Just Rambling

Random thoughts on the meaning of life, universe and everything

[drako-franciscan]

Coming summer this year: a free, certification authority to get your SSL certificates in automated manner, using a script of your own liking.

[drako-franciscan]

Skitch share URL stopped working

on Yosemite after an update to Skitch 2.7.5 that actually claimed to bring compatibility with the newest version of OS X.

And when it did, I switched over to Monosnap and ditched the Skitch. It actually became quite useless for me lately as I rarely use Evernote those days - and Skitch seemed to be just a convenience app that allowed sharing annotated screenshots easily. However it felt quite "heavy" for that task anyway.

[drako-franciscan]

Custom iOS 8 keyboards continued: The Path

Wow. I seem to have finally found a custom keyboard for iOS 8 that is really worth an honourable mention. It is the Path Keyboard that has been upgraded today to an official extension in the app store, and it is quite awesome when taking the following four points into consideration:

It the first custom keyboard that isn’t slow as hell as other ones I tried so far: to me, it is on par with the native Apple’s.[^1] (The other ones I’ve tried are Fleksy, Minuum and SwiftKey)


Second, one can input text both by swiping and typing. Although typing does require some caution and a more slow input - so that Path does not confuse it with “short swipes”.


Third and foremost: Path does not require one to enable full access in order for it to work. It is a big issue for someone concerned with security: enabling full access effectively allows the keyboard to send everything you type to the developer[^2] (I still don’t get why Apple had chosen such an implementation model: in my view it should be essential to allow the devs to store a couple of dictionaries with the user generated words and his style in iCloud and that should suffice)


And the last but not least - it supports a lot of languages out of the box, including my mother tongue, which so far only Fleksy could write home about (ahem, literally). And prediction is quite good too.

Now here come the annoyances:

There are some restrictions imposed by Apple on where custom keyboards could be used. And some of them are reasonable - such as not allowing entering passwords, while some are really weird: like, for example, reviews on the Apple store?

Something is not right with the clipboard handling: I observed the same behaviour with other custom keyboards, when the text copied into buffer would suddenly become a snippet from previous copy operations - in my case oftentimes that would be a password from 1Password, which is quite scary. Again, not sure whether this is a bug in iOS API or the wrong way devs employ it.

As I’ve already mentioned, typing with Path isn’t the most enjoyable process: one has to make pauses in between individual letters so that Path does not start interpreting fast taps on the buttons as swipes.I reckon this is something that could be improved one way or another.

One more feature that I’d appreciate if it’s implemented is the ability to backspace only parts of the word that has been misspelled: sometimes Path’s guess about a clumsy swipe is “almost right” and it would be great to correct it by quick backspacing - and say changing the ending. At the moment I workaround it by tapping a space and using backspace after, as otherwise the whole previously typed word will be deleted.

And yep, why not to enable a local dictionary for the user-generated words to allow paranoics like myself enjoy the full potential without having to enable “full access”?

Besides the mentioned issues I’m quite impressed, and start to appreciate the power of swiping! I give it a 4+ as an encouragement to the devs who managed to put together the product faring so well against its rivals!

[drako-franciscan]

About being late

William Shakespeare: Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late

Your mother: Better a few minutes late than dead on time!

[drako-franciscan]

OpenShift is the only PaaS on the market that provides autoscaling at the application tier. (From the "Getting started with OpenShift" by RedHat)

That seems like a bit of an overstretch: the book that RedHat seems to put out on the market to promote its OpenShift PAAS solution - "Getting started with OpenShift" - states on the page 14 that OpenShift is the only platform out there that allows automatic app scaling out of the box.

[drako-franciscan]

iOS 8 keyboards first impressions

Keyboards on iOS 8: first impressions

Now before I run into premature conclusions I must state that I have tested them on iPhone 4S, so someone else’s mileage may vary. On the aforementioned device all of the following 3-rd party keyboards lost 10:1 to the native Apple’s:

Fleksy: too long to load, unresponsive, causing weird issues with clipboard. Pro: a lot of languages are supported

Minuum: English language only so far, predictive text completion is non-intuitive and slowish

Apple’s native keyboard wins hands down for its speed and impressive predictive text completion for English language. I guess I need to wait for the time when Apple releases new versions supporting languages other than English or get my hands on a more recent testing device ;-)

[drako-franciscan]

One of the reasons I dropped Parallels long ago and switched over to VMware Fusion: the constant push to upgrade and pay more money every time a new OS X comes out. So long, Parallels! I won't miss you.

[drako-franciscan]

Stackato and CloudFoundry:

In this post I will give an overview of where you might find Docker integration within the Cloud Foundry ecosystem. We will look at Decker, Stackato and Diego.

And Docker in new Diego:

Cloud Foundry has a new elastic runtime, written in Go and now with support for Docker as part of Diego, a new orchestration manager that distributes tasks and application processes

[drako-franciscan]

Microsoft reportedly close to acquiring Minecraft creator Mojang for more than $2 billion -- AppAdvice

It seems as if Microsoft buys only the ugliest things out there. Fist Skype, now "Marecraft"

Microsoft is said to be in advanced talks to acquire Mojang, the company behind Minecrafts.

[drako-franciscan]

Vaccinegate: CDC Whistleblower Admits Claims of Data Fixing Were True, Complains at Being Recorded and Outed

Well-well-well, dear "vaccinators". There are some people among you who do regret of munging statistical data for the sake of "desired results". Obviously, the apologies are with reservations, but that's inherent in human nature:

The CDC whistleblower has spoken in his own right, via a press release, confirming he fixed data in an important study, but complaining others now know who he is.

[drako-franciscan]

Why “American” Is a Bad Word in Australia

Australia's ship under with the current government at the helm turning its way towards what the US has already become?

For the present, Australia remains a place where the concept of egalitarianism resonates, and where the government is expected to do things. For instance, although our healthcare system was never truly universal, the idea that we take care of our sick has almost become a part of our ideological furniture.…

[drako-franciscan]

Powershop: Love them (and Carbon Tax in plain English too)

They are the Better Power Company as they call themselves, IMHO - the best ones out there. They are also the greenest ones: they support the RET (renewable energy target) and are 100% Carbon Neutral. At no extra cost to the customers. Check it out

[drako-franciscan]

Python idiosyncrasy series

Getting your string length: Ruby (and any other sane OOP language for that matter): string.size or string.length.

Python: string.__len__().

Umm, what? Right, you can also get it like this: len(string). Even better. Just rambling.

[drako-franciscan]

Excerpts from Smart Traveller advice about UAE

Reading Smart Traveller advice about UAE, I find asking myself one question: if that is one of the most developed Arab countries, then what's happening in the rest?

... The UAE is a Muslim country and local laws reflect the fact that Islamic practices and beliefs are closely applied...

... If you are arrested, you may face a significant period of detention before your case comes to trial...

...Sex outside of marriage is illegal in the UAE. It is possible that victims of sexual assault may face criminal prosecution rather than being considered the victim of a crime. There have been cases in the UAE where sexual assault victims have been imprisoned after reporting an incident to local police or upon seeking medical assistance.

[drako-franciscan]

How Has Stephen Hawking Lived to 70 with ALS?

The interviewed associate professor in the article expresses a typical medical outlook on the issue:

"Hawking obviously has quite the active mind, and previous statements that he has made seem to indicate he has a pretty positive mental outlook, despite his condition. Is there any evidence that lifestyle and psychological well-being do much to help with patients' outcomes? Or is the disease usually too quick for that to make a difference?

- I don't believe that adds to longevity."

and

"What does Stephen Hawking's case mean for people who have the disease?

- It's just an incredible, incredible example of the variability of the disease—and the hope for patients who have it that they could also live a long life. Unfortunately, it's a small percentage of people for whom that actually happens."

[drako-franciscan]

Team Tony Abbot: incompetence at its summit

As the blunders grow in number, can anyone actually challenge Abbott?

Bruce Haigh: The Abbott government has become defined by gaffes of its own creation. What will the rest of his term look like, and can anyone seriously challenge him?

[drako-franciscan]

And every time I close a file opened in Excel, it will always ask me whether I want to save the changes even if there were no modifications done whatsoever.