Posts Tagged ‘google’

Google Phones/Android (incl. G1) ROMs

July 18th, 2009

Great comparison table of all the custom Android ROMs at this site: http://www.simonwalkerphotos.com/android/android_build_information.asp

Updated: YourMP Google Desktop Gadget

December 23rd, 2008

Quick post to say my Google Gadget, YourMP, has been updated.  Its now a lot more efficient, cleaner, working and just overall better.

Quick rundown:

  • MP details: Name,Constituency,Party and Expenses
  • Optionally show MP photo next to details.
  • Debates listing now includes the date given.

You know what would be REALLY useful?

Feedback!

Its been broken for the past 3 months and no one thought to tell me!

So feedback would be most welcome. :)

Google App Engine Spawn

December 13th, 2008

Huge list of open source projects that have spawned for the Google App Engine platform.  You can view the list here: GAE Projects

Google Test Automation Conference

December 13th, 2008

Great selection of slides and videos here for anyone interested in the recent automated testing and test driven development conference held by Google.

Just some of the included talks are “How to Test an AJAX Application“, “Boosting Your Testing Productivity with Groovy“, “Context-Driven Test Automation” and many more – roughly 15.  Well worth a look if you get time.

The full list is here: GTAC Slides and Vids

Insight, Facts and Hmmms

November 30th, 2008

I’m a big fan of Google Insight.  Mainly because it burns time when I’m bored and provides lots of “hmm” moments.  Its a service Google provide that lets you see search volume against a range of other factors such as geography, time, etc.  I thought I’d put a few together that may be of interest to you all.

Django is HUGE in Russia

I have no idea why this is.  Maybe because Django sounds slightly Russian?  No thats ridiculous.  But just look at those numbers – compared to the US and the UK (doesn’t appear) its huge!

Why do the Russians Love Django?

Why do the Russians Love Django?

Rails is in Decline

The Google searches tell no lies.  It seems that Rails is in decline while Django is on a steady and solid incline.  Vive le Django.

My Heart Bleeds

Everyone Forgot How to Use PHP’s substr Function

A collective dose of amnesia seems to have struck the world as the search term “substr” seems to have had an 80% increase in recent years.

Surely its Not Hard?

Surely its Not Hard?

Scala? Don’t bother.

Scala was big a few months back with a sudden influx of tutorials and discourse posted to dZone.  Unfortunately looking at the graph its pointless bothering with it.  On top of that Guido doesn’t think much of it either – and he knows his languages.

See that Bottom Feeder?  Scala.

See that Bottom Feeder? Scala.

Canadians Love Merb

I like Canadians.  They were never quite so anti-British as the Americans.  They still have our Queen as their head of State and have none of the beligerant crankiness of republicans in America and Australia.  Its no suprise then that they like Merb – a lot.  Merb is of course ‘Rails-that-works’.

God Save the Queen

God Save the Queen

Well I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed these stunning eye-openers.  If I find anymore then I’ll be sure to let you all know.  In the mean time – have a good day.

Switching From Rails to Django: Why?

November 15th, 2008

Rails is crap.  There – I said it.  Apologies to the geek with a peanut dick but it just sucks really bad.

Compared to PHP – Rails is Great

Yeah it is great – its epic in fact.  But then again that isn’t very hard is it considering how shit PHP is?

Stop Stealing Ruby’s Limelight

The reason people love Rails is because of Ruby.  It pisses me off when I hear people getting pissed off with having to learn Ruby so they can use Rails.  For crying out loud!!  Ruby is the foundation, cause, Nu(n), beginning, soul, reason for Rails existence.  All of those funky little things that Rails can do are entirely due to Ruby.  Ruby is an amazing language and Rails is an insult rather than a blessing to it.

Rails and Mongrel = Unstable

Every time I get into an argument regarding Rails’ reliability it comes back to: “It must be your code”.

Well fair enough.  Lets say my code is the reason that all my Rails sites fail at least once a week.  Or maybe its my setup, or server config.  Maybe I’m not using Mongrel right.  I’m a dumb fuck who can’t use Rails…

But…

This “dumb fuck” can setup and manage multiple Django sites without issue.  Without hassle.  Without self delusion.  Without restarts every fu*king week!  This “dumb fuck” has had 3 Django sites running for the past 8 months with no downtime.

Okay – so I could setup scripts to kick Mongrel back in when it falls over.  I could manage or code better.  I could do many things.  But why the fuck should I?

I think a good analogy is this:

  • Rails = Windows
  • Django = Apple

You see – Django Just (fucking) Works.  Like a Mac.  Nice and simple.  Reliable.  Consistent.

Rails needs hacking and bollocking around with until it settles.  Then you need to faff some more when it plays up.  Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  Just like Windows.

But All the Cool Kids Use Rails

Yeah – all the cool kids use Rails.  Do you remember that all the “cool kids” at school were normally the biggest dicks in the school?  They were the thickest, most aggressive, most lacking in self confidence and respect.  They followed a ‘leader’ blindly because they were too weak to follow their own path.

The Rails community comes in two parts:

  • A core of heavily invested super-egotistical fat-assed vermin that need it to continue in order to make money training, publishing, etc.
  • A huge cloud of numb nuts who don’t know how to program but jumped on the Rails bandwagon to be cool.  These people invariably make themselves look like idiots when challenged.

Lets look at some real technology leaders:

Google - they use Python for the majority of their systems as well as choosing Django templates for its Google App Engine.  They also rapidly built Django support into it.  Rails hasn’t even hit the radar.

Rails Has Huge Support From The Tech Industry

Similar to the above but I knew you’d never read through anything longer than a few paragraphs so I put this shit here.

Rails attracts disaffected, immature hippies and divs.  No major company has embraced Rails for anything serious.  The only ‘companies’ that have embraced Rails are the fluffy-bunny brigade of non-companies.  They make money but they’re the technological equivalent of the Care Bears:

  • Twitter – for inane bullshit.
  • 43 Things – You put the things you want to do in life.  Personally?  I just do them!
  • Amazon – I almost shit myself when I saw this.  Until I read the details about it:
  • UnSpun is a new service from Amazon that puts workers from the Mechanical Turk and the UnSpun community at work finding the top, best, favorite things in any category.
  • Sounds like a world beater.  Really taking over Amazon there aren’t you.

Django Copied Rails

No, it didn’t – that was my controlled response to this ridiculous statement.  My natural response had a lot more ‘beating YOU in the face for thinking such a thing’.  Django and Rails were born from very different worlds and purposes.  Neither copied the other.  Although multiple projects have spawned in the Rails community to copy the Django admin interface.  Jealous, much?

Discuss?

Comment or email me.  If you disagree I’ll likely mock you.  If you agree I’ll send a digital kiss.

Google App Engine Frustrations

July 20th, 2008

Google App Engine LogoI’ve tried more than once to jump onto the Google App Engine bandwagon to no avail. Unfortunately it’s preview nature is acting to frustrate any attempt I make build something I’m happy with. Just some thoughts so far:

No Direction – It’s been dumped into the ether with no solid direction. No recommended method or path to building your web app is given or hinted at. I’m all for choice and its great Google allow you to use Django, CherryPy, WebPy, etc. but it’d be helpful if a consistent and solid method was given. Unfortunately you’re left with the feeling that the GAE has been thrown together with no real thought of making a web app out of it.

Disorganised Documentation – This doesn’t help the problem mentioned above as the docs provide 3 or 4 ways of producing a web app from the start. It first tells you how to do it using basic CGI and printing directly to the browser. Then it shows you using the RequestHandler and WSGI app. At which point it doesn’t say URLs are now handled by the WSGIApp instead of the app.yaml. Then it brings Django templates into the mix. How about pretty URLs? Oh well we can do that in app.yaml, or using matched groups in the WSGI app. For the love of all thats holy can’t we just have a single nice solution? A recommended method? An idea? A guide?

Restrictions – So it gives you all that wonderful choice as mentioned above so you think you’re going to make the best of it but oh no. Now you have to put up with the restrictions. No MySQL, no Django admin, restricted URL retrival, restricted security, no file uploading.

So you have to ask the question: Why?

What, ultimately, is the point in it when there’s far better out there – Django, Merb, etc.  It has no purpose other than to faff with and so I shall be avoiding it for the forseeable.

Google App Engine

April 8th, 2008

Google App Engine Logo

I didn’t manage to get into the first 10k people so I had to make do with the goodie bag (SDK) and be on my way for now.

Form what I’m reading it looks incredible!!!  Is anyone else realising how amazing this all is?  It’s a playground!!!!  A big Googlely playground for developers to play in!!!

For anyone not in the know:

It’s an online dev server for you to upload and test out your Python-based web apps.  The SDK comes with Django for you to get your feet wet too.

Playtime!!!

Google Code University

March 30th, 2008

Google LogoNot sure where Google is going with this one but they appear to have opened a ‘university’ with a variety of topics offering learning materials, lessons and vids. There isn’t much so far but if it goes in the direction I’m hoping then its got a hell of a lot of potential.

They provide a link for feedback too – help them make it great!

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GMail IMAP and Attachment Workaround

November 28th, 2007

We’ve been having some attachment problems at work recently since shifting over to using IMAP on our Google Apps for Domains service. After some trawling it seems the solution is a relatively simple one:

Change these two values in Thunderbird’s advanced configuration editor to “false“.

mail.server.default.fetch_by_chunks
mail.imap.fetch_by_chunks