Comment System - From IntenseDebate to Disqus

As I have received some reports that people have had some trouble posting comments using IntenseDebate, I switched the blog to use Disqus instead. We'll see how that works out. Let me know if you encounter any problems with the new system.

The iPad Apps That Truly Shook My World Vol. 1

Even though I have used iPad only just one pretty intense week, I have come various applications I thought would be fun to share with the blogosphere.

There is a ridiculous amount of applications to pick from. No doubt I have missed some great ones. If you think I'm missing some crucial application, do let me know and I'll check it out. :)

I'm going to iterate through various handy applications I have come across next. Some of them are free, some are not. I consider the not free ones to provide good value, though. Of course this depends on what you need so the list isn't absolute in any way.

As this post began to grow a bit beyond my scope I decided to convert it to a series. In this part I'm going to focus on utility applications. They truly beef up your iPad to become a true Swiss army knife, figuratively speaking of course.

JavaScript - Abstracting Interval Based Progress Monitor

In the previous post I showed you how to exploit JavaScript's interval to create a non-blocking loop. This allows to render dialog/whatnot while you are doing some heavy number crunching.

As I began to use the solution in larger scale I noticed it's possible to abstract it a bit. In this post I am going to show how I did that. In the process you might be able to learn something about callbacks and the decorator pattern.

Setting Up a Progress Dialog in JavaScript

Setting up a blocking progress dialog ought to be easy. It should prevent the user from doing nasty things while you are processing. In principle all you should need to do is to open up a dialog, process and close the dialog once you are done.

Unfortunately things are not quite that simple in JavaScript due to its single threaded nature. It takes a small trick to work past its limitations as you shall see.

Note that in this post I presume that the processing function is entirely on the client side. In case you are dealing with a server via AJAX, you might want to do things a bit differently.

Apple iPad - Initial Impressions

I just received my iPad (Wi-Fi 16GB) and the official Apple case. The product isn't available in Finland yet but that didn't defer me from getting one from the US. :)

It looks like iPad is just first device of many. There have been tablet before but nothing as disruptive as this one. It reminds me of Asus Eee and the netbook revolution it caused.

I wouldn't be surprised if devices like this would be all the rage soon. Especially Android and perhaps MeeGo based devices should pose some nice competition to iPad.

Overall the device seems like a winner to me. It feels more like some ordinary object instead of a computer. It blurs the distance between the user and the device. It's small enough to fit a bag comfortably and to carry along.

Software Architects - Who Are They?

I came by Tenets of a Software Architect a few weeks ago. Briefly put the post asserts that a lowly programmer may become a software architect at some point of his career. I guess the main point that irked me about the post is that it clearly separates the roles of an architect and a programmer.

As a result I wrote a longish response to the post that for reason or another never got released. Anyhow, in this post I'm going to reiterate the contents of my response and expand on it a bit.

MySQL for Python Book + Future Plans

It has been a while since I last posted something on this blog. I have been busy working on my thesis (+100 pages already!) and a secret Canvas related project. I will probably have more to tell about the latter in a few weeks. :)

Anyhow I guess it's a good idea to write something just so my (possible) readers know this blog ain't dead yet. First I'll plug a Packt book (MySQL for Python) a bit and then share my thoughts about the future of the blog. I would appreciate some feedback on that especially.