Archive for March, 2006

Creating a website

Monday, March 27th, 2006

I created a website the other day for a local parental support group called GeorgiaFaces.info. First, I registered the domain with GoDaddy. Then, I pointed the domains nameservers at the bluehost.com nameservers instead of the parked pages. Then, after waiting a couple of hours for propagation to occur, I installed PHPWebsite at that domain using the Fantastico installer.

PHPWebsite has great documentation. It doesn’t have WYSIWYG article editing. However, I was able to setup and configure the site, install themes, add events to the calendar, add menu items, create a links list, and get the site looking great in a very short time (a couple of evenings and an afternoon). All thanks to the great documentation. It makes me want to go and write great documentation for the projects I have worked on.

Jigsaw Puzzle

I needed to add some character to the site, and some clipart or photos would do the trick. I prefer to use open source content, so I went to OpenClipart and Burning Well. I found some nice Springtime clipart and adorned the site. I also found some clipart that wasn’t quite what I wanted, but after a few hours with Inkscape, I transformed the jigsaw puzzle piece into a mini jigsaw puzzle.

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Personal Software Process – PSP

Saturday, March 18th, 2006

I learned the Personal Software Process from A Discipline for Software Engineering during lunchtime at work in 1996. During the course, the student is required to write some programs that perform statistical analysis of their data from writing the programs. I remember struggling to figure out the numerical methods for the programs, and then I stumbled upon Appendix A. It contained all the numerical methods that were needed in nice, procedural form. I occasionally get email about my Personal Software Process page where I have the programs and statistics posted from my experience. The most recent email asked about the chitest.c program, and what some of the results from the program meant. I had to dig out my book, and found Appendix A again, where all the nitty gritty details are explained. Ah, the memories.

I now mostly use Extreme Programming key practices instead of the data driven methods of PSP. Some day I’ll figure out Model-View-Presenter and be able to automatically test my user interfaces. Maybe someday I’ll even figure out how use Fitnesse to test my embedded systems.

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