Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

191.8

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167.2

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186.2

183.6

184.0

183.2

184.6

Sat, 02 Apr 2005

A Big Visible Chart for a big visible belly

In my mid twenties, I weighed about 190 pounds. Then I had an early midlife crisis and got into shape, using the novel method of eating less and exercising more. Now, twenty years on, what with kids, age, some chronic injuries, and resurgent gluttony, I'm back at the start. I've resolved that this shall not stand, but the past few months have shown that I need some extra oomph behind the project.

What do Agile teams do when they need some constant added pressure to do as they know they need to do? They make the important facts widely visible. So I will do the same. In the header of this blog, I'll post a running record of what the scale shows for me + hiking boots (to ease achilles tendonitis when stair-climbing). This blog gets around 120,000 hits per month. Even though the vast majority don't have an actual human behind them, there are enough that my pride will not let me fail.

Twenty years ago, losing two pounds a week was comfortable, so that shall be my progress goal. My lowest weight was 157, but I had absurdly low body fat. This time I'll shoot for 167.

## Posted at 19:30 in category /misc [permalink] [top]

Cocoa and Java

Is it possible to get to a place where you can comfortably use Cocoa and Java, or is the path always full of rocks?

<boring_tale_of_woe>I am finding plugging a Mac interface on my Jar file no fun. I am distressed that too often building produces mysterious behavior that goes away when I hit 'clean all' first. It's bizarrely cumbersome to include a jar file in the project. The link between the Nib and whatever other magic is involved in launching got so scrozzled that even backing up all the way to the Nib and regenerating all the Java sources yielded an executable that couldn't find the java UI objects. I had to start completely from scratch, redraw the UI, generate the Java sources, and paste in the code from the previous version.</boring_tale_of_woe>

Interface Builder is cool, but once past that things go downhill. I'm particularly wondering if the whole system is fragile in the face of lots of renaming of methods and redrawing of interfaces.

<boring_tale_of_woe>For example, the runtime once unilaterally ceased being able to find the action method addCasePressed. I had to rename it addCasePressed2, change the name in IB, and then it found it fine.</boring_tale_of_woe>

## Posted at 19:30 in category /mac [permalink] [top]