What's it all about, Alfie?

OK, I'm not a big "pictures leaked" fan, but if this is true, the Kindle has taken a major step backwards. The photos show a much wider Kindle with a larger keyboard (totally unnecessary in my opinion) with a much larger border all around the unit. This is in stark contrast to the new Sony eReader that was announced last week. The Sony is sleek with a touch-interface, and far more compact with the same fantastic screen.

If the photos are true, then I can say that the first generation Kindle is far far better than the second. I can honestly say that had the new Kindle been the only Kindle when I was looking to buy, I would have passed. It's just too big and clunky.

Which is why I hope it's just a rumor. Please, let it be a rumor.

Over the weekend, DrawIt 3.6 was released, and very quickly, it seems, 3.6.1 and 3.6.2 were sent out to address specific problems found by the first few users. I saw this just this morning, and I just got the 3.6.2 update. There are a few significant changes in this codebase - primarily the exclusion of the pixel editing features. Rather, they opted for a cross-licensing agreement with the Flying Meat crew to give you a license to Acorn for those features, and then allow a 'shell out' feature in DrawIt so that the integration is smooth.

I realize the need to specialize, and if you're not that good at one thing, take advantage of the fact that someone else is. Acorn is something that I use daily, and to see that DrawIt is acknowledging that as well is nice, and providing a clean interface to it even nicer. I don't see this as loosing something from DrawIt - as gaining a nice integration to Acorn.

That you get a free license, is nice, but I've already got licenses. No harm.

Two great products. Now specializing in what each does best. That's a great Mac tradition. Keep the faith, Boys! Gotta love it.

This afternoon I was trying to measure the partial, intermediate results of something that we're trying to improve the through-put of on a Vendor's package, and I realized that the data I was looking at was really only good in relation to itself - I'd hit on one of the coolest things in Quantum Mechanics: The act of observation alters the system.

I hadn't run into it like this before, but under independent tests, I know that a singular blob could be processed in a little more than a second. But but placing in the outputting of timing results, I saw the combined time raise to roughly three seconds. That's a factor of three. Then it hit me.

You can imagine the issue: by stopping to get the time, more time was taken. Not a lot, but it added up. Fantastic! Thankfully, I didn't require absolute accuracy - I just needed to know the relative times spent on succeeding steps. For that, this was more than good enough. But it was a kick in the pants to see it happen right in front of my eyes. Sweet!

A developer and I were talking about the problem I was having with the second Y axis on the VantagePoint graphs, and he brought up another point: "On graphs", he said, "the origin is included and that tends to 'flatten out' the data so that it's not as rich in detail as it might be." Basically, if the range of the data on the y-axis was 1000 to 1100, the graph would include the y-axis origin and the graph would be smashed at the top. Not good.

I ran some tests, and I found that on my tests, the graph didn't include the origin. I asked him to send me data to verify, and he wrote back that the secondary Y axis data - minus the second Y axis, was fine. Here's a prime (but simple) example:

Sure enough, on a line graph, the y-axis origin is included. I was testing the scatter graph. So I dig into the docs and it seems that VantagePoint defaults this inclusion of the origin differently for different graphs. What I then did was to add the ability on the graph and the applet using the graph to force the inclusion of the origin for each axis independently... or not. Up to the user. So we end up with:

which is exactly what he wanted. Nice. Now there's the choice and that's going to lead to better looking graphs for the users.

A few days ago, I got an email from the manager of this web site saying that he was starting to use the dual-Y-axis line graphs in BKit for the first time, and he was having a problem. I knew I had them working, but I checked my test case applets anyway. Sure enough, they worked fine on several systems in browsers and in the Java appletviewer. I sent back an email saying I couldn't reproduce the problem.

He got back to me saying it was the version of VantagePoint that seemed to be the issue. If he used the older version I used in my tests (4.6.4) then it worked as well. But if he used the newest version (4.6.6) then he got the following exception:

  Exception caught on Viewer[hash=07207493]'s render thread.
  java.lang.RuntimeException: Not implemented.  Use TwoDimVectorDataSet or
        TwoDimTimeSeriesVectorDataSet
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.CommonDataSet.getColumn
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimLineChartViewer.getIsOnSecondary
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimPointViewer.bp
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimGraphViewer.b
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimPointViewer.e
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimLineChartViewer.e
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.VisualViewer.p
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.VisualViewer.b
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.VisualViewer.run
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:613)

I sent off an email to the VantagePoint technical support guys and didn't hear from them for a day or so, so this morning I decided to see if I could fix it by changing my use of the TwoDimDataSet to the mentioned TwoDimVectorDataSet.

So I started by making that change and recompiling. I then ran through all the graph types I had to make sure they all worked. The first problem I ran into was with the Heat graph. It was all red. I had to track it down to a few lines in the creation of the Heat graph:

    case HEAT:
      g = new TwoDimGridViewer(getData(), true);
      if (g == null) {
        error = true;
        throw new BKDebugException("BKBaseGraph.switchGraphType(int) - a VantagePoint
            TwoDimGridViewer could not be created on this dataset. This is a serious
            problem as nothing can be changed.");
      } else {
        // make sure that the graph knows to color pts & labels
        g.setOption(VisualViewer.oiColorStatus, true);
        g.setOption(VisualViewer.oiColorStatusLabel, true);
      }
      break;

It turned out to be lines 9-11 which had been put there to make sure that the default color of labels and points was red. This works fine with the other graph types, but for the Heat graph, it makes all the squares that color. The solution is to not call those methods and I decided to add in the color smoothing in it's place:

    case HEAT:
      g = new TwoDimGridViewer(getData(), true);
      if (g == null) {
        error = true;
        throw new BKDebugException("BKBaseGraph.switchGraphType(int) - a VantagePoint
            TwoDimGridViewer could not be created on this dataset. This is a serious
            problem as nothing can be changed.");
      } else {
        // smooth the colors from one square to the next
        g.setOption(TwoDimGridViewer.gtSmoothColorGradient, true);
      }
      break;

At this point, I have a nice Heat map again:

But when I tried to change from using the TwoDimDataSet to the TwoDimVectorDataSet I got a different exception:

  Exception caught on Viewer[hash=03840954]'s render thread.
  java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimLineChartViewer.getIsOnSecondary
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimPointViewer.bp
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimGraphViewer.b
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimPointViewer.e
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.TwoDimLineChartViewer.e
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.VisualViewer.p
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.VisualViewer.b
    at com.visualizeinc.vantagepoint.jdk12.jfc.VisualViewer.run
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:613)

which is saying that it's trying to call CommonDataSet.getColumn but it's getting a NullPointerException. I'm guessing that this is something to do with the way the TwoDimVectorDataSet is used. Interestingly, all the graphs I've checked work fine with the TwoDimVectorDataSet instead of the TwoDimDataSet. So I'm thinking I'm using it properly, it's just something in their code.

I've gone directly to their web site and put in a support request saying all the data I have on this and asking them to please help me. New version... new code... something that will give me back the double-Y axes on a graph like was (is) available in 4.6.4.

I got an email from the great guys at Panic that they have created a new Unison (NNTP) server farm to replace the old one. The old one was their own after they stopped using a service that did a good deal of filtering - all to the good. This new server farm is said to be bigger, faster, with more groups and longer retention.

One of the nice things they added was SSL access - built right into Unison. I like that only because sending plaintext anything these days is asking to get snooped or swiped. It just makes the connection a little more 'private'.

Love the work these guys do.

I'm tired of companies selling a service, getting the money, and then coming up with a million diffeent ways to keep for providing that service. Comcast is just like that. Insurance companies are like that as well.

Comcast is in the news again with a statement about how the 250GB/mo. limits will raise as general network usage rises in the future. While that's true, so will the monthly charges - it's not like they are planning on giving us more for the dollar - even in the future. It's all another shell game.

Comcast needs to realize that most people don't need all the bandwidth they have all the time and be the Corporate Good Guy and make the system capable of handling the load. Be the one people want to have. Then you've got public opinion on your side if the regulators get ugly. They're already making a ton off the TV market and you can only watch one show per set - two if you think you can multitask that well.

Stop trying to find ways not to provide the service.

This morning I was chatting with a good friend and we were talking about working with Git, and the next step for me is to get a good book Git like I had on CVS when I was learning it. I want to know how the repo is laid out, how to fix it, etc. I do not want to look at this as a 'black box' as that's just far far too dangerous for a developer to trust a single component. You should know how it works, just in case it might fail, so you can fix it.

Anyway, I found this book that looks to be very nice. So I ordered it as a PDF because I have my Kindle if I need to view it in that format, but I don't need another paper book. I've got a quick start on it on my Mac, and we'll see how long it takes me to get through it. I need to really understand what it's doing and then I'll feel comfortable putting my code in it. I also want to see how I want to set up anything on the home network to hold things there. Just don't know.

Which brings up another point made by my friend - get a Git hosting plan like GitHub. I have to say, I haven't been a huge fan of hosted CVS sites like SourceForge because of the licensing they put on the repos stored there. This was the reason for setting up my own CVS repo. But then I got HostMonster and I'm a huge fan of hosting now. I just have to be sure they aren't going anywhere.

So I signed up for a free GitHub account - I can upgrade it anytime to a paying account if I want to put my stuff there in a private repo, which I'll do if I decide not to set up my own Git repos at home. I certainly like the way they handle it - SSL and all, and the prices aren't too bad, but for the 'Small' plan, it's $12/month and that's $144/yr and that's more than I pay for HostMonster with a lot more storage, etc. HostMonster just doesn't seem to have Git hosting - yet. I'll have to check with them to see.

In any case, I'm getting a lot closer. Read the book, pick a hosting plan and start. Sweet.

This last episode with my back is proving to be a real hassle to deal with. The chair in my home office was a $99 chair (I was cheap) purchased many years ago (we had no money) and when I've had to sit in it these last few weeks it seems to make my back problems worse. I know it's the chair because I can sit in other chairs and don't get these aches that I'm getting from my office chair.

Yet I can't help it - I have to be able to get some work done. It's just a fact of the business I'm in. So I'm thinking of springing for a refurbished Aeron chair. I can get one for about $700 - half off. That's not a bad deal, and it's the exact model I've used at a previous job for a while and loved every minute of it. Excellent chair.

I have a hard time spending that much money on a chair for an office that I don't sit in on a daily basis. It is, after all, a lot of money for a chair. Heck, I can get a Lazy-Boy for that money... but it's not a good, working, office chair. I think it's time to realize that I'm not getting any younger and it's time to invest in a good chair for the rest of my professional life.

This morning I saw that BareBones released BBEdit 9.0.1 with tons of little bug fixes. Looks very much like a maintenance release and that's great news. I have to say that I've been playing with it for a while and while I understand the type-ahead and hints, I'm not sure that I'm the kind of guy that really likes to use them.

I love ctags, and that gets me a long way, and I work around a lot of guys that probably couldn't write a method without it. I know they couldn't write C++, so all that's left is Java. OK... I'm probably being a little mean here, but I'm certain all but one couldn't do it. The days of IDEs have taken away the skills of real programming in favor of click-n-drag development. It's a trade-off, but I think they are the worse for their dependency.

As for me. I want to know my code. Understand it inside and out. That's how you debug something. Single stepping is the last resort as it modifies the execution in all but the simplest of applications.

Anyway... kudos to the guys are BareBones for keeping BBEdit going. If only the Coding Monkeys updated SubEthaEdit...