igorbrejc.net

Back in the days before Maperitive had been released for the first time, I wrote a post about how I use simple text files to keep the track of things I have to implement (and things already implemented).

It turns out the to-do list has grown so much that it is very difficult to decide which things to implement in which order. Some features or bugs come in the middle of implementing other features and I’ve frequently had to make use of SVN branches to be able to work things out.

So I got an idea of using Google Docs spreadsheets to create a list of tasks. But a simple list was not enough: I wanted the spreadsheet to be able to tell me which tasks should be implemented first and which can wait. I’ve added two columns to the list: priority and complexity. Then there’s a third column called score, which calculates a score based on the priority and complexity using a simple formula. The complexity is measured in “ideal hours” the task is supposed to take (a rough estimate, of course), while the priority is some value (usually an integer from 1 to 5) which denotes how important the task (or feature) is.

After entering tasks, I simply use spreadsheet’s “Sort sheet Z –> A” function to make the tasks with the highest score appear at the top of the list.

Simple, but effective.

Almost a year ago I posted some photos from my hiking trip to Lovrenska jezera. A few days ago I decided to take a day off before the rainy days come and revisit this beautiful place (and map some hiking paths not yet covered in OpenStreetMap).

The whole photo set it available on flickr.

These are my new delicious links for September 21st:

• Coding Horror: YouTube vs. Fair Use
  
• Figment Engine: Surely You Must Be Listening to Mr. Feynman!
  
• If Google Maps Were Real: An Artist’s Vision [PICS]
  
• Garmin headed for smartphone exit ramp? | GPS Tracklog
  
• Selenium Jobs Explode
  

I’ve finally taken some time to redesign Maperitive’s home page. Not a masterpiece, but I think it’s decent enough for a non-web designer like me. Just don’t ask how much time it took.

Now I’m off to fix some bugs.

These are my new delicious links for September 16th:

• Ryanair boss aims to axe ‘unnecessary’ co-pilots | Business | guardian.co.uk
  what's next… a plane without a pilot?
• Igor may cause rip currents along US East Coast
  bad Igor
• Archimedes – The Palimpsest Project
  
• FILEnetworks Blog: ‘Let Me Google That For You’ – Create animated Google search links
  
• Microsoft’s Response to Russian Scandal
  
• Presentation preparation – Jon Skeet: Coding Blog
  

These are my new delicious links for September 13th:

• Visual Studio 2010 runs faster when the Windows Automation API 3.0 is installed
  
• Great News for MonoTouch Users – Miguel de Icaza
  
• Maintainability, Code Size & Code Complexity
  
• 50 Best Blogs for Geography Geeks
  
• Don’t Be Evil? | Inside Google
  

I’m in the middle of releasing a new version of Maperitive, but I have to warn all users that if you are currently using the latest build (982), automatic update will fail. This is due to an undetected bug in 982 which prevents exiting the application normally.

Manual update is pretty simple: download the new ZIP file (when it arrives) and simply overwrite old Maperitive files with the ones from the ZIP file. I’m sorry about this, but it happens sometimes.

photo credit: eisenrah

UPDATE: I received a very helpful comment, which seems to invalidate some of my statements in the post. Be sure to read the comment. I’ll make further updates when I do some more investigating on the matter.

For the past three or four years I’ve been using Subversion installed on my local development machine. Initially I used a custom installation on Apache, which took me quite a few hours to set up (basically if you want to have more than one repository, Apache is a must). Later, after couple of years, I started using VisualSVN Server, which is a great free self-contained SVN server installation.

This all works great, but the biggest problem is accessing the repository from the outside world, both in terms of security and in terms of me not wanting to have my SVN repository computer running all of the time (I’m a believer in keeping machines turned off if you’re not using them).

On the other hand, I started using distributed VCS systems like git and Mercurial for my open-source projects. The biggest benefit I see in the fact that you keep your own repository on your development computer, so you can have the history of changes, which isn’t really an option when you’re working with SVN in an offline mode.

So I started thinking about experimenting with a commercial VCS hosting solution like Assembla or xp-dev.com for my closed-source projects. Apart from the decision on which provider to use (they both seem to get good reviews), the biggest question is: which VCS?

Although git and Mercurial are all the rage now, I don’t see much benefit in using them for a one-man projects on a VisualStudio platform. Let me explain why.

Integration With VisualStudio

I got so much used to AnkhSVN, that I simply cannot work without it. Renaming files, moving them around the solution, automatic refactoring using Resharper, that’s all handled pretty well by AnhkSVN. I still use TortoiseSVN for commits, but in VisualStudio, Ankh is the king. I never use SVN from the command line and I don’t need to. AnkhSVN is simply a great productivity booster.

And this is why using git or Mercurial is such a pain in VisualStudio. I frequently use “Rename class” refactoring in Resharper and it renames the class file, too. This gets undetected by git and Mercurial and I end up with “missing files” when committing.

Local Repositories

While having your own repositories on development computers is a truly great thing, not having them isn’t such an issue if your online SVN repository is available most of the time. And the problem with VS integration far outweighs other benefits of a distributed VCS when you’re running a one-man shop.

Decisions, Decisions…

So I’ll probably start using a commercial SVN hosting option, at least as a trial. Most of the providers offer limited free plans, so it’s a good place to start…

I feel I’ve been neglecting my blog lately and it’s a shame. It is not that I don’t have stuff to write, it’s just that I’m so immersed into developing various projects (mostly Maperitive) that I don’t seem to find the time and energy to take some time to write something interesting.

Yes, I know one of the first rules in writing blogs is not to apologize for not writing. But anyway, I’ve decided I should write something more regularly but deliver it in smaller packages. This way writing shouldn’t look so intimidating and it should make it easier for me to write.

How’s Maperitive

There has been a lot going on behind the scenes in Maperitive. I’ve been opening many different fronts, but I’ve mostly worked on improving the GUI. Maperitive started out as a (more or less) command line application and now I’m slowly trying to improve its usability. Right now the GUI is still too intimidating for a non-technical user and a lot of work is still needed to improve this.

Like the most of other code in Maperitive, the GUI framework has been written mostly from scratch, with some reusing of the existing code of Kosmos. I had to reinvent the wheel on each step, since there aren’t many good WinForms GUI frameworks out there (in fact I only know of one which is a beast and I didn’t feel the urge to invest a huge amount of time to try to learn it). The advantage of this is that it forced me to get to know the problems I’m trying to solve and not just sweep them under the rug using some 3rd party library.

All in all I’m quite satisfied with the new architecture. One of the main reasons I decided to pull the plug on Kosmos and start with clean code was to ensure the new architecture allows me to add new features more easily and to make the whole code base more manageable. I think I’ve achieved this, mostly by sticking to dependency injection and using Windsor Castle, an inversion of control container.

The application framework being built for Maperitive is generic enough to be reusable for other desktop applications, which could come in handy if I find the time to work on anything else. But right now I have so many ideas for new features in Maperitive that I doubt I’ll run out of work in the next year (or more).

These are my new delicious links for September 2nd:

• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Axis of Evil (Oracle) | Lessons of Failure
  
• Rugged(er) Android Units On The Way | AndroGeoid
  
• Number of humans who have ever lived – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  
• Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 – Plog Photo Blog
  great photos, via The Endeavour
• Dark Roasted Blend: Dwellers In The Abyss: Ugly, Monstrous Fish
  via The Endeavour
• YouTube – What different sorting algorithms sound like
  via The Endeavour