Stein Nygård

Non-linear progress bars

2009-03-25T07:56:00.023+01:00

Yeei, I'm 90% through the loading process, but the last 10% alone seems to take longer than the first ninety covered already.

Oh yes, the uselessnessity of the non-linear progress bar... And by "non-linear", I mean in regards to time (ofcourse).

Quite a few progressbars in "loading..."-contexts seems to be based on the number of bytes loaded. This is not really what the end-user is interested in. I'm not concerned about bytes (well, usually I am, but not in this context :P). I'm concerned about how much longer I'll have to wait! Ofcourse, the 'byte-approach' is (usually) a means of estimating this, but in many cases not a very good one.
The thing is, many of these so called 'loading'-processes are not only loading bytes, but also thinking about what to do with them. And this has a tendency to take quite a while...

A different approach; An estimate based on average performance characteristics.
Break the loading progress into smaller parts, and evaluate how much time is spent in each part (this is an 'offline' calculation). The values are subsequently used to calculate percentages of total loading-time for each component. Obviously these numbers are only correct for systems with a similar component performances (relatively), but assuming this is done on an average system, it should provide a good estimate.

iPhone lint rant

2009-01-06T13:42:00.014+01:00

This is too funny. Really!

After a few months with my iPhone, I started having problems with the mic/button not working. It was on and off for a few days, and then it stopped working altogether.
Obviously, I tried out the headset on a friends iPhone, and it didn't work there either.
Conclusion; Something's up with the headset.

Turned in my headset at the local iPhone dealer (Telia). Big mistake though... Took them four weeks to get me a new one.
Anyways, plugged it in, worked great! A week later though, problem was back.
Didn't want to relive the four-week Telia-story, so I filled out the form on Apples' support site. Different story; Two days later, new headset in the mail.
Pretty cool service, although this time around it didn't help the problem in any way. Tried the new headset on my brothers' phone, and it showed no issues.
Conclusion #2; Something's up with the phone rather.

Went on for a week or two, before I got my self together and used the f*ing google.
A few people had the same issue (what do you know, huh?), and cause of the problem seemed to be lint.
Mmm... Yes, lint!

So, as described by fellow lint-owners, I tried out the paper-clip trick, and it imediately solved the problem. Very nice!

It seems I even have a good little record goin' of nothing less than four pieces of fluff..! :D

Remapping the windows-key

2008-10-14T22:36:00.012+02:00

I recently (a few months ago) purchased Apples keyboard. The wired one, that is. It's a really nice keyboard! There's a problem when running windows, though. The windows and alt-keys has been switched around.
After trying a few tools for key remapping, I settled for good old registry tweaking. This thing always works - unlike tools I've tried.

Anyways, here's the mappings if you want to use the keyboard for windows. This only switches around the left and right alt and windows keys, so it's pretty basic.


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,05,00,00,00,5b,e0,38,00,38,00,5b,e0,\
5c,e0,38,e0,38,e0,5c,e0,00,00,00,00

1. Paste the above into a textfile and rename it to "whatever.reg".
2. Run the file and click ok to the messagebox that pops up.
3. Reboot and you're set.

Disclaimer; Use this at own risk!

For more info;

Scan Code Mapper for Windows
Scancode list (self-extracting archive).

Invisible breakpoints in VS 2008

2008-09-18T09:24:00.005+02:00

The SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 comes with a - to me - pretty annoying bug, that causes disabled breakpoints to go invisible, rather than just showing as a circle outline.
It works in assembly view though.

Fortunately, it seems that MS "have fixed this for the next version of Visual Studio and plan to have a downloadable QFE to fix this for Sp1 as soon as possible...".

Looking forward to that :)

OO principals

2008-09-16T21:59:00.006+02:00

Reading a book by Cadle and Yeates... Got a laugh out of these explanations of some OO principals;

"Some of the methods for objects can be defined at a high level, so that sportspeople can all run around, train and drink beer in the pub afterwards."

"Members of the class Footballers have some specific methods, like shooting at goal and falling over pretending to be hurt, whereas cricketers can sit around waiting for the rain to stop."

iPhone experiences

2008-08-04T20:25:00.013+02:00

Had my iPhone for about a week now.
All in all very happy about it!

Not too pleased with the camera. I knew the quality of the camera was bad when I bought it, so this is no surprise to me. Just can't see how it belongs in an iPhone, though.

Also, I'd wish that Favorites was an integrated part of the Contacts list. It should always be available when accessing the Contacts list, nomatter from what app. Not restricted to the Phone "app".

Today I had some problems with the SMS app.
It was terribly laggy! Actually; Just watch the vid below :)

Somehow it fixed itself... 15 minutes later I tried again and it was back to normal. Very odd.
Other people experienced something similar apparently...

Lagging sucks... Especially on the iPhone! There you are, moving about in your browser (or whatever you're doing) on this slick device, and the bonk; everything hangs. Not much to do but wait.

I'm definitely waiting for a 2.01 from Apple!

Tab previews... Of code?!

2008-08-01T10:53:00.008+02:00

Seems like previews are the thing these days. Somehow, it became a fancy feature to have a nice little preview when tabbing between windows or applications. I really don't see why in most cases. Perhaps if I was tabbing between a collection of photos/images it would make sense. But a browser window? That seems to be planned for Firefox 3.1. And Vista has it for general application tabbing. Think it's easier to recognize a website or an application by it's visual appearance over it's name? Hardly!
Actually it needn't really bother me, if it wasn't for the fact that it always brings our good old friend Mr. Lag! Gotta hate that...

One application, in which I spend most of my time, recently integrated this feature. Visual Studio 2008 has previews of your code when tabbing between sourcefiles. Previews of CODE! I lack words... Excuse me sir, would you like to tell me the name of the sourcefile your looking for or do you wan't make me a drawing of it? Hmm... That's a tough one!
Tabbing in VS2008 has become ever so laggy.

There was a comment, on another post, on how to fix this in Vista.
I'm running XP though, so I'm still looking for a way to disable this. I did try setting my performance options in XP to "Adjust for best performance", but that didn't change anything in VS.

Please come forward if you have any tips on this.

Syncing iPhone with Google Contacts

2008-07-30T11:14:00.005+02:00

Got my iPhone yesterday! How cool is this thing?
Pretty cool.

I got it activated through iTunes, and decided to sync contacts from my google account. Never really used the google contacts list though, so it quickly became obvious that my list was one big mess. Realized this after syncing... My iPhone was completely bloated will email adresses I never use.
So, cleaning up my contacts list (through gmail on my laptop), updating it with missing contacts etc.
Now trying to sync the iPhone again, resulted in a seemingly neverending "Syncing Google Contacts" process... Tried a few times, same same.
Finally I did a "Reset iPhone to factory settings" (making sure that I had a backup of the settings). After the reset, I did a "Restore from backup", and boom; Contact syncing works again :)

I've heard that there's also a "reset sync history" function in iTunes... Perhaps that would've solved it too.

My contacts is good... I'm happy.

iPhone for me today

2008-07-29T10:08:00.004+02:00

Yei... Got a call from Telia yesterday, with the message that I can now pick up my iPhone. That's great news!
On top of this, this morning I received a text message from them, letting me know that the prices on the iPhone has dropped. The 8GB version now comes for only 1099kr. and the 16GB for 1699kr. Not bad.
I'm heading to Telias shop after work :)

Wee... an interblag for me!

2008-07-23T19:54:00.004+02:00

Been thinking about getting this interblaggo thing going for a while now. Not sure how much I'll actually use it, but there's only one way to find out. Definitely need a first post to feel like it's up and running, so here goes :)
Was actually in the middle of a code session though - on ToyRacers ofcourse, so I'll have to get back to that... But hey, a post is a post.