beyond measure

Last month my friends and I had an idea of a website startup. I can’t share the details right now but it will be a free service website and I don’t know how to make money out of it yet. But that’s what makes it fun. Even if it’s not gonna be successful, what’s important is I tried and I learned from it. Anyway, my friends are gonna work with me on this, they liked the idea as well. One of the preliminary decisions was choosing the right platform for our current situation. Here are my thoughts and options:

• Ruby - Ruby on Rails — while this is what I wanted the most, it’s just not possible right now. We couldn’t find a hosting service that we can afford for this. And we’re all currently beginners on the language so we’d most probably be crawling all the time when working on the project.
• ASP.NET - ASP.NET MVC — this one looks really tasty as well. We have strong skills in ASP.Net development and some of us has already worked on the new MVC platform for ASP.Net but the general feedback is it just isn’t quite stable yet. For the hosting there shouldn’t have been a problem at the start cause we know of a hosting service that’s cheap enough for startup websites. Of course, it will be quite expensive if the site grows.
• Python - Django — I read a lot of recommendations about this one. The problem is I don’t know much about Python, much more on how to deploy one. I would
• PHP 5 — it’s going to have to be this one. PHP’s one of the easiest to deploy and from what I see is the cheapest in terms of hosting requirements. Also most of us already know PHP so there shouldn’t be any problem there. We’re choosing between Kohana or ZendFramework for the framework. It’s more fun to start the project from scratch but it’s gonna take longer to develop so I don’t think that’s gonna be one of our options.

I’ve been planning to do an installation of Ubuntu and I got to it just this afternoon. So here are my reactions on the installation:

• Kinda confusing from the start, I was allowed to select from a lot of options on what to do when I boot up from the CD. But I think this is great for experienced linux users.
• I chose to select Run and Install, which I wasn’t able to understand what that meant until it actually ran Ubuntu on memory! Goddamn this is great! Window animations are really good, even better than Vista! It also has a desktop manager built-in with a very cool animation when switching between desktops.
• To do an install, I had to click an Install icon in the Ubuntu desktop. Really, it’s really great running an OS without actually installing it first. I was able to try out Ubuntu before deciding to install it in my harddrive. AND it’s got Firefox, OpenOffice, and Pidgin already installed in there! And other stuffs as well though I don’t know what they were ^_^x
• So, with Ubuntu actually running on memory, I can do an installation on the harddrive from the desktop. I can install while surfing the net for installation manuals. I was even chatting with my friends while installing.
• Now here comes another confusing part, I have NTFS drive partitions so I had to do a manual partitioning for the OS files. I had to set a partition for swap, root, and home. I didn’t know what they were but it was explained in the installation window. And the manuals were also available in the internet so I was ok. There were also format options (ext2, ext3, ntfs, etc.), most I don’t about, but I just chose the default (ext3).
• After that, everything’s done in the desktop. So I restarted, removed the CD, and it’s already working. Simple enough for well-informed computer users but not good for novice users. Well, most novice users don’t know how to install Windows XP anyway ^_^x

All in all it was quite easy to install Ubuntu. And I’m really liking it, I’ll try to use this for my PHP development.

Well, not really a conspiracy theory. I recently uninstalled Firefox 3 and tried to download Firefox 2 through Internet Explorer 8. When I tried to click the download button, an error occurs and eventually the browser gets closed. See for yourself:

I’m sure there just might be something with my computer but it was pretty funny.

Emurse is a free online service for creating and storing your resume on the web. For starters, the service allows you to fill up forms such as personal information, skills descriptions, work experiences, awards and honors, and education history. The data that you provide will then be automatically formatted to a resume design or template that you can choose from in their website. For the free service, there are 3 available templates. For paying users, I think there are about 10 templates that you can choose from.

So I whipped up my old resume, and copied and pasted some infos into Emurse. The data entry forms were superbly made using AJAX. It took me a minute or two to find the Save button, and a minute to realize that they were already saved on the fly. Cool. Almost everything is done in Javascript. Additional entry forms are created on the fly without refreshing the page. You can even add, remove, and re-order sections. I would have been finished in less than 10 minutes, if not for the evil perfectionist side in me. When you’re done filling up forms, clicking on the Design page will lead you to a preview of what your online resume will look like. Or if you want to change your template, you can do that as well.

Pretty much all data that you will need can be placed in your online resume. Here’s my online resume in Emurse. There’s also an option to save your resume into a Doc or PDF file and other formats. But I couldn’t get that to work though. All in all, Emurse is very easy to use and manage. Updating your resume could never be easier. No more formatting headaches in your word processor. And you can email it as a link to companies that you apply to. This ensures that they are getting your latest resume.

My only problems with Emurse is I couldn’t achieve the format of my online resume to what I have now. And I have specific data such as my projects experiences that I want to be more presentable and easier to read. For me, the projects experiences are the highlights of a developer’s resume. Maybe a good additional feature would be for users to create custom formats. XSLT? Nevertheless, I still recommend Emurse to everyone. There are still other useful features that the service provides. So check it out.

Found this in TechCrunch. As we all know, many people are still using Internet Explorer 6. In effect, we, fussy web developers as we are, are suffering every day we do our work for the web. Even unto this day we are still trapped in this routine of checking and making sure our websites work in IE6. We’d be leaving in a dreamworld if I’ll say that it’s easy to make things work in IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera, and all other browsers out there. And people still using IE6, the most untamed beast of them all, just ain’t helping us.

So I’m joining this move, Save A Developer, Upgrade Your Browser. There’s a script that you can put in your websites that’ll show a neat and cool message in the top-right of the browser window that says “Upgrade IE 6 Now”. This is shown only for IE6 users of course. I’m putting it in this site after this post. Moving forward, I’ll just continue my quest of scaring every IE6 user that I find that spyware will eat out their computer if they don’t upgrade.

I use Opera for daily-use and Firefox for web development (because of Firebug). Opera is just too neat, fast, and light to pass up.

P.S. Someone named Michael commented in the TechCrunch article that he started a project like this about 6 months ago. The project’s named End 6!.

I’m getting old. Really. And I’ve only realized this not too long ago. ^_^x I’m turning 27 this year and I haven’t mastered, I mean really hardcore, any programming language or field. I’m always into so many things trying to be a jack of all trades. I don’t think that’s possible. Possible only if you have nothing else to do in your life but programming. Luckily I’ve come to realize that life is never about work. We work only to live.

So, I’ve decided to focus more on these technologies > .Net, Ruby on Rails, and AJAX. And maybe a little Java here and then. To start with that focus, I’ve just recently transferred to a .Net hosting and I’m currently looking in to transfer this Wordpress blog to a .Net alternative. Probably a CMS or another blog engine. From all my extensive research, I’ve reached to these final three: DotNetNuke, Umbraco, and BlogEngine.NET.

DotNetNuke seems to have a large following, but it seems to be bloated and I had a hard time trying to find an installation manual. Looks like the manual is greatly hidden in their forums. Well, I’m not going that road. Forums are just too messy for my taste. Even though I got it installed in the end, that took a lot of google searches. Well, the default theme isn’t exactly presentable in this Web 2.0 age. I think they really need to update that one.

BlogEngine.NET seems to be a very powerful blogging engine. My friend John got it installed here, and I didn’t hear any complaints about the installation so I think this is really a good candidate. It even has a “tag” feature already. I’m pretty sure my default install of Wordpress didn’t have that.

My last and looks like will gonna be my choice in this dilemma is Umbraco. I’ve just gone up to reading everything in their site right now and I’m liking it already. Next step is to try and get this installed in my machine. Let’s see how easy it’s gonna be and if it’s compatible with my hosting. I’m looking forward to a CMS than a blog-focused software cause I’m gonna put up a site in a subdomain for an open source software that I’ve been planning on working for months now.

Take a break, check out this funny video about the Web 2.0 craze and other things in the web today.

I read this article a few months ago, The 10 types of programmers you’ll encounter in the field. Wanted to blog about it but didn’t have the time. Quite funny but true. From those types I believe I’m a combination of The Ninja, The Theoretician, and The Evangelist. I am The Evangelist most of the times. I like/love management, leading people, making things easy for everyone, improving the software development process, and making things happen. But I don’t usually get the opportunity to do so, or just not enough. I guess in the midst of things, I am usually overlapped or underestimated. Amazingly, I do know people who exclaim that I have inspired them. Very gratifying. I hope you’d experience it too.

Before I was mostly The Evangelist, I was The Ninja. Code and code all day long until the next day. I remember good ol’ iThink days when my working schedule was 8am to 6am. I was a lone warrior, and still am in times of need. From The Ninja’s description “The Ninja is your team’s MVP, and no one knows it.”, yep, I do get that every time. We ninjas don’t get rewarded or credited for our work. We don’t need it. But in the real world, an employee does need it sometimes. That’s part of management principles’ “taking care of your employees”. This is actually my main reason why I’m thinking of going back to designing (web design and flash dev) which I was really good at in college. People in designing get noticed and are rewarded greatly like my friend, Mike, who’s getting 25k every month. Cool.

The Theoretician. I am a researcher, a scientist by heart. Always finding the true solution which is never there. That is, for me there is no true solution or real truth in the IT field. Makes me wonder why Computer Science is called a science. As Grissom said, Science is about truth. Right, but that’s another story. Being The Theoretician I believe is both my bad and good quality. I get distracted easily, especially when I’m debugging another programmer’s code which is very very low down in the optimization department. Or is just downright dirty, wrong, and full of loopholes. In the end, I redo or fix the code which took a lot of time and effort. Very bad if you’re in a deadline, and good if you have nothing else to do or can’t do nothin’ for that matter. For the uninitiated, this is type of work is called refactoring. Nevertheless, I take pride in what I do. Except those code that I had to slip in when I only have 5 minutes to do it. ^_^x

Being a combination of The Ninja, The Evangelist, and The Theoretician has made me always love to be in the Research & Development department. If such as department really exists. I am a framework and software engineering addict. Microsoft Enterprise Library, NUnit, Joomla!, Drupal, Ruby on Rails, SubSonic, and Castle Project are just one of the few things I’ve been to. And I’m still not quite satisfied. SiteCore, ZendFramework, and CodeIgniter are my next targets. Yum, yum. So many things to do, so little time.

How about you? What type of programmer are you?

Edit: This is also applicable for desktop apps or dlls. Just attach to the name of the “exe” process or in the case of dlls, just attach to the name of the “exe” process that is using the dll.

I just found out about this trick a week ago. Saves time when debugging an ASP.NET web application. Another way to debug an ASP.NET application in Visual Studio is to use the Attach to Process function available in the Debug menu. This would, like the name says, attach to and debug a currently running process in your machine that is outside of Visual Studio. To debug an ASP.NET application, it should first be setup as a local website in your machine (i.e. http://localhost/mywebsite). Browse to that website using your favorite browser. Open your solution in Visual Studio if you haven’t opened it yet. Put in breakpoints anywhere you need them. Click on Debug > Attach to Process and find the ASP.NET process running in your machine. The process name should be aspnet_wp.exe in Windows XP. Click the Attach button and you should be in debug mode without the Visual Studio compiling anything. That’s it. Visual Studio will break/pause if you hit a breakpoint while browsing through your site in the browser.

I find this trick relatively faster than using the default Start Debugging function. This is especially useful if you have multiple projects in your solution which is the case in an AspDotNetStorefront project. Remember though that by default, Visual Studio will only be able to debug a process if the code version is the same as the website that you’re debugging. So don’t forget to compile referenced projects (dll) that changed before debugging.

Another way to save time is configuring your build process in the Configuration Manager of your solution’s property page. But I like attaching to ASP.NET process better cause it’s more straightforward and flexible.More info about attaching to a running process can be found here.

Just found this script from 24 ways which allows your images in PNG format to be transparent in IE6. Very helpful indeed. It’s easy to setup, just copy the code in your source directory and paste the call to the script in your html head.