eokeke's Blog

ircmaxell's blog: When Rocks Falter

2014-10-22T19:45:00.001+01:00

ircmaxell's blog: When Rocks Falter: I've never been a rock. I'm about as passionate as someone can be when I choose to do something. Unfortunately that means I tend to ...

Blackberry Development: Application Resources and Screen Dimensions...

2013-04-05T22:46:00.001+01:00

After the blogging sabathical...

I really haven't added any posts in a very long time...(#guilty-face). I just can't help it, I can be very lazy sometimes [actually it's more like most times #evil-grin].
Anyways, all of that aside; it's really good to be writing something again after such a long while and I'm hoping it'll be worth your time [by the time you're done reading it].

One of the problems with mobile...

Is the number of device screen dimensions you have to cater for [except for iOS which basically have at most possibly 2 screen dimensions]. This issue sometimes causes some stress for developers like me. How? Let's take a look at the scenario below:

I build a really cool Blackberry® application that has a 200x100px logo in the title bar and a 640x480px splash screen image... Cool uh! Yeah, of course it's cool...until some guy with a 360x480px [or even worse 320x240px] screen install the application...
Here's what happens: he sees an application that has a logo already taking more than 50% of the titlebar [the titlebar usually also contains some text -- the title] and a splash screen that gives the impression that the developer was definitely *high of something...

How do we remedy this...?

What some smart people have done...

If you've ever developed for Android, you'l notice that image resources are sub-categorized into sub-folder of the main resources folder; for various screen resolutions...Well android guys #thumbsup; for Blackberry developers, there's no builtin [automatic] way provided by the platform to do this but it's very easy to come up with some code to perform the same task... #smiles

What I've done

Like I said before, it's very easy to come up with some code to add this feature to your Blackberry application so that it loads the appropriate image resources for the device it's running on depending on the device's screen resolutions else it fallsback to using the default image resources.
This way you can load a 200x100px logo on a 640x480px screen but load a 100x50px logo on a 320x240px screen [or any way you like it].
I wrote a simple class [which is open sourced] which is hosted on Github that adds this functionality very seamlessly to your coding [so long as you abide by it's rules #evil-laugh].
You can find it in this Github repo Blackberry-Utilities; the class is funkily named ImageLoader. The source code lives there.

Conclusions

It works fine, I'm currently using it in an ongoing project...so it's tried and tested... :)
Have a great weekend peeps!

Hustle On A Mile: A Short Documentary

2013-02-01T15:17:00.001+01:00

Things fall apart...on the Amazon Cloud!

2012-08-08T20:00:00.001+01:00

[Sighs]...
This is going to be one of those rants...yes, it definitely will!
You know how you just get one of those days where you just make a silly mistake (not like it's totally your fault anyways O_o) that nearly brings down your entire work?
Well, I had a day like that...and I mean today IS that day.

My day started out quietly...

As usual, had a short breakfast; went to the office; had a short morning meeting with the boss, then went to my desk and started working on the implementation of decisions in the meeting. A very regular day (or so i thought)
Wrote a (bash) shell script, to handle our MySQL database backup (dumps) because we have a pretty heavy database (PHPMyAdmin would choke -- actually it would just time out -- while generating the *.sql file).
That part went well, trsted the script from the shell...it was perfect...
Then for some reason unknown to me, MySQL stopped responding.
My colleague and I tried everything, MySQL just wouldn't come up (or is there something I'm missing with the mysqldump command?).

Amazon EC2 comes in...

Now here's the terrible part...
I login to EC2 and make the mistake of clicking the "reboot" on the server... #FATAL ERROR
Fine, the server restarts; everything seems fine EXCEPT the entire file system has been reverted to files as at 2 weeks ago....
It didn't end there, the database was reverted back to the blank state... (how ~~cool~~ sorry i mean frustrating is that)

A Hard Solution...

Thank God I tested out the db backup script, so I happened to have the most recent copy of the database (that was easily restored).
Now my colleague and I had to start uploading all the files back to the server (this was the hard part -- since it was couple with dealing with a bad network connection -- today of all days)
That was done eventually, everything was back to normal AFTER 3 hours of rigorous work.

The moral of the story

If you ever get a twitchy finger and feel like rebooting a server hosted on the Amazon cloud....

DON'T!

Or at least be damn sure you know what you're doing ELSE....(that's all I'll say)

Conclusion

Everything is back to normal and Shell scripts are fun!

ircmaxell's blog: Framework Fixation - An Anti Pattern

2012-07-29T17:09:00.001+01:00

ircmaxell's blog: Framework Fixation - An Anti Pattern: In this day in age, it seems that the community trend is completely and unequivocally trending towards the use of web application framework...

QR Codes, Google, Life and The Circulatory System

2012-07-26T09:46:00.000+01:00

Before I go far, I've got to let you know this post has nothing to do with the Human circulatory system, so if you're here for some of that biology thing....well....(I have no idea what to say; seriously I don't).

QR Codes

Firstly we all know how wide spread QR codes have become (and it's not because they have zebra colours #smile).
The reason for this widespread use is as a result of how much data can be embedded in a single QR code image; this is the reason for its widespread use in various application domains.

Life and the Circulatory System

Here goes (and No this has nothing to do with Human physiology -- just read on).
As was stated above, QR codes have been used in various domains for circulating data. Feel free to read more about QR code and of course think up various ideas as to how you can implement them to help your business' circulation

Google

We all know Google and we also all know that they have tons of APIs just laying around waiting for people to consume in innovative ways.
It also turns out that they have an API for generating QR codes (for FREE).
I was sitting down yesterday and because I had nothing better to do, I decided to write a small wrapper class for the API in PHP and upload it to Github.
You can find the script by visiting the PHP-Utility-Scripts/google-api-wrappers repository on Github.
Below is an example script written to consume the API:

For those on slow internet connections (or mobile devices), here's the link to the Github Gist.
It's a pretty straight forward API wrapper to use once you understand basic PHP, or simple copy-paste the example and change the values O_o.

Conclusion

Have fun

My Github Life: Debug Mode

2012-07-23T17:03:00.001+01:00

I have no idea why I picked this title for a blog post but I'll still talk on it.
When working with applications in languages that aren't scripting languages (e.g. Java, C e.t.c), you'd have a console (where you or the compiler can dump messages) to keep track of what's going on while your script/program is running.
With scripting languages, this hasn't happened just yet (because of the environments in which they run) but it's possible to mimic such attributes in scripts (actually I got this idea while looking through the source code of NuSoap -- I really love how they implemented it).

Keeping Track

Well, if you're working with classes, this should be easy.
For instance I just implemented something elementary for one of my classes (a database connection class). I really can't explain it in words per se, but I believe you'll understand it by looking at the source code.

How is this related to Github?

Well the source code for the library is hosted on Github O_o
Guessing that should be enough to know for a relationship. You can view the source directly here and take note of the new variable:


        private $__debug;

Conclusion

Have fun!

SchoolBase: Status Report (Part 2)

2012-07-16T07:00:00.000+01:00

This is a continuation to the post 'SchoolBase: Status Report (Part 1)'

The Application

Well I must say that working on this project has been fun and who knows what it'll become, but for now I just want it to help schools process both results and manage student records in the easiest way I can think of right now.
Like I said in the former post, it's currently hosted at http://www.schoolbaseapp.com/ and it presents a demo account with some data to give the prospective user feel of how things work.

The Application Components

On school account creation, the school gets two (2) portals available to it, they are described below:

Administrator portal: This is where school administrators (i.e. Principals, Vice principals) can manage school records i.e. sessions, terms, classes in the school, school teachers and also admit students to the school
Teacher portal: This is where teachers that have been given login details can access to manage student results, generate reports e.t.c.

They're both easy to understand and navigate through, but even in the even that they're hard to understand; provision is made for tutorials, a forum is also available as well as a support email address.
All this are done because I consider this important.

Conclusion

I do hope that it makes life easier for schools that adopt it. Teachers are a great bunch and of course they deserve the best.
That's all for now :)

SchoolBase: Status Report (Part 1)

2012-07-15T22:28:00.000+01:00

Firstly, I'll apologize for not putting up any posts in a long while...Not to worry, I won't say I've been occupied (that would be a lie), I've simply been a little lazy lately.

As the title implies, this post is supposed to be a status update on the project I talked about a couple of posts back SchoolBase. It's currently hosted at http://www.schoolbaseapp.com, feel free to check it out.

In all sincerity, I'm at a loss of how best to organise the information I'm about to place in this post, so kindly bear with me.
NOTE: I think I'll break this down into parts

Reason for taking on the Project

Not sure exactly how I'll explain this but to be put simply:
I did it to make life easier for school teachers (particularly secondary school teachers -- in Nigeria).
Lately, I've noticed that a lot of people have been writing solutions like this for secondary schools and many of them are basically suites of software that do things ranging from: student registration to results processing, then to accounts management and a whole set of other features.
Don't take it the wrong way, but it's actually very distracting for most of the people who'll want to use the software to make life easier for themselves i.e. the teachers
Also, these software are not actually free, meaning that schools (government schools...I'm staring at you) that don't really have fat budgets can't take advantage of these products. Hence, I decided to come of with something that has the following features:

Little or no Risk (it's free; Schools are free to sign up, and free to pack up with all their data i.e. information; this totally deletes the account and all data but before doing this packages their information and s presents it as a download)
Easier to understand, since it has only a limited set of features (it doesn't try to be everything to everyone, it was built to with teachers in mind)

Those were the main reasons for taking on the project!

Up Next will be part 2... Bye guys...

SchoolBase: A Hosted Platform Service

2012-06-27T11:15:00.001+01:00

Going by what was learned from the book I spoke about a few "Blog Posts" back - Getting Real by 37Signals.
I've been able to make some "changes" to how I set up and operate web applications.
I'm still moving closer towards the launch of my new web app SchoolBase which I hope will solve certain problems for certain people; implementing my strategy using all the knowledge gained from within the book.
Will definitely let you all know how it goes.

Always read something...

Hackers and Painters

2012-06-07T22:22:00.001+01:00

Just got a copy of the book "Hackers and Painters" by Paul Graham.
I should start reading it by tomorrow, hoping to learn a lot from it!
Will keep you all posted!

Sequel: What I'm doing with the last 7 months of 2012...

2012-06-03T12:00:00.000+01:00

This post is sort of a sequel to my last post...

So what is this about...

Since I was ranting about how the year is almost over, I decided to share with you all one of the things I'm doing with the remaining 7 months.
This is a ~~secret~~, so please don't tell anyone (NOTE: Never reveal secrets on the web - I'll take this advice someday O_o)
I'm working on a product in collaboration with someone whose both a friend and an uncle sort of... :) (NOTE: Don't ask...I'm not telling)
Just designed this logo for the product myself

Hope it's cool, was just trying out my Gimp skills
Anyways, it's supposed to be a web application that help (as you can guess from the name) secondary schools in Nigeria solve certain problems; and of course it's totally FREE
So just stay on the lookout for launch...

Conclusion

I'd simply say, everyone should learn to collaborate on things; it makes doing things a whole lot simpler and easier than doing them alone.
Have fun!

Note: Happy new Month...

2012-06-01T22:14:00.000+01:00

Firstly, this post is impromptu simply because it's a spur of the moment kind of thing!

Basically, welcome to month 6...

Of the year 2012; a lot of things will be happening in this last 7 months which includes the "year's end".
Yes, I said what you were thinking: "The year is coming to a close, in fact to me; the year is already over"
This is injury time(permit me to use some football/soccer grammar).
What were your plans at the beginning of the year?
How far have you gone with implementing them?
I've asked myself those questions and gotten my answers....I think you should too..

Conclusion

Have a great remaining 7 months of 2012 :)

Book Review: Getting Real by 37Signals

2012-05-31T01:46:00.000+01:00

I guess today I simply want to talk about a book I'm reading...
It's titled "Getting Real" by 37Signals and they're giving it out for free download right here.
I'd seriously advise you go and download a copy for yourself :)

My Take on the Book

Firstly, I'll admit; I probably expected to read something nice in the book but I can say right now that I'm in awe of the amount of wisdom packed in it.
I'm about 67% through it and the amount of insight I've gathered has got me looking at projects totally differently -- in new light
So, if I were asked to rate the book on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd say it's a 9.5, I'm keeping the 0.5 so people don't feel like I'm being too generous, but sincerely; that's how ~~good~~ great the content of the book is.
They say the largest room in the world is the room for improvement but in all sincerity, I don't see what else can be added to this great book!

Conclusion

Kudos to the guys at 37 Signals; first for writing something this great, then secondly for giving it out for free in PDF format.
Thanks Guys!

NOTE: For those interested in the print version, here's the link on amazon.com

A "Free" Tool called Trello

2012-04-24T11:24:00.001+01:00

First, I'll say you can find Trello at this location :)
Just read the about and see what you could possibly use it to simplify tasks within your current organisation structure.
I read about it while using the Pulse app on my android device to read some articles from YCombinator Hacker News (as a side note, I have to state that it's EXTREMELY informative) yesterday!
I found a post by Richard White of UserVoice, on how they used this "tool" to handle their entire software development workflow.
It struck me as:

Really cool
Pretty useful
An extremely intuitive yet usable project management, collaborative software product

I'd definitely recommend that every organisation where projects (whether software or not) are handled in groups of 2 or more should check it out; it will greatly improve your productivity used properly.

In case you're wondering, I started using it yesterday plus I also introduced it to my team and started using it on a new software project :-D

if you're not using it, then have fun doing things the old way

O_o

My GitHub Life : Part 1

2012-03-22T18:08:00.000+01:00

For those who don't know the OctoCat

Well, an OctoCat is an animal that is both an Octopus and a Cat. Yeah, that's exactly what Github is; okay I was just kidding -- there's no such animal (i think).
Well, let me define Github for you (according to Github):

Github is focused on increasing and simplifying collaboration when it comes to software development

You can discover Github for yourself!
I'd seriously advise you try it...

My Github

My Github profile lives at https://github.com/emmanix2002
As from now on, all posts that are titled something in the line of "My Github Life" will just be avenues for me to rant about one or more of the following:

My repositories/projects on Github
The reasons for working on those projects (as stated above) -- in other words, what inspired me
My gists on Github
Repositories/Projects owned by other people I find useful and thus wished I could write beautiful code like
and whatever is related to Github I feel like praising

Today...

I simply want to talk about one of the APIs; specifically i want to talk about consuming the Google Feeds API.

Feeds are so common these days on various websites, they'd usually contain information depending on the content of the website itself.

Most of the time, this information is gathered by a lot of hard work on the part of the staff or employees of those organisations (now that's a lot of work).

Let's assume that for some reason you want to build an application that offers such information to others...

Oh my God, does it mean I'll do all that work!

Well, I'm very happy to tell you...it might not be entirely necessary (unless you have some custom content you wanna offer your users).
Comes, the Google Feeds API; if you have checked out the homepage for the API, you will understand that it can allow you build a feed aggregator by doing little or no work.
The only work that will be involved is when you have to process the content or when you have to display the content (which I'll tell you isn't much since the API itself handled processing all that XMl you would have had to process).

GoogleFeedsAPI PHP wrapper class

I've worked (or rather consumed) this API on a couple of projects and it's been great.

I just wrote a simple class to help me with most of the processing and abstraction but it was never something worth sharing till today.

I came across someone else's work on Github today and it inspired me to refactor the class and make it more presentable and useful for others apart from myself.

Anthony Mill's work on the GooglePlaces API wrapper for PHP inspired me to do something similar for an API I've consumed so many time (knowing might simplify other people's work).
I thus was compelled to write a wrapper class for the GoogleFeedsAPI.
Well, you can find a small tutorial on how to use it below:

What you can do...

Well, you could start by building an application (web and/or mobile) that processes feeds from various sources and presents it to users.
You could create something that is subscription based (whether paid or free). At the end of the day, the only thing that holds you back is your imagination.

Last Words

Have FUN!

Big Ideas--Small Ideas : The Myth (Excerpts from the Book 'MindFire' by Scott Berkun)

2012-03-22T17:03:00.002+01:00

Yes, I read!

Seriously, I really do read books (when I have the time). Please note that I'm trying to imbibe that attitude of reading (i.e. things that are not programming related) to develop skills and even get new ideas.
So a couple of months ago, I read a book titled Mindfire: Big Ideas for curious minds by a really great guy (in my own opinion) by the name of Scott Berkun.
This post simply contains excerpts from one of the chapters in the book that "jumped out" to me.

Something you should know

I had actually posted this excerpts on my facebook profile as a note; so you could consider this a formal presentation of the note to those who are not my "friends" on facebook.

The thing about Ideas

The logic we use is the bigger the idea, the bigger the value, but often that’s not true.

There’s a myth at work here, an assumption that big results only come from radical changes. However, there’s good evidence for a counter-argument.

The problem is a simple idea that’s is rejected by ignorance, lack of discipline or ordinary incompetence. If those simpler, smaller, ideas were set free, the effect would be as potent as any grand theory.

Yet somehow we discount simple ideas for being playthings, for being too small to be worthy, dismissing the surprising power hidden in our smallest decisions.

Unlike today’s version, the original McDonald’s hamburger from 1940 was simple to make. The McDonald's brothers started with a simple idea as owners of several ordinary hamburger stands in San Bernardino, California. As any reasonable owners

would do, they explored ways to run those stands efficiently.

They tried to make the process for making food repeatable, an assembly line for food construction. Any homemaker or line cook of the 1950s made the same discovery, as making school lunches, or eggs over easy, again and again motivates this kind of thinking.

Had you shown the McDonalds’ business plan to any of the great business minds of the day, they’d have thought you were insane: they’d have said the idea wasn’t big enough to warrant interest of any kind.

Fifty years later, McDonald's has 30,000 locations and $22 billion annually in revenue.

Certainly not all of that value can be attributed to the simple notion of creative efficiency, but dedication to the notion did enable their early domination of competitors.

The point is simple: a small idea, applied consistently, can have disproportionately large effects.

Ray Kroc’s insight was not finding a big idea, but in seeing how a little idea, done right, could become big.

Put another way, what I’m describing is leverage. Rather than worrying about the size of an idea, which most people do; it’s more productive to think about the possible leverage an idea has. Doing this requires thinking not only about the idea itself, but how it will be used. An idea can have a different amount of leverage depending on where, when and how carefully it is applied.

One old idea from someone you know, reused in the right way in a different situation, might just have transformative effects.

In Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto, he explains how the simple idea of a task list, something used by aircraft pilots for decades, has improved patient safety in surgery by 30% or more. Hospitals didn’t need a breakthrough technology. There wasn’t a new theory or grand vision. A simple act, with a simple, old tool, had incredible, and surprising, leverage.

There are many dubious stories in the history of ideas, and some, despite their improbability, make valid points.

One such story is about Charles Steinmetz (or Edison, or Tesla, depending

on the version you hear), holder of more than 200 patents, who retired from General Electric.

A complex system had broken, and no one could fix it so they hired him back to consult.
Steinmetz found the malfunctioning part and marked it with a piece of chalk. He submitted a bill for $10,000. The GE managers were stunned and asked for an itemized invoice. He sent back the following:
Making the chalk mark $1,
Knowing where to place the chalk mark $9,999.
Ideas are like chalk marks: as simple as they seem, knowing where, when, and why to use even the smallest ones can make all the difference in the world.

My First Day as a blogger!

2012-03-21T09:23:00.000+01:00

Skirmishes

Seriously, this blogging thing just happened because a friend challenged me...
Anyways, my intention is to introduce myself (or rather - the things I hope I'll be able to blog about) in this post; hopefully you'll return when I have some interesting stuff to pass across.

What will I blog about?

There are a couple of areas I have interest in, I'll list them below:

Web Application Development (specifically with PHP)
Blackberry Application Development (using Java)
Consuming RESTful services (my favorite is the Google Feeds API)
Creating/Building RESTful web services (at least up to the level of knowledge I have)
My Projects
Maybe a little about life (generally just 'Rants')
and probably some other stuff I'll pretend to know

I think that about covers it... :)
Anyways, just check back as often as you can...it's been so much fun introducing myself (I think...).