The blame game
We have all been part of the blame game, by our choosing or by the actions of someone else.
In todays Dilbert, Wally takes it to the next level.
I work as a consultant and beyond the instant irritation I actually find some amusement in watching the blame game in action. At least when I am not a central player.
I’ve had to work with people that CC’s and forwards every mail to a supervisor (or a hand full of peers) and insists on the same policy for booking meetings. My experience is that those that do what ever they can to protect their back are usually the ones starting the game.
So, is their protective behavior the result previous games or strategic moves for the next one?
Get rid of some recursion
I just had a doh! moment.
In .Net the System.IO.Directory object has a GetFiles method that returns all files from a directory.
I used to pair that up with some recursion to get all files from all sub directories.
BUT, heres the doh!: GetFiles has an overload that takes a SearchOptions parameter so that it can return the sub files directly.
So go back to your old unnecessary recursive code and do it the .Net way instead.
I just released a redesign of jsisoft.com
I used to run jsisoft.com (and jsisoft.se) on WordPress, but since the content is very static it felt like overkill.
Now I have all of the site, including all file releases, in a Subversion repository. This way It will be a lot easier to have the application documentation in line with the current release. It also allows me to revert to an older version if (when) I screw up.
To support the development of these applications I will keep the ads, even though there is almost no one clicking them. Users are taken to a download page when there are new updates so there is at least some potential for ad clicking when a make new releases.
Better than logview4net
Someone Googled for ‘better than logview4net’ and ended up on my blog. It must have been an anticlimax to look for something better and end up on the developers blog.
There is a java application called Chainsaw that is part of the Apace Logging Services. I don’t know about all it’s features but it inspired me to create logview4net.
I know there are some performance issues with some usage patterns. If you think you are on of those users please write a comment and use a WORKING email address so that I can try to fix your issues.
Scrum and Continuous Integration
I’ve been rambling about Continuous Integration a couple of times before and I just noticed that I have misspelled Continuous every time so I guess I’ll just have to go through all of my old posts and correct that. I have, on the other hand, gotten a lot of Google traffic from fellow misspellers around the world.
Here’s a google search with misspelled articles, and here’s a search with the corrected ones.
If you find any weird language constructs or words in the future please tell me. A big reason for blogging at all is to keep my english alive.
Anyway, I was thinking a bit more on Scrum and it struck me that Scrum is Continuous Integration for people. I know it won’t take a genius get that idea, but it made me feel even more comfortable with Scrum. I like to enable continuous delivery of value to the customer.
A customer should be able to stop a project (almost) any time and still get some value out of it.
I’m a scrum novice
I have been forced to learn what Scrum is due to two independent assignments.
So in the spirit of learning stuff by myself I just read Agile Software Development with Scrum and I’ve got Agile Project Management with Scrum in the pipe.
It struck me that Scrum is a little like it has turned out when I, and the good developers around me, have had some saying in the organization of software development.
I’m by far an expert in the field but I get the feeling that it will be hard to convince a customer to embrace Scrum. I would gladly work in a Scrum team though.
My Scrum encounters this far is by one customer that want to use Scrum in a project to migrate a rather large application from VB6 to .NET, and one customer where I helped them inspect and evaluate a software supplier (and their software) that uses Scrum for their application development.
Done in the right way I really think it enables both transparency and creative thinking.
jsiServiceManager 8.09 released today
… and here are the relevant release notes:
- Fixed some sloppy null exceptions
- Uses a newer version of jsiAppUpdater to enable localized web site.
- Fixed an error whith the state image in the app. window
- Enabled manual sorting of the services within a group.
- Starting a group will start the services in the display order.
- Stopping or Pausing a group will stop or pause the services in the reverse display order.
- Restarting a group will first Stop all services in the group and the Start all services in the group.
- If the displayname is empty in the app. window the ‘official’ service name will be used instead.
Support free software
Do what you can to support the free software you are using.
I estimate the user base of my free software to about 1000, but over the years I have only been in contact with a hand full of them. It would help me a lot with the future development if I got to know what the users want to have and what they don’t like about it right now. A friendly note or a feature request means a lot to me and I’m quite sure other developers feels like that too.
We, free software developers, spend a lot of time developing our software and some hard earned money to keep our websites and internet connections running.
If you like a product and want to support it go to it’s home page and check out it’s sponsors. That way the developer will get some money and the advertiser will get some traffic. It will benefit a lot of people. You don’t have to donate ‘real’ money but the developer will still get some monetary support and it’ll build your karma.
So the next time you use your favorite freeware; take minute and figure out how you can contribute to it.
I just released jsiPodFetch 8.05
I use an overridden button for the flat buttons in jsiPodFetch and I had forgotten to call InitializeComponent in the constructor that gets called by the designer. This has the nasty side effect of making the control disappear from the form.
The underlying error was corrected before I released 8.04 but I missed one form when I checked for missing buttons; The form to confirm a new feed.
Old users probably never noticed since they have their feeds configured already, but new users got a modal form without button or control box. Doh!
It is taken care of now and I hope I haven’t scared to many users away from it.
jsiPodFetch has a broken installer.
Update: Now there is a working installer.
The latest release of jsiPodFetch has a broken installer. I uploaded the previous version while I’m fixing the error.
I had forgotten to add some files to the install package. The application will load, but it will have a blank main window.
I am really sorry for any inconveniences this has brought you.
I will re-release 8.04 later today.
