Author Archives: Sampo J.

When to hard-code

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Sampo J.

Hard-coding is generally considered an anti-pattern and abhorred by experienced developers. Input and configuration data should be externalized from the code, or at the very least parametrized to a language constant. While working at Wellmo, I’ve come to reconsider this … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding | Tagged | Leave a comment

Backup KeePass2 database on Linux

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Sampo J.

There are several instructions on how to use the KeePass2 trigger mechanism to create a backup of your password database when saving the database.  However, all of the instructions I found were for Windows.  It took a bit of figuring … Continue reading →

Posted in KeePass, Security | Tagged | 3 Comments

Hybrid app testing using dynamic DNS

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Sampo J.

Hybrid apps simplify implementing cross-platform mobile applications in many ways.  You only need to write the HTML once, and it should work on all platforms.  However, you still need to test those platforms. At Wellmo, we do most of our … Continue reading →

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Using Spark with MongoDB

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Sampo J.

I recently started investigating Apache Spark as a framework for data mining. Spark builds upon Apache Hadoop, and allows a multitude of operations more than map-reduce. It also supports streaming data with iterative algorithms. Since Spark builds upon Hadoop and … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, MongoDB, Spark | Tagged , | 33 Comments

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 , | 1 Comment