Web development, scripts, source code and IT stuff
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Requirements Engineer certified
1I have read this article from Barbara Paech, where explain to us the where abouts of the Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering and I would like to share my thoughts about it.
First of all, maybe it is helpful to know what I’m talking about with this introduction on wikipedia Requirements Engineering , that since now on I will abbreviate as RE.
I’m not a big fan for certified, but I must admit that now a days they seem to be pretty useful when you seek for work.
When you are certified and for my experience (Master in Java architecture), you have already an advantage over the rest of the candidates, Why? normally Human Resources are not qualified IT people, been certified makes for them easier this “first” selection over other selective points.
We should not forget that once you are certified means that you past a test that you studied for it, you will share common language and is supposed you have same knowledge as any other.
I never liked exams at all. I’ve been a good student always and I had great scores, but come on, because you have good scores doesn’t mean that much, I explain: I rather do an small “work” where I can use what I’m learning and that may be useful in the future than doing an exam where you study, normally without understanding, you do the exam and you may forget. If you did a “work/project” you will always have it and the research you may do, brings to you much more.
Other point why been certified is not fair at all comes when you have an innate talent, there’s this people that seems to be so good at RE, but they have the same certified as one that really have no idea. Your innate talent may be communication skills, good speaker for example, or good at understanding problems and listening. This things hardly you will learn them.
Same happens if you have been working for 10 years or a newbie, you have the same certified.
Finishing my point is: It’s up to you to be certified or not, but I’ve been involved in few work position selections and there’s things that are more important, experience, talent, work dedication… that are far more important than been certified.
As a resume from my perspective:
Pros:
- Certifies your knowledge about RE.
- Usage of common syllabus.
- It may be useful for seeking work.
Cons:
- Knowledge can be forget.
- Doesn’t demonstrate work experience.
- Not value for innate talent.
- Not certified for your communicative skills.
Web applications to work from home
4I’ve been long time working from home, first I was living in Holland and afterwards I moved to Thailand for a while.
To keep communication between the development team was really important and to have the right tools for these even more.
I will not talk about the good things of working from home or the bad things, at the end what I choose is to work from home and often in the client. I like it more.
About the tools that I use, they needed to have few things in common, for free, powerful and we based.
Sharing document: GoogleDocs
Right now almost every body knows about Google Docs, but did you ever use it as a tool of sharing document for editing them? is wonderful
Upload files from other suites, edit them online, save them, see who edit them, historical revisions….and many more…
Improve your SQL queries
2Not that I want to teach SQL to any one, but do not forget this simple things to improve your queries:
- Usage of Limi/Top if we know how many rows should be return, can save time.
- Do not return * unless you really need all the fields from the table. Saves time and improve.
- If you need a random value use order by newid() for SqlServer and order by rand() from MySql
- Do not save binary data in the rows! (like images or docs etc…)
- If you need to join two tables don’t do this: select * from table1,table2, instead use JOIN
- Important to have indexes in the most used fields.
- The where clauses try them to be for the indexed fields.
- Usage of the same query, this ones once is done is cached.
- Procedures can save lot of time for common queries.
- Try to avoid the usage of Like ‘%something%’ instead be more specific field=’something’.
And last one:
Please, if you need to return the amount of rows from a table, use count(), and never the recordest.count method.
This last one I saw it at many places and kills applications of course!
No IE6, please
3Today I was checking stats from few of my places and is SCARY how many people still uses Internet Explorer 6. Yes I said SCARY. My no entender.
During the last month an average of 460 unique visitors uses IE6! That’s a 15% of the total traffic of the site almost.
But now Web Masters and DEvelopers we have the power to turn the situation and make this different.
First I’m not longer checking my JS for IE6 either the CSS and second we have many resources to let know our visitors that they should upgrade.
For any HTML site I like this two solutions:
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neoMobile – HTML Template for mobile browser
6836 days
Nowadays and everyday more users browse the web with their mobile devices. iPhone or Android is the coolest thing now!
Here in Spain we have lot of providers that for a fix price we have internet 24h. Sometimes they put some limitations but works good. That means lot of visitors that we should care about them just a bit. No?
Because of that I did a simple HTML template for your site!
Also I made it for Open Classifieds and you can download it and preview it (only mobile devices).
If you want to detect if is a mobile device in php, maybe is useful this function from mobiForge (I’ve changed few things):
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How to Linux: Videos for Nintendo DS
2How to convert videos from Linux for the Nintendo DS? And using subtitles?
Many people thinks is not possible, I will tell you something is really easy and works fast!
Yo will need
- Nintendo DS
- R4 Cartridge
- Memory Micro Sd for the R4
- OS Linux (Ubuntu or Debian works)
Do this
- In the shell: sudo apt-get install mencoder mplayer
- Download mpeg_stat
- Create folder /home/user/DPG
- Uncompress mpeg_stat in DPG folder
- Goto the folder and do make
- Move this files to the folder bin with: sudo cp mpeg_stat /bin/mpeg_stat , sudo cp mpeg_stat.1 /bin/mpeg_stat.1
- Download dpgconvThis one generates the files dpg for the DS
- Uncompress dpgconv in DPG folder
How works:
- In the shell go to /home/user/DPG
- Execute: python dpgconv-8.py /folder/file_to_convert.avi
- The videp is now in DPG folder.
- Move the file to your DS memory
- Enjoy the video!
Tip: If you want subtitles, make the file .srt have the same name of the video file. In this way the program will use both to generate the video.
Tools to get a good domain name
4Well maybe this is not the best title for a blog post I ever did, but is kind off difficult for me to explain what I mean.
I need it to find a domain name, but now a days there’s plenty of good ones that they are already taken. Then I started to google to find tolls to generate domain names, to mix words to check size of domains…
I found many thinks but today I do share this ones that are my top:
Domain Hacks: write a word and returns to you a hack of the name with a domain, really useful.
Domain Suggestions: just write a word or domain and it will return to you a list of available domains that maybe you are interested on.
Until here I think they are common links and famous webs but now we start with more interesting ones ;) (more…)