After weeks of blood, sweat and tears, I have finally deployed the refactored version of PRIDE to the production servers. This probably means Sweet Fanny Adams to most of you, but this makes me happy because it means that I can finally stop writing test cases and doing pain-in-the-ass fiddly stuff with raw SQL database dumps.
Tag: geek
Another sign I'm getting old
I reinstalled my home laptop last night. I spent an inordinate amount of time watching a series of progress bars ramp up to 100% while a few gigs of software was copied.
I can't help but think back at the first time I installed my computer from scratch. Michel and I spent hours installing Windows 3.1 on my first computer in the basement of my parents' house. The endless tedium of switching diskettes. I knew every switch and setting and what it did, and how to optimize the last byte of memory on that computer. And I loved every moment of it. I was in nerd heaven.
Last night was just boring as hell. Something I had to do because the Windows Genuine Advantage popups and reminders and logos finally got me pissed off enough to reinstall everything properly. Plop a CD and listen to it spin. I still know most of the switches and settings, but I just can't be bothered these days. What used to be fun, trying to get everything working just right and as smoothly as possible, is now just trying to get everything working. The video drivers wouldn't install (but they've always been a bit flaky) and I couldn't get the advanced power management controls drivers to load to enable hibernation.
I managed to get everything working this morning before work, but that's not the point. The thrill is gone. I've done it so many times now that it's lost all appeal.
At least it's done now and should be stable for the next year or so.
I'm now officially the village geek :)
See this shiny new website:
http://www.hinxtonvillage.co.uk/
The couple that runs the dead-tree-format newsletter wanted to go high-tech and make a website for the village but didn't really know how to go about doing it. I've been in touch with them because I wanted to set up a board game night at our local pub and, well, basically. I offered my services and they jumped at the offer. I looked into content management systems for them. That way, they just need to write content and happily ignore having to mess with any HTML. They're thrilled. The whole thing took maybe 30 minutes to install, an hour to get my head wrapped around their configuration logic and a whole of 5 minutes to hack together the graphics. And you know what? It kicks ass, especially compared to other village websites out there :P
PRIDE is currently a mess
Phil and I have been working on cleaning up the PRIDE codebase. It's long overdue for a good overhauling because as we've been doing this exercise, we've found a cubic assload of code whose only apparent purpose is to be tested (meaning that it's only used in the unit tests, but nowhere else in actual production code and as such, is completely useless, really).
So for the last few weeks, I've been combing through 191 java classes (35562 lines of code), pruning out bits of junk, improving code structure and usability and generally going nuts.
It's tedious work because as soon as you fix something in one place, you need to cascade the changes to everywhere else that uses the bit of code you just re-wrote. It's the worst type of IT work: one that is boring as hell but requires a lot of concentration to figure out what stuff you wrote 6 months ago (or worse, was written by somebody else) is supposed to be doing and how it should use the improvements you're making as you go along.
At least I have the gay dance to keep me sane.
Just cause I'm a geek and find this amusing
On Wednesday at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
I was a pimp in my previous life
It's really bad, but this is making me drool.
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2006/03/31/pimpstar_led_rims_the_video.html
I suck, I know.
Happiness is…
…freeing 2GB on a waaaaaay-too-cramped primary partition to bring the amount of free space from 17% to 38%.
Proxies, Adapters and Flyweights, oh my
Dear brain.
I'm sorry I put you through the last 2.5 days. Although I'm glad I managed to get a last-minute spot in the java design pattern training course, I didn't expect to see this much material this quickly and I apologize for dumping all this stuff on you at such short notice. I completely understand your sudden desire to shut down to prevent circuit overload. If you can wait just another hour, it's going to be the weekend and we can relax with an assload of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Thank you,
me.
Yes of course this is hello?
Saw this in ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
userpicks. I confess that I couldn't stop watching it and was almost late for work.
I'm weird.
woohoo!
Because of all the kerfuffle generated by LJ changing its cookie handling, my LJ client broke. I've written a patch for it. It now works :)