Tag: ecto

WTF!

So I woke up on Saturday to this problem with my software. Having been out playing softball the night before and drinking until 1AM I wasn’t in any condition to troubleshoot and fix the problem. However, after a round of golf today and watching Kimi Raikkonen won the Hungarian GP, I was ready to fix the problem.

First, I thought it was something I’ve changed in the code last few days but that won’t be true as users with older version of the software also have the problem. Then I confirmed that it is a problem in my software by using the Mac version of ecto because it worked. Finally I relented and downloaded a copy of a competitor’s software (which shall remain nameless). That software worked so then it is my software.

I put a trace program on and discovered to my dismay that the .Net HTTP library sends out an extra HTTP header that it shouldn’t have (To the initiated, it is the Expect: 100-Continue). So I thought, “Ok, let’s just remove it from the HTTP Header in the code”. Silly me, setting HttpWebRequest.Expected = null does nothing!

But wait! Google came to rescue and I found this post about this stupid problem. Once I set the HttpWebRequest.ServicePoint.Expect100Continue = false, my software connects to TypePad once again!

Total time to fix a bug caused by Microsoft: ~2 hours.

Thanks alot, Mr. Gates. At least this is before my HDTV is delivered!

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Day Off

Last week I’ve finally reached the point where I need to take some time off work. So I took today off and the plan was to play the new Halo 2 maps in the morning and then work on ecto after lunch.

The new Halo 2 maps are fantastic! Slayer games in Warlock is just absolutely bloody fucking insane! Lots of dark corners to ambush people and with the newly rebalanced weapons damage, lots of grenades were thrown. Not to mention tonnes of close quarter combat with the loser being beat down.

Containment is huge! CTF or Assault game will be great with all three types of vehicles (Warhog, Banshee, and Scorpion!) available. Lots of sniping and rocket action.

I haven’t played Turf with any other players yet (I played Warlock and Containment in custom games with people from XBox Live) but Turf’s layout will be perfect for ambushes. Lots of above street level hiding places where the attacker can be easily caught in cross fires from multiple directions.

As for ecto development, I managed to fix a few minor bugs but I got bogged down with setting up a MT test environment as well as a corrupted Thunderbird profile. This requires me to start with a brand new profile and download all the emails again from the server. Not a big deal? It is when you have 4000+ spam emails that I don’t but do want to download again. I don’t because it takes so long and so much bandwidth, but I do because I want to train the Thunderbird Junk filter with these spam emails. Thunderbird also seems to have problem with recognising spam emails that I’ve already downloaded so it tries to download all 4000+ of them again every 15 mintues! In the end, I went to the server and deleted all of them. I hate POP3 email server, why can’t we all have IMAP email server (like .Mac?).

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It's been a hard day's night

Good day or bad day?

My nose has been playing games with me since the end of last week. Seems to have same symptom as Adriaan has. Not sure about the cause though.

Worked eleven hours (typical hours for the last four months) today because we have to get the software out of the door by this Friday, but I was the only one developer there after 6:30 p.m. (huh???)

Got home by 8:30 p.m. and able to watch 24.

Found out my hard work wasn’t good enough for some people.

Spent the next three hours working on ecto and gotten nowhere (a case of two steps forward one and a half step backward). So tunnel-visioned into the code that I forgot to re-hydrate myself so now I have a headache.

Meanwhile some of my team members were playing Halo 2 online…

Why in hell do I even bother?

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Publicity!

Thanks to Nick who alerted me to ecto being mentioned couple of times in the first edition of the Make: magazine. The Windows version even makes its way into the magazine article. Here is a low resolution photos of the actual page from Nick.

Even after over a year of developing and selling the Windows version of ecto, I still can’t believe people are using my software for important work!

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Time flies!

It’s been over a year since I conceived the idea of developing a desktop blogging application. How time flies when one have fun! In 12 months, it went from just an idea in my head to some code that I tinkered with when I had some free time. From half baked ideas and codes to half working software in January when I was in between jobs. And from software with a bunch of bugs to commercial software with some bugs. And finally now to software that has largely re-written with lots of new features and more to come.

If you told me a year ago that I will be selling my own software, I would have replied that I don’t think I am skilled enough or business savvy enough to do it. I guess one don’t know until one tries! Of course living in the U.S. where having a side job seems to be the norm rather than the exception helps foster my work. I sincerely think that this enterprise won’t have a chance if I were to stay living in the U.K.

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