My migraines

Improving you visual studio experience

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:49:00 +0000

The mouse if cool, but it is not the user interface that an advance user should use, at least that is my opinion anyway. If you really want to rock your programming experience in your IDE you need to use the keyboard.

Because I have recently being using VS a lot I though I should let people know some cool shortcuts I use:

Navigate to definition: You can press F12 to go to the declaration of the current selected object.
Toggle a break point: You can create a break point by using F9.
Go to next item in task list or search results: Yo can do that by using F8. This is very useful when you use the to do list a lot (whici I do ).
Go to previous item in task list or search results: This is the same action a the above, but instead of going forward you are going blackguards. For this you can use Shift + F8.
Start debugging: You can start the debugging by pressing F5
Stop debugging: You can stop debugging by going Shift + F5

These are just some examples. You can find a great poster here. You should print it out and put it somewhere you can see it :)

On XLT and javascript

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:07:00 +0000

The contest

First of all let me give you the contest of the problem:

On one hand at work we currently are using a content managements system written in Java (whose name I’m not going give) that generates xhtml using far to many XSL transformations. On the other hand we have a .Net application that makes those xhtml pages work with existing .Net applications.

From my point of view the system is not well designed, precisely because the rendering of the pages is done twice, first by the Java content manager system and later by the ASP.Net runtime. Anyway, that i not the problem we had right now.

To simplify the creation of the webpage we have a component/module/widget that allows less technical people to add pure html in the page instead of letting the content system decide how to render the content. This seemed to be a good idea in case there was a more advance user that wanted to use html, but just html.

The problem

The problems started when the business people (the lest technical people) wanted to add Javascripts. Ovioulsy the less tesgnical people were not adding complicated scripts, they were just copy pasting something like:

script language="javascript" src="url"  /script

In our case the urls was of the form:

javascriptUrli=number&s=data

Now this should have not been a problem, but it was…. This was actually I quite interesting bug to find out. Let met tell you the process that will be used to generate the component in the page:

Get input from user and store it in XML
Perform rendering of the content using a XSLT
Convert the rendering from step 2 to a ASP.Net master page using a XSLT
ISS5 (yes I know…) renders the ASP.Net master page.

After this process for some unknown reason all the & char will be converted to their html representation, and this included or Javascript url converting it from:

javascriptUrli=number&s=data

javascriptUrli=number&s=data

Ouch… the Javascript does not work!!!! Where is this change coming from? After looking at the XSLTs used I discovered one thing, the target of the transformation was XHTML!!!!The processor is outputting XHTML which does not support the & char. Unfortunately the XSLT processor does that with everything, including Javascript.

The solution

There is a way around the problem which is clearly a HACK. All the scripts should be wrapped as if they were html/xml comments.

What does this mean? Well if we used to add the javascript adding:

script language="javascript" src="url"  /script

We know we should add it using a script like this

var target = document.createElement( "script" );
target.setAttribute(“language”, “javascript”); 
target.setAttribute( "src", "url" );
document.getElementsByTagName( "body" )[0].appendChild( target );

The above code should be wrapped by HTML comments tags (I cannot added them because if I do you wont see the code). If Javascript code is wrapped by HTML comments will still work but it will be ignored by the XSLT and therefore the URL won’t be changed :)

Of course this will scare the shit out of a business guy. We can always make it better adding a function that does that with a URL surrounded by HTML comments.

First version

This function will do the trick:

function add_javascript(url){
    var target = document.createElement( "script" ); 
    target.setAttribute(“language”, “javascript”); 
    target.setAttribute( "src", 
        url.replace(/(comment-start-tag)|()comment-end-tag/,””));
    document.getElementsByTagName( "body" )[0].appendChild( target );
}

This will allows the business person to add a Javascript copy pasting:

add_javascript(“(comment-start-tag)url?i=23794804&s=67ECA(comment-end-tag)”)

Obviously surrounding the url with html comment tags.

Second version

Stepah saw my function and decided to improve it by using the replace method of the string object in a much cooler and elegant way:

function add_javascript(url){
    var target = document.createElement( "script" ); 
    target.setAttribute(“language”, “javascript”); 
    target.setAttribute( "src", 
        url.replace(/(comment-start-tag)(.*)(comment-end-tag)/,’$2’));
    document.getElementsByTagName( "body" )[0].appendChild( target );
}

I hope that know you know that is if you are using XSLT you will have problems with Javascript, but you can always use my workaround/hack :)

I hope it helps

I have just noticed those arrows and crosses, how long has this...

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:23:05 +0000

I have just noticed those arrows and crosses, how long has this ~~bug~~ feature been there?

New style

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:12:31 +0000

I decided two days ago to change the style of the tumblr. The style right now is usuable but I do not think is yet finished. Currently it is usable an and is as the French would say “comsi comsa”. I yet have to:

Make sure images and object ar centered in the posts.
Make a better top menu.
Make a better footer.
Fix the problem with the about box.
Choose a bettern font.

I’ve always felt more comfortable with code a and languages like C, C#, python and etc… So if any one of you can give me some design tips, I would greatly appreciate it :)

"Used Bluetooth headset during conference call today. Was informed later that it was clearly evident..."

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:42:03 +0000

“Used Bluetooth headset during conference call today. Was informed later that it was clearly evident I was sitting on a toilet during meeting”

- CobraCommander

About time

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:44:22 +0000

I have been working with a 64 bit machine running OpenSuse for a while. And I have been surfing the net using a x86 browser to be able to visit all those lame pages that use flash. But finally after reading this post I found out that the there is a 64 bit flash player for Linux, hurray!!!!!!!

You can find it here.

Maths joke

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:27:37 +0000

An infinite number of mathematicians walks into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second one orders half a beer. The third one orders quarter of a beer. It continues that way until the bartender interrupts and says: “You guys are all a bunch of idiots” and pours two beers.

Amsterdam

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:46:00 +0000

Two weeks ago a good friend of Bea and I was coming to Amsterdam so we decided to go and visit her. We though that Amsterdam was closer that it really is, around 250 km, took the car and went. It was a really nice day, we visited the city center, the red district and Heineken brewery which was aw… wait for it some (yes, I love How I met your mother).

View Larger Map

Amsterdam overall is quite a good city, but I would not live in it. Don’t get me wrong, the sight seeings are great, people are nice and you have Marijuana and beer, but is not the kind of place where I would like to settle down. The city gave me a feeling of party non-stop which I don’t really understand or like anymore. Maybe a couple of years ago I did not mind to go to work early in the morning and see a man on the floor cover by his own pee and vomit, but know, I really do not want to see that early in the morning when I go to work. I am sure I will be going back and will change my mind about it… anyway as usual you can find the picts at flickr.

Faking named parameters in PHP

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:59:00 +0000

marco:

Here’s a short technique for faking Ruby’s cool named-parameter ability. It’s useful when you have a function that takes a lot of optional arguments, and you occasionally want to specify a few of the middle values without specifying all of the preceding values (or knowing how many there are). It also helps code readability if you’re willing to make the slight performance sacrifice — and since you’re writing in a dynamic language, that’s probably true.

The function (note the use of extract):
 false,
    $optimize_fetch => false,
    $cache = false
) {
    if (is_array($id)) extract($id, EXTR_IF_EXISTS);

    /* ... */
}
Calling it the old way still works perfectly fine as long as the first parameter isn’t normally supposed to be an array:
But imagine how helpful that is when browsing this code 6 months later. Now, compare that with calling it the new way: 1, 'cache' => true)); Obviously, the function can have a lot more arguments, and this approach makes a lot more sense when it does. It’d be great if PHP at least supported a compact or automatic array-literal syntax so we could avoid array(...) everywhere, but the developers really don’t like that idea.



This same hack/trick has been used in perl for ages… but thank fully we may get named parameters in perl 6, personally I prefer to use this technique in larger projects which makes the code more self explanatory. I hate reading code like this:

sub my_sub_routine($$$$){
    my first_param = @_[0];
    my second_param = @_[1];
    my third_param = @_[2];
    my fourth_param = @_[3];
}


I fill bad every time I have to write things like this...



Update
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:58:37 +0000
Update: The project is going slow but is still on its way. I’m happy to say that I expect to have all the data connections tested by this Friday if not earlier. This means that I’ll be able to focus my…


I really want to play this game, but I’m waiting until the...
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:50:54 +0000


I really want to play this game, but I’m waiting until the Linux version is out :).


Bank holiday = more sight seeing
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:09:46 +0000
Today is a bank holiday in most of the countries that took part in the world war, since we do not have much to do yet in Brussels, Bea and I decided to visit the Atumium. As usual it took me several minutes to take a good picture of the place:



FOSDEM 2009
Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:43:50 +0000
I’ve just decided that I’m going to FOSDEM 2009. The easiest way to describe the event is to simple copy paste from their page:
FOSDEM is probably the most developer-oriented Free and Opensource conference, taking place in Brussels, Belgium on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 February 2009. Apart from having many invited speakers, the conference offers developer rooms, stands and lightning talks to projects from the Free and Opensource community.

We hereby welcome proposals from projects to participate in organizing a devroom, manning a stand or holding a lightning talk.

Let me know if you are going :)


First weekend in Brussels
Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:04:21 +0000
This is my first weekend in Brussels!!!! I truly truly needed the weekend. This has been the first week after 7 years ( the number of years I have been a student at Uni) that I have woke up every day before 6:30 and that I have worked 8 hours per day. We decided to go around and take some picts :)

If you want to see al the picts I’ve taken, either you can view then through this slideshow:
 



Or visit my flickr page


If you are American, and did not vote, you should be ashamed
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:04:39 +0000


If you are American, and did not vote, you should be ashamed


First day at work
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:02:37 +0000
Today was my first day at work and I’ve got to say, I am the geek. I am the only one in the group that uses Linux, the only one who talks about algorithms, VM improvements, using Java within .Net etc…
I’ve got to say that I love it, every time I start speaking and I use an acronym my manager says: “I’m lost again”. I am sure he knows far more than I do about Web servers and HTTP, but I am clearly the weird guy who worries about memory management, and all the rest. Well we’ll see how does this evolve.


U.K. last supper
Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:43:00 +0000
I left the U.K. 48 hours ago and Bea decided to take a picture of our last supper:

Those green things between the cod and the chips are mussy peas, or at least they should be…


Quick update
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:01:24 +0000
Quick update: First of all I want to apologize to anyone that wanted to use the project, I know I promised that the first version was coming out soon, but I have reasons why I could not code as much as I wanted….


lemongirl:


British Traditional Breakfast
A muy poquito tiempo...
Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:05:02 +0000


lemongirl:


British Traditional Breakfast
A muy poquito tiempo de irme de Manchester no hago mas que pensar, esta es la ultima cerveza en este bar, esta es la ultima tal, esta es la utlima cual. Como no, entre todos esos “ultimos” que quiero recordar es este, el desayuno. Todo esto con la correspondiente taza de te y tostadas!
Tengo que decir que cuando llegue a Manchester, lo unico que comia de este tipo de desayuno era el tomate, el champiñon, la salchicha y las patatas (en esta caso las patatas son como un mini pastelillo de patatas rayadas, llamadas “Hash browns”)
Lo de comer el huevo frito, el bacon o las “beans” era algo impensable para mi. Pero lo cierto es que poco a poco fui probando y hoy me he comido mi primer desayuno completo YO SOLA!
(la yema del huevo se la he dado a Manuel, aun no me gusta mucho) 
El siguiente “ultimo” de comida creo que será el fish&chips, se supone que el dia 29, que nervios!


Yes, that was probably my last Traditional English Breakfast in the U.K. I’ll miss those after a good night out.


Ghost Town
Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:00:00 +0000
A couple of days a go Bea and I decided to watch Ghost Town. It was one of those evenings in which you have nothing to do and you don’t want to go out with your friends and get drunk…. I think I’m getting older, I keep finding it harder and harder to go out to get drunk, but I do get drunk in the pub without wanting.
Going back to the movie, we totally recommend it, the plot is simple and you can not say it is the best movie of all time, but it is a nice movie to watch, specially in a dark gray autumn evening. Overall it has a well balance between non-pc humor and a love story, although in my opinion the ending was too cheesy for my taste.

My migraines

Improving you visual studio experience

On XLT and javascript

The contest

The problem

The solution

First version

Second version

I have just noticed those arrows and crosses, how long has this...

New style

"Used Bluetooth headset during conference call today. Was informed later that it was clearly evident..."

About time

Maths joke

Amsterdam

Faking named parameters in PHP

Update

I really want to play this game, but I’m waiting until the...

Bank holiday = more sight seeing

FOSDEM 2009

First weekend in Brussels

If you are American, and did not vote, you should be ashamed

First day at work

U.K. last supper

Quick update

lemongirl: British Traditional Breakfast A muy poquito tiempo...

Ghost Town