Manda QoP

I've just started to use Java, having never coded with it before, and today ran into a bit of trouble with date comparisons.  The obvious option that I wanted to use had been deprecated so I needed to find an alternate. Whilst Google and StackOverflow are normally my very best friends when it comes to this sort of issue, today they were only a little helpful, pointing me in roughly the right direction but not actually hitting the target. What I needed to do was add 6 years to a variable date and then compare that to today's date.  Sounds easy enough, and in Java version 6 it was, but now things have changed.   I found a useful class called Calendar, however, all the online blogs, tutorials and user comments only showed me how to add years to today's date, which is easy as pie.  What none of them told me was how to add 6 years to another date.   It's probably really obvious for most folks out there, but given the number of questions I found by people asking how to

Following a couple of tweets earlier today stating that our Internet in NZ is somewhat better than we folk who complain think it is, I decided to do a bit of my own research.    I've found in the past that many 'facts' stated in newspapers are outrageously wrong as journalists have a tendency to misread or misrepresent data in order to create a good headline, this means I like to dig around and find out facts for myself as basically I don't trust journalists as far as I can throw them. So, what was it that got my blood boiling this morning?  Someone stating that 80% of NZ internet users get speeds greater than 10Mbps.  What a load of tosh!   Yes, the capability may exist and the telecoms may tell us that they're providing these speeds, but we're certainly not getting these speeds.   I decided to dig further and use an Internationally recognized set of stats to find out the truth... you too can find out stats for yourself right here:   http://www.akamai.co

Okay, time to bite the bullet.  I'm always going on about how great Google Apps are and promoting them to other people, but for some reason I'm not fully utilising Google to their full potential when it comes to my own business, so to see how easy it is to set up with Google Apps, I've decided to migrate my website from its current opensource FuzzyLime CMS to Google. I was planning a complete overhaul of the site anyway to make it look more professional and to add some new pages & features, so it may as well be moved at the same time. Before starting the move I need to sign up for the free 30 day trial and spend a bit of time taking a good look around to see what's what.   If you want to check it out for yourself, here's the link: http://ping.fm/wTk6n Things I need to consider: 1.  Make sure mail delivery to *@beegle.co.nz is not interrupted 2.  Make sure visitors to www.beegle.co.nz don't get a 404 at any stage during the move 3.  And erm.... that's it

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a Google presentation in Auckland. It was a chance to catch up on the latest news from Google Apps and to also get a first look at an actual Chromebook. Chromebooks aren’t yet available (officially) in NZ and Ed from Google said that they’re due for release here early next year. If you can’t wait that long then Amazon are doing some good deals and you can pick one up from around US$350. If you haven’t already heard about the Chromebook, here’s the official info from Google . Chromebook Overview Uses Chrome browser as its user interface. Instantly boots to a web browser which can’t be closed as it’s the o/s. No gradual slow down as nothing is stored locally – it’s all online You can set up multiple logins on your Chromebook so that whoever logs in has access to their own Google apps Constantly up to date as apps are online and new apps are always being created Chrome O/S has built in security Built in wi-fi and 3G means you can

One of my all time heroes died this past week at the age of 70.  A man without whom modern coding would not exist, and yet news reports have missed this sad event.   I sent the following email to NZStuff in the hope that some coverage will belatedly occur.  The younger iOS generation should know about dmr and what he did for all of us. --------------------- Hi, There's been a lot of press coverage over the death of Steve Jobs, and yes, it's very sad and he was a great influence to the way we use technology and was one of my heroes purely because of his passion for IT, but an even greater influence on computing also passed away last week and there's been no mention of his passing. Dennis Ritchie, aka dmr, the inventor of the C programming language, co-creator of Unix and all round nice guy passed away on the 8th October.  Without dmr there wouldn't have been anything for Steve Jobs or any other younger generation of developers and inventors to build new ideas on. Th

I'm a great fan of Agile, Six Sigma and any other tools that make development, project management and profitability easier to achieve. I also believe that you should use the tools and not allow the tools to use you. You don't have to worship at the church of Agile in order to reap benefits from its various tools, and you certainly don't have to pick one style over another, pick, choose and combine - it's fusion methodology time. Let's use an analogy, cheese and crackers.   Some cheese is great on its own but is also great when put on a cracker, some cheese is useless on its own and is only really at its best when squished onto a cracker, in the same way we have various Agile and Six Sigma tools.  Some tools stand alone, like a really great cheese, and they can be used to add value whatever methodology you're into, examples that spring to mind are process maps and sliders.   To me, Six Sigma process mapping is the cracker that all companies wishing to do some p

After getting my new phone last year, an HTC Desire, I’d been having great fun taking loads of photos with the camera, it rocks... I haven’t used my real camera since getting the phone, but then just before Christmas disaster struck.  Okay, maybe more of a minor inconvenience than a disaster, but I have a cure that others may not know about. The basic hardware layout of phones means that the camera lens cover is very prone to scratching whilst it’s in your pocket, and the phone is in my pocket all the time whilst walking the doggy duo.   And yes, I do have a scratch cover on my phone but for some reason, none of the covers go over the bit that really needs scratch protection, anyhoo.. one day I took a photo and oh noes, the image was in soft focus and somewhat blurry due to a scratched lens cover.  No more of the super clear, super resolution photos which look awesome.  I was sad.   L After a month or so of no more picture taking and quite a bit of searching on the interweb for a p