The Ringtail

I have been thinking recently of studying for a second degree with the Open University. As I have a 5-hour round trip down to work at least twice a week I reckon I could make good use of the time and get most of my studying done on the train. The question is – what to take?

I took two years of Maths at Uni, but without the grounding I missed at school (crappy O-level pass and no A-level) I always found it hard and didn’t really ever ‘get’ it. I’ve always said I would return at some point and go through a full Maths degree so maybe this is the right one?

I am a hobbyist programmer and would like to have a deeper understanding of the nature of programming, especially as it relates to free software. However, I’m not really interested in learning vocationally (i.e. I don’t want to be in IT in a large corporation) so perhaps the OU route is not the right one for this subject; it certainly seems to be skewed towards practical application rather than science.

On the other hand, I did a Science foundation course with the OU many years ago which I really enjoyed, and I’ve always had more than a passing interest in Physics. Given that I would need a fairly solid Maths grounding to do advanced Physics anyway, and the fact that there would be lots of ‘hobbyist’ programming opportunities along the way, perhaps a Science degree is the way forward?

Sounds like a plan…

I’m working through tasksapp and making sure I am fully covered by my unit tests, ready for refactoring. I’ve already spotted a lot of optimisations I can make and I’m quite looking forward to getting stuck in and doing them now.

One interesting one is that I hade written all my database queries to grab results, package them up into arrays of raw database information and return them to the calling function to do with what it needs to. I thought this was a good, general way to do it at the time, but with hindsight, I’ve had to introduce lots of fudges and unnecessary functions to work with these arrays. Refactoring to return the database results as arrays of Action objects makes things much easier and actually provides better separation of tasks across the whole application.

You live and learn.

This is a test post from a command-line program called Charm.

I am still using Linux Mint and will not be talking about switching or swapping ever again.

I am a broken record. First I love Macs, then I love Linux, then I love Macs, the I love Linux, and so on. Even I’m fed up of hearing it so I would like to set the record straight here:

I use Linux. I will, at some point in the future, have the situation where I think that the Mac is more interoperable with other people, and I will want to swap over. I will then find that it really doesn’t wortk any better with others and I will switch back. Given that I can see this all coming I’ve switched back for good this time, using Linux Mint Debian edition – and that’s the end of it. Some days I will find things I can’t do, but there will be a solution somewhere so I won’t panic and I will fix it and carry on my open source way.

Now, on with business.

I have finished my current project with macmillan Cancer Support, introducing Tridion as a new CMS for managing our print and digital content workflow. It all wnet well, all things considered, and was good fun, but I am ready to move on. I have been offered a role as Digital Publishing Director with Galore Park publishing, which starts full-time on April 4th. I am doing two days a week with them until then, but I am left with the luxury of a few spare days to catch up with things. I have some ends to tie up from my old business and I will finally be getting on with fixing the outstanding bugs and issues on my TasksApp application. I have some JQuery stuff to go in to pep up the usability, and also need to build in a proper config section so other users can manage their settings properly without having to access the database natively (archiving, customising the clients and contexts they use and so on). I also need to build a proper ‘install’ routine so that people can get and install the app on a local server too, which has not even been started yet. I am excited to get on with it and will keep this blog updated as I go.

…was that the act of blogging about my willpower at sticking with one flavour of linux for a whole year would precipitate a change. I am back using my Mac, for a chance sequence of events:

• I thought I’d lost it earlier in the year when the graphics chip died and it looked like I would have to pay £500+ to replace it. Mumble, mumble, bloody Apple, mumble, rip-off, mumble.
• In a last ditch attempt to revive it I took it to the Genius bar and was delighted to find that it’s a known issue with the graphics chip and nvidia have replaced the logic board free of charge. Hip, hip for Apple!
• Now I have a working Mac and a working Debian machine – which should I use? All questions of which I prefer, which is morally best, which is technically best, etc. aside, I decided to base it on one simple criterion – which helps me get my work done quicker?

So I am writing this from my Mac. It’s a simple fact that, for me, the Mac lets me get stuff done. Files just open, apps talk to each other far more seamlessly and I just feel like it’s working for me. Sure, I can do everything I need to on Linux, but it all takes just a little bit longer to set up, a little bit longer to get right. One example – files prepared in OpenOffice by someone else, and subsequently edited by me tend to look less-than-optimal when they get back out to Word users. I may want to write my files in emacs and use Pandoc to get them out to PDF to share, but the rest of the world wants a Word file (and not a russian-roulette ODT export, a Word Word file.

If I coded for a living it would be different, but my job requires that I have ready access to MSOffice, Flash, and mp3/iOS apps. I could find a work-around to be able to use Linux, but life is just too short.