Technology Secrets…

Posted by mkhairul - April 30, 2008 at 07:04:09 am - No Comments

 Categories: blog



The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.

A terrifying insight into the cartel world. This $80 billion
industry is investing in their money to give them an edge in
intelligence and counter-intelligence. Recruiting mercenaries and
cashing-in (and/or luring) tech experts into their organization helped
them build a formidable networked information infrastructure.

Encrypted high frequency radio transmissions, data mining, wire tapping and many more.

Even personnel at the bottom of the cartel food chain
have Israeli night-vision goggles, ICOM radio frequency scanners, and
Magellan GPS handhelds.

Its like the hollywood movies are spilling into the real world. Just
like today’s scientists trying to make yesterday’s sci-fi a reality. A
very interesting read. I think damninteresting.com should put up this article on their web.

Displaying Code on the Web

Posted by mkhairul - April 29, 2008 at 01:04:29 pm - No Comments

 Categories: blog

There's multiple ways to display code, using whatever highlighter you
want (GeSHi, Google Syntax Highlighter), .phps extension (if your
hosting supports it), and many more.

Since the HTML text editor automagically encode characters, so I added an option to download the file.
I've added a download script which will allow users to download files.

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. $mm_type="application/octet-stream";
  2.  
  3. $file = '';
  4. $filename = '';
  5.  
  6. $filename = $_GET['download'];
  7. switch($filename){
  8.     case "truncate":
  9.         $file = "truncate.php";
  10.         break;
  11.     case "download":
  12.         $file = "download_sample.php";
  13.         break;
  14. }
  15.  
  16. header("Cache-Control: public, must-revalidate");
  17. header("Content-Type: " . $mm_type);
  18. header("Content-Length: " .(string)(filesize($file)) );
  19. header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$file.'"');
  20. header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary\n");
  21.  
  22.  
  23.  
  24.                  
  25. readfile($file);

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for Software Development

Posted by mkhairul - April 24, 2008 at 08:04:31 pm - 1 Comment

 Categories: blog

Back in the early days, I was in the software development team for an enterprise HRMS (Human Resource Management System) software and one of the features that was missing at that time were KPIs and scorecards. I have no interest whatsoever in any of these Human Resource skills which the company can train me on (which was also my loss for not taking the opportunity to learn). I only did what I do because the problems that arises were interesting. Errors, crashes, non-trivial features or requirements servers, and the most important thing is the development process, thats my main interest.

There was a time when I was needed to implement these scorecard and KPI features into the system. A visit from a consultant is arranged. So there I am, listening to a consultant which deserve every bit of respect I can give, after all he was a Human Resource Manager for Maybank, trying his best describing KPIs and scorecards to me. The voice was a little bit slow, or just maybe my mind wanders off on its own, thinking, what the hell is he trying to tell me. The rest of it.. is uh.. well, I can't remember much of it. But what I do know that, the emphasize on the words "Scorecard" and "KPI" by my boss (at that time) tells me that it is VERY important. To make a long story short, all the new feature doesn't meet the light of day because the bugs swarmed the development staff like red ants over meat.

kpi_chart_lines.gif

Here, now, in the present. I'm confronted with these KPI thing again. I cannot run this time, I have to face these KPI thing and deal with it. And deal with it I did. Now, information is at your fingertips, anything you need to know, you just have to craft the questions to it. The broader the question the less accurate the answers will be. The question is already half of the answer. If you don't know what you're finding, how will you be able to find it?

An old saying goes, "A wise man's question contains half the answer."

In being able to carefully craft my question (keywords) I found the answer I long sought (searched for 10 minutes). An explanation for KPI (one which I could understand)!

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a morally compelling vision: multiracial peace. Your business needs a morally compelling vision, too, if you want to hire the best and retain them. King had a strategy to achieve his vision: nonviolent protest. If he'd had a KPI (and maybe he did), it might have been something like "number of violent incidents per protester," and he would push his organization to reduce that metric over time.

- Key Performance Indicators for Consultancies

This example is just nice. As a bonus, I found a collection of KPI for various industries (including INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY) from KPI Library. Nice.

So after understanding the article, I suggested a few KPIs:

  1. No. of Estimation on Target
  2. Average Time Response for Bugs/Requests
  3. ...many more.

These key points are not just numbers, high or low, for indicating the team's performance. They have different meanings to it. Those who judge the numbers without inquire the meaning behind it is a fool. Software development is a creative process, sometime there's just lots of easy tasks and sometime few incredibly hard tasks, in a corporate environment, we as a member of an organization will always be bothered with other task which will sometimes overrule other priorities at hand. Its unavoidable.

Alright, enough with this KPI thing. As Jonathan Coulton would say, "Look at me still talking when there's science to do" (Portal Ending Song, Still Alive).

Useful Applications & Websites

Posted by mkhairul - April 23, 2008 at 10:04:44 am - No Comments

 Categories: Tips, blog

I have no idea why the edit timestamp doesn't work. I set the date, and when the time past, its still not viewable on the mainpage. The status is on publish. *Shrug* Does it have something to do with a cron?

Moving on here's some lists, 100 Useful Open Source Applications and 101 Most Useful Websites. Ok, not all of those are useful but a good list nonetheless.  

Zero Knowledge

Posted by mkhairul - April 22, 2008 at 05:04:01 pm - No Comments

 Categories: blog
skydiving_4_way.jpg

It has been a long time since I compiled anything. Now, I have to. I'm learning .NET to join the ranks of .NET developers here at work. I'd have to say I'm very far behind these guys. I have zero-knowledge of .NET. Speaking of zero-knowledge, clipperz put up an article, Anatomy of a zero-knowledge web application. Quite an interesting read. I might try to implement it on in my in-progress web applications.

I read up in a forum, someone mentions about Radicore - Rapid Application Development Toolkit. It looks normal. It doesn't have the needed attraction for people to use it. I'm still using CodeIgniter. The docs are fabulous, exceptional and pleasant to read. The forum is helpful, plugins and many more.

 

Off I go, diving into the .NET world, freefall!

 

Phase out..

Posted by mkhairul - April 21, 2008 at 07:04:21 am - No Comments

 Categories: blog

While I was waiting for the bus, I phased out for about 2-3 minutes and the bus just went pass by. Luckily another bus came by in 15 minutes. Maybe I'm just too tired after the pre-release of Shadowmoor and I'm broke, I'd probably have to be like a camel and try to use the fat that I've accumulated over the years. Heh.

Stand-up Meeting…

Posted by mkhairul - April 17, 2008 at 07:04:05 am - No Comments

 Categories: blog

I had my first Stand-up Meeting.

Which reminds me of this comic strip a few days ago.

dilbert2091689080415.gif

Demonoid is BACK!

Posted by mkhairul - April 16, 2008 at 03:04:56 pm - No Comments

 Categories: blog

Finally!
 

Cool Web App, OpenPhotoVR

Posted by mkhairul - April 15, 2008 at 11:04:00 pm - No Comments

 Categories: blog

As I was going to sleep, I refresh reddit's page one last time. An entry about a photovr (OpenPhotoVR) application is at the top of the reddit list. The title really caught my eye, very good title as the poster said he used one of the methods for web linking called link bait. I was impressed when I saw the video on photosynth demonstration, but this, one guy did all this with just using javascript, actionscript + flash and PHP. Less than 2K LOC (Lines of Code).

Ugh, too tired. Have to go to sleep, and see if the post is still at the top of reddit's list tomorrow.
 

 

Google App Engine static_dir workaround, windows

Posted by mkhairul - April 11, 2008 at 07:04:52 pm - 1 Comment

 Categories: Development, Tips, Troubleshoot, blog
appengine_lowres.jpg

There's two workaround for Google App Engine dev_appserver.py workaround regarding the app.yaml configuration file.

Change lines 2369-70 in <installdir>\google\appengine\tools\dev_appserver.py from:

PLAIN TEXT
PYTHON:
  1. regex = os.path.join(re.escape(regex), '(.*)')
  2. path = os.path.join(path, '\\1')

to:

PLAIN TEXT
PYTHON:
  1. regex = re.escape(regex) + '/(.*)'
  2. path = path + '/\\1'

or

PLAIN TEXT
PYTHON:
  1. regex = re.escape(regex) + '(.*)'
  2. path = path + re.escape(os.path.sep) + r'\1'

The latter works for me.

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