#34. The Google combo box and usability: how to forget the user

This is an old post that I had on my Hubpages account criticising Google Reader, and with Reader's disappearance I want to re-post again here instead of Hubpages.

What's happening in Google? They have forgotten users? Gmail and other products have been famous for letting users be as fast as possible with keyboard shortcuts but recently I have noticed that in some pages they are using some kind of custom combo box that does not fulfill those parameters.

In Google Reader if you want to search for a post in just one of your subscriptions you have to scroll down until you find it, until now you could press a key where the combo entry was its initial and the combo would scroll down until it finds it, as almost any combo box in any website. Scrolling down almost a thousand subscriptions to find one is not funny. I thought maybe they starting to forget Google Reader in favour of other products.

But today found out the same problem in the advanced search, trying to filter by country, wait...that's Google Search, the king's jewel, how can this be happening too? Maybe they are starting to forget us, maybe they are becoming the next Microsoft?

As some partners have said to me, maybe this change is due to tactile devices, as you may have seen on your mobile or tablet when touch a combo box it opens in a dialog and you don't have a keyboard so you have to scroll. I don't really know the reason, you can check the image.

#30. AppHarbor is the best hosting for beginning freelance .Net developers

AppHarbor is a cloud computing service where we can create web applications in .Net, those applications can be continuous integrated with our github or bitbucket repository. The service downloads our newest revision in the hooked repository and executes all tests in the solution before publishing the new revision.

AppHarbor is free of charge with some limitations, but with enough possibilities for starting freelancers, like me.

So, if you are starting your freelance career as a .Net developer you should check it out. I am just promoting as a satisfied user, nothing more.

For example the homepage of Wishlist Manager is hosted in AppHarbor.

#26. Keep working even with a failing video card, even with BSOD

Recently my video card, the more or less old 8800GT, is getting its last moments of glory. A few days ago could not run some games properly, they would fail unexpectedly, after trying other games to discard it was a  problem of a specific game the problems were getting more constant, and a few BSOD and graphic glitches appeared, as the weather was getting hotter.

Even reran the Windows Experience Index and got a 1.0 on my video card. So the problem was clear.

I was fast enough to get a new video card on amazon, the best video card for the money on a budget pocket, but meanwhile I was not able to get my system stable to work.
After trying underclocking the video card, the only method that got result was getting on safe mode, using the option with network I can work ok with a stable system, but no music ;).
Remember, after the bios messages and before the windows startup press F8 to get the "safe mode menu"

#25. For a less painful development

I was repairing a component that automatically historifies changes in datasets through an abstraction, found out some problems with wrong assumptions in a rushy development. As this code was not made by me, it felt like in this comic, and repairing the component give me the inspiration to take some guide patterns for future developments in our current project at work.

- make functions as test friendly as possible, decompose when you can
- use tests to assure you do not break anything and even it costs more, make tests that build the data they use, don't depend on a DB that may change in the future, so favor functions that receive simple data so they can be easily testable.
- favor composition over inheritance, it gets simpler to make a change of behaviour and extend it
- put code where should go, if you use an instance in a function too many times to access its fields maybe you should consider to put this function inside the class of the instance, if it is your code.

Follow these simple rules and you will be happier at your work also read Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, a must read.

#19. loaded pc, granola and blue screen of death

Recently I posted about my current workstation config, also some days ago I tried to re-use an old audigy card, after installing it my system became unstable with random hangs and even some times a BSOD with a internal power error. Of course, I removed it.
After removing it the random hangs stopped, but the general speed of the system had been lowering in the recent months. But I thought it was a typical problem of windows getting bloated with software and updates.
Today my pc had the same problems, constant random hangings and even BSODs after some time. I thought it was a hardware problem, SPU or motherboard fail probably. Looked the voltages into HWMonitor and found lower than normal voltages. I was desperate so I went into failsafe mode, and found that the system was stable and found that granola wasn't running, eureka! Went to bios and looked in hardware monitor it was more or less ok. So finally granola got uninstalled, problem resolved.
This is my experience today, probably it won't affect everybody but be cautious, I don't recommend granola for a workstation (sorry environment) as it probably will waste more of your time that savings it will get you. I'm sorry but I won't use it again. Remember to prioritize everything and your working tools should be as speedy as it can be.

#18. Renew TOR identity in python with vidalia bundle to automate worldwide testing of your website

First of all you need to have the Vidalia Bundle, and configure the torrc config file, find the value HashedControlPassword and uncomment it, next you need to create the hashed password, to do it, you can execute in a command line "tor --hash-password {pass}"
Copy the hash and save it in the config file. Restart Vidalia.
Taken this code from Moshe Basanchig, I've written this code wich authenticates against TOR:



Be careful, you should pass to the function the password you created the hash for, not the hashed string!. Also check out this book, it is a good and fast read:

#17. Data analysis in detail

If excel can’t satisfy your needs in data analysis you can have an online MySQL database ready in 2 minutes, create a DB in www.freesql.org and download the portable version of HeidiSQL. Two thumbs up!
Edit: After using freesql DB for a while found the limitation of 1600 operations....well now just one thumb up ;)

#15. new year resolutions

One of my new year’s resolutions was to increase my freelance profile. Last week I saw code52 webpage and got inspired, soon I’ll start something and I’ll try to rise my online activity, to get the attention of some possible clients.
Thanks also to Scott Hanselman who also today posted an example of simple freelancing. Thanks for the inspiration!

#14. My daily WTF

At work some days ago I received an incidence where a user complained about random crashes, doing some code review I found this:

#11. Comtrend 536+ auto disable/enable wifi

I’ve got the comtrend 536+ from "telefonica", as I have it connected all day, I want to disable wi-fi at night, for some good reasons. The idea is to access to the router with my linux home server, use a script to disable it at certain hours and enable it at others. I opened access through ssh with the router web interface, with this manual you can get a brief idea of some commands, combining nmap and ifconfig in the router we can create a script to automatize this process.
In some days I’ll post the script if it works correctly for anyone to use it.

#10. Current desktop configuration

Q6600 @ 2.71GHz stock voltage
P5KC Motherboard 1203
RAM 2GB 1GHz 2.3v KHX8500 -> Should be @ 1066MHz but the system gets unstable, if anyone has achieved please leave a message. Thx!
XFX 8800GT
W7 64bits
I’m currently thinking of upgrading the ram, as I can’t squeeze it any more, I ‘ll probably get 4GB of Ripjaws @1333MHz cl8. As I get them I’ll post a little review.

#6. Config Cisco vpn client on windows 7 x64 without dying trying

I had to connect to my work's network from home to be available for a deploy this weekend, at work we use the Cisco vpn client in a windows xp environment without major problems. When I tried using it at home, my windows 7 machine exploded in a BSOD, so I looked for other options:

1. In my laptop I use Ubuntu so I tried vpnc without success, it showed a message about some tunneling unimplemented option so I discarded
2. I decided searching at google for a solution and I found much posts on cisco forums about the problems on 64 bits boxes, finally found that last version had a version for 64 so
3. After installing it when I put my pc to sleep hanged on another BSOD about a ndys.sys, and this time i found this posts where it explained how to solve it:
   http://weblogs.asp.net/bhouse/archive/2009/01/15/how-to-successfully-install-cisco-vpn-client-on-windows-7.aspx
   http://jjcoolstuff.blogspot.com/2009/12/cisco-vpn-with-windows-7-ndissys-bsod.html
   
   I tried for now and the system doesn't crash, but I couldn't connect because seems that that I wrote an incorrect IP of the host to connect.

With all this process I lost 3 days of free time, nobody wants to lose time doing tedious tasks, my reflection today is why so simple things in computing take so time? We can't we make some processes more easy?

#5. bugs and the problems of low quality products

I've seen in the last months some sites with flagrant bugs, some of them related, which I will talk about, to the giant microsoft, build by, what I believe are, small companies. Those 2 sites were part of contests, so the importance of a good quality decides who could be the winner, or if this will be a cheater. By the way, in one of them I won an xbox, thx microsoft, I will remark that I didn't needed to exploit any of the bugs but it was ace in my sleeve for if things would go wrong ;).

I've seen also an extreme lack of usability in a program used for the annual taxes, here is my money inverted every year, why I can't use this?

Is this a lack of interest in some of this developments? We can say that the client doesn't get involved in the development and many excuses but if we don't do our work well how can we expect that someone gets involved in it.

I'm not proud of this fellow partners who doesn't stand up for an enough level of quality in their work, we can even say that it's some kind of planned obsolescence to keep renewing sites and contracting more and more developments