Category Archives: Work

Work related

Future looks bright for video ads

By Martin Murphy | Published: August 13, 2007
Continuing in the online video theme, The Register has a story about video ads: Future looks bright for video ads The article talks about ad-funded online video, and video ads in web pages. Both of these are relevant to me at work.
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Flash Lite: Graphics for Mobile Devices

By Martin Murphy | Published: June 22, 2007
This is an interesting introduction to Flash Lite – including getting data from the network – in the current issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal. Well it’s probably only interesting if, like me, the only thing you already know about Flash Lite, is that some people can make nice looking demos with it Dr. Dobbs | [...]
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“lsof” command

By Martin Murphy | Published: April 18, 2007
Just found out about this command today. “lsof” displays information about open files by processes on *nix systems (including network “files” – TCP/UDP). I don’t know how I managed to miss such a useful command over the years. As an example, listing network ports (which I would previously have done with netstat): # lsof +c0 [...]
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Working in a Fridge?

By Martin Murphy | Published: January 2, 2007
The heating system at work seems to break down a lot. I just found this link mentioning a minimum of 63°F within 1 hour (in the Irish Statute Book Database.) I must remember to bring a thermometer with me tomorrow morning. I suppose I should also check if that has been superceded.
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Tip for a forgetful software developer

By Martin Murphy | Published: December 4, 2006
Lately, when writing JUnit tests I’ve been doing things like: ... String result = some.method(); assertTrue("Expected " + expected + " but was " + result, result.equals(expected)); ... However, a similar result can be achieved with the semantically more accurate ... assertEquals(expected, result); ... This is even easier to type I did know this, honest!
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Installing Ruby on Ubuntu

By Martin Murphy | Published: November 6, 2006
These are my experiences of installing Ruby on Ubuntu. I didn’t install the Ubuntu package but went with the source on the Ruby On Rails website. Everything worked fine out of the box, just downloaded the files and followed their instructions (basically the following, in this order.) Download ruby-1.8.4.tar.gz and rubygems-0.9.0.tgz from the links on [...]
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Blogging and the work–life balance

By Martin Murphy | Published: September 4, 2006
There is a new “blogging initiative” at work (well I think it’s new, I’m not there long myself). The company line seems to be that blogging is good for both the employer and the employee. The company has offered to setup blog hosting on their servers. It seems like a reasonable idea, but, I’m not [...]
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