BlackBerry Trickery
19.03.10Filed Under: perspective with 0 Comments
Learnt a very useful (albeit sneaky) trick today about running menu items off other screens. In particular, the phone screen menu items. Originally posted here.
And of course, a big thanks to simon_hain who’s helped with loads of development by virtue of his contributions to the online community. I definitely owe you a beer/coffee/tea or something if ever we meet one day 
I’m Rich
04.03.10Filed Under: Life with 0 Comments
I’m rich. Wealthy. Loaded. Rolling. Abundant. I have inherited millions over the last few weeks. Millions. In euros, pounds and dollars. And not Zim dollars. I’m talking USD, GPB and EUR millions.
It all started with Microsoft awarding me, not once, not twice, but over three times in the last few weeks, USD$10K at a time. Yahoo also followed and awarded me USD$1M. Just randomly. Can you believe my luck? Then, just as I thought I was getting lucky, I got real lucky.
In the space of 2 weeks, I won the Swiss Lottery (USD$100M), Spanish Lottery (EUR30M) and the Canadian Lottery (USD$28M). At least twice each. I kid you not. I have got the emails to prove it. Then my email address got entered into a lucky draw with billions of other people around the world and you’d never guess what happened? I won. 6 times. Twice, I won EUR1M, a couple times I won some other amounts. Whew! You’ll forgive me at this stage for not keeping track of exactly how much- you can imagine my giddiness. Besides, after a while, a bar here, a bar there. Who needs to keep track?
But it didn’t end there. The Nigerian government want to give me more money for compensating any losses I may have incurred because of email scams. Fortunately, I’m way too smart to fall for some pathetic email hoax. The Mali government want to apologise, in cash, for one of their citizens stealing my ATM card and transporting it all the way to their borders only to be apprehended by diligent border patrol. Apparently, the embarassment is too much? And the Saudi government want to use my bank account to transfer gazillions out of the country- a service they are only happy to pay for with 15% of the transfer. What’s 15% of a gazillion in USD converted to ZAR anyway?
On a sad note though, it just so happened that in the same last couple of weeks, a lot of my extended family have been dying. It turns out I have uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends of the family all over the world (whom I’ve never met) just bequeathing their entire estates (often worth more millions) to me alone. I need to chat to my mom about these family members and why we were never invited on ski holidays with them. Nonetheless, wrapping up all theses estates is going to take time and money- but money i have plenty of and I’ll just pay someone else for their time to do it.
The bad news however is that my bank have been sending me a lot of urgent notices to update my details so i can continue banking with them online. At first i ignored the emails- but then my millions weren’t arriving. No surprises there i guess. Afterall, they did say in the email that if i don’t logon with my username and password, all banking activity (online and off) will be suspended. Just shows: read your emails.
Anyways, so now I decided to update my online banking details after the umpteenth urgent final notice from my bank. Woohoo! My first of many millions should start arriving any day now….
Animated Gifs on BlackBerry
01.03.10Filed Under: perspective with 0 Comments
A clean and easy to use gem: HOWTO animated gifs for your BlackBerry development efforts. Courtesy of RIM.
Relaxing on The Couch
26.02.10Filed Under: perspective with 0 Comments
the last few days i’ve been looking at couchdb and started building my first app on it.
Coming from a primarily “backend coder” perspective (complete with domain modeling, object-mapping, type-safety and so on…), it’s been challenging getting to grips with JavaScript on steroids, plain HTML and jQuery along with couchapp all at the same time.
Sometimes my brain’s wires short-circuited but i’ve loved the journey so far. Very reminiscent of my experiences when i made the switch to doing cool stuff from “just doing stuff” for other people.
Lovin’ it.
zaFin Statistics Update
16.02.10Filed Under: Business, Technology with 0 Comments
zaFinTools has been updated with a new function: the statistics calculator. Given a dataset, zaFinTools will give you a descriptive breakdown of the numbers, statistically speaking, by working out and displaying the following information in one go:
Length, Median, Mean, Sum, Sum of Squares, Minimum, Maximum, Range, Variance, Standard Deviation, Co-variance, Mean Absolute Variation, and then the 3 quartile positions and values.
Shew.
Download zaFin for BlackBerry.
ActiveRecord and Thrift Part Deux
08.02.10Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
I posted about AR and thrift earlier (or late last year) and was reminded this morning that I didn’t follow up that post with the solution. So here it is: Download spike code.
Now it has been a while since i solved this, and the versions may have changed since then, but I do remember that the “tricksy” part was boot-strapping ActiveRecord. That was done using the supplied boot.rb. Once that’s done, you can happily run the thrift server daemon based on textbook instructions and the rest is history. Your models and all the ActiveRecord learnings you’ve had with rails can be re-used quite happily.
Happy coding.
Time Value of Money
14.01.10Filed Under: perspective with 0 Comments
The most useful “fun” utility on the zaFin suite was the time value of money calculator which basically allows you to compare the value of money at different times.
For example, how many times have you heard someone older than you mention the price of something way back when and then proceed to complain about the price of things today?
“When I was 25 years old, the price of bread was only 50c. Today, it’s R10!”
Well, 50c way back then was equivalent to just exactly how much today? Remember, all prices are relative, thanks to inflation. Things get more expensive, but we don’t still earn R150 per year (hopefully), right?
Nonetheless, the zaFin inflation and time value of money calculator will help put things in perspective for you.
zaFin for BlackBerry
12.01.10Filed Under: Business with 0 Comments
At last, a version for the BlackBerry has been released and ready for general public consumption. Make some good decisions this year- based on numbers and data- not just emotional “got-to-have-x” or even more dangerous hype-based “woohoo-the-recession-is-over-we-can-spend-now” motivations. take the time to think it over a little… or use zaFin.
To The Power Of, by hand
08.01.10Filed Under: perspective with 0 Comments
I’ve often needed to create a power function, as in 2^3 or more commonly Math.pow(2,3) = 8. However, sometimes, the Math.pow() doesn’t exist and the operator ^ is reserved for other useful functions or not recognised at all. In times like that, you need to hand roll- so here’s a good link to keep bookmarked.
Online JSON Parser
05.01.10Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
A tres useful link for playing around with JSON parsing and data structures; a design tool if you like; the aptly titled Online JSON Parser.
And a useful library for Java ME. In fact, at the bottom of the landing page for JSON.org, there’s a list of implementations for a host of languages.