Author: Rick Tonoli

  • Conference Fun: Blackberry Developer Days

    Having just returned from what was an eye opening Blackberry Developer Days conference in Johannesburg, I thought I’d write a few of my thoughts on it, and Blackberry itself (or rather the direction I see it going). Firstly, thanks to the presenters, they showed both a good knowledge as well as a passion for the…

  • My first of many Android apps

    In my spare time I do what I love (how sad, I should do what I love all the time), and what I love is coding, and the android platform… I’ve created my first android application available here: http://torrentfunnel.ricktonoli.com, read up on it at the site. If anyone wants to give it a whirl I’d…

  • I’m not a child…

    Dear Manager, I am one of your developers, when you hired me you treated me with respect, you asked me about my skills and abilities and (I assume) hired me because of these. Please could you explain to me why, now, the respect is gone and I’m being treated like a mentally deficient child? If…

  • Stay away…

    Yesterday I found out that my dad was robbed, not in some dark ally or in the dead of night, but in broad daylight, walking through the entrance of a busy shopping mall in Rustenburg, with (useless) “mall guards” and numerous shoppers within meters of him. Thankfully he was not harmed, this time. This is…

  • Trust…

    Forcing impossible deadlines, ordering people to be at work during certain hours, denying leave, bringing in consultants and hinting at using them as a yardstick for productivity… I often wonder what makes people resort to these tactics and if they know the net effect of them? Decreased morale, lowered productivity, lack of any desire to…

  • A thought…

    erratic jello in fear you squeeze it; it runs away.

  • Change is good

    I’m often amazed at the number of dogmatic “prophets” out there when it comes to the latest fad’s of agile development. I myself am about getting productive and like to take the best of ALL worlds; change is not only inevitable but necessary, even changing of a process BUT, only if the change leads to…

  • Implementing an Effective Build Dashboard (for Hudson) (Part 3)

    Not really part of the dashboard configuration but more of a cool thing I thought I’d share the underlying layers (hardware, OS etc) behind our monitor. I decided to go with full portability and hands free start-up, I did this as follows: Installed Puppy Linux on a 2gb USB stick. Installed Firefox 3.x (needed for…

  • Implementing an Effective Build Dashboard (for Hudson) (Part 2)

    This is a follow on of my previous post and details how to implement the code available in the original post by Fabio Parera here, together with the modifications I made for our environment. I suggest you look at the original post first though to understand the extra stuff that I did not implement (I…