Yearly Archives: 2013

CoffeeScript woes

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Sampo J.

I recently wrote a piece comparing CoffeeScript, TypeScript and Dart.  For the UI component of Wellmo, we decided upon using CoffeeScript.  While this has been a great leap from JavaScript, we’ve had our share of setbacks.  Here’s a few issues … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, CoffeeScript | Tagged | 9 Comments

Modifying the pace of audiobooks

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Sampo J.

I’ve recently started listening to audiobooks.  They’re a convenient way to enjoy books on your way to work or while driving.  After listening to Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian, I took on The Hunger Games, read by Carolyn McCormick. Like many … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Ruby | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Testing visual appearance with Cucumber + Watir

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Sampo J.

One of the great things about Cucumber and Watir is that it allows you to write functional tests that are decoupled of the UI.  By using page objects, the definition of how the UI works is decoupled from the tests … Continue reading →

Posted in CSS, Cucumber, Testing, Watir-Webdriver, Web | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

setImmediate, MessageChannel, postMessage broken on Internet Explorer 10

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Sampo J.

The JavaScript setImmedate function has been proposed and promoted as a faster alternative to setTimeout(fn, 0) (and cleaner than postMessage). While the HTML spec clamps setTimeout(fn, 0) to a minimum delay of 4 ms, setImmediate(fn) is defined to run the … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs, IE, JavaScript | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Testing time-dependent features in JavaScript

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Sampo J.

Many applications use the current time in their functionality.  For example, they can show data for a certain period of time or show the current date within the application.  Writing functional tests for such applications can be tedious.  How do … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Cucumber, JavaScript, Testing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Simple image devignetting

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Sampo J.

With the prevalence of smart phone cameras today, they are often used instead of scanners as quick digitization methods for documents.  Unfortunately this leads to excessive vignetting (darkened areas at the edges), which makes it hard to print the document … Continue reading →

Posted in Gimp, Image manipulation | Tagged , | 2 Comments

CoffeeScript vs. TypeScript vs. Dart

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Sampo J.

Software often requires two or three iterations before you get it right.  In our case this led to starting a rewrite of our hybrid mobile application.  It had been developed over several years by a diverse group of people with … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Web | Tagged , , , | 29 Comments

Benchmarking Amazon t1.micro instances

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Sampo J.

Note:  The t1.micro instance type has been superseded by the t2 family, which are much better suited for general use.  I ran some tests on the t2 family as well. Amazon t1.micro instances are the most affordable EC2 instance types.  Their … Continue reading →

Posted in Amazon AWS | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Gimp is dead, long live the Gimp!

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Sampo J.

I have been an avid user of the Gimp for well over a decade now. I started using it in the mid 90’s around version 0.60.  I was promoting it to my friends as a great image manipulation tool, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Gimp, Linux | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Switching to Linux Mint

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Sampo J.

This is a description of my migration from Ubuntu to Linux Mint 14.  As this was my work laptop, there are some additional requirements that need to be met by the system.  In particular, I review: Configurability and ease of … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Linux Mint, VirtualBox | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment