Author Archives: Sampo J.

Hybrid app testing using dynamic DNS

Posted on March 23, 2014

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 →

Posted in Hybrid apps, Testing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Using Spark with MongoDB

Posted on February 18, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CoffeeScript vs. TypeScript vs. Dart

Posted on June 18, 2013

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

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