Abhi Beckert

RT @cycloneupdate: The monsoon trough is forecast to return to Northern Australia from next week. Get ready for the tropical wet season.

December 17, 2011, 12:26am   Comments

RT @JustinReid: Gmail Now Lets You Drag and Drop Images Into Emails - http://bit.ly/90yCLR

May 13, 2010, 10:42am   Comments

RT @stinhambo: I stick my middle finger up in regards to the Australian mandatory internet filter -
http://bit.ly/c9Tjmu

May 11, 2010, 6:39pm   Comments

I’ve been playing with Squarespace, it’s quite nice (a hosted cms targeted at pro’s, not your aunt kate). As a test, I was able to re-create my personal site in 20 minutes.

No intention of using it for real, but maybe next time I create a new site.

I uploaded a few screenshot of the CMS back end (see posts on october 11, 2009): http://shrt.tw/u/abhibeckert

October 11, 2009, 11:22am   Comments

At my work environment, I have five ways to discuss a topic:

• Face to face conversations
• Instant Message
• Email
• Issue tracker/job website
• Wiki

Aside from the general problem of deciding which system to use for a particular discussion, each of these has their own flaws.

Face to face conversations are very nice, but they don’t allow you to do anything else, which means everyone involved has to have free time, at the same time. That really doesn’t work in an office where everyone is busy from the moment they walk in the door to the moment they leave. Another problem is the conversation disappears once you stop talking, you can’t refer back to it later. We might have a conversation today about something that won’t be acted on until 2 months later.

Instant messages solve these problems to some degree, you can have multiple conversations at once (as long as the person isn’t completely occupied or out of the office). But it’s still difficult to involve multiple people in the same discussion. And while there are records of the discussion in my IM program’s logs, they are poorly organised, and i can only see my discussions, not my colleagues discussions on the same topic.

Don’t even get me started on emails, they’re just a mess. Full of spam and/or unimportant emails, difficult to organise, and you never get a prompt response when it is required.

Issue Tracker/Job websites are one of my favourites. there’s a lot of software in this category, my tools of choice are Redmine and the Google Code issue tracker. They solve all the problems of a face to face discussion and an instant message discussion, but they’re even worse than emails when a prompt response is required, so they are sadly under used.

Wiki’s are a really good fit for discussions, but just don’t quite cut it. A wiki isflexible enough to be used for almost any task, but there’s almost no structure, and there is no way at all to notify people of a change you just made. Also, it’s a bit cumbersome to make changes. They’re perfect for something that doesn’t change often, but totally useless when it does.

Google wave appears (I’ve never used it) just like a wiki, except it has structure and it informs the relevant people that changes have been made (either right away, or when they are next available). I’m hoping, in the long run, to replace not just email and instant message with google wave, but also issue trackers and wikis.

October 02, 2009, 9:41am   Comments

Oops! Maybe you should keep your rego up to date. ;)

October 01, 2009, 3:54pm  Comments

public function getIdconsultantForLoggedInUser()
{
  $user = Auth::loggedInUser();
    
  if($user)
    return 7;
  
  return 0;
}

September 28, 2009, 10:17am   Comments

Yesterday I finalized our API for sending SMS messages. It’s a simple on-line function, with a few config settings, and does data sanitisaion and all that for you.

We have two drivers (for now), one for debugging (saves message to session and provides a page to view the log), and another driver for http://mbox.com.au, which works quite well for sending to Australian phones.

September 24, 2009, 7:57am   Comments

I’ve created my API to save sessions:

// creates a file with a random name in a tmp dir, and writes
// $_SESSION and an expiry timestamp (10 seconds)
$key = Session::saveSessionToKey();

// redirect visitor to a url which doesn't share the session
// id cookie here

// reads the file, and if it hasn't expired loads the saved
// data into the current session. also deletes all expired
// files from time to time
Session::loadSavedSessionFromKey($_GET['sessionkey']);

September 18, 2009, 12:01pm   Comments

I have been battling with a way to transfer a visitor’s session when cookies are lost, without creating a security hole (for example, if ssl is on a different domain name or SWFUpload is used for a privilliged upload).

It looks like the only option is to transfer the data to a new session id, not re-use the id.

September 18, 2009, 8:10am   Comments

Testing tumblr iPhone app

September 17, 2009, 12:04pm  Comments

I’ve been playing with Haiku this morning, it’s really nice… but not finished yet.

September 17, 2009, 11:09am   Comments