What's it all about, Alfie?

Today one of the more annoying developers I work with reported a 'bug' in the BKJEP parser's getSymbols() method - saying that the symbols 'null', 'e', and 'pi' weren't supposed to be there. Well... those are the constants I added a little while back to allow the testing for null as well as the basic math constants. So they are symbols in the JEP sense of the word, but this guy's code wasn't smart enough to realize that not all symbols are those that he supplied.

What I think he's doing is assuming that all symbols are, in fact, tickers to be processed. He then tries to process these tickers, doesn't trap for the possibility that the user entered bad data, and then it bombs because he's done all this optimistic coding and this is just the first place it's been caught.

My first response was to say "Nope. These are symbols and you need to deal with the fact that users might enter bad data as well." But then I got to thinking. Were constants the equivalent of variables?

I had thought BKJEP overrode the getSymbols() method from JEP, but it hadn't. So I really was free to think of this in terms of what they user might really want. When I took the annoying developer out of the mix, and thought about the role of constants in the expression parsing I came to the conclusion that it probably is better to think of them as "invisible" to the variable space. They aren't to be changed... they support the processing, but may take no part in it's execution... in many ways they aren't the same as the other variables returned from getSymbols().

So I filtered them out of the getSymbols() call. I suppose that the better thing to add would be a getConstants() and then maybe a getAllSymbols() or something like that. It you break down the JEP symbols in a way that I thought it was originally, but wasn't: variables, constants, and both.

So, I guess the lesson is try to keep an open mind and even an annoying jerk of a programmer can get something right - even if by accident.

This morning (finally) the Software Update had iTunes 8.0 and Quicktime 7.5.5 which was mentioned yesterday in the 'event' with Steve. It's no fun to reboot, but since Quicktime is such an integral part of the OS, it's inevitable. Anyway, we'll see if I like the new features in iTunes 8.0 as much as they think I will.

Next up is the new iPod Touch software, but I had to get this first as it was required for the latter.

Hey! This morning the guys at Panic released Coda 1.5.1 - a bug list of bug fixes for the all-in-one web development tool. They have an interesting way of doing the updates - within the app, but not with Sparkle - at least not that I can see. No matter, it's nice to see that they were so quick with the update given the time it took to get 1.5 out the door.

I do wish I did more of this kind of web development on my Mac - just because I like this tool so much. It really is a nice way to deal with the non-web app sites.

A developer stopped by today - OK, well he didn't stop by, I had to walk to his place, but still... he pointed out that if you make a selection on the z-axis of the BKSimpleScatterGraph and then change the x (or y) axis, the graph doesn't properly re-scale it's limits.

The code I had in for the rescaling was (is) in the updateVisibility() method and that wasn't getting called for axes changes. All I had to do was to place a call to that method in the setColumnsToGraph() and it picked up the rescaling nicely.

Good fix, all changes now are reflected in the re-drawn graph.

Today Steve gave another iPod/iTunes presentation and that's nice, but as expected by the rumor sites, there really wasn't a lot there that would cause anyone to stop and take notice. The new Nanos are nice, with accelerometers and bigger screens. Nice, but expected. Also, the new iPod Touch with 36 hrs of music is nice, but it's still 32GB like mine. Make it 18 hrs and 64GB - that's interesting. But I have to understand, it's all part of the Holiday Sales Cycle. They needed something new, and they delivered.

iTunes 8.0 looks nice, but again, I'm not a big user of the "auto-suggest" features of music apps. I'm pretty picky. It's nice that NBC is back in the store and they will be selling standard def and high def movies and shows. But again... nothing amazing.

Unfortunately, as expected, no new MacBook Pros. I'll have to wait. The word on the street is that October is the time to expect some news on that front. I'm just worried it'll be a marginal bump in the MacBook Pros, and focused instead on the MacBooks going aluminum like the Air. We'll have to wait and see.

I finally noticed that Fantastico at HostMonster had the update to WordPress for 2.6.1 - so I updated the two weblogs that I have there and they went off without a hitch. I have to say that it's nice to have Fantastico, as I've done this manually and it's a lot of crummy details, and this way it is one click and about 30 seconds and it's done. Very nice.

Unfortunately, as soon as I get WordPress to 2.6.1 it's telling me that 2.6.2 is out and that I need to upgrade. Tough... I'm going to have to wait for Fantastico and it's upgrade scripts. There's no reason to push the envelope that fast.

Oh... and I'd heard that the remote publishing was going to be turned off by default in 2.6 - but as I looked in my settings for the weblogs, I noticed that the XML-RPC and Atom publishing were turned on by default. So maybe they changed their minds. Would be nice to see they responded to the requests of users like me.

I got a neat little tweet this morning from Twitterrific saying that they had a new public beta available with more tweets, better security and a host of fixes. I had to get it - I tweet every now and then, but love listening to the tweets of friends, and Hodgman - that's an interesting guy.

They have been working hard on the iPhone version so it's understandable that they haven't updated the Mac desktop client in a while, but it's nice to see that they are back at it. Cool.

I am really surprised that I missed this given that I was dealing with my London counterparts all day yesterday, but the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was down for seven hours yesterday. Now I'm not one to point fingers, but the Slashdot crowd is pointing out that the system they are using is based on Microsoft's .Net platform, and are certainly making fun of that little tidbit. Even so, seven hours is an incredibly long time to have an exchange down. Holy Cow!

I'm guessing that someone is going to be in big trouble, and there will be a scape goat for this issue. There are too many people angry they couldn't trade for a day - and yesterday at that. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac bailouts... mis-reporting UAL's bankruptcy and losing 80% like a shot... it was a Big Day to be unable to trade.

Everyone should be entitled to be sick. At least that's the philosophy we created at the company I started. We didn't even put a limit on it because we figured that if you were sick, then there was a reason you were sick, and you'd get back to work as soon as you could, and pick up where you left off.

Well, that was a little optimistic, I realize now, but that's not because it's a bad idea, it's because it's a good idea, and we had bad people taking advantage of it. We just needed to be a little better at the hiring process. That was where we fell down.

But here, I'm in a big company. With paid sick time. And I use very little of it. But this past week I was out because of my herniated disc, and I simply could not stand up. But I got called - three days out of four. Some were understandable, but some were quasi-understandable with a hint of "Hey, now that you're online, can you have a look at these specs, and let us know what you think?"

Thankfully, a few of the guys asked by my Boss to call me on such pretenses tried to abstain. Once emailed me and asked if it would be OK, and the other asked, but said he felt bad about it. I can understand it. You gotta do what the Boss says. But at some point, and I think last week was that point, you cross the line and are asking a sick person to do work. That's plain wrong on so many levels.

So I talked to my manager and told him my feelings. I thought it was over the line, and planned to tell my Boss today. He agreed that asking is OK, but assuming is wrong, and he knows our Boss well enough to know that it's never going to change for him. I still told him, and reiterated my feelings that I wanted off this project that he's got me on. He said that was impossible - he had been told make it work or you're out. And given those choices, I can see why he's going to put his best people on it - even if it burns them out.

Desperation at so many levels... it's not about the Team anymore. I've got to remember that.

This morning I fired up Firefox and after about a minute I noticed a Growl notification about there being updates to some plugins or themes that I have installed. I love touches like this. It's always the little things that separate the good code from the great code. It's easy to see the "web browser" part of the task, it's a lot harder to say "Hey, if this guy has this free notification system, then let's use that and let him know what we found." Those kinds of details are not obvious, but they make a huge difference in the appearance of polish and finish to an app.

Firefox is good. I run it everyday. I know Safari is what I use more, but it's still nice to see both have the nice polish of Mac apps.