Travis Blog » Web

Why Is It So Hard To Make An Accurate Progress Bar?

Travis — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:01:27 +0000

Hear out from software developers why making something that seems to be so straight forward can sometime be so implausible.

Original post at Slashdot

Want to visit an incomplete version of our website where you can’t zoom?

Travis — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:01:52 +0000

To the point. My humble opinion is that this is another first world problem of ours.

Original Comic strip by XKCD

You are not your code

Travis — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:01:37 +0000

Scott Hanselman wrote an light article on progressive improvement of a software developer (application to other technical roles, too) and consciousness of a programmer exposing his/her source code to other people’s opinions.

Original Article

Asynchrony is Viral

Travis — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:01:32 +0000

I was once told as soon as I able to think in asynchronously by default, medium to large sized web applications suddenly become easy to deal with. This article may not be the best to elaborate this idea, but has shown how tasks (avoid to use this word but, magically) appears to be simpler when not have to deal with asynchronous but think of asynchronous by default.

Original Article

Making Sure Interviews Don’t Turn Into Free Consulting

Travis — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:01:01 +0000

Look, this has gone paranoia. The age of magic, SEO and making money at home should already be over, there are no secret sauce to a hot pie everyone wants a piece of. I found no problem giving free consultation (within my capability) to anyone, interviewer, like-minded techies in user group or new comer who wants your seat with minimal effort. Success coming from quality of a person NOT knowledge encapsulated within one’s brain!

If a company able to benefits by your “free consultation”, then it’s their loss not to meet your demand and hire you.

Direct Link

Firefox nightlies now support AAC, MP3 and H.264 by default in Windows

Travis — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:01:52 +0000

This is a good news to many web app developers. Although h.264 is almost a ‘god’ standard for video encoding for online playback, few web browsers still not supporting it by default and Firefox been one of them. Non tech-savvy users would mislead to think certain web players are not comparable with their browser.

Direct Link

How can I deal with a team member who dislikes making comments in code?

Travis — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 08:01:36 +0000

An interesting topic in StackExchange discussing “how to make your dev team write comments?”. A better question (as mentioned by several) would be “when does the code requires comments?” and how to deal with developers commenting for the sack of commenting.

Direct Link

Spec Comparison of YN-560 and YN-560II

Travis — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:57:59 +0000

Here’s a belated comparison to 2 well known third party manual flashgun, the YongNuo YN-560 and its successor YN-560II.

Released a year apart, they share more similarities than difference, hence making the mark 2 version a revision to its presessor. A summary of their similarity as following:

Color Temperature: 5600K
RRP (at release time): US$75
Full Power Recharge Time: approx. 3 seconds
Zoom: 24-105mm
Power Level: 1 to 1/128
Acoustic Signal: Yes
External Power Connector: Yes
PC Sync Port: Yes
Overheat Protection: Yes
Flash Duration (at Full Power): 1/200 seconds

Besides the build quality and an obvious LCD user interface, there are some minor spec variations:

	YN-560	YN-560II
Release Date	2010	2011
GN	39	58
eBay Price (as on 18/01/2013)	AU$60.74	AU$69.99
Modes	2 Optic Slave Modes	2 Optic Slave Modes and a Multi Mode
User Interface	LED indicator lights	LCD screen