The Golden Rule: Keep It Simple
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
Yet another thing I’ve seen at HSBC is a rule that Apple swears by - to keep things as simple as possible, hold true.
When I was developing a system, I tried to add some features to it so that the user can better maintain the system. The big mistake was: it required quite a lot of changes/coding on our end, which ultimately backfired when I made some errors in the coding.
Worse of all, as the user interface wasn’t one that was well thought out, or ideally “fool-proof”, the user didn’t really understand how to use it, and entered erroneous data.
This could all have been avoided if I stuck to a really simple system design. Yes, maintenance of the system from the user’s end would have been tedious, but at least it wasn’t rocket science.
Sometimes, it isn’t about the wow-factor. It’s about being simple.
Dev Reboot
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal, Technical
Chu Hang was right: you can’t just dive into development without proper planning. Thinking that I’ve “got it” with the whole interpreter thingy, I jumped into development. The initial parts was easy enough, creating a lexer, which is able to recognize strings, identifiers, numbers, operators from user input (in the form of text). The lexer recognizes these and splits user input (codes) into tokens.
But then, things turned ugly. Making sense of these tokens turned out to be much, much more difficult. There was just so many possible input forms that parsing the tokens was terribly complicated. It was like looking up Mount Everest, and all I had was slippers.
Then my bro sent me a link of an expression “evaluater” written in C#. It also turned out that the evaluater extends on source code generated by a software called ANTLR.
I thought of using a similar approach, using ANTLR to quickly generate the lexer and parser components. All I had to do is to define the grammar rules. But you see, I hardly understand the article (the one explaining the expression evaluater). I realized, I need to do more reading.
Incidentally, the ANTLR site had a link to a “Programming Languages” course. Well, since my seminar topic is gonna be something on this, so no harm reading. For all you know, I can do something much more deeper, like garbage collection techniques, memory allocation techniques etc.
But then of course, I also need to allocate some time to read Langfords’ Beginning Photography, which is a pretty damn good book I’d say, with plenty of photos as samples. After all, how else to learn photography without photos??
Reading up on theory can be boring. Wish me luck!!
Sorry Opera
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
As much as I love you, I can’t continue to use you. You come bundled with all the neat things that I would possibly need so that I don’t need to go find accessories to make you work better. I don’t need to worry about any ill conceived accessory that make you unstable and overly fat.
My dear Opera, you fetch news that I like from around the Internet quickly and discretely for me, and you make it so easy and even pleasurable for me to browse news items. Best of all, I can always leave you when I feel like it. I can always go back to you, and you let me continue where I left off. More importantly, you’re just so, damn slim and sexy. You’re so light I can always multitask, doing other things while I’m still working with you.
I’ve always loved you. It’s been nearly 2 years. For 2 years, you’ve stuck by me through changing environments.
Sadly, there’s this new friend of mine, Ms Wireless Mouse 5000. Why must you refuse to work with her? She’s quite nice once you get to know her y’know. Every time when she’s around, you’d just bounce up and down so impatiently, I can hardly work with you nor read my favorite news. I can’t search for the latest music and movies to download. You see, using you became such a pain. I’m so sorry I have to use such words on you dear..
I’m afraid I’m left with no choice but to replace you. But worry not! Internet Explorer the 7th is definitely a few classes below you. I know you hate her even more, the only other alternative is Firefox. Sure I miss nice perks like “speed dials”, but you’ve got to understand, the way you twitch when Ms Wireless Mouse 5000 is working with you is just unbearable.
Sorry to break the news to you, but some lads have created not a mind bogglingly great extension to Firefox that makes it so much easier for me to design websites and debug JavaScript. Though Firefox isn’t as slim as you are, but some guy managed to make Firefox portable! Since I can’t install programs at my office, I can’t bring you to work. So sad to say, I work with Firefox, even at the office.
Sorry Opera, I miss you.. I promise to return to you when you’ve calmed down and decide to work with Ms Wireless Mouse 5000. Until then, take care!
Jnls.Net Redesign, Worthy of “v4″?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
After some touch-ups, I’m kinda happy with the look and feel of my blog’s theme. Segoe UI didn’t really go with the “logo”, so I changed it to Cambria, the new serif font from Microsoft. The cursive style definitely reduces the over-simplicity of a sans-serif font. In addition, some stripes to the header image completes the header. I also realized that fluid layouts just don’t go well with blogs, unless I have 3 columns - which I don’t.
While I was touching up the theme this morning, I was kinda disappointed. I kinda had to struggle just to create a 2 column layout. Sigh, my CSS skills are so rusty now.. I’m so out of touch with XHTML/CSS..
As I said, this redesign is more of a “sick of red, let’s try something different for a change” kinda theme. It feature any bright idea that I’m proud off.
Here’s how a floating quote looks like
Oh, I did figure out something to minimize the over-simplicity of the design: little red “quotes” that float to the right. They’re in red, so they kinda attract some attention and add some color. Damn, speaking of colors, I’m so bad at picking colors. All my themes are dead boring: very limited color palette. Hm, wonder what happens if I throw in some purple or pink….
Something Simple for a Change
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
Finally, after using the old “jnls.net 3″ theme for nearly a year, I’ve had enough of red. I just didn’t like the colour scheme anymore… I wanted a change.. something simple (something I can quickly finish up). Heck, I was even tired of the typeface..
To top it all up, I wasn’t in exactly in a great mood.. it was tough going.. my Final Year Project is so friggin’ tough.. it looks really easy and straightforward on the surface, as it’s something everyone take for granted.. but wait till I tell you.. Read the rest of this entry »
