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Friday January 12, 2007

An alternate lifecycle for BDD Todd Fast has an excellent entry on Bug Driven Development. While I agree with just about everything that Todd has said, I would like to propose a slightly different lifecycle for the issue objects.

In Todd's lifecycle, a feature issue is opened to indicate that something is being proposed and closed when its development is completed. This is good, but leaves your bug tracking system filled with feature issues that might not be part of the product anymore. As a project mutates, some of those features may be obsolete, but folks may think they are still part of the projects feature set.

I would propose that all changes to the project be proposed as enhancements or defects. A new feature would get filed as an enhancement (instead of being filed as a feature). It would live the life that Todd proposes, until the day that it would be closed in his lifecycle.

Instead of closing the initial issue (an enhancement), the lead would promote the issue to be an open feature issue. This feature issue would remain open until the feature is deprecated; at that point the feature issue is closed.

Using this promotion scheme would allow folks to easily discover the features of the project. (2007-01-12 16:37:46.0) Permalink

Thursday August 03, 2006

Worth a listen or read, then some more reading On the way to the office this morning, I listened to a segment on NPR about emergency preparedness. While I don't completely agree with sentiment that "nobody is telling me what to do", it did remind me that I haven't checked my preparedness lately.

I did a quick search and discovered this site: http://www.72hours.org.

It is fairly complete and the entire site is available as a PDF so you can read it/access it via dead trees (which can be kind of handy if the power or telecom infrastructure starts to have "issues"). (2006-08-03 08:19:16.0) Permalink

Wednesday April 05, 2006

REM fans... sing along with the Mac users It's the end of the world as I know it. I feel fine. (2006-04-05 10:19:26.0) Permalink

Sunday April 02, 2006

My wit takes a holiday, but others stand firm I feel guilty today.

Yesterday was 1 April 2006 and I did not post anything ironically witty as a contribution to April foolishness. I was up skiing with a daughter and some friends.

Some folks did have wonderful entries, though...

Remember, if you heard it from a Sun employee on Saturday, you may have heard a fish tale... (2006-04-02 15:02:21.0) Permalink

Sunday March 12, 2006

I must be a real blogger now! I got to deal with my first case of referrer spamming. It was nice to be in the "hot list" for a few minutes. But I want my entries to "earn it".

The interesting thing about this spam is: it is totally useless. I don't publish my referrer list, just the count.

It make you wonder... If somebody harnessed the CPU cycles/bandwidth that are being frittered away on various spamming activities to do something useful, where would science be today? (2006-03-12 09:45:44.0) Permalink

Monday March 06, 2006

Good-bye, Goodie Bags! Many folks that have kids know the horror that is the birthday party goodie bag. They are a scourge on all adults with children.

They are painful to the host of the party. Folks have started to expect goodie bags, so the host (PARENT) has to create them. That usually means going to the store and buying a bunch of little junkie toys/items.... YUCK.

They are painful for the parents of the guests. A goodie bag usually ends up being examined by the guest and then left... somewhere in the house. The somewhere in my house is the kitchen. Eventually, the bag and content gets thrown out, about a week before the guest remembers that the "greatest item on earth" is IN THAT GOODIE BAG! "You didn't throw it out...."

Well, a quick search for "goodie bag" found me this page among the hundreds of links to companies ready to pre-build or provide items to include in these horrors.

My wife came up with a great idea. We gave out Ben & Jerry's Pint Coupons. They are small, not too spendy and ever so "tasteful". (2006-03-06 15:54:10.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Monday February 06, 2006

She who should be listened to speaks Snjezana has a blog. That is cool.

She has been actively helping out SDN forum readers for quite a while. Her stats put mine to shame.

Now, we may get a chance to see her thoughts condensed into a form that is easier to find. Tracking down all her replies is just too darn hard... (2006-02-06 14:26:44.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Thursday February 02, 2006

Google's WiFi Plan for Mountain View: EXPOSED Folks have heard about Google's plan to cover Mountain View, California with wireless internet access.

It seems like Minnie Ingersoll has got her bucket truck, since I have started to see an interesting new crop of things on light posts.

Here are a couple of pictures that show the world see what is springing up around Mountain View.

UPDATE: I spotted this blog entry which gives more details about the various bits of hardware
that I have in these photos. There are also some details about the project, 
based on a presentation by Minnie "I love the bucket truck" Ingersoll.

Simple Mesh Transmitter on Leghorn Street

Mesh Transmitter with a long haul antenna near Intuit on Garcia Avenue

The antennas on the booms point toward the GooglePlex, of course...

Mesh with long haul near the GooglePlex on Ampitheatre Parkway
Face of Mesh and long haul near the GooglePlex

(2006-02-02 14:18:30.0) Permalink Comments [4]

Sunday January 29, 2006

another test in testa/testb (2006-01-29 21:27:58.0) Permalink

another test in testa/testb (2006-01-29 21:27:32.0) Permalink

Tuesday January 03, 2006

Blogging and Referrers I just noticed that roller lets me see the referrers for my blog. And I have noticed that a few people are trading e-mail about the entries.

Since, I cannot read the e-mail that is being sent, I am going to assume that folks are finding the entries so useful that they are sending links to their friends and family...

Remember, if you have questions or comments, you can add them to most entries. I do a comment sweep pretty regularly. (2006-01-03 11:06:40.0) Permalink

Friday December 30, 2005

Free Ranging Gnomes I went to the San Francisco Zoo yesterday an ran into a couple roaming around with this gnome, by the penguins.

When I commented on this to my wife, "Hey, look it's the Travelocity Gnome...". A moment later, one of the folks carring the gnome came over an gave me a coupon for $50 off air and hotel, if I use Travelocity. Then the couple offered to let us get a picture with him.

So here it is, the free ad they hoped they would get.

As an aside; isn't walking around with a gnome such a pre-bubble kind of job? (2005-12-30 13:50:54.0) Permalink

Monday December 19, 2005

Improved Server Registration UI I recently redid the server instance registration wizard for the Sun Java System Application Server in NetBeans 5. Lots of folks told me it was lousy (in the 4.1 release) and I agreed. The old UI provided the same features as the new UI, but it did it using about one screen.

The new UI makes all of the features available, but has a number of different screens. We did a fair bit of work to make sure that the 90% use-case [a user wants to register a default instance from the installation directory's domains] could be a single screen process.

One other change that we made was to allow users to create a personal instance "any where" at "any time". So, the advice here doesn't apply to NetBeans 5. (2005-12-19 14:30:32.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday December 09, 2005

Jakob Nielsen told me to write this I just read his article on Weblog usability and realized I was breaking breaking the first rule of weblog-ics.

This is my attempt to resolve that error.

I am an engineer at Sun. I program using Java on a daily basis. I use and contribute to the NetBeans open-source IDE project on a daily basis. Most of the coding that I do is related to J2EE, Java EE, Sun Java System Application Server, and Project GlassFish.

I have written about using NetBeans and Sun's application servers in the past.

You can send me electronic correspondence routed through vince.kraemer@sun.com.

I have a Master's degree in CS from UC, Santa Barbara.

(2005-12-09 12:13:09.0) Permalink Comments [5]

Saturday May 14, 2005

Good rooms at the Diplomat Hotel I have just spent a few days at the Diplomat Hotel in Prague, while I worked with the NetBeans team. (What a great bunch of really smart focused people....[but I digress]). Folks who visit from the US usually stay at the Diplomat Hotel, which is a short walk from the offices (for the moment). On my last night there, I noticed something that folks may want to consider when they book their room. Some of the rooms have small balconies. While there isn't room for more than a couple chairs and a small table, it is a balcony.... The rooms on the sixth floor were 623 and 641. Of the two, 641 is probably a better choice, since it would have a better view. (2005-05-14 21:12:54.0) Permalink Comments [1]