constructive nonconformist

My Greatest Weakness?

The question “What is your greatest weakness?” is a job interview trope.

I don’t know my greatest weakness. I don’t know my greatest strength. I haven’t given thought to either superlative.

Whatever is my greatest weakness today, probably won’t be for long. I make mistakes. I have regrets. But I’m continually improving. Mistakes and failings are learning opportunities. I am better prepared the second time I encounter a given issue or situation.

Part of the territory of being a software engineer is to always be learning, adapting, and problem solving. In that mutual endeavor we should be generous. We should stand on the shoulders of others and be a shoulder for others to stand on.

Party Like It's 1993

Revised editions of two significant programming books are due this May.

• The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition (updated for C++11)


• Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, 3rd Edition

Takes me back to 1993 — in a good way.

Mac OS X Preview Hang on Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion Solved by Disabling AutoTermination

Mac OS X Lion introduced iOS style automatic termination for applications. If an application is running for a long period but is inactive, the operating system will automatically terminate, close and quit, the application. With auto resume it can be invisible to the user that the application was ever terminated.

I prefer the built-in Preview app to Adobe Reader and I have the OS configured to open PDFs in Preview.

After upgrading to Lion, Preview would sometimes hang with a spinning cursor. This would happen when I already had a document open in Preview and I clicked a PDF link in Safari.

If Preview is quit it seems to AutoResume without any issue. So the next suspect to investigate was AutoTerminate.

Here’s how to disable auto terminate for Preview:

1. Open Terminal


2. Run the following command:
   defaults write com.Apple.Preview NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool yes

I commonly have Preview open and running usually with software development related material. With AutoTerminate disabled I no longer get the spinning cursor hang.

Daring Fireball Linked List: The Android Surge

From Daring Fireball Linked List: The Android Surge:

My sense is that over the next 12 to 18 months, Android will surge past Apple the way Microsoft Windows surged past Apple in the 1990s.

— Dan Lyons

Android cannot “surge past Apple [iOS] the way Microsoft Windows surged past Apple [Mac OS] in the 1990s.” Microsoft Windows was positioned as the successor to the incumbent market leader, MS-DOS. That Microsoft was successful in moving the established MS-DOS user base forward to Windows is a notable achievement and it’s a set of circumstances that doesn’t exist for Android.

Android is not standing on the shoulders of an established giant user base.

Comparing Android and iOS to Windows and Mac OS is a bad useless analogy.

links for 2011-08-15

• Your customer won’t take a bullet for you | gapingvoid
  guest post from Kathy Sierra 
  (tags: business technology)
• Design design design. by David Cole - Quora
  Applies to programmers, programming, programs as well.
  (tags: programming development softwaredevelopment)

FaceTime Over 3G via WiFi HotSpot

Back on March 2nd I wrote the following on Twitter:

If no available wifi but #VZW #iPhone4 with personal hotspot and #iPad2 connected to hotspot, will #FaceTime work on the iPad?

In longer words than 140 characters allow, if you find yourself somewhere where there is no available WiFi but you have a Verizon iPhone 4 with Personal HotSpot enabled and you have an iPad 2 connected to the Personal HotSpot, then, even though you can't use FaceTime on the iPhone, will FaceTime work on the iPad?

The answer is yes.

Hotspot Tethering Allows FaceTime Calls Over 3G

Review: "HTML 4 & 5: The Complete Reference" By O'Reilly Media for iOS

This is not a book stuffed into an app. It is an application. The second thing to know is that the content is very good.

The content is a refresh of the O’Reilly HTML & XHTML Pocket Reference, Fourth Edition and benefits from have been honed over multiple editions. As a pocket reference it shows a decision to opt for concision over being exhaustively deep. But it is good because it is on point.

The content can be browsed or searched. Browsing includes a list of elements and a list of attributes. From the attribute list attribute entries link back to element entries for the elements that use the given attribute.

The search feature works across both elements and attributes but apparently there’s no word stemming. Searching on ‘sel’ finds no results. ‘select’ finds results that include the select element but not the selected attribute.

The app was developed in HTML5, CSS3, and jQTouch. PhoneGap was used to create an iOS executable. There are plans to bring the app to Android so using PhoneGap probably seemed reasonable. But there are quirks present that probably result from not being directly developed to iOS. Overall I didn’t see performance issues on a first gen iPad and on an iPhone4 but scrolling and scrubbing in the elements and attributes lists was sometimes touchy. What seemed like a light flick would sometimes send the list flying to the end. Touching the scrub bar is not always recognized, so instead of scrubbing through alphabetically the list is only scrolling. There’s no visual cue when the scrub bar has been activated.

Despite a few deficiencies it’s a huge win in convenience and utility to have this content in the form of an application. I’ve been working on updating an older site and this application has proved its worth as what it claims to be: a complete reference.

HTML 4 & 5: The Complete Reference is on the iTunes App Store.

Thanks to O’Reilly for providing the application for review.

Update on the BlackBerry and CalDav MobileMe calendars issues

Solved this problem for my wife: BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac OS X does not support CalDav MobileMe calendars. She no longer uses a BlackBerry.

Me? I’m planning on resolving this issue for myself by dumping my BlackBerry in the late June/early July time frame.

BlackBerry Support has only been able to tell me that they don’t know when or if CalDav MobileMe calendars will be supported, but keep checking for updates. Great.

I’ll give the Support people the benefit of the doubt on this issue and assume they truly know nothing. But my guess, and this is truly complete speculation, is that BlackBerry will never support CalDav MobileMe calendars. RIM is busy circling the wagons in the corporate enterprise market which is Windows-centric. An issue for individual consumers on a non-Windows OS just isn’t going to get funded.

links for 2011-01-24

• Android source code, Java, and copyright infringement: what's going on? -- Engadget
  (tags: java android)
• Manton Reece: App Store 30% cut
  (tags: apple business development softwaredevelopment)

BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac OS X does not support CalDav MobileMe calendars

Apple had CalDav based calendars for MobileMe and iCal in public beta in July and out of beta in October. The CalDav calendars are wonderful because my wife and I can have a shared calendar.

As of December: Known synchronization issues between BlackBerry Desktop Software and the new MobileMe calendar from Apple

“This is a previously reported issue that is being investigated by our development team. No resolution time frame is currently available.”

The work-around is to create a local calendar that the BlackBerry Desktop Software can sync with. If an event is created on the BlackBerry, after syncing to iCal the calendar for the event can be changed to shift the event from the local calendar to a CalDav calendar.