Selfelected

Testing internal classes without making them public

selfelectedadmin — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:41:45 +0000

When doing automatic tests one often wants to get to the internal classes.

The possibly simplest way is to use InternalsVisbleTo and write

1	[assembly:InternalsVisibleTo("MyTestingProject.With.FullName)]

in the testee’s AssemblyInfo.cs

Thats all there is to it.

One can decorate InternalsVisibleTo with keys and stuff to harden who gets to the internals but why bother? As long as it is dotnet some reflection can get passed the threshold anyway.

Another way I have used is to make a wrapping class “UT_Customer” or method “UT_Create” that 1) wraps the internal class/method, 2) is public and 3) is clearly marked with something conspicuous like “UT?_”. If a drive by programmer sees a method with a weird name and doesn’t bother to read the xml comments and still uses the method and fails; I consider it his fault, not mine. Not that I would use an undocumented method, no never.

Minfied respond.js does not work in unpatched IE7

selfelected — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:02:46 +0000

I haven’t the full reason for the problem – exactly which implicit line ending that goes wrong – or whatever else that is broken. But the (almost) fix is – don’t use the minified version. At github you can get either version as (respond.min.js or respond.src.js). Go for the latter, it is the non-minified one.

In my unlatched IE7 I get a somewhat stocastic behaviour. When just browsing it first fails but a reload makes the page load properly.
When I debug both the debugger and IE freezes at a regular javascript row in respond.js. ”document = doc.documentElement”. This is also where I give up.

Other browsers – including Safari/Ipad and built-in/Android seems to work alright with the minified version.

Communicate, communicate, communicate – and the old layout with the same awesome information

selfelected — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:25:19 +0000

hejdig.

Last letter I tried to create a better layout.
It worked. But the links crashed.
So I go for the old and tried layout below again.

In normal order it starts with Development stuff and then continues with Leadership followed by Products and Security to be ended with Miscellaneous.
And if there is one chapter you should read it is the last one. Why? Because it contains all the fun links.

Today’s top article are about
* Java 6 and 8
* Noda, Joda, CLDR, NLDR which are time and culture resources for global solutions
* Regex testing in several languages
* Yet a brief explanation of which element goes where in HTML5
* MS web tools 2012
* Why budget planning is counter productive
* Glimpse (and elmah and minprofiler)
* HDMI debunked
* The size of the universe

/OF

—-8<—-

Code and development

Top javascript MVC frameworks (web)

If javascript is the soil and frameworks the crop; then it is a good time to be a farmer in Javsacriptland. No other developer biosphere is as fertile IMHO.

MVC/MVP/MVVM is the hoot nowadays. Read my lips: Do Not Develop Client Side Javascript Without Framework Support.

Below is linked to several such frameworks.
Of these I am only familiar with Knockout, hands on wise.

Note: Backbone builds on Underscore – a lib you should look into whether you do MVC/MVP/MVVM or not.

- http://www.infoq.com/research/top-javascript-mvc-frameworks

End of line for Java 6 in March (java)

If you haven’t updated your Java from v6 you are a dinosaur. And the meteor is about to hit.

- http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/jdk6-retirement

Information about Java8 (java)

Java 8 is scheduled for September this year.
There are several new things and this article I found was easy to read.

- http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/26/everything-about-java-8/

Learn F#, gratis, online (dotnet)

Microsoft has released a site for learning F#.

- http://www.tryfsharp.org
- http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/tryfsharp

Noda Time – date/time library ported (dotnet)

Joda Time, a date/time lib in the Java world has been ported to Dotnet.

- http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/11/Noda-Time-1-0

GIT integrated in TFS service (win)

“Sweet men du ligger efter i GIT-TF informationen. Från och med i torsdags är GIT integrerat i TFS Services och det finns fullt GIT-support i en Visual Studio CTP. Så du kan numer välja att köra TFS VCS med TFS språk (Check Out/In, o.s.v.) eller köra TFS GIT med GIT språk (Push, Pull, Commit).”

In short this means you can mix and mingle GIT and TFS as you want.

Will this mean you don’t have to buy a license to write to the TFS store any more?

- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2013/01/30/git-init-vs.aspx

Tipthanks //E

CLDR – database over formats etc. in different countries

If you ever have done a multi language / multi culture solution you have stumbled upon all the ways to represent date, time, currency, numbers and whatnot.

Below is linked a project to create a big database of all this.
It is an open project so help is appreciated.

- http://cldr.unicode.org

ncldr.com – dotnet port of cldr, a database for globalisation data (dotnet)

The Time and Date namespaces in dotnet are plenty but not perfect. There are cultures missing and there is no information about currency, names of weekday and no rules for spelling of number or capitalisation.

So therefore we have the Unicode CLDR project which I have written about before.
Ncldr linked below is a dotnet port of CLDR.

- http://www.ncldr.com
- http://cldr.unicode.org

Multiple carets in Visual studio (win)

Since version 2010 it has been possible to alt-arrow or alt-mouse a caret (cursor, insättningspunkt, whatever you call it) to a vertical line and to “box inserting”.
With an add-on this is taken further so one can alt-mouse to different places in the document.
Look at the animation behind the link – an animated GIF is more worth than a thousand words.

- http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SimultaneousEditingForVisualStudioWithTheFreeMultiEditExtension.aspx

HTML5 and elements – what to use where (web)

With HTML5 coming we’ve got to read up on which element to use where. I still haven’t grokked it but below is linked a flowchart to help me. And You as I write it here…

- http://html5doctor.com/downloads/h5d-sectioning-flowchart.png

Isotope – javascript/css lib for stacking squares (web)

Say you have a text box. Say you have several.
Say you want to show them on a web page.
Then you want to add new ones, and remove, and change size and and and… and you want them to stack themselves.
This is where you give up until you read this.

Metafizzy has Isotope, Masonry and, as of late, Packery.

Packery does more intelligent packing. I see lots of use for this, say for instance you are moving and filling one and only one lorry with stuff.

- http://metafizzy.co
- http://isotope.metafizzy.co
- http://metafizzy.co/blog/packery-preview/

BCL is an immutable lib (dotnet)

BCL is a lib still in experiment for doing immutable stuff.
“Immutable stuff” are stuff that doesn’t change, instead you have to create a new instance. Often in parallel computing, which is coming fast, you want to have immutable objects for having thread safety.

- http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/Immutable-BCL

Micro formats and schema.org (web)

There is something called Microformat. It is using (X)HTML for creating semantic data. If you need to send Person data to someone, why invent a new format? Instead reuse.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat
- http://schema.org

Introduction to Rx – dotnet reactive framework (dotnet)

Rx (Reactive Extensions) is a dotnet library for using IObserver and IObservable. With Rx you can get events when a collection is added to or removed from. It is like having a form *inside* your app. Sort of. Liksom.

The site below is an introduction and tutorial for this.

- http://introtorx.com

Online regex testing in several languages

Every language has its own implementation of regex and they might differ. So when googlingwithbing for an online regex tool one has to make sure the right language is used.
For instance is the very good Rubular.com written in Ruby. Most are written in Javascript. No usable was written in dotnet.
Until now.

Through the link below is linked to online Regex testers in 10 different languages.

- http://www.regexplanet.com

Windows shell commands as… commands (win)

As heavy Win developers we are aware of %temp%, %appdata%, %systemroot%, and %programfiles% as shortcuts for c:… but what about “shell:”?
Open a prompt or the Explorer address bar and write “shell: cookies” to get to cookies, “shell: common startup” for the common startup and “shell: startup” for user user’s or “shell: system” for the system path etc. You get get idea.

Follow the link below for more information.

- http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2013/02/13/windows-shell-commands.aspx

Six hours of video for getting started at aspnet programming

Building web apps with aspnet jump start: 6 hours of free aspnet video.

- http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2013/02/28/building-web-apps-with-asp-net-jump-start-over-6-hours-of-free-asp-net-video-training.aspx

Getting the name of the calling method in dotnet (dotnet)

Anyone hacking WPF should read this.

When doing logging it is sometimes nice to know the caller so instead of

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public void MyFunction(){
MyLogger.Write( "MyFunction", "Start");
...

one can write

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public void MyFunction(){
MyLogger.Write( "Start" );
…

All it takes is to call a stack walking method like so:

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public static class MyLogger{
public static void Write( string message ){
Console.WriteLine( CompulsoryCat.CallingMethodName() + ":" + message );
…

That is the reason I wrote CompulsoryCat which is a helper lib to, among other, get meta data out of methods.
It is my plans to move it to CompulsoryCow but maybe I won’t since some of the functionality already exists in Dotnet4.5. Since Microsoft has a grab on the compiler in a fashion I don’t they could also make the syntax nicer.

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public static class MyLogger{
public static void Write( string message, [CallerMemberName] string callingMethodName = null ){
Console.WriteLine( callingMemberName + ":" + message );
…

Now think INotifyPropertyChanged, made famous of MVVM and WPF. If you program in WPF then you know of INotifyPropertyChanged. And then you know of all the hard coded property names.
That can be made a thing of the past with Dotnet4.5 and above syntax.

Well… to be honest- one can get to the property names through lambda which makes part of the problem disappear.

- http://code.google.com/p/compulsorycat/
- https://github.com/LosManos/CompulsoryCow
- http://10rem.net/blog/2013/02/25/using-callermembername-for-property-change-notification-in-xaml-apps

Advanced Html/Css and polyfills (web)

Advanced. Html. Css. Shiv. Shim. And how to use.

Do not read if you are a Html newbie – the crooked and confused way of Html and Javascript might scare you off to more well paved paths.

For the die hards – the site contains more advanced stuff.

- http://learn.shayhowe.com/advanced-html-css/feature-support-polyfills

CSS tools – noise texture (web)

Noise is not something you want in an image. But when hipsters design blank areas of colour, noise is suddenly in demand.

Below is linked a tool that does what the head line says.
Plus a gradient generator, the-most-awesome-thing-of-html5 rounded corners and box shadows.

- http://www.cssmatic.com/noise-texture

Web tools 2012 (dotnet)

Update for your Visualstudio. Syntax highlighting for Coffeescript, must ache, handlebar and jsrender (like query templates but without the DOM), more odata, more signalr, mvc like routing in web forms, device dependent page name in web forms just as in mvc, 4 new spa templates, more azure and more functionality.

It is an update of earlier release with more functionality than I care to write about.

Did I say it is gratis?

- http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/02/18/announcing-release-of-asp-net-and-web-tools-2012-2-update.aspx
- http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/07d54d12-7133-4e15-becb-6f451ea3bea6

Webpagestest.org – hit your site with a hoard of speed tests (web)

How fast is your site?

Enter your site’s URL in the site below and behold the answer.

- http://www.webpagetest.org

Kulmedkod – site om att lära barn programmera

Med lite ojämna mellanrum dyker nyheter upp på siten nedan.

Den är inte en-site-för-all-info-om-att-lära-barn-att-programmera tyvärr; jag har fortfarande inte hittat en sådan site. Men letar. Och när jag hittar få ni reda på det.

Under tiden har jag kulmedkod i min RSS-feed (och min twitter).

- http://kulmedkod.wordpress.com

How to version and write release notes – a proposed standard

For versioning of a program the semantic versioning has risen to an almost standard.
But how does one write release notes?

Semantic release notes is a proposed standard (in the same way as Markdown is a standard) for writing release notes. I haven’t tried it but I will because I do write release notes and I do have to compile them later. Having an almost standard would help my work.

Even if you aren’t interested in semantic release notes, do look into semantic versioning.

- http://www.semanticreleasenotes.org
- http://semver.org

Projects and leadership

Jämför lån- och sparkonti

Jag hittade snabbt ett sätt att låna pengar till 838% effektiv ränta, “vardagslånet”. Det skall jag inte ta.
Även om man inte ser hela sanningen så är det ett intressant projekt.

Man kan också jämföra sparkonti och jag fann raskt ett sparkonto som ger mycket mer än det bästa min bank erbjuder.

- http://www.bank24.nu

Compare more CMSs than you have ever heard about

There are tons of CMSs out there. How to find the right one?
Use the link below to compare the ones that interest you.

- http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix

Planning a budget is sub optimating

Have you read Valve’s Personal handbook? It is good.
Have you read your own company’s Personal handbook? It most certainly sucks.

Valve did something different, instead of writing the same boring handbook as every other company; they decided to make something good out of it.

The same counts for how Vale hires employees.

The same with The blogging terrier. He is co owner of a company and decided to go for equal salary. At first it felt like a bad idea but it soon became an advantage. Read more through the link below.

- http://jockeholm.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/am-i-a-socialist-how-a-small-consultancy-approach-the-tricky-questions-surrounding-power-and-money/

How Valve hires, fires and pays

I have earlier written about Valve’s awesome personal handbook.

You know the concept your company has with rules and regulations and policies and stuff? The concept that is out of date, impossible to understand, too long to read and presumably signed by all employees.
Valve has one too. But their is awesome!

I still haven’t read the personal handbook for where I am employed. But I have read Valve’s. That is how awesome it is.

Now to today’s subject. Valve’s routine of hiring people. And firing. And the salary in between. This isn’t in a handbook though but in the mind of the People. Awesomeness in life.

- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187296/How_Valve_hires_how_it_fires_and_how_much_it_pays.php

Daily Sync for five teams

Scrum meetings in a team isn’t that difficult. But how does one do the scrum of scrums? the synchronisation between teams I mean.

Should one do the scrum of scrums before the scrum? If one does; one can send the helicopter view back to the teams. On the other hand, if one does the scrum of scrums after the team scrums one has better input for the oval guiding.

MarcusH doesn’t have the answer but some good insights.

- http://www.marcusoft.net/2013/03/daily-sync-for-five-teams-and-get.html

Producing open source software book

Running an open source software project is not easy.
Below is linked a book on the subject to read digitally or as tree killer.

I have not read this book, just glanced through some pages.

- http://producingoss.com

Products and releases

Phonegap with WinPhone8 support (mobile)

As the head line says

- http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/phonegap-2-3-0

Discourse

The guys at Stackoverflow revolutionised the Q&A webs. Before Stackoverflow every Q&A site was bad. Now everyone know what a Q&A site _should_ look like.

Not being content with creating the world’s best Q&A site they have looked at discussion sites, forums. Think phpBB. They equally suck in one way or another or more usual several ways.
So they set out to fix this.

Discourse.org is their product.
I have great beliefs in it. If it is half as good as Stackoverflow it will still be the world’s best forum.

Did I mention it is free? Free like in Libre.

- http://www.discourse.org
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs

Which does hold the most RAM, Win8Pro or MacAir?

TL;DR

It’s equal.

Longer

There has been some mud slinging about this and it boils down to two things.
1) Whether one counts a megabyte in 1000s of bytes or 1024s of bytes.
2) Fanboys.

Next time someone throws you some data about one or the other and the amount of RAM; return this link to them. It is a lengthy article about calculations and how to get more even more RAM and just plain old debunking.

- http://www.zdnet.com/surface-pro-versus-macbook-air-whos-being-dishonest-with-storage-space-7000011009/

Lorempixel – lorem ipsum but for images (web)

When you need place holder text you go looking for lorem ipsum.
But when you need images? There are several solutions for this, like bing. Another is lorempixel. One can choose image size by tweaking the URL and even image category (sport, cats etc.)

- http://lorempixel.com
- http://lorempixel.com/400/200/sports/

Open source HTML5 game engine (web)

Somewhere HTML or Javascript means a product has to be open source. So with this one. It’s a game engine for HTML5.

- http://www.gameclosure.com

FullCalendar – jquery plugin web calendar (web)

A web calendar with drag and drop implemented as plugin to jquery.

I haven’t tried it so I can’t tell if it only does US datetime or also more international ones.

- http://arshaw.com/fullcalendar/

Glimpse 1.2 (dotnet)

If you do asp net programming you should already have looked into Glimpse.

It is like a procto camera into your web server.
Do like this: install it in your web project through nugget. There are a few lines added to web.config. Then surf to your site and to the page Glimpse.axd. Press the button shown.
Now, when you surf your site you see not only network information but even database calls! (well… you have to do EF or something else Glimpse compatible but anyhow: it is cool as hell is hot)

If you like it.
Correction.
When you like it.
Search for Elmah and MiniProfiler.
Equally awesome.

- http://blog.getglimpse.com/2013/03/19/glimpse-1-1-released-with-support-for-mvc-4/

Miscellaneous

Devops reactions – say it in moving pictures

Small flicks of fun showing my working day in both glory and fail.

- http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com

Tipthanks Anonymous

Why all HDMI cables are the same – debunking

Warning audiophiles. Don’t read further or you will feel cheated. Your 100€/m HDMI cable isn’t better than mine.

- http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20056502-1/why-all-hdmi-cables-are-the-same/
- http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57540275-221/still-more-reasons-why-all-hdmi-cable-are-the-same/

The universe is big. It is even bigger than that. And then plus some.

Following the link below might give you some clues about how big it is. Note “might”. Because all I got was headache.

If the video doesn’t show – click in the sidebar to the right “How big is the universe compared with a grain of sand”.

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2013/feb/11/how-big-universe-sand-video1

Play house model “big”

Some with air conditioning(!)

- http://imgur.com/a/8Dqv8

Remote controlled paper plane

A battery. A rod. An airscrew. A wind rudder. For about 30€.
Just add a folded paper.

Geniously!

Me gonna buy for sure.

- http://www.nyteknik.se/popular_teknik/teknikrevyn/article3637689.ece

Tipthanks Lasse

Blanda egen spolarvätska och dyr är inte bättre än billig

Jag kan underteckna att Statoils gördyra spolarvätska luktar Mycket.
Enligt test är den dessutom dålig.

Miljöpåverkan har inte testats.

Bosse bildoktorn blandar egen, billigare och säkert bättre också.
Dessutom har han moussserande vin för festligare tillfällen(!)

- http://www.teknikensvarld.se/2013/02/24/38288/billig-spolarvatska-battre-an-dyr/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Yjw0QqXAs

Tipstack Lasse

A ridiculously large swing

Disregarding the fact that I would piss in my pants I still want to go!

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdJc1_IBKJA

William Gibson Alien iii script

William Gibson is a good writer.
Alien is a good file series.

Together…

It is a film script so it is a different read than a normal novel.

- http://home.online.no/~bhundlan/scripts/alien3/gibson.htm

*EOF*

Tip when using DebuggerDisplay in Dotnet/Visual studio

selfelected — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:48:09 +0000

When debugging and watching an object one only sees the name of the type in the debugger.

1	MyProjectNamespace.Meeting

The quickest solution is to click the little plus sign or use the keyboard right arrow to show the properties. This is ok to do once or twice but doing this for every comparison is a waste of time at best.

Better then is to use SystemDiagnostics.DebuggerDisplay like so:

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[DebuggerDisplay("ID:{ID}, UID:{UID}, Name:{Name}, Type:{this.GetType()}")]
public class Meeting : BaseClass {
...

to get

1	ID:1, UID:234abc, Name:XYZ, Type:MyProjectNamespace.Meeting

The Tip was to use {this.GetType()} in the argument of DebuggerDisplay.

Visual studio snippet for an enhanced #region in csharp

selfelected — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:39:58 +0000

Visual studio contains snippets. These are “shortcuts” for writing various code. Try writing for in the editor and text is typed in for you and you get placeholders for faster code writing.

One can write code like this oneself. It is quite easy. Just go to menu->Tools->Code snippets manager and work from there; copy, paste and rewrite to your will. (The location field is the folder of the very snippets.)

Here is an example of mine.

I know that some people swear that #region is the devil’s own child but there are other, let’s call us them for pragmatists for now that say that if it fits it fits. The standard snippet outcome for a region is

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#region // Name of region.
//code
//code
//code
#endregion

but I prefer

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#region // Name of region.
//code
//code
//code
#endregion // Name of region.

So I just copypasted the existing snippet to this; which you can import through above mentioned menu.

#region
region
Code snippet for #region
Microsoft Corporation

Expansion
SurroundsWith

name
Region name
MyRegion


$selected$ $end$

#endregion // $name$]]>

Shortcuts when doing Visual studio unit test debugging

selfelected — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:32:15 +0000

Short story: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182470.aspx

I still miss a shortcut for “Debug the last unit test”. There is “Repeat the last run” but that runs and doesn’t debug. Strange since that is what I during times use the most. I have resorted to marking the test and the alt-s-d-enter.

Also: Resharper interferes with the shortcuts but that is more a facet of life I think.

Communicate, communicate, communicate – and the new email friendly layout

selfelected — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:47:24 +0000

hejdig.Long time no see.This is the same email with a new layout.
To make a long story short; the positive feedback I have gotten on this email has been on the contents, the bad on the format. Depending on email client it has been mangled enough to be rendered ugly.
So through a detour around Ruby land I have finally gotten something that is readable again.For getting this layout to work I have started using Mailchimp. I am totally new to this tools so if you find any dead links or anything else not working – please let me know.
Your email address is still as private as before.So what do you think?To celebrate the new layout I link to possibly the funniest jump. Evar.

And as always – the good stuff is at the end of the letter.

/OF

—-8<—-

Code and development

Create a menu in CSS3 (web)

The article below is nice. The code probably ok. But. As always with CSS it requires a certain width, 960 in this case.I will continue my holy war against pixel width in the web.- http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/08/create-a-stunning-menu-in-css3/

Aspnetmvc, Webapi, Jquery, Knockout and Signlr all together (web)

Aspnetmvc, Webapi, Jquery, Knockout and Signlr all together.
In an hour or less.
Awesome.
Continue with googling with bing for “webstack of love” for more of his presentations.BTW: NDC (Norwegian Developer Conference) has most (all?) of its presentations online. There are many good ones.- http://vimeo.com/m/43603472

Javascript frameworks to aid Model/DOM-manipuation on the client (web)

Using MV frameworks on the client is pure goodness until one stumbles upon a situation where it doesn’t work and instead trips you.
Don’t let that stop you – I have tried Knockout and really like it.Angular isn’t MVVM but MVW, whatever that stands for, and has another model for sending data between DOM elements. Sort of MVVM without the Model. It looks like it’s a Google product.Backbone has a Model. When it is updated the DOM updates. When the DOM updates so does the Model. It is more MVC than MVVM. It relies on underscore, another helper lib which might be good to have in the toolbox.Ember is a tool that targets bigger solutions. It has MV and templating like the others. Recently out with a new beta. They call it 1.0pre. Which is a beta AFAIK.Knockout is a MVVM framework that just happens to be the one blessed by Aspnet. I have tried it. I like it.Then there I Knockback to mix the Knockout and Backbone worlds.

- http://angularjs.org/
- http://backbonejs.org/
- http://emberjs.com/
- http://knockoutjs.com/
- http://kmalakoff.github.com/knockback/

- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5112899/knockout-js-vs-backbone-js-vs <-comparision and discussion

JSHint, A JavaScript Code Quality Tool (web)

Text copied from the about screen explains it best.
“JSHint is a community-driven tool to detect errors and potential problems in JavaScript code and to enforce your team’s coding conventions. It is very flexible so you can easily adjust it to your particular coding guidelines and the environment you expect your code to execute in.”There is a big text box on the site. Just paste your code and feel ashamed of yourself for writing sub par javascript. Just as I do.- http://www.jshint.com/

List and poll and summary of HTML5 development tools (web)

Below is linked a survey, a listing and some summaries about HTML5 development tools. Most programs I (you) already know of but browsing such lists once in a while can be worth its while.-http://www.infoq.com/research/valuable-tech-html5-development

Monkeycoder

Multi platform game development.The program translates the Monkeycoder language to several others which can then be compiled in respective environment. And sold. And profited.-http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/

Tipthanks DanielG

GTD with Evernote

The secret weapon is the name for a project? solution? idea? community? that has put GTD (getting things done) together with Evernote.GTD is in short:
If you can do it in less than 5 minutes – do it now.
The rest – put on a list and prioritise.
When the <5minutes tasks are done: review list.
GOTO 10-http://www.thesecretweapon.org/

Hammer.js – javascript touch lib (web,mobile)

If you are just starting your utterly responsive HTML javascript project you should be aware that the browser on Ios has a 300ms delay between tap and click.There are totally valid reasons for this but outside the scope of this article.
300ms is noticeable. I foresee it will decrease in the future when we get screens with more sensors and intelligence in them. Also outside the scope of this article.Never the less, if you are writing a HTML5 game this might be a show stopper so you are into writing your own handlers for down, up and click/tap/press. And there goes your initial estimates for a demo because down-up-click is a framework on its own, especially combined with doubleclick, swipe, pinch and drag.Talking of frameworks, the link below tries to solve just that.-http://eightmedia.github.com/hammer.js/

DYI – a 3D touchless tracking device (arduino)

You need a computer, an Arduino, some wires and electronics components, time and patience.
Of course it is a little course. Of course it takes a few hours to put together. Of course it isn’t compatible with your latest games.The documentation puts some weight on everything sharing the same ground. In Sweden laptops are often not grounded but that could be remedied by yet another wire acting as ground.-http://makeprojects.com/Project/A-Touchless-3D-Tracking-Interface/2233/1

Great jQuery plugins for fresh websites (web)

There are many Jquery plugins. Below are various curated.- http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/08/great-jquery-plugins-for-fresh-websites/

Git-ts: Git integrated with TFS (win)

Should one choose Git or Tfs?There doesn’t necessarily have to be one SCM to rule them all since one cannot integrate with Git-Tfs directly from Microsoft.- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/08/13/announcing-git-integration-with-tfs.aspx

Common infrastructure libraries for .NET (dotnet)

Have you ever had to choose between log4net (how much is it developed today?), nlog (newer and fresher but better?) and enterprise framework (can do everything but how?) and decided to postpone decision or even roll your own?Have you ever been in a project where some run log4net and others nlog and someone used ef some years ago?Enter Netcommon. It presents a common interface for everything logging. The plans are for supporting more infrastructure stuff in the future but right now only logging is ready.
So you can write logging through Netcommon and don’t care what people use down the road. A nice idea. I have to go down the corridor to talk to a guy who has used it. Be right back!- http://netcommon.sourceforge.net/Yupp. He was satisfied.

Jquery 1.9 release (web)

Smaller. Faster. Modularised.
Modularisation means one can use Grunt to strip out unnecessary stuff. Still not as good a jquery-ui where there is a GUI for what you want to use and not and create a script with just what you need.Then 2.0 is released as beta. It doesn’t support old IE browsers.- http://blog.jquery.com/2013/01/15/jquery-1-9-final-jquery-2-0-beta-migrate-final-released/

Mousetrap – keyboard shortcuts in javascript (web)

The Web interface is very mouse pointer oriented which sucks big time since I am born with just two hands and they are on my keyboard. Mouse works fine for browsing but input? No.
Fat client programs have keyboard shortcuts which is still The reason to use them instead of Web applications.
But look at gmail for instance; press ? and a help screen pops up. C for composing a new letter, GI for getting back to the inbox and so forth. Implementing this on your own is a great pain, unless you use a lib of course; then it is only Less of a pain.Mousetrap, the lib linked below, contains tools for ctrl-a, ctrl-shift-a and the like, “hormal” shortcuts if you prefer. It also contains gmail-style which are ?, C, GI etc. To top it up it contains whay they call Konami style. An example of that would be: up up up down up up left right lef right down a x. There are live examples right on their site.- http://craig.is/killing/mice

Unit testing and SMTP (dotnet)

Doing automatic testing with email is a hassle. Below is linked a link to a fake SMTP server and a trick with it to drop the emails in a folder.- http://www.thinqlinq.com/Post.aspx/Title/Unit-testing-and-SMTP

How do I become a hacker?

The head line is the one most used questions at a certain kind of forum. The answer is the same as with learning to play an instrument.
Practice.But where does one start?
I really don’t know but hackerhighschool seems as good as any.And remember – Hack everything but harm none. Really. As a 10 years old one hasn’t developed ethics, as a 20 one is still new at the game and as a 40 years old one is still learning.
Print it out “Hack everything but harm none.” Put it on the wall behind the monitor. Read it. Embrace it. Hack.- http://www.google.com/ <- best place to start learning hacking
- http://www.hackerhighschool.org/lessons.html

Gratis device emulators for testing

Having recently delivered a project running on both Android and IOS tablets and phones I can testify it is cumbersome to test. And debug.
Ok, with Ios6 one can finally connect remotely to Safari but we had to support Ios5 too. And what about debugging Chrome on Ipad? Phew.
Does Opera run on Ipad? Opera mobile has solved remote debugging already today you know.With 90% of the functionality we can move it to the desktop and the horse powers we have there. Below is linked 6 such tools.- http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/11/6-free-mobile-device-emulators-for-testing-your-site/

Colour scheme designer with colour blindness visualisation (web)

Colours is a science of its own.How does one choose the right colours for a site or application or when drawing or doodling? One has only 3 choices: chance, feel or math. Due to lack of time and a slight colour blindness I go for the latter.Below is a site that does the hard work for you. It has several hidden features like export to different formats, manipulations like pastel and contrast and visualisation of how the colours look for different types of colour blindness.

When you have decided for a colour scheme you can store the URL and get back to where you were.

- http://colorschemedesigner.com

What happens the first few milliseconds of a HTTPS call? (web)

As the headline says. Written in a easy to understand manner, if possible is.- http://www.moserware.com/2009/06/first-few-milliseconds-of-https.html

Chart of what takes time, code vs network calls

Absolutely not comprehensive but instead readable to give a rough value of if it is with to trim code or network calls.- http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html

Razor engine tips and tricks (win)

The Razor template engine is awesome. It’s like “how would I like to code?” and then just write like it and let Razor figure out what you mean.
There are certain caveats but they can be remedied with for instance @: and @helpers. You haven’t heard about them? Me neither. Hence my linking below.If you do AspnetMVC with the Razor engine; read below. These 2 minutes of you time are a good investment.- http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2013/01/09/ten-tricks-for-razor-views.aspx

Projects and leadersip

About Google’s one day a week

Google is famous for letting their developers do other stuff 20% of the time. That is quite a lot of time. But it seems to work!- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/08/today-is-goof-off-at-work-day.html

Your Path through Agile Fluency

How does a team move from being Waterfall dependant to being fluent in Agile?MFowler, of course, has some insights to share.- http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html

Deliver 50 times a day

Latest project I was in came with the usual birth labour. Deliver. Bugs found. Correction. Deliver. Repeat.
I find this good. I believe in continuous delivery and repeated my mantra “a delivery every 20 minutes” for anyone who’d listen. (reality:to anyone having the bad luck to be close enough)
Then during one of these delivery iterations we felt a disturbance in the force; and checked online; and was Live!It wasn’t a 20 minutes delivery and it wasn’t 50 times a day but it was a first step.Below is linked a way bigger and more complex site than ours that deliver continuously. 50. Times. A day.- http://timothyfitz.com/2009/02/10/continuous-deployment-at-imvu-doing-the-impossible-fifty-times-a-day/

T4 for visual studio 2012 (win)

T4 is the templating language used by Microsoft and Visual studio. If you for instance are doing Entity Framework you are using T4.Now this language and these template can be further developed or made totally from scratch. I have invested some time in ST4bby which creates POCOs with a single click of a button.T4 has been updated and adapted for the new Visual studio. If you are using it, or thinking thereof, zip through the link below for some new stuff.

- http://www.olegsych.com/2012/12/t4-toolbox-for-visual-studio-2012/
- http://johnnycode.com/ST4bby/ <- create pocos by the touch of a button

Getting kids into programming

I have many times written about languages appropriate for programming. I have later realised that it is possibly not the language that is the threshold but the will. *Why* should a kid chose to program?The simple answer is “games”. The more comprehensive answer is longer. Below its linked a blog article with various links.- http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/01/getting-kids-into-programming.html

Products and releases

Raspberry pi + Xbmc + Airplay (linux)

Raspberry pi is a small and cheap (<30€) computer that doesn’t draw lots of energy (<5W). It also doesn’t have a fan or any other moving parts; this makes it fitting for a living room.Now the moment we all have been waiting for has arrived – Xbmc works on Raspberry pi. And not only that – also Airplay works.(Airplay is an Apple construct to share screen content between devices. Typically you can play youtube on your ipad and watch it on the tv.) (Google is working on an open competitor to Airplay.)

A konkullega has tried it and it was no problem he said. Also 1080 works if the file is not too heavy. A 30 gig file stuttered. He got airplay audio to work but no video.

- http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AddingAirPlayToAReceiverWithoutAnAppleTVRaspbmcAndTheRaspberryPi.aspx
- http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Top10RaspberryPiMythsAndTruths.aspx<- more about what raspberrypi can do
- http://apc.io/<- higher price, more horse power and less press coverage
- http://www.fxitech.com/fxi-demonstrates-any-screen-connected-computing/ <- memory stick sized, usb powered android computer using existing hdmi monitors as screen

Ouya preorderable (android)

It’s an open game console with an Android engine.
One of the shiny parts is that is was funded through Kickstarter.- http://www.ouya.tv/

Textmate 2 going F/OSS (mac)

Contrary to Windows there is just a handful of free and gratis text editors on the Mac. Textmate is one of them and it is now going open source. Not only that, it is going GPLv3 which means than no fork of it can be sold in the app store.

I’ll throw a log in the fire and write that the editors on the mac are lacking in usability.
The litmus test is to edit a file without using the mouse.- http://blog.macromates.com/2012/textmate-2-at-github/

Whiteboard on the web (web)

Need to scribble and doodle with someone out of arms’ reach?
Go online!http://webwhiteboard.com/

The Ipad and Android has icons in tabular format so you, dear reader, know how bad it is (win)

There must be a better solution.
Windowsphone7 has tiles which is slightly interactive icons but in a vertical order. Very like but also very different.
The start menu of Windows>=95 is hierarchical.
Spotlight and the start menu of Windows>=7 does a quick text search and happens to be my preferred way of starting applications.
Late Osx versions use pinch to show a, yet again, tabular screen with icons.I don’t know how to use Circledock but I know in the back of my head there is a good use for it.-http://circledock.wikidot.com/

Upverter

Online collaboration for hardware electronics.Gratis for open source projects.- http://upverter.com/

Android Mini PC RK3066 (android)

Raspberrypi is getting all the lime light right now but one shouldn’t forget neither Fxitech nor Rk3066. Read more about the latter below.
- http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/12/the-rk3066-android-4-1-mini-pc-hands-on/

Papercut – mimic a mail server (win)

If you are writing an application that sends email you also have to set up SMTP server or SMTP relaying; and do it securely. It is not difficult but it takes some time.Papercut is instead a desktop application that does this work for you without configuration – anything you send pops up in the GUI. F/OSS.- http://papercut.codeplex.com

Privacy, security and rights

The patent war between Samsung and Apple described as a flower

Apple created an icon with a blue sky, green leaves and a yellow sunflower for the gallery. Samsung created an icon with a yellow flower and a couple of green leavers. The original article sees this as a rip off.I see imitation as the highest form of flattery. Plus; I don’t see a flower and blue sky as so unique for a GUI that a company should be able to own it. Or if it is so wonderful a solution – then maybe a company shouldn’t be able to own it but instead the whole world.But we freedom fighting heroes are not without flaw. Open source initiative, one of the good guys, is fighting with Open source hardware, another good guy, about an icon and another icon.
Personally I see no reason they shouldn’t be able to live together. Now the Open source initiative logo is darn ugly but that is beside the case.- http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/08/08/apples-argument-that-samsung-copied-its-software-designs-summed-up-by-a-single-yellow-flower/
- http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/080812-open-source-movements-butt-heads-over-261484.html

Watching Netflix or Hulu from outside USA or Canada is not impossible (web)

Watching Netflix or Hulu from outside USA or Canada is not impossible, it just requires a few tweeks.
Below is linked info for a newbie.- http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/81175
- http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/15/netflix-watch-instantly-streaming-scandinavia/

No more Flash updates on the Android platform (android)

What does this mean?
Well… when the next vulnerability is found on Flash running on Android all Flash has to go on your Android devices.
Read that again if you have an Android device and didn’t get it. It might be important.-http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/14/psa-adobe-halts-new-installs-of-flash-on-android-as-of-tomorrow/

Use Google to search for patents

Google has for a long time has a service for searching for patents. Both regular patents and the sick, mis formed, abused, innovation halting and humanity unfriendly software patents. It is now extended to try to search for prior art.Which leads me to my own site, Selfelected ideas, where I drop ideas I have just to make sure that no one believe they are alone with inventing such a obvious idea.-http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/15/google-patents-gets-prior-art-and-european-patent-search/
- http://ideas.selfelected.com/

Logo for DRM free files

DRM, aka copy protection, is a way of the past even though not everyone has understood. Ok ok, to be honest I know of some places where it is a good fit but for, say, music or moving pictures it is more of a wart than real limb.Someone has created a logo for this. My trained artist eye says the logo is hideous.-http://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/2243

Site for helping you with those pesky Terms-of-service

Have you ever read one Terms of service? I doubt I have.
Have you ever written a Terms of service? I have not. My personal terms of service are either Works on my machine or I don’t owe you and you don’t owe me.Now there is a site to grade and discuss Terms of service. It also has a wonderful feature – a diff feature. Every time you get a new Flash patch you have some ks of words of Terms of service but what is new? A diff is exactly that – tells you what is new, changed and gone.One thing to look for that I haven’t noticed earlier is the right to leave the service. According to Steam or Skype you cannot. It’s like a Cockroach hotel.Duckduckgo gets full grades but it is also a very simple service. Github is one grade down. Facebook is not graded yet but we know which end of the scale it ends up on. I guess Google, despite trying hard, is going towards that same end.Below is also linked to an aid for creating your own privacy policies.- http://tos-dr.info/
- http://termsfeed.com/free/privacy-policy-generator

Free classical music

Modern music is owned by someone.
Older music might be free.
Some people has collected old music for our convenience. Free.
Not as in Free beer but as in Free speach.- http://musopen.org/music/by/performer/Musopen-Symphony-Orchestra

US government (or military) eaves drop your private Facebook postings

In the name of the holy war against terrorism and people with different opinions your facebook private files might be read by the U.S. national security details.In the defense of the Holy warriors in the holy war against terrorism and different opinionated, the guy arrested was putting out some real threats. Personally I’d prefer to have him under surveillance and treatment too.
But the fact remains that Facebook isn’t private. Not even the private parts are private.Which leads me to Microsoft skydrive where one is not allowed to store nude pictures or warez. This means that there is constant surveillance of what you store. I have lost the link though.Equally lost is the link to the guy at Google, a contractor, that had as job to sift through juicy pictures; the real juicy, like goatse-juicy ones. He had to go to therapy afterwards.- http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/08/20/2345253/ex-marine-detained-for-facebook-posts-deemed-terrorist-in-natureI guess I get bumped with Echelon for this.

Miscellaneous

Mactuts+ – mac tutorials

If the Mac isn’t as easy to use as you expected.- http://mac.tutsplus.com/

Toys – war toys of yesterday

If you ever wondered where USA got their love for weapons look no further. Below is linked old commercials with gay (used in the old tense as happy, glad) boys blasting away at their enemies.
No gun is too big.
Every boy wants one.
And girls too.
Mattel – big guns for boys, eating disorder dolls for girls.
Batteries not needed – remember, this was back in the black&white days.- http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/08/retro-commercials-old-toys-your-parents-loved/

How differential gears work

I know how differential gears (differentialväxel) work. And You know how differential gears work. But trying to explain how it works is another issue.So below is linked a flick from the times when the moving pictures where black and white but mostly grey and people smoked in their homes and women were secretaries and wore skirts but above all the Car was teh Future and gasoline was neither scarce, expensive nor polluting the earth.
Strangely enough it does a good job of explaining how differential gears work. You can wind 1:30 or 3:15 into the movie to avoid some of the fluff.- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JhruinbWcTipthanks MaTh

Nice presentation

Nice presentationA presentation for presentation’s sake. Nice one too.-http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_the_electric_rise_and_fall_of_nikola_tesla.html

Tipthanks FredrikH

Watch in CSS (web)

Watch in CSS (web)Nice animation of a watch. Almost only done in CSS.-http://codepen.io/TheSisb/pen/eAHyJ

Home made prosthetic arm

One should not fish with dynamite. It is bad for the fish. It can also be bad for the hands.
So this guy does some dynamite fishing and blows of his hands.
Without hands he still manages to create two prosthetic hands.
How’s that for dexterity?-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/15/sun-jifa-prosthetic-hands_n_1777168.html

DIY aircraft

Now, when we are about to get 3D printers and affordable CNC machines in every household why not make an aircraft? Open source!-http://makerplane.org/

Physical 1st person shooter

Playing FPS is probably the most fun thing you can do with your clothes on.
What it lacks though is sweat and pain.We have all dreamt about the 2D tread mill so we can walk and run in any direction instead of slouching in the couch. And we have all dreamt about the surround graphics filling our view field with intense graphics. Now this is done.And to add…
…paint ball markers to give sensory input when you get fragged!Sensoring is done through a Kinect so you can do it naked too.Reality is coming closer as we speak.- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8Bh5iI2WY

Tipthanks Fx

Nice looking props helmet

Below is linked some nice instructions on how to build a 3D props helmet out of paper.
First use a computer program to model the helmet in. Then use another program to get the model translated to paper and lines to cut. Then cut and glue and cut and glue. And cut and glue some more. Then apply bonding, polyester and other stuff every other time and sand every other. Repeat and repeat. Then apply layers and layers of paint. The result below is quite nice looking.- http://protagonist4hire.blogspot.se/2012/01/prop-building-101-part-1-building.html

Scariest prank. Ever.

It is like the Ring of pranks.- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N5OhNplEd4

Lego rubber band tank

Not bad.
Considering the creator i 9 years and have 20 hours of stamina – not bad at all!- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP0TosvzoBITipthanks MaTh

Solar powered Raspberry pi FTP server

The title says it all.
Now, why limit oneself to FTP? It could just as well be a web server or media server. The thing here is that solar power is enough to power it. Just add water proofing and you have a server for your summer house.- http://blog.makezine.com/2012/12/11/how-to-solar-powered-raspberry-pi-ftp-server/

Bumbloods – zombie web series

Stupid people doing stupid things. A proven recipe since Friends and long before that. Bumbloods isn’t as good as Bite me but can be watch worth.- http://www.dailymotion.com/Bumbloods

Putting scale to things

How big is the sun? If you take the distance from Earth to Moon it is very roughly a fifth of the diameter of Sun. So Sun isn’t that big, cosmology wise.
Jupiter on the other hand is big. The biggest (known) planet TrES-4 isn’t even double the diameter of Jupiter.Okok, you can put all planets in our solar system on a plane and still have Sun surround them; so I guess it is kind of big. Disregaring Betelgeuse that is so big that when I placed Sun beside it, Sun was but a speck. Now Betelgeuse isn’t the biggest star, not by far. But it is old; old enough to die within the next 10000 years.Now. How small is an atom?
Don’t get me started. Find out for yourself.Play around with the link below.
Almost as addictive as google maps and heroin.- http://scaleofuniverse.comTipthanks Lasse

How Git works – explained in pictures

It might be fun if you don’t know Git.
It *is* fun if you know Git.- http://wheningit.tumblr.com

List the size of tables and stuff in a Sqlserver

selfelected — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:01:17 +0000

A simple solution copied from here is

1	sp_msforeachtable "sp_spaceused '?'"

an almost as simple is the one below copied from here:

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SET NOCOUNT ON

CREATE TABLE #TBLSize
(Tblname VARCHAR(80),
TblRows INT,
TblReserved VARCHAR(80),
TblData VARCHAR(80),
TblIndex_Size VARCHAR(80),
TblUnused VARCHAR(80))

DECLARE @DBname VARCHAR(80)
DECLARE @tablename VARCHAR(80)

SELECT @DBname = DB_NAME(DB_ID())
PRINT 'User Table size Report for (Server / Database): ' + @@ServerName + ' / ' + @DBName
PRINT ''
PRINT 'By Size Descending'
DECLARE TblName_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT NAME
FROM sysobjects
WHERE xType = 'U'

OPEN TblName_cursor

FETCH NEXT FROM TblName_cursor
INTO @tablename

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
INSERT INTO #tblSize(Tblname, TblRows, TblReserved, TblData, TblIndex_Size, TblUnused)
EXEC Sp_SpaceUsed @tablename

-- Get the next author.
FETCH NEXT FROM TblName_cursor
INTO @tablename
END

CLOSE TblName_cursor
DEALLOCATE TblName_cursor

SELECT CAST(Tblname AS VARCHAR(30)) 'Table',
CAST(TblRows AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Row Count',
CAST(LEFT(TblReserved, CHARINDEX(' KB', TblReserved)) AS INT) 'Total Space (KB)',
CAST(TblData AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Data Space',
CAST(TblIndex_Size AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Index Space',
CAST(TblUnused AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Unused Space'
FROM #tblSize
ORDER BY 'Total Space (KB)' DESC

PRINT ''
PRINT 'By Table Name Alphabetical'

SELECT CAST(Tblname AS VARCHAR(30)) 'Table',
CAST(TblRows AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Row Count',
CAST(LEFT(TblReserved, CHARINDEX(' KB', TblReserved)) AS INT) 'Total Space (KB)',
CAST(TblData AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Data Space',
CAST(TblIndex_Size AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Index Space',
CAST(TblUnused AS VARCHAR(14)) 'Unused Space'
FROM #tblSize
ORDER BY 'Table'

DROP TABLE #TblSize

Encrypt Android and restore a bricked Google nexus 7

selfelected — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:01:41 +0000

Encrypt android

With the later (exact version unknown) it is possible to encrypt the whole Android device. This should mean that anyone getting hands on your machine can’t get to its data. I don’t know the encryption method nor do I know if there are any holes to exploit that makes the encryption moot.

Just go look in the Settings and there is a Security and from there you’ll find your way.
The memory card can be encrypted too.

For encrypting a device one must start using a pass code to start the machine.
For security one should also have a pass code to open it. Now this can be tedious, pressing in 4 characters or more every time you want to do a small check.
Try out Llama. It can react on the cell masts/IDs and in a beta to WLANs. For instance have the device not being locked while being at home (close to a mast or within your home’s WLAN range).

Restore a Google nexus 7

First hits when googling google nexus restore are various kinds of holding down power button and up/down volume.

If this does’t work there is a hidden while doing System restore I found here.

If you are so out of luck this doesn’t work go here to do a full OS replacement.

Convert data like you do in Excel – but with a tool that is created for it

selfelected — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 21:07:57 +0000

SHORT

If you convert table like data, think Excel and manipulation, before being able to use it:
There is a tool called Openrefine for this and it is free.

TL;DR

Sometimes one gets a file from the customer to import into a system. The received data is almost correct.
So one opens a spread sheet, pastes/imports and start converting. After a while deed is done and case is closed. Then one gets a new file and redoes everything.

In my above, real life, example a spreadsheet program like Excel or Openoffice-Calc is used. But that is not what it is created for, or best at, or even good at.

I have wished for a program created for importing and converting data. And it has existed since many years, albeit seldom mentioned.

http://openrefine.org/