Know yourself, and the kind of errors you make. Once you have found and fixed a bug, make sure that you eliminate other bugs that might be similar. Think about what happened so you can avoid making that kind of mistake again.

I really like this quote, even though I haven’t read the book (Practice of Programming) yet (it sure fires me up to read it now).

Lots of my work involves other people, since no one is around, even if there is, they’re busy with council’s meeting and stuffs. So, I can’t proceed on the stuffs that I’m working on. I read some news and gets bored and falls asleep on the chair. It was also the time when I feel really down, depressed. I have no idea why, but I noticed almost every end of the year my enthusiasm would deteriorate and all I want to do is sleep. Maybe my ancestor was bitten or mauled by a were-bear or something and passed along the gene so that at the end of the year (usually winter), I can’t resist the urge to hibernate.

So anyway, since the holiday season is over, the sense of productivity is coming back to me (or maybe its just the salmon sushi that I ate on saturday at Shikiya, Low Yat).

A New Year! I have to make amends the stuffs that I did last year, spend time to ponder, make some SWOT analysis on myself (or pareto whichever I can), and widen my options. Take new challenges, aim for the sky, if I can’t reach it, at least I will be among the stars!

One of the saddest thing about our history is how much it has repeated itself.

Let us learn from the past, remind ourselves of the present and the future, so that we can thread carefully through this journey that we call life.

Katakanlah: “Mengembaralah kamu di muka bumi kemudian lihatlah bagaimana kesudahan orang-orang yang silam; kebanyakan mereka adalah orang-orang musyrik” [al-Room 30: 42]

One of the point in the meeting is one of the Software Development team members asked a member of the LMS team to teach him about LMS. I have been preaching to the LMS team (even though I’m also a team member of the LMS, I don’t deal much with users of the system) to write that kinda stuffs down in the wiki so that we could reduce the overhead on teaching people how to use the system. Since they have reluctantly refuse many times by giving stupid excuses, suit themselves. If they want to spend time teaching over and over again to other new people, its their choice.

Why do I refrain myself from giving out ideas? One of the factor is that I’m just plain tired. I’m like the drummer on a row boat. Beating the drums to get the rowers to row faster and follow the drumbeat, but in my case, they still rows slowly, ignoring the drumbeats. Realizing my drumbeats were ignored, I joined the rowers and show them how its done, they just nod and cheer but when they continue they still rowed slowly. So I just sit down and let them row in whatever speed they want, the left side rows fast, the right side rows slow, and we’ll just go round and round getting nowhere.

We tried to plan between the holiday, working around my annual leaves and other kinds of hoops without considering the environment and emotional situation that leads to a rather unproductive day.

There was also data’s or forms that were created by the project owner (financial advisor / consultant) that was given to me that was incomplete and doesn’t make sense. I tried to make whatever that is possible from the data that was given. I informed him of the incomplete and inadequate information that is provided in the form for a department and he gave me another file with budgeting information in it and expect me to extract something from it. At first glance it looks like it would not be a problem but when I delved more into it, it doesn’t make sense at all, I don’t know which I’m supposed to put inside the datatable form.

Instead of just extract some data that I don’t understand about from the file and put it inside the system, I’d suggest that the user for the department to have a discussion with me in front of the computer and tell me right there and then about the categories/data that should be inserted into the form. Reducing the overhead of inserting wrong data and observing the user’s impression and reaction on the system, killing two bird with one stone.

I still have a lot of stuffs to practice in managing this kind of stuffs. Currently I’m currently reading Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition)
, in the book, it is stated that this is more of a sociology aspect of a project. What makes stuffs works and what doesn’t. Hrmm, I haven’t finish the book yet, still a long way to go with my schedule. I’d have to make time for it.

So anyway, the Presta Project (Performance Management System, keeping data for KPIs and stuffs), is not seeing much use right now in my department, where it should start with. I have no idea why, I think I should have a discussion with my HoD and raise this issue on an upcoming meeting. And I also feel (spider-sense) that the new HR Manager is getting annoyed at me for delaying the progress and adoption of the system. Heh.

Everything seems like a rollercoaster. Especially in my management skills. There are days when I just jolt down things that needs to be done in bullet points and managed to divide my time between all the tasks to get it done flawlessly (well maybe a little bit of hiccup here and there) to micromanage tasks by using Google Calendar daily view to reserve slots for tasks within a certain time frame and follow it as a plan or guide (but not as a commitment).

I think I need more practice and try to be as consistent as possible. In the meantime I’ll try to analyze and identify the variables that contributes to the elevation of this rollercoaster that I’m on. What makes it go high? What makes it go low? And see if I can do as much as possible when I’m on top and minimize the impact when I’m at the bottom.

Here’s something to think about from Lao Tzu’s, Tao Te Ching.

• To know others is wisdom;
• To know oneself is intelligence.
• To conquer others is power,
• To conquer oneself is strength.
• To know contentment is to have wealth.
• To act resolutely is to have purpose.
• To stay one’s ground is to be enduring.
• To die and yet not be forgotten is to be long-lived.

Some people says, “Pfft, I already know that”. Yes of course, when we are confronted with stuffs we already know we would say that, but when we’re not, we often forget. We are forgetful, and needs to be reminded until the day we die. If there’s no one to remind ourself, we should try and find ways to remind ourselves. (refer to the movie Memento or RPG of the Year, Planescape:Torment).

I put in some filler text, Lorem ipsum, into the system and took several screenshots. He asked me, why is there a weird language in the system? Did you built this system or took someone’s system?

I was fucking pissed off with that SMS. He came to me asking for help and dare to tell me I took someone else’s system? WTF? The thought of dropping this project came across my mind, its not like I get a lot from this project and with that kind of insult really makes me mad.

I lie down to cool off and replied his SMS, explaining that it was a latin filler text to fill in the spaces so that it will look like a real system with data and stuffs, it is a standard practice in web development, etc. After that he replied, Oooo, I thought you modified someone’s system.

I think that’s a very rude thing to say when you ask someone to help you on a project. Even more he’s a friend of a friend.

I use Selector/contains for this but the problem is, it is case sensitive. That’s gonna be a problem to type in the exact case from the list. Here’s a snippet to extend the selector.

jQuery.extend(
        jQuery.expr[':'], {
                contains : "jQuery(a).text().toUpperCase().indexOf(m[3].toUpperCase())>=0"
});

Took the snippet from StackOverflow, but it has a typo.

I found this solution at the forum, CI 1.7 Forge Problems. Basically what you need to do is find DB_driver.php inside the database folder. Go to function _protect_identifiers (most probably on line 1193).

Add in this code (inside the function).

if (is_array($item))
{
	$array = array();

	foreach($item as $one)
	{
		$array[] = $this->_protect_identifiers($one, $prefix_single, $protect_identifiers, $field_exists);
	}

	return $array;
}

Alright, that should fix it up.

It is a collection of forms that creates a timeline for specific types of stuffs. Its a form generator something like Wufoo. But with specific custom needs, like a DataTable. I went through all the examples and some other examples from other developers but none to my liking.

There’s a datagrid plugin called Flexigrid for jQuery but then again, there’s all this hurdles that I have to go through to make it perform certain stuffs and I don’t like to constraint myself inside that type of UI.

After browsing through Smashing Magazine’s Pricing Table Examples and Best Practices. I’ve decided to use jEditable to accomodate a normal table with the function that I need by just putting in an inline editable feature to it.

The deadline is in 10 days. The system must be functional on 1st December. Let the death march begins!