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So, after an interruption of work, first with attempting to fix a core bug with CakePHP to help fix a bug with my own application on our staff site (and failing miserably to create a unit test case so it's not yet fixed), and then being asked to create a Tri-fold pamphlet for a series that our library was putting on (with no knowledge of the series itself other than its name, and the 6 programs), I've been a little busy - oh, and holidays, traveling, and more traveling. (Gonna be out in Arizona for a week starting on the 17th.) Fun times, fun times. I am back to reading up on more stuff about Adobe Air. Our library just got the O'Reilly "Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook" and it does have some pretty good examples. Unfortunately, even though extremely confusing and too technically written, I think the official Adobe Help documentation is probably a more thorough resource for me. IT'S SO DRY.

Either way, skimming through the cookbook, I already found a few notes to jot down, such as how to access information about the current monitor's resolution in order to set the location for my application (when using AIRAliases.js with HTML/JS creation):

air.Screen.mainScreen.visibleBounds.width
air.Screen.mainScreen.bounds.height

...and there was a nice and easy example of how to use custom "chrome" with HTML/JS minimize and close buttons:

onClick="window.nativeWindow.minimize()"
onClick="window.nativeWindow.close()"

I've got the internal SQLite chapter bookmarked and may take a quick look at it later if I ultimately decide to deal with network failure to the production DB store or not.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

...and I just truncated a database rather than a table completely on accident (yay for GUIs and quick-clicking). All of the data for my Reference Stats application has been lost. I'm rather upset with myself at the moment; I had thought I propogated it to the live database.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

So, I was learning a scripting language awhile back to help automate and secure some things with our public computers. The scripting language is for use with an application called "AutoIT", which is, well, both a compiler and run-time for the scripts themselves.

I needed to detect if an application window was present on the screen, and if it was, take appropriate action. So, looking at the following code documentation:

WinExists
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Checks to see if a specified window exists.
WinExists ( "title" [, "text"] )

I wanted to make sure that things were working as they should, so my test for this was as follows:
If 0 == WinExists("Please login.") Then MsgBox(4096, "Shutdown", "LOGIN FOUND! WinExists 1."); Else MsgBox(4096, "No Login", "No login found: WinExists 1."); EndIf

The problem, which I was unaware of, is that I apparently can't make the test (value) comparison in the manner that I did. The proper way to use this method was as follows:
If WinExists("Please login.") Then ; ...or... If Not WinExists("Please login.") Then

What a bummer.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

I'm not much of a traditional reader. Ever since I was jaded from using my actual imagination by my father, I had completely lost interest in fictional writing, and I never had an interest in history. My primary reading interests now focus only on technology, programming, and things related therein. So, although my reading habits may be boring, I'm still excited about my recent purchases.

I've been needing to use Subversion for awhile now, and although I have it set up and installed, running, and have used it a few times, I really don't know the actual power and capabilities to truly use it, so...now hopefully I will with the following book.


...and in the honor of trying to keep up with the current trends, I also purchased a book to show how to use (and the reasons for using) Git:

...currently on pre-order, the book is released at the end of the month. Until Git is easily installable on Windows without a lot of pre-requirements, I don't see this being very helpful to me though, but it's always important to at least have a working knowledge.


Now, as a somewhat interesting book that I've felt I would be able to use well in my market, I came across (quite by accident) a little treasure entitled "Selling to the VP of 'No'".

Here's the book's description:

He might be your sales prospect, your boss, an investor, or the chairman of the board. He is also one tough dude. He has to be. Every hour of every day, someone tries to sell him something. He has one way to deal with them: Say "NO." It’s brutally simple, but it works, because most people are simply a waste of his time. Selling Stars know how to break through that tough exterior and get the VP of NO to listen to their story. In this short, visual book, you will learn the secrets of the Selling Stars: how to turn the VP of NO into the VP of GO!

Awesome.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

So I've been asked by the Adult Services department head to come up with a means to retrieve and store statistics for "Questions Answered at the Public Service Desks". Currently, they're using a pen and paper approach from a template created in Microsoft Word. Each staff member (reference librarian) at the desks (currently using the paper document) has to print out one sheet per day (therefore, the Reference Desk has 2 sheets each day, Information Desk has one sheet) and will tally (slash slash slash slash, cross) the number of questions asked, separated by hour(s) (9-11, 11-1, 1-3, 3-5, 5-9). There's also a section for notes such as "We need the following items...", "Interesting Questions", and "Suggested books/items to order".

He mostly wanted a way to reduce the paper trail and become more "green". All those papers are then returned to his desk at the end of the day. He tallies the results at the end of the month. That's approximately 3*5*4 = 60 full pieces of paper to go through to count (by hand) all of the stats, as well as read (all at once) the comments and/or notes. Granted, I don't know if he keeps a running tally (one would hope), but either way, that's a lot of unnecessary work.

Since other desks/departments may find this useful, I've extended the schema in the database that will hold the information to account for that. Although it can all be managed via a web page (and is currently working as such in skeletal form -- thank you, CakePHP and 5 minutes of time), I've opted for a better solution. Since it'd be unruly to require a webpage to be open at all times, or dealing with load-times on a webpage from a favorite or desktop shortcut, I'll be developing a dynamically created UI using Adobe Air to allow for a desktop application. All it will require from the staff member is to either click on a button (and then verify -- requested from the department head), or fill in a text box. Upon installation the application will verify which public service desk it is at and use that information from then on.

The department heads in charge of each service desk (in case any other departments wish to use this) will then be able to view reports and statistical data from a staff intranet page, as the database will be maintained on our webserver. I'll probably integrate it with Open Flash Chart like I did on a personal project - it turned out really nice looking and was easily stylized (with a little understanding of its settings).

Hopefully when all done I can post some screenshots of the first draft of the final product. It's meant to be very simple, but nice with features...we'll have to see if I deal with connection issues to the database (as Adobe Air also has a local file store and can check on server responses). Either way, I have a lot of reading ahead of me on Adobe Air now that the database schema is complete. The statistics will come last...but we should have hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly break downs.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski