May 2005 Archives

It's not unusual to encounter undocumented methods in a programming language, it's just the nature of the beast. Take for example Delphi 2005. It has a new Queue method, for allowing a programmer to queue a call to the main user thread, rather than serially invoke it (it's not quite serial, there's a WaitForSingleObject in there).
This interestingly brings up another item. There are two models generally associated with timed events. The first model is the Invoke, leaving at least an interval gap between the invocations, the second model is the invoke, and even if it's not finished invoke it again when the interval elapses. The first model can be emulated using the standard Synchronize call, the second can be emulated using the Queue call. Because they both are operating from the one task queue, either method would be safe to use on mt-unsafe code. The advantage of the Queue method is that you can interlock the thread and the GUI in a looser manner, as the thread does not wait for the GUI to do it's stuff before continuing. This means that, for example you could be informing a gui component to repaint itself when the underlying dataset changes.

As I've been through most of these at one point or another, and finding them is a pain in the ass:

• Apple Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines
• Microsoft XP 'Design Guidelines' (or Buy the book argh)
• Palm OS Application Design Guidelines Pre PalmOS 6; and Post PalmOS 6 (aka Protein)
• Java Look and Feel Guidelines (Version 2)
• Gnome Human Interface Guidelines (Gnome-HIG)
• KDE UI Standards

I'm of course still stuck with a PalmOS 4 handheld, so the pre PalmOS6 docs are what I refer to the most. I have no real motivation to buy another handheld when they're looking like the entire market is going to be eaten by micro PCs like the OQO.
[links edited, text slightly changed 2005-10-14]

Here's one from the symantec firewall ruleset:
Trying to access an SQL server with a blank password.
Obviously this is one in a long line of stupid f*ing user problems, but let's be honest, this was while I was constructing the ODBC connection, I don't have a blank password.
Another rule is FTP_IIS_Status_DoS, this one is particularly nefarious as I hit it regularly when using NCFTP. For some reason I don't think ncftp is trying to DOS a remote server :)

I just went to see the last of the Star Wars movies with my 3 nephews. I will have to say it all comes full circle - every i is dotted, every t crossed. Movie wise, it's a really hectic ride, mostly action from start to finish with a few angst ridden moments suffering from Hayden Christian's woefully wooden acting.
I'll say yayy to the light-saber duels, especially the quad saber wielding cyborg.
Based on the speed of Padme's pregnncy, I'm expecting that the movie took place over a 7 month period, assuming a 9 month pregnancy; but we don't know that for a fact; do we Mr Lucas? I'll have to say the kid brings balance to the force by the end of movie VI, the prophesy was correct, people just can't deal with a ~40 year span between his discovery and fulfillment.
The final fulfillment of Vader is most excellent! The only half believable emotional cry of the entire movie from that character; even if it was distorted by the mask.

The brother has a problem today, his dispensing system kept keeling over when he dispensed to some people, but not to others.
Firing up the utility which is what all normal pharmacy people would have had access to would only show that the system failed to validate a table, and that the connection to the database was broken. The only clue I had was the table name that I last saw in the utility. I'll just say from the get-go that this is Not good diagnostic programming practice.
Firing up the SQLPlus worksheet, I ran the ANALYZE TABLE <foo> VALIDATE command over the table, and saw no error. I ran it with the CASCADE, option and the same thing happened as the utility - the database fell over.
It turns out that one of the indexes was corrupt on the table. Iterating over all the indexes using ALTER INDEX <foo> rebuild, which narrowed down the indexes. Then I extracted the DDL for the index, dropped and recreated them, re-validated the table and everything was hunky dory.
Full documentation on the ANALYZE command is in the oracle documentation. For the purposes of this exercise we used ANALYZE TABLE BLOB VALIDATE CASCADE to see the error.
Solving the problem took about an hour, most of which was spent chewing on a sandwich and booking tickets to see Star Wars, and of course cardboard programming by another friend. A backup of the database would not have helped in this case as the corruption occurred silently some time ago, and was only uncovered when certain customer's records were accessed, so the loss of all the data input from the point of corruption to then would have been unacceptable.

This weekend seems to have been the talk to people weekend. I got a two phone calls from across the world, and an email from another person. I feel so loved! Plus that and I think I've drank more in the past 4 days than I have in the past 6 months, means that the conversations must have been surreal (I lie, I was not drunk when I talked to them); but I was drunk when I replied to the email. I'll just warn people right here and now - never, ever drink and dial.

Ah yesss... I remember pac man, but it was years after it was released. I may be old, but I'm not that old.

Just visiting the office today. Mood: silly, I'm typing this up on the laptop in the office as we speak, sometimes I wonder why I bother :)

Yesterday my next door neighbor called over. He's getting on in years, pushing on to 84 at this point. His problem was that he had seen some young lad in his house causing problems. We have a problem with local kids breaking into houses and robbing them blind, so a local kid in the house would not be totally surprising. The cops were called, people came, itwas al much excitement but no-one was found. About an hour later I left him, under the impression that we had convinced him that there was no-one in the house. About an hour later he came knocking on the door again. He again repeated that he had seen someone in the house. By this time my sister's boyfriend was visiting so we both went to the house and went through it with a fine tooth-comb. No kids. We're not completely convinced that there was anyone in the house in the first place, but we again feel that he deserves listening to again, just in case.
You have to bear in mind by this point, he is really agitated, and scared. It's an awful sight to see a person in such a state of distress, and we were trying all that we could to make him feel safe and secure.
By this stage he's spent the best part of the afternoon in the house, and I've been feeding him tea, and listening to his stories of the past. He's really really, really difficult to understand, the conversation is slow and painful, but I feel I understand what he's saying, even if it's not completely in one piece.
We seem fine until later in the evening. He arrives at the door at about 7.30 pm, absolutely scared out of his wits, saying that the kids have been in his house and have been harassing him when he was up town. I settled him down, he smoked a few cigarettes, had a couple of cups of tea, and I went next door, torch in hand making sure that there was no-one in the house. It took until about 10.30 before he felt he was able to go back to his own house, so I followed him in and practically walked him up to his bed, all the time assuring him that there was no intruder in the house and that I would be in the house for as long a it took him to feel happy. He insistede that he was OK, and practically walked me out of the house.
The next morning, I had my shower and no sooner had I the towel on my head then there was a knock on the door. He was there, telling me that there he had encountered three women sitting on the sofa in his living room, that he could not open the door and had rushed out to the house. Again, I settled him down; a cup of tea, and he smoked a cigarette. By this time, I had completely figured out that he was imagining the intruders in the house. Afger about an hour he left to visit one of the neighbors, and I went next door to have a look around the house. He had left the front door open, and had jammed the key in the back door. He had been so f**king frightened that he had left the house through the front door, which is something he never, ever does.
Long and short of it, he's gone dotty. It's only been in the last few days. The cause could be a change in medication, a reduction in the amount of booze he's drinking, seeing ghosts; I just don't fucking know. What I do know, is that if he has more visitors than the home help for a solitary half an hour during the day that he might not be in the situation he is in. I would hope to christ that it's just a temporary aberration, and that he'll be better soon. He's living on his own, he's lonely, and for some reason, I'm able to understand what he's saying better than a hell of a lot of other people, which makes me even sadder, as it only emphasizes the fact that while I've only been in contact with him for a short period.
It only exemplifies my statement. Hug an old person today, because they need it.

I'm not surprised at the level of outrage from people regarding the fact that it's most likely that Tony Blair will win the election. The problem is that it's not Tony who's getting in, it's the Labour party, he gets elected as a by-product. It's difficult to completely eliminate such a huge majority of 160 seats out of 646. The consensus is that while Tony has been a really bad boy, you would have to be insane to vote the Conservatives in after their track record in the 80's, and after all, they are the only alternative (sorry Lib Dems).

This weekend was spent at Ruth and Pirouel's Wedding. There are photographs, of course - what would you expect from me? The vast majority of the people there were vegetarian (and quite a few were vegan) so the food was non-meat based (for the most part). Even though, I will have to say it was really tasty. Almost make me think of going that way, If it wasn't for the love I have for steaks.
This weekend also marks the removal of the last pieces of my chattels from Dublin. I am officially not there any more. What on earth am I going to do now? Mind you Dermot still has a chunk of my DVD's. I think I'll go visit during the week and bring a baseball bat :)