Random musings in IT

The new version 1.5.0 has been released, with a quick succession of bug fixes and add-ons in 1.5.1 and 1.5.2.

Download

As usual the downloads are available from the release page or from the github releases.

Changes

v1.5.0

#36 : The formulas are evaluated before display. If you use a formula in an action item, the add-on will display the evaluated text. NB. Formulas are only evaluated in nodes, and not in details, notes, or the attributes used by Freeplane (When, Who, Where, Priority)
#34 : The strikethrough was a really ugly hack in earlier versions, and remained from the original HTML component. Since the HTML is now styled, it was replaced with a much better looking check/uncheck mark.
#27: The default icons were not switchable. Now all default icons can be reused at will (provided, you specify an other icon instead) The exception is the priority icons, as I see no reason to use them for anything else, but priority display.
#35 : That was quite ugly. Originally it was pasted as a standard content string, and this made the list display lengthy HTML codes. Changing it to be HTML didn't help much, as Freeplane stores every richtext field as an HTML document. Adding HTML inside an HTML caused some useless padding on the pages. Now only the body of the document is shown, which looks way better.
#32 : Originally the plugin was intended to be used with Freeplane 1.2, but the API has changed so much since, that the plugin is not backward compatible anymore. From now on it's marked on the manifest, and incompatibility will be displayed when one tries to install it on old versions.

v1.5.1

NEW: German translation added
NEW: Added an option to control the behavior, when an item is selected in the task list

FIX: The priorities are now displayed properly. The changes in done item display were revised.

The code has been cleaned up a bit, to get rid of warnings. It's still quite unstructured and hacked.

v 1.5.2

Some regressions appeared on the actionEditor after the refactor. This release fixes those problems.

Just a few days after the previous release a new one is released, with several enhancements for day-to-day use.

In my daily work it's customary to use this plugin to aid note taking on a meeting. Action items are noted on the map, and are followed through after the meeting. The produced task lists are then mailed to the participants. I then copy all my tasks to my GTD map, to keep track of them there.

For this to work the previous clipboard management had to be reviewed, and new features had to be developed to support it.

New features

• Copy groups of items from the action list to clipboard #23
• Select groups of items from the action list on the map #23
• Open links embedded in notes/details in system browser

Enhancements

• Fixed formatted clipboard items to display:
  
  • done items with overstrike
  • notes/details in color, with a smaller font
  • priorities in red
• Fixed unformatted clipboard items to display properly
• Fixed note and detail views on the action list
• Added message upon successful clipboard copy

Availability

The add-on is available on the release page and on github

This release introduces the capability you were all waiting for, multiple context and delegate handling!

As a major overhaul was required, the original sources were almost completely scrapped and rewritten.

New version of FreeplaneGTD+ is released with some new features.

Action list sorting improved

List items are now sorted in all action lists.  The first sort criteria is the priority, the second is the due date. The timeline is now arranged, so that the overdue items appear before the tasks marked with today icon, followed by the items due the current current week, then the tasks with no date, then the remaining tasks.

Action list editor

The editor pane had layout problems that are fixed for now. Done checkbox is now visible.

This will be a short lived release, as the next version is already on it's way with multiple context and delegate support, as well as support to display notes along with the tasks.

Links:

• Official release page
• GitHub page for release v1.2 

New version of FreeplaneGTD+ is released today with some new features.

Priority handling added

Priority handling introduced. You can now use the shortcuts #0 to #9 to set the associated priority icons.

• Added priority property setting from shortcut
• Added priority property setting from icon
• Added priority property update to icon
• Added priority display in action list

Action list editor

The Java HTML renderer component is poorly written and can only render the most basic HTML. It doesn't allow any CSS styling, which constrains the use very much.

Now the flyingsoucer component is introduced which will allow for more sophisticated content. It adds 2Mb to the otherwise miniscule addon, but there is no better way to do it.

Links:

• Official release page
• GitHub page for release v1.1.1 

It's been a while, since I last experimented with Chinese tablets. This is mostly on account of having no much use for them lately.
After Christmas I decided to get a new one, and I'm certainly not disappointed with my choice.

Disclaimer: This is in no way a representative test, I'm only sharing  of my experience with my shiny new toy.

This post is the last in my current retrospective series, that sampled the projects I was working on years ago. You can see the previous posts here and here.

While the previous posts were about projects that span through years, this will be about a project that took no longer than a couple of months.

I was desperately looking for a screeenshot in my archives, to add as an illustration. I finally gave up, and tried to go with the University logo from the Internet. Imagine my surprise, to find the application is still up and running! It wasn't used since 2013, but considering it was not maintained since the end of 2010, it was quite well done. You can see the version number on the bottom of the screen.

Disclaimer: The project is described best from my memories. I tried to keep the story professional, still there were emotional aspects that I tried to present in the back story. 

This is the second part of my retrospective series I started here.

When I'm asked about my favorite project in my career I always talk about this one. Every part of this project was solid, well established and justifiable. There were no need to make any compromise on anything. We didn't have to worry about licence fees, as long as we used IBM. :-) And what's most satisfying about a project? The sponsors and the users find it useful!

Disclaimer: I've put this together mostly from memory and the few remaining documents I found laying around in my archives. I have no idea if this system is is in use any more, for all I know it probably is.

Background

A few years passed after the Intermed project, Java became a strong player in enterprise development. With the J2EE application servers becoming a viable option, coding your entire stack from scratch was no longer necessary. Still there were quite a few gray areas that had to be worked around.

I was working as a contracted freelancer at IBM at the Hungarian manufacturing site, that produced (and still produces) high-end data storage systems. The manufacturing site ran a high number of IT components: shop floor control systems, order management systems, procurement systems, truck load tracking. All in all it was a smooth running operation, but still faced a problem. There was only a really limited communication between the systems, so monitoring the actual status of an order was quite difficult.

Production monitoring is essential for running this operation. No two orders were the same. During the "free" time the plant manufactured "prebuild" machines, that were configured for the most likely order configurations. These were placed in a buffer, and when an order came in they were reconfigured with the exact specifications. This required a common monitoring application that could be used to match the orders and the available machines. The most time in the build phase was used for testing the configuration. If a "feature" was removed from the machine it didn't require re-testing, and it was easily shipped. It was essential to use pre-tested prebuilds that had minimal difference to the order.

To achieve a transparent order monitoring a Lotus Notes application was created which was loaded with  data from the relevant systems provided real-time reports to oversee the operation. There were some problems with the solution, as it was not as fast as expected. The data load was running so long, that the incoming datafiles stepped on each-other's toes, data was inaccessible during the load, so basically the system was down for the better part of the day. The project was started to overcome these problems.

I was looking for the Christmas decorations on my attic, when I came across a set of compact discs. I got rid of most of these, except for some that seemed important enough to keep for posterity.  These disks contained an original Window 2000 Professional edition, and one titled Medex Backup 99/05/13.

Yesterday I took my time to review what's in the backup, and took some time to reconstruct the architecture in my mind and the reasons behind it. It occurred to me, that it might be a good time to go through some of my previous projects since, and sum them up, to see how IT (or at least what I'm part of) changed in the past few years.

Strap yourself in, for a travel back in time to the land of the possibilities and techno blable!

Disclaimer: I've put this together mostly from memory and the flashbacks I had during the installation on my virtual machine. I might have left out some interesting aspects, lessons. 

Coming up: "10 year retrospective - SCISy, or "Supply Chain Inventory System" @ IBM"

DB2 Express-C is a fully functional and very powerful database offering from IBM, that can be used for free. Currently it's limited to two cores and 4GB RAM, that's enough to be used in small-medium applications.

DB2 plays well with LXC, and I had no problem using it for years in a hosted server environment.