Operation redesign - a secret behind the scenes project after the big crash of November 2004 - has been completed. As a visible result some of the pages now look somewhat different, but there’s more. The core foundation in the new design is ”NetFactory Tree” a home-brewed, not too fancy but pretty damn efficient site engine, which manages the design (sort of). It’s a fun mixture of database hierarchies, Smarty templates and other magic stuff – which almost work.

Web archives and the IT-business has always been a fun combination. Some sites with great expectations crash and burn fast – while other underdogs seem to make it quite well. Predictions and initial expectations seems to be just as bad no matter if it’s hardware, software or devices… Take these iPod comments from the initial launch as a great example, that you really shouldn’t try too hard to predict that future of IT too stubbornly.

Why is it that lawyers and project managers keep information to themselves until the very last minute, and the present the non-negotiable deadline to developers when the point of ”reasonable notice” is long past? – Today marked yet another occasion. … and even more strange – why is it, that we developers do magic every time and actually make the impossible happen? – I’m seriously questioning if that’s a bright strategy, if we ever want to get something in due time – and not burn the midnight oil while the project managers a sleeping.

I usually edit more code others made, than I create new files, and while most of the code is in PHP, there’s a huge difference in the coding style applied by different developers, and some styles are much more annoying than others. I do respect that people are different and that is probably more efficient to allow for some degree of personal style than to try to enforce a single common style. If possible try to make standards where all can agree upon them, and where it isn’t possible, don’t force it too hard (on less pressing issues makes it necessary).

I was browsing across some pages at Telia Mobile – one of the largest mobile providers in Denmark (and Scandinavia) and frankly, their webshop leaves something to be desired in terms o user-friendly behaviour. I can to some extend accept to be rejected if there are reasonable reasons behind it, but this rejection – that’s just too much and too amaturish in 2005:

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First the Internet Explorer doesn’t ship with OSX any more – Safari does and shouold be supported, if you intend to support Mac-users.

There are actually two ways to wipe a mysql table either using delete or using truncate – which is better and why? So far my most commonly used form to wipe a table has simple been by using:

DELETE FROM tablename;

TRUNCATE tablename;

Besides the fact that it seems to be faster (even on small tables with few rows) – which in itself is a reason to favour this method - it also has another nice feature, which may be desirable. It resets the AUTO_INCREMENT field if it exists, and let the counter start over from 1.

It’s almost funny in a tragic sort of way how many project managers seems to think a project plan is a one-time event in the project. It isn’t. It is a continious task through out the project. As the project progresses, a bright project manager ajusts the plan so it fits the actual project progress. If the project plan isn’t updated, there might be selveral reasons. Updating the plan maybe causing a headace and take hours and hours. Keeping the plan up to date must be worth the effort, and if your project planning tool is easy to use and manage, then you just don’t do it.

Apple has finally released a new upate to OS X (”Tiger”) – version 10.4.3. It has been roumored to include 500+ fixes, but so far I’ve only noticed to changes – it broke the latest version of the EyeHome-software and they finally fixed the connectivity issues with my SonyEricsson P900 phone – I can sync and I’m pleased.

Under the ”think different” theme, Apple currently pays tribute to Rosa Parks, who recently passed away. While Apple has used their frontpage earlier to make statements, it is quite refreshing once again to see a large company which dares to make a statement and pay a tribute [via cupertino.dk].

I do like and appluade 37Signals for their narrow focus on small but efficient and unbloated online applications and I was probably an early adopter of their tadalists – a tool for managing todolists. While I didn’t use them as actual todolists, they were more like a place to collect thoughs and move them (usually) into project plans which lived elsewere. That has come to an end. I’ve switched to an other wonderful system called Remember The Milk. Remember the Milk is slightly more than just todo-lists. They do add that little extra functionality which makes it a great tool for me, and it seems their system can be used quie effciently as a (small) project management tool.