score would be 1.
If you can actually jam Vista on your PC then obviously it is Vista ready and should be able to run any normal application. Hmm.. what do I mean normal. Well in the above example with such a hopeless gaming grap
Having fun with Wordpress plug-ins 2007-03-15 10:52:16 I was looking for a hit counter plug-in for the version of this blog that I have started writing using the full version of Wordpress
at www.itwerkzsometimes.com (gee, why’d you call it that). I have tried several plug-ins and some work OK and others are hopeless. I installed a hit counter plug-into the sidebar.php file, which should display the hit count in the left-hand sidebar but instead, didn’t do that, but knocked out the right side bar completely. The file that generated the right side bar, right-sidebar.php still existed and I don’t think had been amended but I couldn’t be certain.
Don’t panic. As I hadn’t amended right-sidebar and therefore had nothing to lose I re FTP’d the right-sidebar.php file up to the server so if the site counter had trashed it in any way then that would freshen it up again. Did it work? No.
Removed the site counter code from sidebar.php (the left sidebar) and back comes the right hand side bar. I bet if I con Read more:Having
Dead projects in perpetual design hell 2007-03-16 11:45:04 I recently spoke of a friend of mine and his company where projects stall for various reasons. They have several projects on the go at the moment and their salesmen are getting lots more customers. This is obviously pleasing the brass but I’m not convinced they can deliver as they don’t appear to have the manpower. In fact they have more salesmen than they have people to populate some of their newer projects so heaven knows where those projects are going.
They are taking on staff at a rate of knots but getting them up to speed is taking time. They have even taken on some contractors, which is new to the company and also, unhelpfully, they are first time contractors. So the new contractors have to be told to get limited companies, get an accountant, register for VAT, how to invoice and what can they can claim as expenses. The company, who has never taken on any contractors before, don’t even know how to write out a contract yet. No doubt there will be a certain amount Read more:perpetual
, design
Moving blog to itwerkzsometimes.com 2007-03-19 10:35:52 Creating this blog on its own server hasn’t been too difficult but there were some issues. The import process knocked out all of the comments on these posts for a start. Also Clustrmaps, which like the hit count sites, are all domain specific so if I want Clustrmaps on the new site then it will depressingly start blank, as will the hit counts sites.
All of the posts that have been on Digg, and are still being pointed to from Digg will need to stay on the old blog and will never point to the new blog version. Of course all new entries that I get Digg to look at will be pointed to the new version so from now on that will switch. Maybe all entries on the old blog that aren’t pointed at by Digg can be deleted. Trouble is there are others pointers to some of these old entries can be found from Google and lord knows where else.
Lastly how do I get anyone who subscribes, via RSS, to resubscribe to the new blog. I think I have replicated all of the subscribe links and even displ Read more:Moving
Finding bugs and covering cracks 2007-03-20 10:49:51 The software I’m testing is working quite well though it’s not yet flawless. Performing two stock pushes consecutively of different stock to the same destination correctly resulted in 2 transfer files being created. The first one was processed OK but Oracle got itself confused and managed to delete the secondtransfer file. When I pointed this out to the developer he went straight on the defensive, which is OK, but did accuse me of deleting the second file. Eh. ‘So how do I do that?’. I was running his system. It was his system that generated the situation where the file was deleted. It’ll be easy enough for him to replicate that defect so we should see some work done on that.
Seems that some of the other issues I’ve spoken to him about are also being addresses. There was one where a report was being produced before the data processing had been completed and therefore was not 100% accurate. Where the transfer of data was OK then the report was Read more:covering
, cracks
Three new acronyms a day 2007-03-21 14:44:01
This is the first in an occasional series of my interpretation of 3 acronyms.
XHR: XMLHttpRequest, javascript and other scripting languages API to transfer XML data from a web server to a client using HTTP. An important part of AJAX. Without this Google maps would not have happened.
Reverse AJAX: Give me strength. For a start ‘Reverse’ isn’t an acronym. What this stuff does is, whereas AJAX goes to the server to get data to update the browser, with Reverse Ajax the communication is instigated from the server by pushing data to the client. Normal AJAX does a pull thing. So how does the server make communication with the browser. Not easily, as browsers only really listen for answers to questions they have asked. And of course there is the problem with firewalls. The first way is for the browser to poll often, like say every few seconds. The second way is for the server to load the data to the browser slowly, just to keep the channel open. Thirdly, there is the piggy Read more:Three
iTunes 7 crashing XP for a continuing glitch rich Windows experience 2007-03-21 10:43:21 XP has bluescreened on me twice in the last 3 days. The usual USB pointer message was displayed but I haven’t installed any USB device in ages. But both times I was running iTunes
. This time I was downloading about 50 podcasts so it was probably iTunes that knocked it over.
I am using the latest version of iTunes, version 7.1, which is still not reliable on Vista, and have noticed that when syncing the iPod that the syncing never finishes, the flashing ‘do not disconnect’ message starts displaying and just carries on displaying even when iTunes, as far as it goes, thinks it’s finished syncing. Nice to know that we can continue using XP and other software with a glitch
rich experience
.
When Apple finally get iTunes working with Vista and I’m downloading numerous podcasts and at the same time syncing iTunes with the iPod and at the same time running Excel with a macro to generate 500,000 data records, and also using bittorrent to download a couple of Read more:crashing
, Windows
Wordpress documentation and podcasts 2007-03-21 09:39:35
I’ve been wading through the Wordpress
online documentation and there is a lot of it. I always prefer reading that stuff on paper so printed a whole load off which didn’t format too good but was readable. It’s going to take me a couple of weeks to understand this well but then I’ll be able to trash this blog with experience on my side.
Subscribed to some Wordpress and Web design podcasts and started listening to some of them this morning. And was I underwhelmed. One of the Wordpress podcasts was recorded by a kid of about 14 and was predictably full of ‘awesomes’. He was full of it for all sorts of plug-ins and bits of javascript and even he admitted some of them weren’t easy to get going. I can just imagine all sorts of fumbling around necessary to get these things working and a net result of dissapointment. What he thought was great was not quite what I would think of as great. Anyway he was enthusiastic and he’s done well to record t
Not sure if moving over to wordpress.org is a great idea and other reasons to panic 2007-03-22 10:11:02 I finally found a half decent Wordpress podcast yesterday. It’s got some introductory music and two guys that seem clued up on all things Wordpress. Listened to 3 of their podcasts, and apart from the fact that one of the guys is far louder than the other, meaning that you have to turn up the volume so much that when the louder guy talks the speakers in the car doors almost rattle themselves to pieces, and that is a big fact, actually listening to them was quite illuminating. Also worrying. Though I have managed to replicate the look and feel of this blog pretty well, at least in my view, and everything seems to be going swimmingly, I’d imagine that as usual with computers I may be one click away from messing the whole thing up.
One of the things they mentioned was installing new versions of Wordpress.org and how it can be messy. Oh that old chestnut. I immediately came to a shuddering halt. So I move everything to the wordpress.org version of my blog, get subscribers mo Read more:great idea
A quality system full of bugs 2007-03-23 12:14:29 I worked on a Y2K project once where it was full of QA consultants. I’m not even sure what a QA person is anyway, it certainly isn’t anything to do with what I do which is to test software till it works. With the QA people, I wasn’t even convinced they had that much experience as they appeared to have better knowledge in other areas of business rather than IT. But then what do you expect. It was Y2K time and all companies were panicking a bit and taking on anybody to test software and paying way over the odds.
These QA guys did push out a hell of a lot of documentation regarding the generation of quality systems, and I mean a lot. But they were a bit reticent about actually testing any software i.e. they didn’t actually want to get their hands dirty. Now the cynic in me might say that they didn’t want to actually test software probably because they’d never actually done it before and maybe never actually worked in IT before and therefore didn’t
How do I cancel my subscription to Windows One Care? 2007-03-26 14:01:50 I heard this morning on Leo Laporte’s Windows
Weekly podcast that there are issues with Windows One Care. An attempt by Microsoft to provide some kind of security software that I have paid for. More fool me.
Currently on my Vista PC when it’s started One Care pops up and tells me it has amended my security settings as I am no longer connected to a network. This is the peer-to-peer network that I tried to get Vista to connect to and which resolutely fails. Obviously Vista thinks it was connected to the network or maybe even has nearly connected to the network. If the Vista pc hasn’t been turned on for a couple of weeks then One Care worryingly has reduced its perceived security level, to orange from green, as it finds that the virus checking files are a bit old and possibly out of date. So you get a nag window for that.
On my laptop which is also running Vista and doesn’t get switched on from one week to the next One Care, on start up, usually loses its own spywa
Vista on a Core 2 Duo = waste of space 2007-03-27 14:38:36 Got a Core 2 Duo with Vista
on it and I hardly use it. I actually prefer using my XP machine which desperately needs XP reinstalling on it.
The idea was to migrate all my apps and data from the XP machine to the Vista machine then I could tidy up the XP machine i.e. apply the recovery DVD to it, let that thrash about to its hearts content and see what’s left when its done. The trouble with this thinking is that Vista just looks so naff and is so barely usable that I can hardly be bothered to use it at all. I have little confidence that anything I install on it will work. The new version of iTunes is still flaky and there is a chance that when syncing if you get your keystrokes in the wrong order you could end up with a trashed iPod. Great.
What else doesn’t work, hmm.. let’s see. Usenet newsgroup readers: Just checked whether Newsbin Pro is compatible with Vista and its not. What about good old Forte Agent newsreader, nope.There is one called Usenet Explorer which Read more:waste
Installing iTunes 7.1 on Vista 2007-03-29 11:20:36 Had a go at installing iTunes
7.1.1 on Vista
and it appeared to work even though the Apple site doesn’t say it’s Vista compatible. Downloaded a podcast and played that back from beginning to end and that was OK. iTunes did a search and found some music that must have been on the PC when I bought it and added it to the library OK. Haven’t ripped a CD yet.
Downloaded the latest version of Forte Agent, which also didn’t say it was Vista compatible, and that installed OK. Pointed it at my news server, subscribed to a music newsgroup, downloaded the headers and then downloaded a single track, which played back OK. Got iTunes to import that track which it did OK and was able to play the track in iTunes.
Tried the Newsbin Pro newsgroup reader which downloaded and installed OK. Pointed that at the news server and subscribed to a couple of newsgroups. Tried to download the headers but nothing happened. Don’t know if that is a Vista induced problem, or a Newsbin p
Should I install iTunes on Vista? 2007-03-28 14:53:56 Somebody commented that maybe I should have a go at getting stuff to work on Vista
and I think he has a point. It’s all very well me claiming nothing works, which maybe right, but if I’m supposed to be such a wise-guy with software and computers then maybe I should try and get some stuff to work and post my success or failures here, if for no other reason than to save others any misery I may end up putting myself through.
First off, why don’t I download iTunes
7.1 and install
that and see if I can get that to work. Then load up a couple of usenet newsreaders like a very old version of Forte Agent and install that, and download the 15 day version of Newsbin Pro and install that. Point them both at my NNTP servers, download some music and import it into iTunes. Also try and subscribe to some podcasts. What can go wrong here?
I think I need an Apple ID to get iTunes and that is currently being used on the XP machine. Dunno what’ll happen if I try and use the sa
Newsreaders and a particularly virulent password cracker 2007-03-30 16:56:19 Tried Newsbin Pro again to see how it coped under Vista to get newsgroup headers and download attachments. The first newsgroup I tried had a huge number of headers to download and would have taken too long. Subscribed to a newsgroup with fewer headers, at.binaries.rubbish.music or something similar, it downloaded headers for a while and then fell over in a wobbly heap. Restarted Newsbin Pro and as it isn’t a registered version I have to enter the NNTP server name and login details each time Newsbin is started. Repeated the test with a different newsgroup with even fewer headers which this time it did complete. Downloaded an attached file and before it had finished Newsbin fell over again. If I can get a serial number for it and therefore all of the setup details will be saved then I’ll give it another shot.
The version of Forte Agent I installed, v4.1 or around that number was another trial version and as this appears to work I uninstalled that version and installed versio
Taking longer to test with QA Run than testing manually, eh 2007-03-30 16:54:53 We have a couple of guys here pounding the heart out of QA Run to regression test some applications. Till recently they were convinced they were doing system testing. Its taken them ages to get these scripts working but at last they do.
To manually regression test the application I have just been told takes 15 minutes which isn’t long and you would think if it can be manually regression tested so quickly then why bother spending lord knows how many weeks getting an automated test script to work. Dunno, doesn’t make much sense to me.
The automated test script also takes 2 hours to run. That’s 8 times longer than manually regression testing it. Daft. (I just hope no automatic test tool scripters read this nonsense coz they’ll hate it. Ed.)
Quote of the day
‘I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top’ an English Professor at Ohio University Read more:Taking