Sergio Barbosa #1,498,000 and counting...

The hike to the Kakapo

Next time you are in Cape Town and feel like doing a beach walk, I highly recommend the walk to the Kakapo shipwreck on Noordhoek's Long Beach.

The start of the walk begins at Noordhoek beach. If you're coming from Chapmans Peak side, it's the first turn to your right on the way down the pass (there's a little tea cup sign and a horse farm on the right). Drive towards the beach (you will pass through the monkey valley resort) and park.

The hike is just short of 1 hour each way. You are walking on beach sand, so I would recommend doing this barefoot. The beach faces open sea on the Atlantic Side, so this hike is definitely "weather permitting". The beach is also prone to spots of quick sand because on storm swells the tide rises very high and covers the whole beach - so take note.

Lather yourself in suntan lotion and make your way down the beach towards Kommetjie. Between 45 minutes and 1 hour you should reach the wreck. Most of it is covered in sand, so there are sharp bits of the boats structure sticking out. You'd be barefoot, so be careful not to injure yourself. If a decent swell is running you should see one of Cape Town's larger surf breaks in action right in front of you - its called Sunset and named after the famous Hawaiian counterpart.

If you have a 7 month baby, you might want to pick up one of these handy Kway carriers ;)

How to dismantle the toy box while reading...

A variation on the U2 album with a cat thrown in the mix and no nuclear waste ;)

Sofware Engineers, Smurfs and Empty Promises

I am one of millions of Software Engineers that have fallen victim to the Empty Promises that Smurfs make to the people that run big business.

In true fashion big business adopts its typical response to the unknown and throws money in an attempt to understand the Empty Promise. Because the Empty Promise is in fact, empty, the only people who can validate the Empty Promise are the Smurfs endorsing it. Because the best Smurfs are typically good speakers, big business buys into the Empty Promise. The Empty Promise gets integrated into the organisation by the unsuspecting Software Engineers who, despite their vehement opposition to the Empty Promise and the endorsing Smurfs, are essentially forced into performing said integration in order to satisfy their mortgage or car repayment or whatever financial requirement they may have.

All the while the Software Engineers have a cause of their own. They strive for simplicity in an environment filled with complexity - an environment so complex that it will always contain anomalies no matter how hard the Software Engineers strive to eliminate them. Every waking hour is spent analyzing whether there is any value in adding the tiniest bit of complexity to the environment. Every other waking hour is spent on improving the processes of adding these tiny bits of complexity so that costs can be minimized and some link can be made to the real financial return of adding the complexity in the first place.

Ultimately, the Empty Promise proves not be empty at all, but instead contains unnecessary complexity with immeasurable ROI. Time and time again this proves to be the case. Web 2.0 is just another instantiation of the same Empty Promise base class. Every single Software Engineer knows this because they have been using the so-called "Web 2.0 technologies" to varying degrees for nearly a decade - just without the Smurf enumerations and the all-or-nothing licensing model.

As a Software Engineer I am truly excited about the emergence of new web services standards because their emergence continues to make the Internet an exciting and attractive platform to write software for. This excitement however tends to be dissolved every time a Smurf instantiates Empty Promise.

Friday's Gig

Contrary to popular belief, Friday 1st September is the longest day of the year!  At 4:30am Luka shrieked over the baby monitor and brought me to a state of consciousness.  After about 45 minutes of feeding, nappy changing and general middle of the night chit chat I was wide awake and Luka was fast asleep.  So, I whipped up some Wiener Mischung and had a bit of a SAD (Solo Application Development) session on the "secret project".

The sun came up, we went to work and worked likes slaves.  Knocked off at around 5pm for a 6pm sound check...

It was probably one of our best gigs to date.  From a performance perspective we were really tight and all the work in studio with the click track has really helped.  The set list we are currently performing is working very well, so we are probably going to stick to it for the next 2 gigs (16th Sep at the Hidden Cellar in Stellenbosch with Bed on Bricks and 29th Sep at Zula Bar in Long Street with Sitter from Durbs - more details on www.shyguevaras.com if you're interested).  Check the pic from the collage of Shifty doing some airtime!  BTW, shot for the pics Craig :)

After a few (several) drinks J and I stumbled into the house at around 2am to find Grandma (baby sitting for the night) transfixed on the late night movie.  I'd been awake and missioning for a solid 22 hours!

As I flopped into bed little did I know that within a couple of hours (4:30pm to be exact) I would be awaken by another Luka shriek...

Geek Dinner: Report Back...

The Geek Dinner certainly had its moments.

The first speech by Stormhoek Winemaker Graham Knox was really refreshing, because it showed how someone from a truly non tech origin could be inspired by something very tech, and to such an extent. He also came across as a really sweet person!

The second speech was very insightful (despite the fact that it was filled with hypothesis upon hypothesis, but given the time frame allocated, I doubt anyone could have made a better argument and/or prophecy), depicting a summary of human history and making predictions for the future, and of course, how blogging fits into all of this. In fact, the speech fitted in well with the "secret project".

From there on out, the speeches started to get a bit hazy - the Stormhoek wine administers a solid punch to the kidney area - I have to admit it is in fact incredibly palatable wine! However, I don't think I will be able to use my handy "ratchet and pliers" trick on said wine because the bottles apparently have a screw top (or did I mishear that in Graham's speech?)

Somewhere between the kidney punch and going home, Cherry delivered a fantastic little speech, who, after having read the blog for sometime and now had the opportunity of physically meeting, is someone who I can officially regard as pretty damn cool!

The food was very decent actually, and in all I think the evening was a huge success. I mean, Google even sent out an HR person from the US all the way to little old Cape Town on the other side of the world. just for twenty odd SA bloggers? .that's pretty cool!

I think the sad part about the evening was that I had to hear the vomit inducing phrase "Web 2.0" about a dozen times - I must say that really pissed me off! I have come to the conclusion that people who utter that phrase are actually technologically challenged and strive for to be smurfs.

The best toys are often the cheapest

The marketing smurfs of the world often prey on a popular weakness in new parents - fear of buying the wrong thing for your child.

So to some extent I've been a bit of a sucker because I bought an orthopaedic-ally sound Bumbo (http://www.bumbo.co.za) for Luka to sit in and a developmentally focused toy set called Practica (http://www.practica.co.za/portal/Users/portalPageEdit.aspx). Both are actually really amazing and work well, but we've found that Luka is just happier in a wash basket with a bunch of socks :)

Unit tests and TDD

A couple of my friends are having the following debate.

-----Original Message----- From: [email protected]]
Sent: 23 August 2006 07:40 To: -- Cc: -- Subject: Re: Unit tests and TDD

This is the way we do it here at ---- :) However, sometimes you need your unit test to "interact" with an object/component that it is not supposed to rely on in determining its result, and that is when you have to start using object mocking.

Not a particularly fun thing to do imho. :)

On 8/23/06, [email protected]> wrote: > It's a cool article. I like the clear way in which he laid out the > challenges. However, I am starting to agree that any unit test which > touches the DB is in fact an integration test, and should be labelled as > such. When developers do their normal builds, only unit tests (in the > strict sense of the word) should be run. You can let CruiseControl run > your unit tests as well as your integration tests. >

From: [email protected]]
Sent: 23 August 2006 10:06 AM To: --- Subject: RE: Unit tests and TDD

I agree, but there are always issues with database unittesting...

What do you think of this article? http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/articles/dbunittesting.aspx

From: [email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 5:24 PM To: -- Subject: Unit tests and TDD

Hey,

Here is a really, really interesting article on unit tests. A while ago I wouldn't have agreed with the guy, but now I completely agree.
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=126923

Let me know what you think...

Well.

I think the use of the ADO.NET transaction object in the first article is brilliant! I also think that a distinction should be made between unit tests and integration tests as suggested by the second article.

However, if your database is actually part of your system, i.e. it is shipped with your code and not interchangeable with other database platforms, then I don't believe that tests which perform CRUD operations on the database are integration tests - they are unit tests!

Scenario 1: You are working in a software development team for some firm

You are typically developing software for a very specific technical environment to which your code is tightly integrated, i.e. the firms runs SQL Server 2005 and the database instance contains business logic in stored procedures and meta data in tables that is part of your application - your code is actually shipped with the database into Production!

You would probably find that in this situation your build contains more unit tests than integration tests, because there is a smaller dependency on integration. In this situation the best way to improve your build times won't come from splitting out your integration tests from your unit tests. It would be to break your system up into logical architectural blocks that can be built independently as the system gets bigger. I've seen this work well at a previous financial institution I spent some time at.

Scenario 2: You are working for a software development company that ships a software product

You are typically developing software for an array of different technical environments, i.e. the client runs any one of MySQL, SQL Server or ORACLE and there is or no (or at most very little) business logic in the stored procedures (i.e. the majority of the stored procedures are simple CRUD operations on the tables), and your code ships with the database schema!

In this situation your build will most likely contain a higher percentage of integration tests than unit tests because of the higher dependency on integration. The use of object mocking become more important and by splitting out your integration tests from your unit tests in this scenario I agree will make a huge improvement on your build times!

From the article. I would make the following amendments:

A test is not a unit-test if:

It talks to the database (...that is not shipped with your code and not interchangeable with other database platforms)

It communicates across the network (...that is not shipped with your code and not interchangeable with other network platforms)

It touches the file system (...that is not shipped with your code and not interchangeable with other file system platforms)

.

Audioslave's New Video...

I must be a more consistent blogger. I must be a more consistent blogger.I must be a more consistent blogger.I must be a more consistent blogger.I must be a more consistent blogger.I must be a more consistent blogger.I must be a more consistent blogger.

I don't post anything in over 2 weeks and then like 4 in one day - it's ridiculous!

Ok, the new video is pretty cool and so is the new song. You can view it here.

http://www.videocodezone.com/videos/a/audioslave/original_fire.html

And, if you let it stream to the end you can get it from your download cache - which I am sure they were not intending when they posted it.. And no, I am not sharing my copy.

Another Reason why SA is great!

We braai!  Yep, we make a real fire (damage the environment, yes, yes, I know, but at least we obey the Kyoto Protocol... sort of... anyway...) and on the real fire we take large real pieces of meat and cook them.  Like this steak we braaied on the weekend...

Sure makes the 10 Rand note look awefully small doesn't it.

More Luka Pictures...

He just gets cuter by the day... :)