Stolen MacBook Pro and iPad

Posted on November 22, 2011 by doug

Work has really slowed down for me. Had my vehicle broken into and my main development MacBook Pro and iPad stolen. Given how slow it is to get insurance to cover things, I find myself set back in a big way.

My big regret is I did not have Lion’s new File Vault 2 turned on to ensure none of my sensitive data could be seen using target disk mode. When I get the replacement laptop, I will definitely be turning that feature on!

It has also gotten me thinking about how dangerous it is for us to store critical information on the Internet protected only by numerous passwords we have to try and remember, or use tools like 1Password to fill in for us. With browsers like Safari caching everything under the sun, how many passwords or access credential can be accessed by the thieves when they examine the hard drive?

Of course I have changed all my passwords to keep that data safe, but that was a whole evening of pain I don’t want to revisit.

I’m now starting to see an interesting paradigm in our connected world which I plan to use to change the work being done at Cadent. I will need to think on this more, but plan to make my next blog a discussion of this new view and how I plan to change Cadent’s product offerings.

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Working with Lion Now

Posted on August 10, 2011 by doug

Well, contrary to the previous post, a rewrite of wineCellar was not necessary to fix the Lion-triggered crash. It came down to an over-complex build system which accidentally mixed versions of the compiler gcc. That caused some code to build as 32-bit, and other as 64-bit. There was one point where the different sizes made a difference and triggered a crash. Sigh.

It has been resolved in version 2.19 which has been submitted to Apple for approval. Disaster has been averted!

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The Lion Disaster

Posted on July 21, 2011 by doug

What a bad couple of days!! I did what I tell all my friends not to do: Never apply a major OS upgrade on a critical machine until it has had time to “soak”. Well, I updated my primary development laptop to Lion as soon as it came out. I wanted to see how things like wineCellar and other projects fair under Lion. Things have been going from bad to worse!! Here are just a few issues I have encountered:

  • The tool I use to maintain my website, Sandvox 1.6.8, does not even run under Lion so I have been unable to update my website to tell my users of the dangers of Lion in the news section.
  • I am off on a contract in another city with only this machine so I cannot use another computer to save the day. This will continue for another week.
  • I did not bring an external HD with me to keep Snow Leopard around (ouch!!).
  • wineCellar from the Mac App Store won’t run under Lion. Something about the new sandboxing is causing some significant issues to wineCellar.
  • wineCellar from the DMG download does run…why it does not also crash, I cannot determine yet.
  • The tool I rely on to make wineCellar run on both Windows and Macs, wxWidgets, seems to be the core of the crashing.
  • Lion’s version of Xcode, 4.1, will not build wxWidgets so I cannot begin to address this issue on a Lion-based machine.

Wow! And of course all my contracts which involve MacOS are eager for me to get them Lion-ready too! In all my history working on Mac-based programs, nothing Apple has done has broken my code as bad as Lion has. The main reason for this: I don’t use Xcode, but rather use good old Makefiles so I can build for multiple platforms. This decision has really burned me this time.

I’m now stuck in a awkward position. To address what Lion has reaped, I can:

  1. Try to solve the issues in wxWidget for Lion. This is a huge task which will probably require months of effort!
  2. Abandon wxWidgets and rewrite wineCellar using Xcode. This would be a Mac-only version.

I recon I will have to do number 2. However, that is going to take time, but it will free me from wxWidgets thereby preventing the type of issues I have just run into. My lesson from all of this: If you are going to drink the Apple Kool-aid, drink it! Don’t mess around with layers of portable code (wxWidgets, and yes, I’m looking at you Java!).

What about Windows then? Having two separate code streams was something I desperately wanted to avoid…but I don’t feel I have a choice…sigh.

Important message: If I am rewriting wineCellar for Lion, this is going to take a lot of time given I have to juggle that with contracts and that I work alone. Until then, wineCellar does not work under Lion!!! If you upgrade, please understand that wineCellar will probably not work. Yelling at me, as some have done already, will not change this unfortunate situation.

Unless the wxWidget community finds a way to get it working on Lion quickly (I’m not betting on this), it will be months of effort to get a rewrite done. Looks like my evenings, and yes, any summer vacation I would have taken, are gone. Thanks Apple.

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WordPress: Is it Worth It?

Posted on July 3, 2011 by doug

I can’t say my experiment with using WordPress has been going well. Previously, I was using a “static blog” created with the tool Sandvox by Karelia. With that blog, I would create static entries and people could comment using a special third party comment system. I never had any spam or security issues. Not one. Mind you, I also did not have any comments.

I switched to WordPress for two reasons:

  1. To use the great plugin, WPTouch which makes the entries friendly to iPhones.
  2. To get better SEO support via one of the many SEO plugins.

Well, things have not gone great with this experiment. Two things in particular have been a big thorn in my side:

  1. Spam, and lots of it! Even with good SEO support, I do not get any legitimate comments…just spam…sigh. I feel like that kid in the South Park episode “You have Zero Friends”.
  2. Security issues. I keep reading things like this article on plugin backdoors, not to mention the constant updates of plugins and WordPress itself to deal with security issues. I’ve come to the conclusion that WordPress has become a target of spam and hacking.

I’m a programmer and really get this web stuff. I thought I would use a CMS like WordPress to make my life easier. I now realize that WordPress has really made it worse. This is interesting given that WordPress is pushed by non-technical users as “the” way to get on the web with a blog or even a commercial site.

All the forms, tabs, and settings pages has made, in my opinion, WordPress a heavily over-engineered product. I’m not sure the other CMS’s are any better. I heard that Drupal is having a big conference in England for people who have to configure Drupal sites. Seriously, has that CMS advanced so much in complexity that people feel the need to have a conference over it?!?

It seems to me that the CMS’s have all become big businesses competing with each other for features and marketshare. I wish Apple would come along and kick their asses showing them how to build something people actually “like” to use and don’t need to go on a course or conference to figure out.

In the meantime, while I’m waiting for Apple to do CMS right, I have to decide whether I will be moving back to a static blog system away from this “spam-bait” known as WordPress (and no, I will not pay money for a plugin to filter spam!), or even if I want to continue blogging at all. Having no comments is the equivalent of talking to oneself and that is usually the first sign of insanity.

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theLocBox Close to Release

Posted on June 2, 2011 by doug

It has been awhile since I have last blogged. Reason: very busy on multiple business ventures. One of them, a new software product called “theLocBox” is nearing release.

theLocBox is a file encryption utility aimed at encrypting files going into cloud storage such as Dropbox. There are two versions: the free version which just works with Dropbox, and a Pro version which lets you create vaults wherever you want (i.e. USB key).

You can learn more about theLocBox on its dedicated website: theLocBox.com. Note: this is all in a beta state and will be continued to evolve over the next month.

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The 90′s have called and want their user interface back!

Posted on April 19, 2011 by doug

I never get tired of hearing my interfaces being called “90′s interfaces” (much sarcasm). To help defend my choice of interface design, I need to relate a story about the “Delicious Generation”.

I was attending a WWDC conference in 2007 and kept hearing references to “the Delicious Generation”. This seemed to be a reference to the people behind Delicious Monster and their product “Delicious Library”. Namely, it was referring to the new design techniques they were following. Everyone who was following their lead were considered part of the Delicious Generation whereas those who were still designing software the old way were part of the “Old School”. I started to get the feeling I was in this Old School without realizing it.

When I got home, I started to look up Delicious Generation and found this blog from Rogue Amoeba. You can also see what Wikipedia has to say about it here.

So, am I part of the Old School? Yes. I have always focused on function over form. My own interpretation of the Delicious Generation is they focus on form over function. But, I have to admit that the pendulum swing to the Delicious Generation approach has been overwhelming.

This really hit home for me when I was working as a contractor for a startup. We were interviewing application developers for a position. The company’s owners were asking for portfolios and focused all their attention on UI design. Never once did they want to seeing if the application even ran or how well it worked (i.e performance)! Nor did they concern themselves with how many bugs the developer had to iron out of the software nor with how long it took to stabilize it. All they cared was it looked good. Sigh.

As the Rogue Amoeba CEO quotes a Delicious Generation person in his article: “You can be honorable, or you can make money”. I believe I have taken the honorable road up until now. But the markets have spoken. Statistics have shown that flashier wine cellar apps are kicking my butt in sales. People want elegant interfaces. I can spend the next couple of years adding new functionality to wineCellar but I do not believe it will result in any better sales. This is the new reality for indie developers.

So, kicking and screaming, I have to solicit outside help on interface design to pull in some of the principles of the Delicious Generation. I have already done so for another project I am working on (will announce it here at the beginning of June).

With regards to wineCellar, I have a problem. You see, wineCellar is a niche product and will never generate enough to be an income to sustain even just me. Sales have really dropped off. I have to decide if the cost of a third party UI designer for wineCellar will be recouped in new sales due to the flashier interface. If this was a mainstream product, I’d say yes. Being a niche product, I doubt it. I just cannot afford to throw thousands of dollars at wineCellar only to recoup a few hundred in extra sales. That is just bad business.

I don’t want to scare my customers here. I am still committed to supporting wineCellar as it is today. I’m just not certain a break from the current “90′s interface” would be a smart business move on my part.

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iPhone/iPad Version 1.9 to Apple

Posted on March 29, 2011 by doug

I just send version 1.9 of wineCellar for iPhone/iPad off to Apple for approval. This changes fixes two issues on the iPad (nothing changed on iPhone):

  • Images were not being resized on the iPad. This caused an issue where imported photos (via camera connector) were so big they caused the Cadent Cloud server to fail the sync operation. In this update, the photos are resized to a more reasonable size.
  • Owners of the iPad 2 (lucky people) were not able to add photos to wine entries. This has been resolved so you can now add from either your photo library or your camera.

Back to enhancing the desktop versions…

Posted in iPad wineCellar, iPhone wineCellar | Leave a comment

Attending Eat.Drink.Tweet Conference

Posted on March 12, 2011 by doug

This weekend, I am attending a “Eat.Drink.Tweet” conference in Penticton, BC, Canada. The focus is on teaching how to use social networking to promote businesses associated with the wine industry.

It has been very interesting to learn from the presenters but even more so to learn from the other attendees. I’m focusing on what technical problems this group is having with the vast social networking landscape.

Unfortunately, attending the conference is holding me back from continuing the changes I have been working on for wineCellar. I will get back to them, I promise.

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Next Release 2.17 of wineCellar Desktop

Posted on March 3, 2011 by doug

Today the next release of wineCellar desktop (Mac & Windows) 2.17 was uploaded to the web site and sent to Apple for Mac Store approval. This update allows you to turn off fields you are not using or don’t want to see all the time. You can even re-order some of the fields within their sections.

One important thing to know is that turning off a field does not delete it so if there was any data already in that field for some records, it will be preserved. They will even continue syncing with the cloud. So don’t worry about losing data you have entered when you turn off fields.

I wanted to have the selectors on the left turn off with the form fields, but that process was much more complex and would have introduced a lot of potential bugs. Unless someone really wants that list adjusted as well, I’d rather just leave it alone for now.

Still forthcoming this month are these changes:

  • Change date fields to be only month and year getting rid of day (and allow for blank entries).
  • Add three user-defined fields where the user sets the label for the field as well as the location on forms.
  • Add ability to import/export to a comma-delimited file. This can be used by Excel or other spreadsheet programs.
  • Menu option to create a new entry from an existing entry

These changes will, hopefully, come out faster than 2.16 and 2.17. Those last two versions had some complex improvements which were quite challenging to do and test.

One side observation: for reasons I cannot yet figure out, under Windows 7, the details pane draws REALLY slowly! So, when using the cursor keys to scroll through the wine list, this pane cannot keep up and slows everything down. I am not seeing this with the Mac version or even with Windows XP. I’ll look into this after the above changes are done.

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February Updates Delayed

Posted on February 25, 2011 by doug

In a previous blog, I gave a list of changes being made to wineCellar for the end of February. Well, we are pretty much at the end of February and I have not released these changes yet. Many of the changes are done and being tested. Testing has become very involved and is slowing things down significantly. Today, I ran into a nasty bug introduced to the Windows version.

I’m writing this blog to report on the progress and to say the changes are coming, just delayed. To help speed up the process, I’ve decided to start releasing the changes as they get tested rather than as one big release. That means you will be seeing a flow of updates over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, the Windows bug means the first of these updates will be delayed until the end of this weekend.

The first update, 2.16, will have the new list tab controls which will:

  • Save list changes on exit.
  • Introduce a preference pane which lets you turn on/off columns for the list view as well as re-order them.
  • Change the printing controls to print only those columns you have displayed and in the order you have them set.

Again, expect 2.16 in 2 or 3 days as I need time to resolve the Windows bug.

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