The collected works of PymbleSoftware - Page 12

I've been doing a few days worth of work at a local university...


Doing anything with your parents as a teenager is pretty un cool teenagers want their space.

@Guardian.. More programmers today you say... more poser, want-to-be, tech heads who act like they know everything but actually know absolutely nothing and have no skills in anything behind them...I am shocked by kids today, I've been practically worshipped for doing little to nothing on a cake-walk project which is "far too difficult" for the current crop of grads... who say "rah-rah, yay-yay, I'm awesome"... first slight hurdle or the rubber hits the road and rah-rah I'm awesome becomes "way-wah everything sucks". They expect to press a single button and the code just rolls out magically all around them.
Lots and lots more "programmers" ... so few people actually able to write code.

Back in the day, I knew very little but probably enough to keep my mouth shut except to ask stuff like... "You mean you wrote your entire O/S from scratch and burnt it in an eeprom"..? and ... "what do you meant you'll just just code it in your head in hex and dump it straight to disk and attempt to boot it"... People who coded in binary or hex... did maths in different bases.. programmed mostly in solder... those guys were legends and very made little noise about stuff. People who thought my C= 64 was cute and much simpler than designing their machines from scratch just to track satellites or intercept HF radio fax...for fun..

@SAQ teaching Java to kids should be considered child abuse.
[/rant]


R

Compared to universities here, I am impressed, I've had a MSc grad tell me he'd never been lower level than the JVM and grads who can't write 5 lines of perl..
... and these are the kids that are not out-sourcing their homework...

R.

Sorry you are seeing this ugliness...


. http://getfirebug.com/

http://jquerymobile.com/



R.

Pull the boards out, do re-config then put the boards in anti-static bags and sell them to someone who actually wants them? (not me I have enough FC here)

You can connect the two Tezros to the same array, (or arrays using fibre switch such as a Brocade) and with CXFS software read and write to the same disks.

FibreChannel is sort of like SCSI... a bus for devices, if you want a communications system, you want something more like Gbit Ethernet.


R.

1). http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Kernel_Rebuild
2). http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/CXFS

I can't wait for your reaction to Windoze8.



R.

Not specifically unless there is a really compelling reason and I don't see any features that the iPad3 doesn't have.
One thing I am confused about is the other iPad released at the same time... The specifications seem to be the same as an iPad3 but with the iPhone5 dock connector. The media called it an iPad4.. but what is the difference..?
I haven't seen anything in the documentation or developer site that tells me I have to code differently for the iPad mini as far as I have stumbled across so far...
I have one function that tells me the device from an ioctrl() or sysioctl() or something... iPhone3GS, iPhone 4S, iPad2 (Wifi), etc ... So that might want to be updated for the iPad mini but otherwise...
I bought an iPad2 because my end users said they had issues on the iPad2 that weren't evident on the iPad3. Turns out not to be the case and it was on special anyway...
Dr Wife is talking about learning Objective-C now ... but then I have lots and lots of things to code for already some help might be nice. If it was help.

If you are still running on an iPad1 then do you see the apps in the app store that end in (HD)... Those are retina specific and higher resolution so
Can you run iOS6 on an iPad1...? If not then no Siri...love it or loath it.... You'd get sharper clearer images on a Retina display than on an iPad1.

The only question I would ask myself is "am I feeling rich?"... Yes, then blow some money on a new toy... Otherwise I don't need it, unless its for work or something.

I'd consider an Android but I already have an Android tablet and I really really hate Java unless there is real money in it..

R.

So you have met the Australian PM then..
Its pronounces Ju-liar around here.

R.

If you touch type well enough it shouldn't matter. I've been handed a blank keyboard and been able to admin a system from it.


R.

I've seen a few Microsoft Surface ads on TV recently and the first few I saw, I thought what were they selling a car? Home-wares? What?
Newspaper web sites have Microsoft surface ads all over them... I went to a retail store and people were standing around the Windows8 products like zombies.. although I didn't see anyone camp outside in the cold like they do for Apple products..

I had a look at Google trends with the keywords, Window8, Android and iOS and what is really interesting is that Windows8 is big in Japan and China.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... oid,%20ios

Now I am thinking...I should do Windows8 apps in Chinese and Japanese..? Then I get confused by the Microsoft crap WindowsRT on surface vs Windows8..What is a free SDK and what you could actually do with it compared to why you would want to buy Visual Studio 2012...for an arm and a leg... and maybe your first born if you want extras... and hear rumors about the Windows Market place such as...

http://themissingbit.blogspot.com.au/20 ... p-try.html
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12 ... dows-store

... and I've been burnt by MSFT several times before and then all the history with Zune and other failures...

Makes me wonder should I crank out iOS apps like a crazed ferret on acid or diversify... and reuse resources like icons, background image files, etc... and do Android (with its rampant piracy, multiple app stores and other issues...) and Windows8 versions...

I worked for Samsung and I was a bada expert teaching people how to code for bada and these days no one has even heard of bada. Heck I was even approached to write a book on it which I ended up self publishing.

The main question here is... Am I going to miss the boat or are these other platforms dead-end distractions and the money is in the Apple app store....?

R.

You are probably right on most of the points.. That first link is something called Google trends... ( http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q= ... oid,%20ios )
Data on searches for "Windows8, Android, iOS" ... go down to the bottom of the page and there is a graph "by region"... Japan is a much darker blue than China so they have probably searched for it more in Japan and I didn't see much pirate software in Japan compared to elsewhere in Asia where it is rampant..

I am going to try selling 60Y apps in Japanese and see if anyone buy them... Still thinking about platforms to sell on though..

R.

mee-too maybe, no, not quite... useful and novel function maybe, no, not quite... Yes, I am trying to make a few extra $$$ and gain marketable skills... If I get say a dozen apps into the app store and I learn about polishing things and marketing and stuff then maybe I can do freelance work for companies that want an app for their products and services, failing that if I reply to a job ad for iOS developers the recruiter says... how many app do you have in the app store...A good answer to that usually gets you a lot further in the recruitment process..

I am not giving people what they need or want... I've been giving them what they ask for... CryWhy was Dr Wife's idea... Cricket Score Sheet was a recruiters idea. The recruiter wanted something that looked like the real score sheets they use to score club matches and children's games. I hate and loath and despise Cricket, I ended up playing cricket in school for a semester when I did the windsurfing sports elective too many times in a row and they demanded I pick something else. Cricket at an international level is boring and stupid, test matches go for 5 days and the result can be indeterminate after 5 days or can be decided pretty much by the second day... it is just like baseball with a bucket full of valium. Thus I don't know the rules that well besides growing up in a culture that plays the game.

I love unsolicited app ideas from friends, co-workers and acquaintances.



My interest with CryWhy also is with audio matching... Most people have heard of Shazam. I can do FFTs and stuff but the libraries I have used suck.. (Chromaprint) I have been was looking for a better way for generating spectrograms and pattern matching...

Cricket sells. CryWhy doesn't.. Strange that.



I don't ... I put a feedback button so that users tell me what they want. I don't decide anything. I don't even like it. If possible I try to get users to design things.



Most universities have clauses like that... BSD has a copyright the regents of the university of California, Berkley all over it.. There was a campaign "Free the Berkley devil" or something like that in the 1990s.
I've known people who claim their PhD thesis would slay Google but they are working this dumb-ass dead end job because the university won't let them commercialize it..





I got sucked into bada because I thought it might be the next thing coming. I am often wrong, I though hype around WWW would last about 6 months when I first saw a web browser.



I have met two guys who absolutely worship Gates, MSFT and Redmond. One of them was a colleague a poker machine company and he is convinced that Apple is dead in the water. I'm still trying to figure it out. I've seen a lot of people looking like lemmings or zombies hovering around the Windows8 displays at an electronics retailer, but I guess that means absolutely nothing.



I am trying to figure things out... I am looking at an Ad version of another app and a paid version. Revenue off ads, annoy users enough they might actually buy the paid version without ads. Localization, marketing strategies, etc... Its a puzzle. What I think will sell like hot cakes doesn't... What I try but don't expect to sell especially well actually does. I know nothing but the market and end users know everything.. if only they would tell me.


R.

One word: cool.



Version 1.4 will have that and some other features that users have requested.. The email and twitter stuff works well so far.
It makes about $3 a day or maybe a little less, by my calculations so I am not going to retire on it.

R.

If you have a machine that boots from a USB stick you can run it off that. I have a dedicated machine for it and another I run of a IUSB stick and I think I've got a VirtualBox or VMware image of it somewhere which is what most people use.. I was a programmer for it. I wrote an article about it and a ray tracer for it. It is really nice to program for it but if you code for BeOS. Haiku or whatever generally no one uses it and even less care.


R.

Nice, I'm impressed.

I used a similar thing "Baby/34" System/34 emulator for JCL and RPG-II at Control Data way back when.

R.

I actually like 4dwm and I love Gnome on my (CUDA devel) Intel Linux box and all my Suns.. v440, Balde 1500, etc. I run IRIX for IRIX features and I don't need to turn it into a Linux clone, just because I can. But to each their own. Have fun with that. I already have thousands of lines of over due code to complete this week anyway.


R.

I might check it out one day when I have some time..
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2338


Anyone else play with RISCOS on the RPi and have comments...??
What is RISCOS like to program on..?

Since it also originated from Cambridge in the in 1980s does it has any philosophical roots in common with Tripos/AmigaOS

R.

Read something they might be going for ARM Even on the desktop..
Where will it end...

R.

I am rapidly developing better Objective-C skills..
I know this because I look back at 3 month old code and shudder and want to rewrite it better.

I have periods of having a lot of fun with it, but I have tripped over my own feet a lot in the mean time.

Every day I am learning so much more with it.
I would like to play with BCPL or RISCOS or something but no time anymore.

R.

SMH picked up the story from Bloomberg. I am sure everyone has their own views on it.
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-i ... 28xat.html


R.

Didn't seem relaxed to me, I am a licensed pilot (private). In flight school they said its not the impact of the crash that kills the pilot, its the mountain of paperwork that crushes them. I've worked on a military flight simulator and it seemed pretty much punch in some way point data into a CDU and let the APs fly the jet for you while you sort out hours of paperwork, rules and regulations.



Today equivalent of a high school rock band in the 1990s.

R.

I haven't played any form of quake on the SGIs in years but I remember the sky looking bad too. I wonder if it is everyones experience or there might be certain hardware that it runs better on.

I'd fire up a quad 1 GHz Tezro and run quake on it but I'm suposed to be coding.

R.

Not sure if I entirely agree with this.... When I first got interested in Objective-C I started doing OS-X and iOS related stuff but then I started exploring the O-O aspects of it on Linux, I created frameworks, categories, protocols, delegates testing if objects supported certain selectors, etc ... in text based Linux projects just for kicks. You could even do Objective-C stuff on IRIX if you so cared. Its just GCC and later, LLVM.

I am quite happy to work in client server stuff and be coding simultaneously in JavaScript using AJAX stuff, PHP, C/C++,, perl and whatever else is at hand or is called for. You could use Objective-C on platforms other than OS-X and iOS or NeXTstep but you probably wouldn't. For big data stuff I worked in Java, Hadoop, etc I didn't like it much. I've never found the time to learn clojure or install OpenStep. Functional stuff we did at university was in Haskell, gofer, and maybe a little ML or Scheme. Paraell stuff I did was mainly pthreads, PVM, MPI, and they blew up the transputers before I got a chance to learn Occam.



To each their own. I just completed 5 entire projects in notepad, forbidden, verboten, absolutely no access to test data or the databases, had to email the code for someone else to test, I had to run in my head thoroughly before emailing any changes. IDEs are a crutch.

R.

Soliciting software piracy is against the forum rules. However, I am sure that there are lots of keygens and cracks out there. Try googling "Tecplot crack" and "Tecplot keygen".


R.

Is anyone here into Baseball, and by into Baseball, I mean enough to coach and keep big paper score sheets of their kids games?

I wrote an iPad app (1a) to generate score sheets, I put a feedback button into it, people press it occasionally put in random text and click send.
Otherwise I get zero complaints from the app and about half the down-loaders (1b) updated to version 1.1.
I have written a perfect bug free app or people really really don't get it and update it just for the sake it.
I sell another app for $0.99 cents and people howl about some relatively minor obscure aspect of it like it was the end of the world.
I could put pinch zoom type stuff in it the app or other features but no one seems to want any extra features for it or have any complaints about it, so should I bother, or should I go write another lame pacman clone..



R.

1a. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/basebal ... ?ls=1&mt=8
1b. From USA, Korea and Japan.

Version 6.5.22 is the minimum requirement for nekoware.

A list of all features of each version can be found here on our very own wiki:

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/IRIX_version_6.5

When upgrading from 6.5.13 to 6.5.22 or later you need to install patch 5086 first.. http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Patch_5086

R.

No, the patch is only required for updates.

Don't wipe the drive. I'd pull the drive an put a new blank drive in. The old drive might have software on it that you might want to be able to go back to, Maya, LightWave, Mips Pro, Pro/E or something...

R.

The wiki has a How To section.

Just a thought.

R.

Samsung Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note II

Disclaimer - I used to work for Samsung teaching people how to write apps for Samsung's bada platform, I even wrote a book on it.

I don't like Java but a lot of people do, and Android I suspect is where most people are headed. Generally I like Samsung products, and inside the company there is one word I would describe the company: ernest. They don't always get things right, are not always best of category, but they put 100% behind everything they attempt.

recent marriage between Nokia and Windows..?

I have very grave misgivings about Windows Phone 8...

I am toying around with Visual Studio 12 Windows Phone 8. Its clunky, trying to port even just one of my simplest apps makes me pine for MFC at the best of times and want to take hostages at worst of times. The Nokia Lumia 820 and 920 have very very pretty cases (I'd like a yellow one), a certain amount of IT people are lemmings and thus I suspect some people will buy it just because it is Windows (and some people (especially Linux fanbois) won't buy it just because it is Windows). I just got a shinny new Samsung laptop and Windows8 Pro is almost unusable on it. Moving the mouse cursor on the trackpad too quickly and it interprets it as a swipe between applications and thus you get sick of accidentally switching between applications when you don't intend to do so.
The sample apps in the Windows Phone 8 look really ugly and the samples and SDK documentation is full of BS marketing spiel, I just want to know what parameters to pass to a method, not wade through a lot of BS about leveraging partnerships. The people at the Windows Phone 8 Seminar don't always strike me as the sharpest tools in the shed either....

There seems no built in support for social network stuff in Windows Phone 8. Sit in a cafe or on public transport and stop and watch people, they are all sending text messages, on Facebook, tweeting or whatever, to do that on Windows Phone 8, I'd have to pretend to be a web browser, send http requests to facebook or twitter, or weibo or whatever, you are talking probably thousands and thousands of lines of code to do that. By way of contrast, for a laugh, I did a Augmented Reality app(*) on iOS (iPad and iPhone), the wife suggested it on Tuesday after breakfast, I did the graphics in GIMP and Maya on Tuesday, coded camera stuff on Wednesday and Thursday, copied a selector (a Objective-C method) containing about 10 lines of code for the HUD picker for facebook, twitter, email, etc.. Friday took care of the child while Dr Wife went in to deal with students, Saturday debugging, Sunday released, Monday went into the app store. 6 days, I am now two days into porting an app to Windows Phone 8 and I am having to dig around in xaml and UriMapper just to switch between two forms in an app. Its convoluted, tedious, confusing...
The live tiles thing is kinda cutesy but generally working in the Windows Phone 8 platform on a daily basis would probably make people want to jump off a bridge or something... I talk to people in phone shops and when I mention Windows Phone 8, they tend to give me a "are you mad?" look and seem to want to sell an Android or Apple device..


R.

* InstaElf, ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instael ... ?ls=1&mt=8 ) ( http://www.pymblesoftware.com/Apps/iOS/InstaElf/ ) you hold the iPhone or iPad up at someone, position their face under the overlaid Santa hat and push a big red button and a HUD display comes up with a choice of Facebook, Twitter, or email and their image plus a Santa hat over the top is ready to share on any of the social networks.

um, okay.

R.

Actually it is tomorrow here and we don't get SNL here at all, Conan, Craig Ferguson, Letterman, The Drew Carey show, Whose line is it anyway, Family Guy Simpsons, Cleveland Brown, Bob Burgers, etc, but SNL, it doesn't exist here. We almost never see West Coast NFL games (go 49ers!) unless they are away games at an East Coast team. No ice hockey unless on cable. We do get F1, Nascar and basket ball.

I'd be more likely coding or out to dinner or something than watching TV anyway. I have 5 iOS apps in the store now under PymbleSoftware and I am starting to look at Windows Phone 8 and Android.

R.

If you have a valid support contract at mega bucks level they will create a patch, not a service pack. I was stepping through MSFT source code in Japan that my boss had access to via a VPN back to Redmond, and they had a patch specific for a NZ company that was causing problems with our device driver code.

R.

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2011-04-01.html

R.

I just got a phone call from Symantec on behalf of Microsoft, my Windows Phone developer account will be ready in 48 hours, they found my details matched on the government registration of companies (called ASIC here, sort of like the SEC, in the USA), everything else checks out.

A friend of mine from days when I was developing poker machines, ported an iPhone App to Windows phone, the Microsoft trainers scowled and said that it looked very iOS like. He said the client wanted consistency, my app looks too shiny iOS-ish for Windows Phone. The live tiles, as you say, fisher-price look is something they are pushing, especially at developer training. I get the feeling Windows Server 2012 is dumbed down too. They are really pushing this customized dashboard with constant updating live tiles thing.. You get used to it after a while...

I think Apple get 15,000 app submissions per week and have something like 700,000 apps in the app store, Android is probably way beyond that, even Windows Phone has something like 200,000 or 300,000 apps in their store, already and the Microsoft surface and Nokia Lumia 820s and 920s are selling at a rate faster than iPad and iPhone did when they first came out. I don't think it really matters which platform you choose. There is lots and lots of stuff to play with, more than most people would ever want.

One of the features missing in Apple devices that I like in the bada (Wave II and Wave 725), Windows Phone and Android phones is that some of them have an FM radio built-in to the device. I like to go some where, do some consulting, listen to my preferred classical music station ( http://www.abc.net.au/classic/ ) on the phone while I hack away at the clients code, channel surf through the commercial stations for traffic reports just before leaving for the day.

Sometimes you look at categories, reflection or something in the code and think that is really beautiful and elegant and other times Xcode crashes several times on the same day because you have too much open and you only have 8Gb RAM in the Mac and you get lost in some sub option of some sub option of something in Visual Studio 2012 with a real WTF..? moment and Eclipse with the Android ADT just feels like a clunky hack and some really weird stuff happens sometimes and you have to dig to find out what it decided to "fix" for you mysteriously and secretly in the background... They all suck are great.

If I had a choice I'd like an Apple iPhone 5, an Android Samsung Galaxy SIII or a Windows Phone Nokia Lumina 920. My views are entirely biased on who I've worked for and who has given great freebies at developer conferences. The HTC H8S is a pretty cheap Windows Phone 8 device.

I'd like to get at least a few apps out on Android, iOS and Windows Phone into the respective apps stores by the end of the month. I'll happily code on anything if someone pays me... Coding on Haiku for fun would be nice if I can find the time...


R.

Mariage and children, you'll barely have time to touch an SGI ever again..

R.