Month: November 2007

  • November 20, 2007

    Yankee Offseason

    A lot has happened since my last post about the Yankees, and the news has been mostly good. Jorge and Rivera both came back, renewing their contracts; news I was very happy with. Of course, these two items are overshadowed by the big ticket announcements.

    First, Joe Torre has left to manage the Dodgers, and brought Don Mattingly with him. What the Yankees offered Torre was a slap in the face for what Joe has brought to the franchise. He revitalized a team that didn’t see playoff glory in 18 years, and took them to the world stage 5 out of the 12 years he managed. I can’t blame him for leaving. Next, they didn’t choose Mattingly has manager. I like Joe Girardi, but Donnie Baseball bled pinstripes. It will be disappointing to see him in a different uniform.

    And now, on to A-Rod. He opted out. He and his agent were asking for $350 Million. But now he’s back. And here is why. A-Rod wanted to stay on the Yankees. His agent is an ass. A-Rod took a healthy $275 Million over 10 years to remain the Yankee’s 3rd baseman. I was saying all along it was his agent who was the one asking too much and A-Rod just went along with it. I’m glad to see he came to his senses and decided to stay.

    It’s shaping up to be quite an interesting season. I for one can’t wait until April.

  • November 10, 2007

    Reuseability

    Code

    A few months ago I developed a Scrubs Quotes application for Facebook. This is a simple app that displays a random quote from the show on your profile. One of the first lessons/ideas being taught to me in the Software Engineering Masters program here at the University of Scranton is that when you develop software, you should make it as abstract and general as possible. Reusable code is key. With that in mind, I set out to make my quotes app a little more reusable.

    As far as the scope of the project goes, it wasn’t that daunting of a task. When programming in PHP, I usually make everything a function anyway because of the ease of use. But there were some things I needed to clean up. The first thing I did was create a config file with all of the application specific information- database connection info, application title, links to include in the app, etc. This makes changing the app as easy as changing a single file. Other files that I felt could be edited I placed in separate files as well. This includes the style sheet, which up until that point was included in the header file.

    Once that was done, there was not a heck of a lot more to do. In an upcoming version of this software, I want to include an SQL file to generate the databases, and an easy switch to make the app sightly different if there is a single person being quoted, or multiple people.

    My first use of this reusable version of the app manifests itself in a Demetri Martin Quotes application. The set up was really easy and I was able to have the app up and running in just minutes. This is a pretty exciting little project for me because it’s a great practice in system design and software development. As time goes on I hope to grow this engine and possibly make releases of the software for others to use. I would like to learn how to make this easily updateable as far as adding features go and see how scalable it really is.

  • November 1, 2007

    Facebook for Blackberry

    FB App

    About a week ago I downloaded the new Facebook for Blackberry application by RIM. The app allows you to get notifications on wall posts, messages, pokes, friend requests, etc. right to your blackberry in a nice, clean interface.

    Overall, I think the app is really nice. I’m a bit of a Facebook addict, partially because I do business through it, but also because of the fun factor. With this app, I don’t have to go to Facebook’s mobile version of the site to send/receive messages and the like. The way they set it up was really nice too- you can change the notification settings in your sound options, like you would for your ringer, text, and email notifications. When you get a Facebook notification, the app icon appears at the time, next to where a text/email notification would go (pictured).

    FB Notification

    You can also have the app delete the email you would get, alleviating some of the pressure in my inbox.

    However, every good thing leaves you wanting more. One thing I would really like to see is the ability to view the profile right from the app instead of bringing up the browser to view a profile. On top of that, there are pretty frequent requests for the ability to view your entire wall and inbox right in the app, which would also be a very nice addition. These three features would increase the functionality of the app exponentially. All-in-all, however, it’s a great app that broadens the scope of use for my blackberry If you have a Blackberry, I strongly recommend this app.

    Go to Facebook for Blackberry