software_dev

How can I store my list of passwords on an iPhone or iPod Touch? This is the question that I attempted to solve as I geeked out over the weekend. I know I can buy an application like 1Password and sync between a laptop and an iPhone but I already have a pretty good password manager (since I wrote the one I use years ago). After a bit of research I came up with a few possibilities: create an iPhone app to sync with my password manager, create an encrypted bookmarklet (this is the way 1Password used to export passwords to the iPhone), or create a html page which will alter its own structure after I enter a password....

If you believe that Software Craftsmanship is important then its time to nail your pants to the mast. Sign the manifesto....

A year ago I wrote a post about about writing a program to performance test web applications (see Thumper). Since I finished off the original set of python scripts, I haven't really had the time to continue developing this application further in either Java, Ruby or any other language. Fortunately there is someone out there who thinks that threaded performance tools have an inherent flaw. Enter JCrawler ... go out and try it....

I am currently working with a team that uses subversion for day-to-day development but needs to use cvs due to a corporate policy. So I suggested that we create a build on our continuous integration server to automatically merge changes from a subversion working copy to a cvs checkout. I had a quick look on the internet for something to do the merging and managed to find and play with a perl script to merge from svn to cvs, and with a java application that was supposed to do the same....

Love these videos on SQL database performance best practices - part 1, part 2 and part 3....

Erk, Avalanche is not as nice as I originally thought. It seems that it tries too hard to keep an average load rate. When responses take too long to return, it sends out more requests. The end result is that it overloads the application server. Damn it, why can't someone write a testing tool that sends out requests at a specified rate. Oh, hang on, that's what Thumper is supposed to do....

Over the years I've been involved with writing a number of web applications. Some I am proud of, some I never want to see again. During each project, testing of the application's performance, stability under load, and regression testing of user journeys always comes up. There are a number of great bits of hardware (eg. Avalanche), and software (eg. Grinder) that help you test applications. I've even had a fun time using a room full of Grinder clients to test web services for a client - a great way to run a denial of service attack :-)...

Just use this magical incantation: RAWTOHEX(SYS_GUID())...

Ever been asked to estimate something without any information? Rather than just stare back with a blank look on your face, simply go and ask the estimate goat and you’ll have your answer. UPDATE (August 2016): I wanted to experiment with javascript and canvas so I made a slighly different looking estimate goat....