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Friday, June 25. 2010
I put together some quick&dirty PHP scripts to extract my Twitter feed and resolve short URLs: http://ticker.wiredwings.com/
If you're interested in the sources, let me know.
Update: I have pushed the sources to github now: https://github.com/moba/twitterarchive. No cleaning, no documentation, plain ugly.
Thursday, March 25. 2010
Wer sich für die Problematik von Bildern im Web und Barrierefreiheit interessiert: Dazu Auszüge aus einem Chatlog mit meinem blinden Freund Eric. Direkt von der Quelle also. Danke, Eric!
Continue reading "Wie war das noch mit alt, title, longdesc und der Barrierefreiheit?"
Sunday, January 31. 2010
Sikuli gets around this by using picture based computing. Instead of needing intimate knowledge of a particular API or language you simply use Sikuli script to take an action on an area of the screen it finds by you giving it a picture.
DownloadSquad: Sikuli uses screen shots to run scripts
Wednesday, April 29. 2009
Java: Elliote Rusty Harold, Easier testing with EasyMock.
"Any time you have an interface that needs to return certain results for purposes of testing, you can just create a quick mock. It really is that easy."
PHP: Matt Butcher, Get to know the QueryPath PHP library
"The new QueryPath library, a PHP cousin of the jQuery JavaScript library, offers an efficient API for working with XML, HTML, and HTTP. From Web pages to Web services, SVG to SPARQL, RDF to Atom, QueryPath provides a robust yet simple API for contemporary Web development in PHP."
Grails: Scott Davis, Mastering Grails: Authentication and Authorization
"In this article, I continue building a "tiny little blog" named Blogito. You'll learn how to enable logins, limit activity based on whether or not the User is logged in, and even add in some authorization based on the User's role."
Friday, March 13. 2009
At the moment, I am preparing for 'my most important exam', which happened to bring me to the website of Markus Völter, one of the current experts in Model Driven Software Development and Product Line Engineering. In his list of recent publications, I found a nice (German) article about the Jetbrains Meta Programming System. I've heard of MPS before, but his introduction is nicely written and understandble. Basically, MPS is a nice editor and composer for Domain Specific Languages. What makes it interesting is that apparently you can combine your own DSL with other languages, for example to easily extend a base language like Java with your own concepts. The DSL code is then transparently translated into the base language.
Also, you can use it the other way round, and extend your own DSL with concepts from existing languages, for example Java expressions.
Continue reading "JetBrains Meta Programming System"
Thursday, February 26. 2009
Monday, January 26. 2009
Review Board is an open source tool developed by the VMware team to help with code reviews and pending code changes. Somewhat similar to an issue tracker, but worth a look.
From the same team: Parasite, a live debugger for GTK+ applications ("sort of like Firebug").
Thursday, January 22. 2009
I had the pleasure of attending two interesting presentations at our university yesterday. I am a bit biased here, because one was held by myself, for a few students participating in the current "Softwareentwicklungswerkzeuge" (software development tools) lecture. The other one was a presentation by Sebastian Kurfürst, one of the core developers of TYPO3 (and a "former student of mine"), for the T3 User Group Dresden, about the upcoming TYPO3 v5 and its application framework FLOW3.
 Even if you're not interested in TYPO3 or CMS development, I recommend reading the [very fancy] slides (if you understand German). They have a rather large user base, still they decided to throw away the current code base and design the new release from scratch - using 'modern paradigms' such as strict Test Driven Development, Dependency Injection, Aspect Oriented Programming, Domain Driven Design and MVC. Sebastian accomplished to explain these concepts clearly, so if you want to refresh your knowledge about any of these techniques, take a look at the slides. According to him, TYPO3's new base level application framework is the first framework to introduce AOP to the PHP world, and is 'ahead' of the current PHP development (they require PHP 5.3, which is not even in beta yet).
I'm really looking forward to the new TYPO3, which hopefully might be one of the first web application frameworks and CMS that doesn't suck completely.
 My own presentation (not very fancy slides...) was about a MetaCASE tool called "unicase", suitable for smaller collaborative projects and especially targeting research projects with special needs such as a new methodology, or other individual model requirements. It is being developed at the TU München by a team around a good friend of mine, Maximilian Kögel. Its main features are model generation from an ECORE meta model (it's Eclipse based), so you can easily introduce new model elements and regenerate your client. The central repository with similar concepts as Subversion (checkout, commit, update) is able to work with any meta model compliant models, and the client tracks any changes to the model and the client usage, which is especially useful for research projects interested in how their application is being used.
Unfortunately, the most important part of the presentation was a live demo, where I showed how you can easily generate a "new client" by small changes to the meta model. The unicase website has screencasts of most features though, so if you're interested, you can watch it there.
If you want to try it out, I'll explain the few steps required to get your own local server and clients to run. If you just want to try the client, they have an update site you can easy add to your current Eclipse installation, and a standalone download. Unfortunately, the link to the relevant unicase documentation is "hidden" in the right sidebar, whereas the main documentation link in the center of the page currently leads to a mostly empty wiki page.
Continue reading "TYPO3 v5, FLOW3 and Unicase"
Tuesday, January 6. 2009
QUOTE: Once thought to be the savior of IT, SOA instead turned into a great failed experiment—at least for most organizations. SOA was supposed to reduce costs and increase agility on a massive scale. Except in rare situations, SOA has failed to deliver its promised benefits. After investing millions, IT systems are no better than before. In many organizations, things are worse: costs are higher, projects take longer, and systems are more fragile than ever.
Continue reading "Burton Analyst Manes: SOA is Dead"
Friday, December 19. 2008
Dmitry Fadeyev from Smashing Magazine has posted some useful tips for (mostly Web related) interface design.
Friday, December 12. 2008
Auszüge aus dem Artikel Projekte, Strukturen und Herzblutenergie von Gunter Dueck, IBM Distinguished Engineer, aus der aktuellen "Informatik Spektrum" Dezember 2008:
QUOTE: Wer beginnt heute einfach mal so ein Projekt - aus unternehmerischer Lust? Das kann sich vielleicht ein mittelständischer Unternehmer leisten, der das Sagen hat und das eigene Geld gibt und dazu noch alles gut selbst überschauen kann. (...) Wer aber blickt bei großen Projekten noch durch? Etwas Neues muss überall genehmigt werden. Jeder sagt etwas dazu. Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie haben eine große Idee und besitzen nicht zufällig die Firma oder die Unversität selbst. Sie können das Projekt nicht stemmen, Ihr Chef auch nicht, dessen Chef ebenfalls nicht. Keiner will eine neue Baustelle aufmachen.
Continue reading "Projekte, Strukturen und Herzblutenergie"
Wednesday, December 3. 2008
Do you really need CAPTCHAs?
Spam bots are so effective today mostly because there's only a handful of different publishing software used (forum, blog, CMS). This is very convenient, because all information required to write and tweak a bot is identical for all installations. All the bot software has to do is query Google for parts of a particular URL (eg. inurl:yabb.pl or inurl:phpbb/posting.php) and continue with algorithms to circumvent the specific protection (if any).
Continue reading "Eliminate Form Spam Using Behavioural Analysis and Individual Forms"
Wednesday, December 3. 2008
QUOTE: Just like any language, developers can write code in PHP that ranges in quality from truly awful to very good. Learn good programming habits that can help you bridge the productivity gap.
Depending on whom you ask, the difference between a good developer and an excellent developer, in terms of productivity, is a factor of 10 to 20. An excellent developer is more productive because of his experience and good habits. When poor programming habits sneak into your code, they're a drain on productivity. This article demonstrates some good programming habits that can make you a better programmer.
Continue reading "Five Good Programming Habits in PHP"
Tuesday, December 2. 2008
uTest, a new startup, pays users for harvesting bugs in products.
Monday, December 1. 2008
Tim Bray, Director of Web Technologies at Sun, wrote an interesting article about the company future, from his point of view. His main statements: Focus on web technologies (you probably guessed that) and give the Java Community Process (JCP) to the community in full.
Continue reading "What Sun Should Do"
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