Articles May 11, 2011

Converting scripts from Watir to Webdriver, Table size

I am starting the process of converting my WATIR scripts to use WATIR webdriver.

There a couple of table methods I was using in my WATIR scripts to check the size (rows and columns) of a HTML table.

myTable.row_count
myTable.column_count

These methods don't exist in webdriver so I was looking for a good way of doing the same check.

For rows this seems to give the same result as the row_count method

myTable.rows.length

For column count of the table I've tried converting the table to an array of strings and getting the length of the first row, but the conversion to the string array is taking a while.

myCols = myTable.strings[0].length

After asking the question on StackOverFlow the solution to find the number of columns in the table was to use;

myCols = myTable.row.cells.length

This assumes that the first row has the correct number of columns, which in our application should always be the case.

To avoid rewriting all the unit tests I've extended the Watir::Table class at the start of the script so that it contains the missing row_count and column_count methods.

class Watir::Table
    def row_count
        return self.rows.length
    end
    def column_count
        return self.row.cells.length
    end
end

The unit tests now run unaltered.

If your table has a uniform number of columns for each row then you could check the whole table by doing something like.

        myTable.rows.each { |myRow|
            myCols = myRow.cells.length
            assert_equal(validColumnCount,myCols,"Column count mismatch")
        }

Doodle's Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Articles March 30, 2011

Kensington Orbit Optical TrackBall

Kensington Orbit Optical TrackBall, a photo by Alastair Montgomery on Flickr.

All I need now is a Missile command style game :)

Articles February 17, 2011

FxCamera App

The iPhone guys at work have been talking about a retro camera app for their phones, so I’ve decided to look at what’s available for the Android platform.

The second one I’ve checked out is Fx Camera

FxCamera enables you to take a picture with various effects,

ToyCam (number of colour mode and vignetting settings available with randomizer)
Polandroid (number of colour mode and film type settings available)
Fisheye
SymmetriCam
Warhol
Normal

It works quite well for the ToyCam and Polandroid but the other three modes are more of a novelty than something you’d use all the time. Downside it has a maximum picture resolution of 960 by 640 pixels. It is 1524kb in size and can be moved to the SD card.

Toy Cam Examples

Polandroid Examples

SymmetriCam Example

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Articles February 15, 2011

Retro Camera App Android

The iPhone guys at work have been talking about a retro camera app for their phones, so I’ve decided to look at what’s available for the Android platform.

The first one I’ve checked out is Retro Camera

The free ad supported version gives you five retro camera types to play with, see example shots below. The application is a fairly chunky 6179 kb but can be moved to the SD card. It has a novel interface which replicates the retro camera but this reduces the viewfinder size which can be a problem.

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Articles February 14, 2011

Android Alastair

Note: 1 of this post’s 4 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

android1.png
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

Created with the http://androidify.com/ App on my HTC Desire

Articles October 21, 2010

CentOS 5

CentOS 5
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

CentOS 5

Setting up a CentOS5 VM to attempt to install Oracle 11g and Weblogic
test environment.

Articles October 20, 2010

Linux Mint 10

Installing Linux Mint 10 (Julia) on a VirtualBox VM with BTRFS filesystem.
Using the release candidate 1 CD

Initial install disk

Hard disk configuration
You have choose the advanced disk setup to create a small boot partition of either ext3 or 4 and a larger BTRFS partition.

Post Install
Post install after enabling the VirtualBox tools as detailed here.

Installing Websphere 7

Installing WebSphere 7 on Linux Mint 10, make sure the /bin/sh is
linked to bash not dash before you start.

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Articles October 5, 2010

Ubuntu 10.10 RC

Ubuntu 10.10 RC
Originally uploaded by Alastair Montgomery

The Ubuntu 10.10 release candidate running on VirtualBox.

Need to work out how to install the guest additions so I can get a proper screen resolution.

Found a solution,

Solution to VirtualBox guest problem
1. Open terminal and enter the following command:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-x11
2. Once installation is finished, restart your virtualBox machine.
3. Go to System -->Preferences -->Monitors and change the resolution of your screen.

Articles May 19, 2010

Life with an HTC Desire part 3

Applications

Having more fun with apps, couple of my current time wasters are,

Sketch-a-bit

A collaborative, evolutionary-drawing app, the hook is that you can upload your doodles to the web and other people modify them. Some examples can be seen on their website at http://superfiretruck.com/sketchabit/ surprisingly you don’t see too many “adult” doodles.

Fractoid

Generates fractal images. Pinch zooming works well on the HTC Desire and the 1GHz snapdragon renders the images at an acceptable speed. Examples of the image can be seen on this Flickr group

Dot 2

Simple but addictive tilt control game

Problems

Couple of issues I’ve noticed with the phone, battery life, with everything turned on (wifi, gps, etc) I seem to be getting around a days use out of the battery when I’m using apps a lot. Take a bit of getting used to since my old phone used to last a couple of days, guess price you pay.

The SD Card becomes unusable, this seems to be a common issue with the HTC Desire, a co-worker has the same problem and its mentioned around the web a lot.

A simple reboot of the phone brings it back to life, according to HTC I should back up the data and reformat the SD card to solve the problem, not tried it yet.

I got round to installing the Android SDK and went through the classic “Hello World” app tutorial, step one done :)

1. Install Android SDK

2. Write Killer app

3. Profit!!!

My full current app list

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery

Articles May 19, 2010

Approaching 9000

Note: 1 of this post’s 7 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.

Noticed that I’m approaching the 9000th Tweet mark on my Twitter account, this is scary so I decided to map my Tweeting habits again using http://tweetstats.com/

Doodle’s Geek Monkey by Alastair Montgomery