Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
A while ago, i got addicted to RoR. Life before RoR was… well. Mundane. Don’t get me wrong. There was still a lot of exciting stuff going on, but RoR opened up a brave new world and it’s “differentness” added to its appeal. And since then, i’ve written a fair amount of Rails apps and [...]
Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
While developing a financial calculator on the J2ME platform (MIDP2.0, CLDC1.1) i had the need for some “basic” math functions like pow() and log(). As it is, there’s nothing quite like that natively available on the platform which on one hand surprised me; on the other, got me quite excited. I’d have to implement my [...]
Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
After some tinkering with CodeIgniter, i’ve setup a small playground (which will hopefully grow over time) to test drive the framework.
I like the framework for it’s lightness- and you get quite a lot of control without having to rely on helpers to do _everything_. You can learn the helpers as you need to, so [...]
Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
Setting up development environments is something you do once in a while- hopefully. And over time, you tweak different areas and add in bits and pieces here and there and it evolves. Nicely. And then you get to do it all over again But then you got to go back a couple of months/years [...]
Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
They have a saying with Ubuntu: “It Just works” and freak- it’s true, especially with the latest release 8.1 (Intrepid Ibex).
My goal was to install Ubuntu Server edition on a machine that is really, _just_ a server. No shmancy graphics card, no CD-ROM.. wait. No CD-ROM!? How do you install server software onto a [...]
Filed Under: Rants, Technology with 0 Comments
One of the great habits now ingrained into my being are doing diffs on code before committing a check in. It’s a great habit, and worth the extra quick 2 minutes. It’s also a great time to review your changes and get your head into the right space for your next move. Of course, having [...]
Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
Bzr have just launched their latest version. And while i’ve used it for development control on my *nix, i’ve also migrated it’s use onto Windows. The earlier versions were all very command-liney and so un-windows-like, but in it’s defence, the good ‘ol command line really is pretty fast and efficient for some tasks. Anyhoooo….
The latest [...]
Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
Optimizing code is generally an expensive process (read: time-consuming) and there are established ways of getting to the bottom of “what to optimize”. Thankfully, profilers are available to help with a lot of the guesswork, so it’s generally a good idea to make sure you work with one *most of the time*. Moving along, it [...]
Filed Under: Technology with 0 Comments
How often you store code snippets, only to lose them again? Often enough (or maybe you aren’t writing that much code). There are plenty useful routines out there, already written, some you could probably rewrite in your sleep without looking them up and probably aren’t worth saving. Others are gems that need to be published [...]
Filed Under: Business, Rants, Technology with 1 Comment
UPDATE: 3 July 2008
Updated code to reflect more recent tax tables (2009)
When I was asked to estimate PAYE on a gross monthly salary, i hauled out the calculator and started chipping away, according to the SARS Tax Tables. Not being a tax consultant or looking at various structured packages, the first stab is mostly always [...]