Abandoning This Blog

I’ve decided to abandon this blog in favor of one with my name on it: rickproctor.wordpress.com. You can find all of my new posts there.

Thanks,

Rick

More Mingle Chart Modifications

As much as I like Mingle…except for its speed…there are a couple of things that have bothered me for a while: the straight lines to infinity when a chart goes beyond current data points and hard coding dates as labels in charts. It turns out that there are a couple of easy resolutions to both problems.

If your burn down chart looks something like this (notice the parallel horizontal lines running off the chart to the right):

Example Mingle Burn Down Chart

simply remove the “x-labels-end” tag and save the chart. Your new chart will end at the most recent data point and should look like this:

Mingle Example Burn Down Chart without "x-label-end" tag

Onto the second issue. Instead of hard coding dates into your charts, causing them to modified every time you need to change a date, use a project variable. Since my charts are primarily based on release, I created a date project variable  called “Release Start” that I use on the x axis: x-labels-start: (Release Start). Now, I only have to go to one place within my project to maintain the release start date.

Hope this helps with your Mingle adventures.

Apple – Top Of The Line (latest mac hunter ad)

Apple has released a new commercial to clash the PC Hunter Ad’s

more about “Apple – Top Of The Line (latest mac h…“, posted with vodpod

Having Trouble with Java on Your Mac?

I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly playing with (read messing up) my Mac loading new software, trying different things, etc. I spend a lot of time poking around in the BSD shell. After some recent mods, I began experiencing problems with Java…specifically related to Eclipse. I couldn’t get it to run. Instead, it returned “Cannot find executable for CFBundle … (not loaded)”.

After some fruitless searching and reinstalling Java, I found the problem. Somewhere along the way the symbolic folder “Current” (found under /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions) was corrupted. Current should be pointing to the “A” folder (located in the same folder as Current). I used the following command to correct the problem:

sudo ln -fhsv A Current

If you find yourself in a similar situation, and according to my own internet searches many of you have, check the symbolic folders “Current” and CurrentJDK. Chances are your problem is there.

Has Google inspired a game changer or another yawn?

Recently Google has introduced several new applications from Android to the Chrome Browser. I’ve watched, and in some cases, tested these technologies with varying degrees of success and satisfaction. While I use Chrome occasionally on an old Thinkpad I have in my office, I’m miffed that Google has yet to provide a Mac version…though I’m not truly in love with the browser anyway. My team have also developed web applications using GWT. Overall, they found it cumbersome and buggy. They’ve since switched to Yahoo’s YUI because it’s easier and more lightweight.

Now Google is introducing the Chrome OS primarily for netbooks. It will be available later this year. I must admit that my curiosity is piqued. While they are primarily targeting people who spend a lot of time on the web (who doesn’t nowadays?), I’m particularly interested in their OS’s UI as it sits on top of Linux. Is Google going to provide the affordable Windows killer desktop and start taking its share of the Windows space? Aside from the Mac, others such as Ubuntu (which has a great desktop IMHO) have failed to make significant corporate inroads.

Personally, I’m hoping that Google strikes gold here. One thing I loathe about Microsoft’s dominance is not Microsoft, but all the other software vendors who write their applications exclusively for Microsoft OS’s or worse, only IE. When vendors do this, they are in effect saying to organizations like mine who run multiple desktop OS environments and browsers that they don’t want our business.