Things have been a bit quiet here of late, mainly because I’m snowed in work time with one big project that’s dealing with a metric fuckload of data coming in by XML. It’s aq nightmare in many ways – and also decidedly scary because of the sheer amount of personal data involved in each record.
Additionally, the company that we’re connecting with are – to be polite – not all that helpful. I got to see their documentation before we started the project, and that looked OK. However, the documented examples don’t actually match up in any useful recognisable form with what we’re getting out of the process.
During this week, among other things, the company has realised that the documentation they sent us initially was out of date – two versions out of date, no less. So they said they’d send the latest/greatest version. And then sent the self-same two-versions-out-of-date documents. The file actually has the version number on it, so it’s not (or at least you wouldn’t have thought it was) rocket science in the least to be able to send the correct documentation.
Once we’d got the up-to-date documentation, I queried the data coming back from the company, as it didn’t match the examples given. Oh yes, I was told, “We can’t put in examples for everything.“. Yes, you can – particularly when it’s what your customers are using to develop their interactions with. Random data format changes aren’t helpful either – “We’ve stopped sending the numbers with four decimal places – yes, we know our documentation says we do this, but we don’t any more”
As you can imagine, it’s making life pretty difficult. There’s a lot to do still, and I can’t rely on the information from the original company. Always a joy.
Already we’re one month into 2010. Where the hell did January go? (I know for me it went mainly in a blur of broken databases, fixing inherited ropy code and just generally fire-fighting)
Still, at least February starts with a nice palindromic date. I know, geeky as fuck. Live with it – we won’t have another one like this for another 110 years…
It’s been a quiet couple of days here on D4D™, and with good reason.
On Thursday, the database at work died in spectacular fashion. It’s been getting shaky for a while, but this week it keeled over totally, and since then I’ve been putting in silly hours getting things back to something approaching usable.
The problems are many, but basically the entire site – user-facing and company-facing – is database-driven. Without the database, there’s no business. It just grinds to a halt. So it’s been a case of “fix the essential bits, deal with the rest later”.
The other main problem is that the database was originally written as a proof-of-concept, a basic thing that’s then been extended and extended. Think of the original as a bungalow. The current site, all built off that bungalow, is the size of an airport, and all balanced on the roof of that original bungalow.
Because it wasn’t written with “the big picture” in mind, some of it is downright fucking nasty- and I suspect the original developer was also learning as he went along. For example, there were no date columns in there ’til I came along – instead it all used some very dodgy string-handling to figure out dates.
One of the main tables in the database now has 170,000 records in it. Which (in the database scheme of things) is nothing. Well, until you realise that each of those 170,000 records has 180 fields in it. That one database table is 600Mb in size. Oops.
So the last couple of days have been spent in Database Intensive Care. I’m through the brunt of it now, but it’s meant that other things – food, sleep, relaxation, D4D™ – have taken a back seat. I’m still going to be working on stuff around this for the next week, but things should be a bit calmer now that the urgent repairs are done, and it’s now more a case of fixing the underlying issues.
Thank fuck my assessment isn’t next week.
Following on from yesterday’s post regarding the difference in price between Dell and Apple, I also ended up doing one between desktop machines. You know, just for the sheer fucking hell of it.
Similar plan – same specs where possible, same plan. Not bog-standard, not top-of-the-line, but mid-end on both models…
| Dell | Apple | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Optiplex 360 | iMac |
| Processor | 3.06Ghz Core 2 Duo | 3.06Ghz Core 2 Duo |
| Memory (RAM) | 4Gb | 4Gb |
| Hard Disk | 1Tb | 1Tb |
| Monitor Size | 22″ | 21.5″ |
| Graphics Card | ATI Radeon HD3450 (256Mb) | ATI Radeon HD 4670 256MB |
| Keyboard | Logitech Wireless | Apple Wireless |
| Mouse | Logitech Nano MX Revolution | Apple Mighty Mouse |
| Price | £895.35 inc VAT | £1,199 inc VAT |
Yep, think I know which one I’d go for…
Yet again today I’ve been involved in an argument about the costs of Dell vs. Apple laptops. It gets really old, really fast.
All the normal excuses get trollied out, “They’re not that more expensive really”, “Apple Macs are lovely, and built from a solid block of aluminium”, “Dells fucking suck” so forth, so fifth.
So for the sheer fuck of it, I decided to do a comparison. Dell vs. Apple Mac vs. HP (as one person recommended). HP isn’t really fair, as they don’t appear to offer much in the way of customisation.
The spec : An “office-ready” machine. (i.e. not Dell’s low-end inspiron, but corporate Latitude). 4Gb RAM. 500Gb hard disk (or highest size possible). Best possible monitor/screen resolution. And what we come up with is this :
| HP | Dell | Apple | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | HP Compaq 6730b | Latitude 6500 | Macbook Pro |
| Screen Size | 15″ | 15″ | 15″ |
| Processor | 2.53Ghz Core Duo | 2.53Ghz Core Duo | 2.53Ghz Core Duo |
| RAM | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB |
| Hard Disk | 250Gb | 250Gb | 250Gb |
| Resolution | 1280×800 | 1920×1200 | 1440×900 |
| DVD Drive | Not Specced | 8x DVD +/RW | Superdrive 8x (DVD +R DL/DVD) |
| Additional Info, as requested by Matt in the comments | |||
| Dimensions | WxH : 35.6×26.6cm Depth: 3.4cm |
WxH : 35.8×25.7cm Depth : 3.3cm |
WxH : 36.4×24.9cm Depth: 2.41cm |
| Weight | 2.7Kg | 2.3Kg | 2.5Kg |
| Price | £767 inc VAT | £1105 VAT | £1299 incl VAT |
Not the most convincing (once you’ve added in VAT – Dell and HP don’t show it ’til afterwards) but still the Apple is nearly £200 more than it’s nearest competitor.
Interesting though.
via bsag, I think this slimline plug is an absolutely fantastic idea.
UK 3-pin plugs are pretty sturdy, but if you’re carrying a couple of power cords around – or phone chargers, laptop power bricks etc. – then you quickly become aware of how bulky they are too.
The design of the slimline plug is aimed at getting round that, and seems to work really well. Even better are the adapters that allow three or four slimline plugs to be used in a space similar to that of a normal three-pin plug.
Today the BBC has been carrying the story about “Millions” being taken in by scareware scams, where pop-up ads on web pages tell people they’ve got a virus and to download ‘this antivirus software’ to fix it. At best the ‘antivirus software’ is useless, and the person’s credit-card number is sold for use in credit-card fraud. At worst, the “anti-virus” actually contains viruses (virii?) and trojans that make the computer less secure, rather than more.
Now of course there are lots of idots out there who will fall for this kind of thing. But to my mind, it’s not just those people’s faults – both PC Manufacturers and ISPs need to take some of the responsibility too.
It doesn’t take a lot to get decent anti-virus software. Go to Grisoft, and get the free AVG anti-virus software (free for personal use) and job done. There’s plenty of others too – Kaspersky, Avast, so on, so forth.
But people still have to know about these, rather than using the clusterfuck shitpieces like Norton, McAfee that come with most PCs and that people never use – or just assume that it’s installed, so Everything’s OK. Not knowing that they need to subscribe, and make sure it’s updated regularly (for which read daily, rather than monthly)
So why don’t the ISPs supply a free antivirus like AVG, Avast or Kaspersky on the CD you invariably get? Why don’t PC builders install a free anti-virus with the PC rather than the paid-for POS software? (Of course, we know that PC Builders like Dell etc. must get some whacking kickback fee for providing paid-for software, which is the reason)
If computers were provided with free anti-virus that didn’t require any further financial investment or effort from Joe Everyday-User, there’d be a lot less problems of this sort.
Amazingly, D4D™ now contains no less than 848,392 words.
D4D™ started on 9th August 2002, so it's been going 2782 days or roughly 7.62 years.
In that time, I've not posted on 187 days all told. Not bad.
