I Grok2!

Using LiveCode (RunRev) with SDK Platform Android 2.2, API 8, revision 3

grok2 — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:11:34 +0000

The current (LiveCode 4.6.3, Oct 2011) release of LiveCode for Android development does not accept the revision 3 directory structure of the Android 2.2 (Froyo) SDK and needs some directory structure tweaking as below:

Copy the folder

\platform-tools\

\platforms\android-8\tools\

You need to do this when in the Edit menu Preferences dialog for the Mobile Support item, if it fails with an error message saying:
The chosen folder is not a valid Android SDK. Please ensure you have installed it correctly, and enabled support for Android 2.2 (Froyo).

Fragmentation when allocating memory

grok2 — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:21:15 +0000

To reduce fragmentation specially in high-activity code, allocate temporary buffers (buffers that will live only for a short while) from a separate memory pool. The idea is to avoid long-lived buffers and short-lived buffers from being allocated from the same pool.

Focus on the road not the wall

grok2 — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:41:46 +0000

An interesting essay on being the CEO by Ben Horowitz. The ideas he suggests for managing your own psychology as a CEO also appears useful in general. The following stood out for me:

Focus on the road not the wall

Focusing on things that need to be done and not focusing on things that bring your project down can help you finish your project and not go crashing into a wall .

Coding and Holding The Big Picture in Your Head

grok2 — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 06:04:12 +0000

I find that I am often unable to complete some piece of code unless I have a mental picture of the whole thing in my head. And this is a huge problem. For small things, it is fairly easy to get a mental picture of what needs to be done and my coding happens fast. But for something that is larger, requiring perhaps a multi-step process with things that can go wrong in each or all of the steps, it is much harder. I keep procrastinating for days on end until my puny brain has wrapped itself around whatever needs be done end-to-end and I feel that I will be able to take care of all the loose ends and all corner cases are considered — mentally. Only then can I start coding.

But this method does not scale and also it’s hard to give a project schedule and tell when you’ll be done with some module .

I need to figure out some way of divide-and-conquer programming where I don’t need to have the entire thing in my head, but have just pieces of it in my head at a time, code that piece and be comfortable that the particular piece has been coded correctly — and that the way it’s been coded it will interact correctly with all the other pieces making the old adage of the sum of the parts being larger than the whole come true.

Oh well. I guess I cannot be everything all the time. Back to wrapping my head around this current problem…why is it that people find web-development easy and I keeping finding it hard and wondering why no-one sees that it is complicated distributed programming? That things can go wrong anytime and everywhere.

How do you deal with coding of such nature? Let me know in the comments.

Firefox Firebug Add-On Notes

grok2 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:01:04 +0000

If you don’t see JavaScript that you know is on the page you are browsing, in the Script tab, then reload the page.
If you want to see JavaScript errors as they happen on the page, look in the Console tab.
In the Script tab, breakpoints can only be set on lines whose line numbers are green in color.

Ignoring white space when performing diff with Subversion

grok2 — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:36:14 +0000

Subversion doesn’t seem to have support for ignoring white space changes when performing a diff against revisions. But it has an option to invoke an external diff utility. So I generally invoke GNU diff with it’s ignore white-space option as in below:

svn diff --diff-cmd diff -x -uw /path/to/file

PHP function and method names are case-insensitive

grok2 — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 04:05:19 +0000

Wow! You learn something new everyday. Today, I learned that PHP function and method names are case-insensitive! This after a couple of years of using PHP off and on…

Hosted SMTP / SMTP Relay Service

grok2 — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 05:32:59 +0000

A few hosted SMTP (or SMTP Relay Service) providers (their servers are whitelisted, they manage bounces and can send out large volumes of email without attracting the attention of spam blacklisters or ISPs):

SendGrid
Postmark
CritSend
SocketLabs
Amazon SNS : It seems like SNS can be used for this and would be a cheaper option than the rest, but no personal experience with it.

Who is suing who in the mobile world…

grok2 — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:10:07 +0000

Based on the diagram from here…

If you are going to print tablular information…

grok2 — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:51:18 +0000

…in a console as a result of some debugging or control command, then try to ensure that any column that uses string or such similar output does not have spaces within that column. This helps with parsing output using tools like awk that are able to split by column and help with subsequent slicing and dicing of the information (specially when debugging).