The summary below describes major new features, items of note and breaking changes. The full list of issues is also available for those with access to the Encodo issue tracker.

Highlights

• Lots of bug fixes and improvements for the Winform UI and German translations with the release of Punchclock on this version. (QNO-5162, QNO-5159, QNO-5158, QNO-5157, QNO-5156, QNO-5140, QNO-5155, QNO-5145, QNO-5111, QNO-5107, QNO-5106, QNO-5104, QNO-5015)
• DateTimeExtensions.GetDayOfWeek() had a leap-day bug... [More]

This article was originally published on the Encodo Blogs.

This first-ever Voxxed Zürich was hosted at the cinema in the SihlCity shopping center in Zürich on March 3rd. All presentations were in English. The conference was relatively small—333 participants—and largely vendor-free. The overal technical level of the presentations and participants was quite high. I had a really nice time and enjoyed a lot of the presentations.

There was a nice common thread running through all of the... [More]

At the beginning of the year, we worked on an interesting project that dipped into IOT (Internet of Things). The project was to create use cases for Crealogix’s banking APIs in the real world. Concretely, we wanted to show how a customer could use these APIs in their own workflows. The use cases were to provide proof of the promise of flexibility and integrability offered by well-designed APIs.

Watch 7–minute video of the presentation

The Use Cases

Football Club Treasurer

Activity Stream in the AppThe first use... [More]

Since Trump won the primaries, the press and representatives on both sides of the aisle in America have stepped up their level of panic to at least DEFCON2. Nearly everyone who’s anyone is pulling on the handbrake as hard as they can to prevent the ever-more imminent disaster of a President Trump. At this point, the entirety of the press has nearly forgotten that Hillary and Sanders are even running in the other party’s primary because Trump is doing such a good job making Trumpzilla/the... [More]

The Trumpdozer rolls on, showing the world the real America. The article How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone) makes the case that Trump is the logical result of the American electoral process, which is not to be confused with the presidency itself, which while often cruel and capricious is not really a joke. People die because of it. As Taibbi says,

“The presidency is serious. The presidential electoral process, however, is a sick joke, in which everyone loses except the people behind the... [More]”

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

In several articles last year[1], I went into a lot of detail about the configuration and startup for Quino applications. Those posts discuss a lot about what led to the architecture Quino has for loading up an application.

Some of you might be wondering: what if I want to start up and run an application that doesn’t use Quino? Can I build applications that don’t use any fancy metadata because they’re super-simple and don’t even need to store any data? Those are the kind of utility applications... [More]

The news is that the FBI has requested that Apple comply with a court order to crack a single iPhone—that belonging to one of the suicide killers at the San Bernardino massacre last year.

A lot has been said about this case that is wrong. I’ve read a few articles and comments from relatively knowledgable sources and what they have to say makes a bit more sense than the typically hyperbolic interpretation in the major media—and, of course, social networking sites.

The Law is Bigger than You... [More]

1. No matter how sunny it is or how dry the streets are, 15ºC in February means a windy, windy bike ride. It’s cold somewhere and the warm air is hurrying to get there. Still, awesome to be back outside.
2. The Swiss are not nearly as prone to nationalism as the French. This, despite the obvious fact that Switzerland chose to blow a hole in the middle of the EU with their absence while France joined a union with its age-old enemies Germany, Spain and England. The French have a real problem with... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

This is an old post that I never finished when I released earthli WebCore 3.5 almost a year ago. The design analysis is still pretty relevant, as are the conclusions about flexbox.

We released version 3.4 of the earthli WebCore over a year ago, in June 2013. That release introduced a new overall style that was both looked more modern and also conformed to recent design/development standards. See that article for more information about what would turn out to have been stage one of two stages of... [More]

At Encodo, we’ve got a relatively long history with Git. We’ve been using it exclusively for our internal source control since 2010.[1]

Git Workflows

When we started with Git at Encodo, we were quite cautious. We didn’t change what had already worked for us with Perforce.[2] That is: all developers checked in to a central repository on a mainline or release branch. We usually worked with the mainline and never used personal or feature branches.

Realizing the limitation of this system, we next... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]

1. Stalker (1979) — 9/10
2. Winter Soldier (1972) — 9/10
3. Je ne suis pas Charlie (2015) — 9/10
4. Hard to be a God (2013) — 8/10
5. Betty Blue (1986) — 7/10
6. Dallas Buyer’s Club (2014) — 7/10
7. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) — 8/10
8. Ant-Man (2015) — 6/10

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of over 900 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each... [More]

1. Trophy Kids (2013) — 6/10
2. Dark Shadows (2012) — 4/10
3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) — 8/10
4. Jessica Jones (2015) — 9/10
5. Mr. Robot (2015) — 9/10
6. The Sting (1973) — 9/10
7. Blindness (2008) — 7/10
8. Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014) — 7/10
9. Eddie Murphy: Delirious (1983) — 6/10
10. Return to Algiers (2000) — 5/10
11. Ted 2 (2015) — 5/10

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb... [More]

1. L’Arcano Incantatore (1996) — 7/10
2. Tom Segura: Mostly Stories (2016) — 7/10
3. Lilya 4-Ever (2002) — 9/10
4. Taxidermia (2006) — 8/10
5. The Tenant (1976) — 7/10
6. Straw Dogs (1971) — 5/10
7. Du rififi chez les hommes (1955) — 8/10
8. Shame (2011) — 7/10
9. Vier Minuten (2006) — 7/10

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of over 900 ratings publicly available. I’ve... [More]

I find James Howard Kunstler to be worth reading more often than not. He writes engagingly and his insight into the devolution of capitalist society can be quite valuable, But he’s been more and more prone to going off the rails when he discusses issues of race. It’s usually not out-and-out racism; there’s a kernel of an idea that’s worth discussing, but usually not the way he’s discussing it. His phrasing betrays a tone-deafness that underlies much of his opinion in these areas.

For example,... [More]

1. Men Behind the Sun (1988) — 3/10
2. Come and See (Idi i Smotri) (1985) — 9/10
3. Place Beyond the Pines (2015) — 5/10
4. Lovelace (2013) — 7/10
5. Bad Lieutenant (1992) — 7/10
6. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (2009) — 8/10
7. The Holy Mountain (1973) — 7/10
8. Tetsuo, the Iron Man (1989) — 6/10
9. House of Games (1987) — 6/10
10. Repulsion (1965) — 7/10

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and... [More]

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of over 900 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood. YMMV.

Dead Calm (1989) — 5/10

Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill star as couple who’ve lost their child in a car crash that... [More]

I started using Netflix in Switzerland about 5 months ago. I initially made these notes about 2 months after I started using the Samsung TV App. In the last three months, while Netflix has made updates to their app from time to time, the core usability and browsability issues have not changed.

Browsing

Permanent billboard

The browser doesn’t make efficient use of screen space. The top half of the screen is always reserved for a billboard for the currently selected item. This choice makes... [More]

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of over 900 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood. YMMV.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) — 6/10

Willem Dafoe is Jesus, Barbara Hershey Mary Magdalene and Harvey... [More]

The article Learn you Func Prog on five minute quick! by Verity Stob (The Register) provides a typically twisted and unhelpful overview of the state of functional programming in this 21st-century renaissance—heralded decades ago by Lisp programmers. It includes an honest overview of the major players, including Scala, for which the “pro” and “con” are the same (a “[c]lose relationship with Java […]”) and ending with JavaScript, for which the “pro” is “It’s what you’ll end up using.”

The discussion continues with rules:... [More]