Monday, May 23, 2005

Testing Mobile Applications


So if you are testing mobile applications that use GPRS how do you test if it works ok (i.e failing with style) when there is a poor/no signal?

Sit in the dark in the the downstairs lavatory?
Sit on the piccadilly line and wait until you go underground at Earls Court?
Find a very large person and stick it down their pants?
Go to Cornwall?
Subscribe to T-Mobile?

Nope, you build a Faraday Cage.

Monday, May 16, 2005

You are what you eat

M'chum Rubbery Chapploe and I have been discussing diet lately, here are his measured thoughts on Atkins and the like:

Of course when I was child they told me that in order to be healthy I needed to eat eggs, butter, red meat, cheese, bread and potatoes. They also told me that a diet of vegetables and fruits would be lacking in all sorts of essential stuff. In fact in those days there was a vital food group that seems to have disappeared in recent years. Along with carbohydrates, fats and proteins came the far more important food group of “goodness”. I believe Cadburys fudge fingers still contain traces of it but due to modern farming methods and European standardisation of things and that and stuff, it has been almost entirely removed from the food chain. That wee pinched old Scott off the telly with the celery soup and the poo fetish is patently suffering a severe lack of goodness (and man fat) in her diet. Goodness can be reintroduced into the diet through judicious food combining (a bit like the Arthur Asky diet that Crispin is on except for its total oppositeness to it). For instance that pork pie is OK if you have the pickle too. And the cake? Gotta have the cup of tea to wash it down. Chips? Ok as long as you have the salt and vinegar to break down the badness and to produce goodness and possibly even traces of bifidus digestiven if the wind is in the right quarter of your nutritional chart. If you have it with fish and mushy peas as well you’ve had almost an entire day’s recommended intake of goodness including (in the peas) a healthy dose of “greens” which is also an essential thing for stuff. As a result of this insight I demand my own television program and access to that bird off breakfast time telly with Dermot Mergnihan and that bird (who is that bird off …. Etc and so forth).

Sunday, May 15, 2005

White Stripes kick off world tour ...

I'm hip, me. Sort of the the vanguard, Joe Strummer in a squat under the westway .... really ;-).

The White Stripes kicked off their world tour on Wednesday and showcased a number of songs from their new album, 'Get Behind Me Satan'.

The group played at the Monterrey Fundidora Amphitheatre de Coca Cola in Mexico, and the gig featured the forthcoming single 'Blue Orchid' plus other new songs, including 'The Denial Twist' and 'Passive Manipulation'.

A fan at the gig told nme.com: "The venue is similar to an amphitheatre and it was crammed. There was a great ocean view with palm trees. Jack started the show by saying 'Hermanos y Hermanas', which means brothers and sisters, and played
UKULELE and marimba on two songs."

The White Stripes will headline this year's Glastonbury Festival in June.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Festival Ukes Logo

Do you like it?

Thursday, May 05, 2005

It's XTC day .... . . .

We are stuck in the computer mines today with no visible means of escape. To ease the pain I decided to have an XTC day. For those of you who think "Making plans for Nigel" was their high water mark, you could not be more wrong.

Swindon's finest .... well along with Diana Dors, Billie Piper and me.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Phone Pest

As some of you may know, regular phone numbers in the uk will receive SMS messages. The phone rings as normal and a little computer voice reads out the message. I often use this facility to text Mrs Spug who does not always have her mobile phone to hand.

Recently I have taken to sending her lewd and suggestive messages via this service. It is great to hear the little computer voice say things like:

On the five eighteen from paddington, any chance of seeing you in your nighty later on pet?

It has a go at swearing and everything ....

Although amused at first Mrs Spug is now completely bored by this. I am sticking with it of course, as I like to get every last smile out of a gag.

Try it, it's a hoot.

Thought for day

Round them up and herd them in to the F@!%ing sea.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Hey what yer been doing spug m'boy

So got a J2me application off the ground. The app is a mobile survey system for a well known drinks company. The surveys are drafted on-line in a Domino web app. The surveys are downloaded to regular Nokia phones in an XML-stylee where the users (attractive young ladies) complete them and send the results back up to the domino server where they are crunched in to graphs and what not.

The client app is only 36k and installs over the air; so no cables, no mess, no fuss. What's more the users are very comfortable with the interface, as using mobile phone is so natural to them. The other groovy bit is that as the app runs on regular Nokia phones, there is no capital outlay for devices, unlike if we had used Pocket Pcs for instance.

The app has been developed using Eclipse with the EclipseMe plugin so I can debug on the emulators; Antenna to help with generating all the J2me stuff in Ant and j2meunit so I can still do test based development in j2me (no reflection y'see). The builds and tests all chug away at a touch of a button. A breath of fresh air after too much Notes Designer.

It's a big woolly mobile world out there my special computer chums.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?