Saturday, July 31, 2010

Mozilla

Some stuff about Mozilla (Mozilla as in Mozilla, not only Firefox):
It is highly standards compliant, supporting many standards from bodies such as the W3C, IETF, and ECMA.

Mozilla is built on a very big source code base and is far larger than most Open Source projects. It is 30 times larger than the Apache Web Server, 20 times larger than the Java 1.0 JDK/JRE sources, 5 times bigger than the standard Perl distribution, twice as big as the Linux kernel source, and nearly as large as the whole GNOME 2.0 desktop source—even when 150 standard GNOME applications are included.

As a result of the browser wars in the late 1990s, the platform has been heavily tested and is highly optimized and very portable. Not only have hundreds of Netscape employees and thousands of volunteers worked on it, but millions of end users who have adopted Mozilla-based products have scrutinized it as well.

-- Rapid Application Development with Mozilla, Nigel McFarlane (2003)


Also, a thing or two about Firefox add-ons development:

Useful tools:
Extension Developer
DOM inspector
XPCOM Viewer

Useful Websites:
Mozilla Developer Network (MDN)
Mozilla Cross-Reference

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Microsoft WebMatrix

WebMatrix actually looks interesting, maybe I should give it a spin.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Power Sockets as Internet Ports

A friend pointed out this interesting product to me: 200 Mbps Powerline Ethernet Adapter.
Here's how it works:



See also: Power line communication

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Visual Basic on CSI

Anatomy of LVM

Note to self:

hda1 hdc1 (PV:s on partitions or whole disks)
\ /
\ /
diskvg (VG)
/ | \
/ | \
usrlv rootlv varlv (LV:s)
| | |
ext2 reiserfs xfs (filesystems)


PV: physical volume, VG: volume group, LV: logical volume

Monday, July 12, 2010

Qualitative Research & Grounded Theory

This is a summary of 5 chapters from the book Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (2nd edition), by Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin.

Chapter 09: Axial Coding
This chapter describes the process of Axial Coding. Axial Coding is defined as "the process of relating categories to their subcategories". The objective here is to "form precise and complete explanations about phenomena" by linking the categories and subcategories. The chapter also introduces the traditional concept of "paradigm" (think Kuhn). The term "actions/interactions" is also introduced, seemingly as a replacement for the concept of "cause/effect", which can be contentious in scientific and philosophical literature (think Hume -- induction/deduction). But of course, the basis for this is based on the standard argument that the over-analytical use of "cause/effect" do not faithfully represent the many phenomena that goes on in the natural sciences. Finally, the authors propose the use of mini-frameworks and recording techniques to facilitate the coding process. Such frameworks can be simply diagrams (think Microsoft Visio).

Chapter 10: Selective Coding
Selective Coding is the "process of integrating and refining the theory". The book lays down the criteria for choosing a central category. The chapter again reinforces the use of diagramming to help with the analysis and representing the data abstractly. The practice of using memos is also introduced as a useful tool that guides the thinking process. Lastly, the process of refining the theory is explained. The techniques discussed for refining include filling up poorly developed categories, dropping ideas that do not fit (trimming the theory), validating the schema, identifying potential outliers, and appreciating the complexity and variety of data (building in variation.

Chapter 11: Coding for Process
In this chapter, "process" is defined as "sequences of evolving action/interaction... [that] can be traced to changes in structural conditions." An easy way to think about this is reducing process to phases or stages. Processes not only involve the flow and problems/issues, but also the conditions and the forms that the problems take. Process can also be broken down into subprocesses, which can be further broken down into action/interactional tactics. We can categorize the steps in a process, and to look at the process using a micro or macro viewpoint.

Chapter 12: The Conditional/Consequential Matrix
This chapter introduces the conditional/consequential matrix as "an analytical device to simulate analysts' thinking about the relationships between macro and micro conditions / consequences both to each other and to process." In justifying the matrix, the authors make several important assertions: (1) conditions and consequences are not independent, (2) Micro and macro conditions are often intertwined (3) conditions and consequences exist in clusters (4) action/interaction are not limited to individuals, but are caused by global bodies/organizations as well. The matrix is just an Archimedean spiral, where dark lines are used to denote interaction, and the spaces between the lines are the sources of conditions/consequences, and the arrows denote intersection structure with process.

Chapter 13: Theoretical Sampling
Theoretical sampling here is defined as the data gathering process that aims to create more categories. Sampling can be applied to open coding, axial coding and selective coding.
Open Sampling (for open coding): taking an open (open as in open to possibilities) approach to data as it comes by.
Relational and variational sampling (for axial coding): sampling for events that show relations and variety among concepts
Discriminate Sampling (for selective coding): here the researcher selectively chooses data that will contribute most towards comparative analysis.
Lastly, the authors assert that sampling should be continued until "each category is saturated".

Apache Cassandra

Interesting alternative to MySQL. See http://cassandra.apache.org/

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Gedit Symbol Browser Plugin

The Gedit Symbol Browser Plugin is a great plugin to get around large chunks of code quickly.


As the binary distribution for Unbuntu Linux hosted on sourceforge.net seems to be outdated/incompatible, I have downloaded the sources for gedit and the symbol browser and compiled them.

I am making the binary for the plugin available here.

Details: Compiled with Gedit 2.30.3 and gedit-symbol-browser-0.1 on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 i386

Installation:
$ cp gedit-symbol-browser-plugin*.tar.gz ~/.gnome2/gedit/
$ cd ~/.gnome2/gedit/
$ tar -xzf gedit-symbol-browser-plugin*.tar.gz
$ rm gedit-symbol-browser-plugin*.tar.gz


Note: you need to have exuberant-ctags installed.
$ sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Java Code Coverage for Eclipse

Java coders doing JUnit testing should install this.
http://www.eclemma.org/

A more advanced code coverage tool is Clover, which you can try for [continuous] fully functional 30-day trial.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

Creating a Launcher in Ubuntu

Here is how to create a launcher in Ubuntu, using the old school approach.

Say we are calling the launcher "Awesome". On your desktop, create a new file "Awesome.desktop". Put this in the file (ascii):

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Link
Icon[en_US]=gnome-panel-launcher
URL=file:///home/hbovik/awesome_stuff/
Name[en_US]=Awesome
Name=Awesome
Icon=gnome-panel-launcher

Finally, chmod +x Awesome.desktop

Friday, July 02, 2010

Zarro Boogs

By design, Bugzilla is programmed to return the string "zarro boogs found" instead of "0 bugs found" when a search for bugs returns no results. "Zarro Boogs" is a facetious meta-statement about the nature of software debugging. Bug tracking systems like Bugzilla readily describe how many known bugs are outstanding. The response "zarro boogs", is intended as a buggy statement itself (a misspelling of "zero bugs"), implying that even when no bugs have been identified, software is still likely to contain bugs that haven't yet been identified.