Dmitry Dulepov

Software review: FlairBuilder

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:05:00 +0300

FlairBuilder is a cross–platform prototyping tool. This review includes a video of what FlairBuilder can do.

Icelandic volcano: who did that

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:10:00 +0300

Today morning I found an interesting image of icelandic volcano:

Here is this image rotated and masked. Do you see it?

Many people will say "Coincidence" but is it really? Isn't it the one who made this volcano burst open?

TYPO3 Security Announcement (must read!)

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:13:00 +0300

Easy phishing scam detection tool

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:04:00 +0300

Did you know that you have an easy phishing scam detection tool? Yes, you do! It is called "your eyes"!

Today I got a nice phishing scam. Here it is:

Cyan–colored rectangles are mine. They are created by my "scam detection tool".

What do they tell you? That typography is inconsistent. You do not even have to read this e–mail to understand that it is not from Google. Just look: missing spaces here, unnecessary spaces there, missing punctuation. Scam.

This message is still more clever than a typical "YOU WON 1000000000€ SEND YOUR MAIL SEX ADDRESS".

So next time when you get a message from Google or Apple, watch the typography. Bad typography is the first sign of scam.

ThreadViews extension for Thunderbird and PostBox

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:40:00 +0300

If you are using Postbox e–mail, rss and news client (yeah, you should!), you may wonder if my ThreadViews extension works with it.

Yes, it does. Version 1.3 is specially updated to support PostBox!

Get it here of from the Mozilla download page. On Mozilla web site this extension is listed as experimental because there are no enough feedbacks to promote it to public. If you like this extension, please, leave a positive feedback there.

How to give the best presentation

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:43:00 +0300

On March 27th, 2010 I went to the first Zend Framework conference in the world. While watching presentations I thought that technical people have absolutely no idea how to present. This is a hard solid fact: anybody can bore the audience to death even with an interesting topic.

Here I am going to tell you how to make the presentation right and avoid death of your listeners.

Prepare in advance

At one TYPO3 event I saw a guy who make his slides 20 minutes before his talk. He had a colored template and lots of bullet points. I instantly knew he will fail but for the sake of interest I watched how it went. He did not really know what to talk about. He finished in 25 minutes instead of allocated 45. He was boring. You'd feel like you lost time your for nothing and better be in the neighborhood room. I even do not remember presentation title these days. It definitely had “TYPO3” word in it but what else?..

If you do not prepare in advance, you won't be able to give the talk to users. You'll say something about this and about that. Is this what the room wants to hear? Nope. They want clear ideas or facts on the topic of your presentation. You can't do that unless you research, structure and prepare you material properly and well in advance.

Respect the audience, do your home work!

Topic first, slides next

The most important thing in the presentation is your talk and never your slides. If it were slides, we will not need you on the stage. People would just watch slides in silence if they were more important than you are. Unless you are a naked supermodel, even awful slides will look better than you. Remember, there is absolutely no reason for you to be on the stage unless your talk says more than your slides.

Prepare your topic first (below you will tips for that), only then make slides that complement your story.

What are you talking about?

Do you know what are you talking about? Stupid question, right? Wrong. I am sure you know your subject but are you sure your audience knows what are you talking about?

Neuropsychologists say that average person can hold their attention for up to 10 minutes on a single topic and on up to 3 topics. Then they loose the topic and go sleeping like frogs in winter. We all are frogs (me including), it is in our brains!

Make your presentation to show 3 points at most. Yes, three points. State them clear at the beginning: “Today we are going to see three things…”. Keep 10 minutes on each topic. Together with you introducing yourself it makes 35 minutes. You have 10 minutes remaining for Q&A in a typical 45 minute talk. Easy, productive and keeps your audience from becoming a room of frogs.

By the way, you really don't have to push everything you know to people's heads. This will only ensure they are lost and overwhelmed with information. Instead, make them interested with bright outstanding facts. Give pointers and hint where to look for more. They will want to know more themselves.

Rehearse

Ok, you got your topic and slides weeks before the event. But do you know that you sound awful? No, you don't unless you try it. If you try, you will see that your presentation is bad. Unless you can speak clearly, without all these “well”, “umh”, “hmmm”, “erm”, you are not ready to present and you will not make your topic impressive for listeners.

Take a videocam and record yourself. Just do it, ok? Don't try with the mirror, you cannot talk and watch yourself at the same time. Use a camcoder. You will see how awful you are when you present for the first time. See what mistakes you make and eliminate them. See what can be omitted to keep the talk on topic and omit it. Watch what you can do for more impressive show. Make pauses, do not rush. Let users get the idea.

If you are not Steve Jobs, you won't be able to spend two week before the event solely for rehearsing. But spend two half days on it. Remember, not one whole day but two half days. You'll be tired after half a day but two days will make your the presentation stronger in your memory.

The rule is simple. You must memorize you story so that you can tell you in your sleep. Only then you will be ready.

Do not side track

“Today we are going to talk about DoJo and jQuery. There are other JavaScript framework too, for example, ExtJS. ExtJS is…”. Sorry, did you just say the talk is about DoJo and jQuery?

As soon as you are side tracked, it will be very hard to stop and logically go back on topic. You will have to make connections like “let's get back on topic”. Stupid, huh?

Don't side track. If you followed the previous rehearsing advice, you won't.

Don't speak like a robot

Even if you have a great topic and great slides, you can put the room to sleep with a boring drawling voice.

At the TYPO3 developer days 2009 I went to a presentation made by a very talented programmer. He gave a topic I was not familiar with and I was very interested to listen. But I could not keep attention for more than 10 minutes. He hid himself behind his computer. He showed some slides with lots of texts and code samples. At the same time he talked about something unrelated to slides. At least it seemed so for the person who was not familiar with the topic (me). The presenter used that boring drawling voice. After 10 minutes I quietly slipped out of the room to a great sun shine outside. I got an ebook on the topic next day and read it in half an hour. Sun and payed ebook was more worth than sleeping 45 minutes in the presentation room.

Speak clearly, use proper intonation. You are not a robot.

Know how to hold the microphone

One of the hosts at Zend conference did know how to hold it. He always put it down. As a result we heard only 30% of his speech. I still wonder what did he say in his talk. Could not get his points at all.

If you can, get a microphone that sticks to your head. This is the best option because you will have free hands. You will need those for your remote.

Get a remote

Get a remote for your slideshow. Don't come to the computer all the time to switch slides. Keyboards are tiny and laptop keyboards are smallest with arrow keys smallest on the smallest keyboard. Just imagine “Here is . . . (come to PC) . . how our growth . . . (look at keyboard) . . . looks . . . (clicking the key) . . . (checking the slide on the screen) . . . like”. Sorry, half of the room is sleeping.

Get a decent remote that feels convenient in your hands. Do not use the iPhone. You must be able to keep eye contact with your room. If you use the iPhone, you will need to look at it to swipe to the next slide. It is plastic, it may slid in your sweeting hands. Get a decent rubber remote, damn it!

By the way, Targus makes one of the best presenting remotes on the market.

Don't use a laser pointer

If you have to use a laser pointer it means only one thing: there is too much information on your slide. Split it to more slides. If you can't (for example, you show code examples), dim the rest of the code while you show a part of it.

Using laser pointer has several problems. Firsts, you loose eye contact. This shows the room that your slides are more important to you than the listeners. Bad.

Next, when you point to a specific point on the slide, your hands will shake. They always do because our heart is pumping blood (and extremely fast while you are on the stage). On a large screen from a large distance you will get a bright dot bouncing half a meter in all directions. Humans are still like animals, we pay attention to that jumping dot far more than to your talk.

Dispose the laser pointer and rework your slides.

Use a decent font size and good colors

This was a major problem at TYPO3 developer days 2009 talk where one long awaited presentation used a lot of code in tiny font typed with a light brown color on a dark brown background. Sunny day outside, no text is recognizable on a giant screen in the giant auditorium.

Here is how to fix it. If you are using a 15" notebook, step 5 meters away from the screen. Can you still read it? Now you got the idea how your audience will feel. Adjust. Repeat. Adjust. Repeat. Come on, you do not want to look unprepared, are you? Invest extra 10 minutes into making your slides more readable! And, please, do not ask the room “Can you see this text?”. Why did you come to show it if you have to ask such questions? Be prepared!

Regarding colors. Remember that there are lots of color blind people. So your best choice is neutral high contrast colors. If you know the room (dark or bright), match background color of your slides to the room background (dark background for dark room and vice versa). Make sure your clothes do not conflict with the room (no red clothes in the green room). Shades of grey are always ok.

Don't read from your slides

“Hey, I already read all that from your slides! Do I think I am so stupid that I can't read? Do I look like a brainless git?” – this is what I think every time when presenters turn their back on me and start carefully reading their slides. I don't need the presenter any more. I already read it. Go on, switch to the next slide and shut up. I can read myself. I read faster than you are!

Don't make slides so that you have to or can read them. Remember: slides are supporting your talk. If you read your slides, your talk will be useless for most of us. Drop all these texts and show us only essentials that support your talk.

Don't flip slides back

Forget the back button on the remote. It does not exist for you. If you have to go back, evaluate your talk's sequence. May be something is wrong with it. If you are to present step 2 in 1–2–3 program, insert a new slide with the next step highlighted and other steps dimmed. But never ever go a slide (or 10) back. Doing that shows that you saved on an extra slide for your listeners. Cheap and dirty.

Your listeners are on the other side

Your listeners are on the opposite side of your slides. Remember that. Keep eye contact. Do not look to the ceiling, there is nobody hovering there. Do not look to the slides, you saw them already. Make sure you look here and there in the room, so nobody feels abandoned.

Sometimes you can be unsure if you are on the right slide. To avoid that make sure you see the monitor of your laptop while presenting. But do NOT turn to slides with every flip. It just shows that you are unsure. Don't do that. Nobody likes unsure people and especially unsure presenters.

If you have to give your slides to show them from a separate computer located elsewhere, try to find any kind of a mirror (even polished subwoofer would do). Make tricks but do not turn back on your users with every slide. They deserve to see your face.

Avoid premaid templates

Avoid templates if you can. This is hard in corporate world where they want you to have boring slides and keep your head down. But if you are free to choose, avoid templates and logos. Make a plain background without pattern or with a very neutral pattern. Discard any element that will take the attention away (logos and company names always do!)

Remember: stock templates are made to be pretty, not to help you with your presentation. You would do better without them.

Conclusion

There are tons of techniques how to make your presentation better. These are mine own, proved by many presentations that I gave.

There are many books on the subject. If you have to present often, get one of them. I mostly recommend “Confession of a public speaker” by Scott Berkun. This is the only book about presenting techniques that is not dull but very interesting to read. This books contains lots of practical information about how to present well.

And the last but the most important: practice before you present. There is nothing more important than that.

Setting up multiple e–mail addresses with Postbox

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:05:00 +0200

If you like Postbox, you may like it even more when you know that you can set up many e–mail addresses for the same account. For example, people write me to four different addresses and I generally reply from the same address. All e–mails come to the single mailbox. Essentially these addresses are aliases to my main e–mail address.

The most straightforward solution for having multiple e–mail addresses is to set up many accounts. But this solution is very inconvenient because you get many fake accounts in your sidebar. Much better solution is to use identities.

Identities in Postbox link multiple e–mail addresses to a single account. You can also have automatic signature insertion and PGP key selection for the identity.

To use identities, go to your accounts:

Clicking "Manage identities" button will bring new a window with all your identities:

Here you can add, edit or delete them: complete control! Here is how editing looks like:

As you see, it is very simple and convenient.

Like Postbox? I have a discount for it. Following this link will give you $10 discount on the purchase.

Postbox: e–mail, rss and news client

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:29:00 +0200

A week ago I discovered Postbox: a great looking e–mail, rss and news client based on Mozilla Thunderbird. However it is much faster than Thunderbird and offers many goodies to organize your communication more effectively.

Here is a screenshot of Postbox:

Click to enlarge

On Mac Postbox can make Spotlight search your messages. On any platform you get lightning fast search, tags that work very well, link extraction, easy signature editing (no more files for signatures!), Facebook & Twitter integration. You can even attach files from one message to another! Attachment downloading is also easy from the sidebar you see on the right.

In other words, I am absolutely love Postbox!

Now, something special for you. Postbox is not free, it costs $39.95 but if you follow my referral link, it will cost you $10 less, only $29.95. It is absolutely worth all its money! Give it a try, you will not be disappointed!

What type of engineer are you?

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:27:00 +0200

If you work in the web development field, you can call yourself an engineer. Did you know that web engineers are divided to categories? Knowing where you belong can focus your job, enhance your skills and give you more incentives at your work.

Let's have a look to various engineering categories for web developers.

Designer

If you work in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator only, you are a clear web designer. This is the most creative work out there. Designers are usually special people, not like anybody else. Usually they live somewhat outside of the rest because their job is totally different from what other do.

Being designers is interesting because design is what people see when they come to the site. Design meets them. If visitors like the design, they will stay longer. If design is horrible, they will leave the site in many cases regardless of the site content.

Being a good designer rates you very high in the industry.

Frontend engineer

If you do HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, etc, than you are a Frontend engineer. Designer design the site and gives you a picture. Now it is your job to make sure that designed picture is live and works as expected by visitors. It is a tough job. Probably toughest of all web jobs. There are many browsers to check with and most browsers behave differently from version to version. Frontend engineers make sure the site works everywhere. This is very difficult but often very interesting job.

Strangely the value of Frontend engineering is underestimated. JavaScript is not seen as a “serious” programming language and everybody around knows bits of HTML and CSS. However when you are a true “pro” Frontend engineer, nobody can compare with you. Although you are usually in shadow, your job is one of the most important jobs on the web.

Backend engineer

If you are a Backend engineer, you make a functionality behind the site. You make sure user's data is stored and processed. You are responsible for smooth running of complex applications. You do magic behind the site. If you do it well, users are satisfied.

All of the above

Are you all of the above? Most likely you are a freelancer than! Freelancers often take all activities to themselves. How good is it? Well, if you know bits of this, bits of that, it is good because you are universal. On the other hand it means you cannot excel in what you are doing. Unless you specialize on something, you will be in lower position than a specialized engineer.

I am not saying that being all–in–one is bad. It is not. However you may want to team up with somebody to provide better values to your clients. For example, your partner does design, you do the rest. Or you do Backend engineering while your partner does the Frontend part. This will help you to finish the project faster.

Conclusion

This post is somewhat unusual for my blog. I was recently thinking a lot about where I stand and it made me to write this article. It is always good to know where you are. Think of it and play your strengths.

New "Magento development" book

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:43:00 +0200

If you are a developer interested in Magento e–commerce platform, here is the best Magento development book for you, reviewed by me :)

Farewell, TemplaVoila!

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:33:00 +0200

As of today I am no longer managing or developing the famous TYPO3 TemplaVoila extension. I decided to quit the development and lead because my views on the development, purpose and perspective of this extension does not agree with other developers in the team. Being democratic I prefer to leave than to stay on the way of others.

It happened so that I was a sole TemplaVoila development for three years. I spent numerous hours of my own time fixing bugs and implementing new features. I never got a cent for it, it was always a pure enthusiasm. Nobody sponsored or supported this work. The reality of the open source world: you create, others use, you stay away.

Today I announced that TemplaVoila 1.4.2 will not be released any soon because of the major bugs in it. I was immediately accused of “stopping progress” by two different people. All these years of hard work meant nothing it seems. I was very much stressed by such views. I can’t bear that. And I won’t. Quality means very much to me but I am not going to listen to any more accusations. I would rather drop the project completely than being accused of stopping progress because I want to release a quality product. I am tired to fight for the quality!

I think TemplaVoila was the best that happened to TYPO3. To me my latest 1.3.x version would be still the best one: slim, small, fast, free of unnecessary clatter and cheap looking plastic icons. I am going to use 1.3 for my own projects from now on. I am going to host it on Google code and fix bugs and make it compatible with newer TYPO3 version as they are released. The official version is to be continued by other people. Since now I have absolutely no relation to TemplaVoila. My name will be removed from the extension soon.

Long live to you, TemplaVoila! Have a good future! Good bye!

Apple Airport Extreme error -6753

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:15:00 +0200

You reset your Apple AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule. You try to connect with AirPort Utility. You get error -6753. You google for it and find that lots of people has this problem but nobody seem to have a solution.

Well, I do.

The solution to this common problem is: enable IPv6 in your wireless network settings (on your computer with AirPort Utility). You will be able to connect to your device. It is because fresh AirPort Extreme (or Time Capsule) use IPv6, not IPv4.

It took me three hours to figure this out. However it is 100% working solution in my case: no IPv6 — no connection to a clean AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule.

Enjoy!

Vodafone usability mistake

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:27:00 +0200

Use Vodafone Mobile Broadband software with my USB modem to connect to the Internet when I work in café (I usually write something in café in the morning). Every time when I plug the modem, this software pops up and prompts me to connect. The software is cool, beautifully designed and very friendly. All is cool except one small detail. Have a look at the picture:

As you see there is a prompt to connect (I wish it just could connect without asking!). Two buttons are selected in some way: one has full glow, another has outer glow. It means that one of the will act on space key, the other – on Enter key. Which one will act on what key? This question always makes me stop and think. Remembering excellent Steve Krug's book named "Don't make me think", I see such selection as a usability mistake by Vodafone. Obviously I wish to connect if I plugged in my modem! But how do I do that without pressing wrong button and without using mouse? I have to think for 10 or more second and guess that Enter key will probably apply the fully glowing button. May be it will, yeah. May be... What if not? I never try to remember such details because they take my brain's RAM and they are not what I should be thinking of. My experience should be different in this case: the program should provide a single selection, which is the most appropriate and desired by the user. Which one? Obviously to connect! Why else would I plug the modem?

This kind of mistakes quite common. It comes from the programmer's wish to give more choices to the user. Good wish but wrong. It makes people think to make the choice to the obvious one.

Don't make me think, Vodafone!

Release of TemplaVoila 1.4.2 is approaching

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:56:00 +0200

TemplaVoila version 1.4.2 is approaching. I must tell that I did not work on this version. Entire work was done by Steffen Kamper and Tolleiv Nietsch (from AOE Media). There are bug fixes and lots of enhancements.

We had certain problems in the previous version. There were serious bugs and this release should solve the most annoying of them. I am going to take quality assurance role in TemplaVoila development and leave coding work to others. The reason for this is that I got everything I need in TemplaVoila. Other people have more ideas for extending the functionality than I do. Therefore I give them freedom to add features as they see fit. QA should be my main task for TemplaVoila from now on.

I expect to work on QA for TemplaVoila some time this week (depending on my load with other tasks). If everything goes well, we should have TemplaVoila 1.4.2 out very soon.

No thumbnails in TYPO3? Check ImageMagick!

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:12:00 +0200

I upgraded my server to a newer version of Linux in December. Today I suddenly noticed that I see "No image generated" yellow banner across all images in the TYPO3 backend.

Normal steps in such cases would be to go and check ImageMagick installation using the TYPO3 Install tool:

There is a special section there for image tests:

Basic tests for reading graphics formats told me that convert did not produce any results.

I know what it means. I run Apache in the chrooted environment and after upgrades copies of ImageMagick in the chroot jail are not the same as outside of it. So I upgraded binaries in the jail but it did not change anything. Hmmmm.

I went to chroot jail and tried to call convert from there. Here is what I got:

convert: UnableToOpenConfigureFile `delegates.xml' @ configure.c/GetConfigureOptions/553.

delegates.xml is a file that contains ImageMagick configuration for image conversions with external programs. So it must be missing. I checked /usr/share/ImageMagic-x.y.z and that directory was empty.

"This is easy" I thought. I reinstalled ImageMagick and ran convert again. Huh? Same error? Checking the directory: it is still empty.

Finally I managed to solve it. I had to delete ImageMagick completely with all its dependencies and install it fresh. Than it worked. Now I have my thumbnails again!

Extension updates: pagepath and dd_googlesitemap

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:11:00 +0200

Two extensions were updated to ensure compatibility with TYPO3 4.3: pagepath and dd_googlesitemap. Thanks to sponsoring of updates!

There are also several bug fixes. One major of them is Google news sitemap format change. Previous version of dd_googlesitemap used obsolete format, which was not accepted by Google anymore. Also sitemap now works with shortcuts: the feature many people wanted so much.

Enjoy!

P.S. Did you know that you can send me a donation too? ;)

How to repair a broken YaST online update in SuSE 11.2

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:42:00 +0200

One of the last YaST2-ncurses packages renders YaST2 online update and software management in SuSE Linux 11.2 unusable. Online update just exists back into the menu. If you want to fix it, follow these instructions:

Mount your install DVD. In my case it looks like:
mkdir /mnt.dist
mount -o loop /mnt/distro/opensuse-11.2-x86_64.iso /mnt/dist
Change path to RPM packages location. In my case:
cd /mnt/dist/suse/x86_64
Restore original packages. In my case:
rpm -Uvh --force yast2-ncurses-pkg-2.18.4-2.9.x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh --force yast2-ncurses-2.18.10-2.1.x86_64.rpm

That's all. Now you can use online update. It will propose you yast2-ncurses fix, which you should install.

Avoid your personal "Aurora operation"

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:53:00 +0200

I am not a Microsoft Windows user. I was quite indifferent to the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer scandal that causes break in to Google, Adobe and many other major companies (the “Aurora operation”). However posts and articles about this event pop up so often, that they are very hard to ignore.

Yesterday I read a phrase that made me think a lot about the way how we develop software. The source was not in English and it is hard to make a precise translation. The phrase sounds like this: “Software will be always vulnerable while it is written by humans”.

Why did this phrase caught me? For several reasons.

Firsts, I immediately remembered many extensions that I saw in the past with trivial security problems. It is so easy to avoid them and yet people still write it insecurely.

Secondly, I remembered an episode from the TV series called “Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles”. There is a scene where the artificial intelligence named John Henry talks to former FBI agent Ellison about a recent hack attempt:

John Henry: I've traced the roving back door that allowed access to my systems. It uploaded itself from one of the main T3 hubs that carry all global internet traffic.

Agent Ellison: It uploaded itself?

John Henry: Yes, Mr. Ellison. It is highly sophisticated. The intelligence who designed it is far beyond you, or Mr. Murch, or any human being.

John Henry was able to resist the attack using its own intellect. I guess it would be able to learn and prevent such attack in future forever.

John Henry talks to agent Ellison.

Unlike John Henry, most of us, humans, learn nothing.

The attack used on the Internet Explorer, is one of the classic ones for this software. Internet Explorer tries to access a method of the object, which is already freed. This is not the first (and surely not the last) time when Internet Explorer does that. Microsoft even built “Data Execution Prevention” feature in Windows trying to guard the system from its own software.

All these facts and thoughts made me think: why we, humans, are so irresponsible? Why can't we write the software like John Henry would: securely, applying our knowledge to every line of code we write? Or, may be, we can?

Computer logic vs human brain

Computers has several unique feature that makes them better than humans in certain areas.

Computers do not forget. Computers always apply techniques they are told to apply.

Humans are different. They are creative from one side, lazy from another (yes, everybody is lazy!) and chaotic from the third side. Humans are not like computers, they like to create and see results faster, even if it their creation is not built well enough (“it works, what else do you need?”).

Can we combine all good features that computers have with all good features that humans have?

I think we can.

Human brain as a CPU

In another episode John Henry said: “The human brain is an amazing computer. It's raw clock speed is 20 billion calculations per second. It's storage is functionally infinite”. That makes 20Ghz CPU plus unlimited memory: far more than modern computer can offer today! The only two things we miss in our wonderful CPU is patients and responsibility.

Both these qualities can be trained. People, who professionally works with computer programming for years, can be self–trained in a very fast way. The unfortunate effect of such training is that their thinking becomes less human and more computer–like (one/zero, white/black, good/bad, secure/insecure, optimal/unoptimal, right/wrong). It is harder to talk with such people but they are far more responsible in any aspect of the life and they are better professionals. Is it worth becoming less human? I cannot answer such question because it is a personal decision for everyone. It is definitely harder to communicate with the rest of the human world when you see how unoptimal they behave. It is harder to forgive yourself for unoptimal behavior or mistakes. But with each mistake you become more clever and learn how not to make the same mistake again. Life becomes easier in certain aspects.

How to become more responsible

So you want to become more responsible? Right... It is very hard at the beginning. Not everyone can. In fact, most people can't.

If you decide to do it, it is a lifelong decision. One you start practicing it, you cannot turn back because it becomes your lifestyle.

You have to stop running first. No, I do not talk about your morning runs around the park. Continue those! I mean: stop running in this life. Stop and see around. Is there anything you do in hurry all the time? Is there anything that deserves a better, more careful look? I bet there is. Think of it.

Start doing it properly, without hurrying. If you do cleaning, do it properly. Clean on the top of that wardrobe, it was not cleaned for ages and have heaps of dust on the top! If you drive the car, follow driving rules precisely. If you write programs, be paranoid and apply security checks and validate your objects everywhere. Just do it all the time regardless of how fast you want to skip it!

You will notice that it pays back. You will not forget to go to a meeting because you read an interesting article. Your mentality changes when you stop running and follow the “right way to do stuff”. It slower than doing it “the fast way” in short term perspective but it is much faster than doing it in long term perspective (you do not have to recover from mistakes made long time ago).

Let me give you a simple example.

I have a daughter. She is six and she goes to school. As many children of this age, she like to make her home work fast and go playing with toys. However fast in her case means inaccurate. Therefore, when we check here home work, she has to redo it. She again does it fast and has to redo it again and again. We tell her every time that she should do it once accurately and then she can play her toys for the rest of the day instead of redoing the same stuff for hours. Once she did it snower and accuratey. It was half an hour longer than her usual “fast” work but she did not have to redo it for hours later. She liked it. But she is too small to have patients to do it well every time.

Are we different from my six year girl? No, we aren't. We always run. We do not escape parameters that we get from users in order to finish that software faster. We do not read bank loan agreements because it may take 10 minutes but we want to get a cheeseburger ASAP. Later we discover catches in that agreement but it is too late. Was the cheeseburger worth it? No, it wasn't. It is our fault that we run for the cheeseburger!

So if you would like to make your life better, than stop running! Do it properly from the first time!

I believe we can do it. I believe we can beat computers in this.

Using XDebug helper plugin with FireFox 3.5.7

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:54:00 +0200

Recently my FireFox automatically updated itself and disabled XDebug helper plugin, which I use to debug PHP scripts with Komodo IDE. While it is possible to start debugging by adding XDEBUG_START_DEBUG=1 to the URL, it is not very convenient when debugging such framed applications as TYPO3 Backend.

There is no update for this plugin. Even worse: it is disappeared from the list of FireFox plugins. Fortunately I have it locally and managed to cheat FireFox to recognize this plugin as valid.

It is quite simple. Firsts, you need to shutdown FireFox. Next you need to go to the extensions/ subdirectory of your FireFox profile. On Mac it is in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ff3.default. In the extensions/ you will see xdebughelper@mail.ru and install.rdf inside it. Open this file in the text editor. You need to change two values there:

set em:maxVersion to 3.*
increase em:version

Start FireFox and you have XDebug icons in FireFox again!

mod_security book review

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:23:00 +0200

Some time ago Packt Publishing published a book about mod_security. Since I use mod_security very actively to protect servers, I decided to get this book and write a review.

Here it is.