Kaleidosblog

The easiest way to copy non-Apple videos to the iPod/iPhone on the Mac

2009-08-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

This is just a "note to self" as I don't do this very often and end up having to google it every time.

1. Open the iMovie HD app (pre-installed with Mac OS X)
2. Drag & drop the video into iMovie HD
3. Open the File/Export.. menu and select iPod

That's it! iMovie HD will format the video correctly for the iPod/iPhone, send it to iTunes and place it in the iTunes library ready for the next sync.

(*non-Apple meaning avi, divx, etc. Mov and mp4 videos can be imported directly into iTunes)

Good programmer's editor for MacOS X?

2009-06-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

Can anyone recommend a good programmer's editor for Mac OS X?

It must be free, that rules TextMate out.

It must have source code editing features (syntax highlighting etc.), and be able to cope with long files (GBytes).

So far I've been using JEdit which is otherwise quite good but its MacOS integration is quite flaky due to the fact that JEdit is written in Java and thus it depends on Apple's Cocoa-Java integration API which changes all the time. Also, JEdit is not very good with long files since it tries to load the whole file into memory (i.e. JVM heap).

I have tried TextWrangler but I didn't like it very much. I'm also not a big vi fan.

Any ideas?

PS. Obviously the GB long files are not source code ;-)

Who was The Strongest Chess Player of All Time?

2008-06-04T06:26:00.000-07:00

Computers choose: Jose Raul Capablanca.

Refreshing to be reminded that my country has produced more than just dictators and popular music.

Software and the book metaphor

2008-05-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

Done properly, "writing" software is more like writing a collection of short stories than like writing a novel.

If you follow this advice, your modules will be self-contained, smaller, easier to understand and to test ... And a pleasure to read!

Return to sender

2008-03-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

Looks like the ClearCase Ant task I submitted to Apache a while ago has been scheduled for inclusion in Ant 1.8. Now that I don't use any of these tools anymore!

Regrettable Spring

2008-01-17T15:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the otherwise well-intentioned and very talented folk at Spring Source (aka interface21), the software world has been blessed with yet another pointless certificate.

In the Middle Ages you could buy all sorts of permits from the catholic church that would "certify" you were apt and allowed to perform some activity. For example, you could buy a permit that allowed you to eat meat on fast days (rather than the otherwise ubiquitous salted fish). "Certified Friday Meat Muncher". Needless to say, it was quite a profitable business for the church.

My company is hiring. We don't believe in certificates. We believe in people with brains and the right attitude.

Zeitgeist

2008-01-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

Hmm, the Ruby fad did not last very long.

It seems that not even JRuby can save it.

I wonder how long it will take till we get "Scala on Sails"? Oh wait, Google tells me it's already there!

Blog's Best Friend

2007-12-30T15:50:00.000-08:00

While I enjoy reading Steve Yegge's blog, I suspect that sometimes he likes to take the piss out of his readers.

Nothing wrong with that, mind you. This kind of postings is what makes the blogsphere so entertaining, that's why we enjoy the bile blog too.

But of course, the argument that you can solve the software maintenance problem by picking a new language that reduces the number of LOC is utter nonsense. Whoever tells you that with a straight face is trying to sell you something (himself?).

Imagine mankind invented a new language that allowed to write all of Shakespeare's books in one page. Would that make it easier to read/understand/appreciate them?

Product development job in Sydney CDB anyone?

2007-11-28T21:20:00.000-08:00

My company is hiring.

We are a fairly small, friendly and highly focussed product development company. We write connectivity solutions for stock exchanges, brokers and other financial market participants. Our main technology is Java, with some C/C++ thrown in (via JNI). The role is very technical and we are looking for high caliber candidates.

Have a read through the position description below and have a look at our web sites. If you are interested please send your CV etc. to fabio.gavilondo@orcsoftware.com

(PS. We have customers all over the world. Some travel may be required from time to time).

Software Engineer or Senior Software Engineer (depending on level of experience)

Tenure: Permanent

Key tasks:

Participate in the design and implementation of CameronFIX products and their features (about 70%)
Provide technical support and incident resolution for CameronFIX products and their features (about 25%)
Provide technical pre-sales support (about 5%)

Key skills and experience:

Significant experience in Java based product development
Broad capability across related technologies (e.g. JMX, JMS, JDBC, RDBMS, Spring)
Excellent knowledge of OO programming
Experience in network level programming
Experience in multi-threaded programming
Ability to troubleshoot and resolve problems under time pressure
Ability to take tasks to completion.

Other desirable skills and experience:

Exposure to Test Driven Development
Exposure to the FIX protocol and/or FIX engines
Financial markets knowledge
Exposure to (near) real time systems development.

Key personal strengths:

Strong customer focus
Self organizing
Self motivated
Enjoys working and contributing in a team environment
Excellent communication skills both in technical and business level contexts.

ClearCase merge support for Ant

2007-09-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

I you use Ant, ClearCase and continuous integration this one is for you.

There are situations where you need to ensure that a ClearCase view/branch is up-to-date with another view/branch (e.g. the mainline) before the build can proceed. Of course you also want to automate this step, and maybe even make it part or you continuous integration checks (e.g. build fails if the 2 branches are not in sync).

Unfortunately, Ant's ClearCase optional tasks don't offer support for merge operations.

I have written a 'CCFindmerge' Ant task and submitted it to Apache to remedy that situation. It will probably be included in some future Ant version, but if this feature is important to you I suggest you vote for it to speed up the process.

2007-08-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

This little Mac utility is too cool not to share. Taking screenshots has never been that easy.

Has Agile hit the Pareto wall?

2007-08-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

We know how it goes: 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes.

It seems to me that the 20% that matter when it comes to agile software development has long been invented and documented.

Everything I've read about Agile recently is just more variation on the same: yet another way to write test cases, yet another way to organize your index cards on the wall, yet another way to run a stand-up meeting...

I'd love to be corrected. Otherwise all these agile feeds will start to disappear from my blog aggregator in order to make place for some fresh content.

Back to the roots

2007-07-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

After some years of agile consulting and a brief intermezzo at a big financial institution I am again about to join a small and innovative product company with a leading product in their space.

Product development, trading software, highly concurrent systems ... that should be fun! And did I mention I am free to choose whatever hardware and operating system I want to use? Good bye Windows.

Hani's interview

2007-07-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

Hani is hiring. Imagine the job interview:

Please introduce yourself - do you prefer Rod Johnson's moobjuice or Gavin Fleury's turd lubricant with your javalicious breakfast?
Why are you interested in Formicary's baby jesus buttplugs anyway?
What other 5 things don't I want to know about you?
Could you explain why OSWorkflow is the only true kind of genitalia waggling since FogBugz's ASP to PHP compiler?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Ruby orifice rubbing compared to poopoowibblewomwoming in Java?
How is the OpenSore interface implemented in Axis2? How would you refactor it away using NetBeans and a time travel machine?
How fast would fowlbots die without regular dependency injections by The Bearded One?
Ok, enough of your spastic, retarded gibberish! I've got the right job for you. It's with the Maven team at Apache...

I hope someone who gets to the interview stage is so kind to share his/her interview experience with us!

Google not functional?

2007-06-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

There has been some discussion in the blogsphere lately as to what the Next Big Programming Language might be. At the same time the functional programming camp has been stressing that with the advent of multicore CPUs functional languages will find their way into mainstream programming because they make it easier to write thread-safe programs (being side effect free and all that).

It was interesting to read that Google's internal choice of programming languages (C++, Java, Python and JavaScript) does not include FP (JavaScript has first-class functions, but it lacks other caractheristics to make it a full-flagged functional language).

Surely if anyone would benefit from FP for massively parallel computation it would be Google?