Tips for Twits

Caveats: This post is not to criticize Ricoh printer’s lack of Mac OS X support. It merely provides a workaround to do printing grayscale on Ricoh C2051 for Mac. What you can’t are printing colour and printing grayscale high quality than 600dpi.

There is a good reason why we need to pay a hefty S$1000 to be able to print from Mac. It is expensive to get the PostScript level 3 option on the Ricoh C2051 because Ricoh has to pay a license to Adobe. Ricoh picks genuine PostScript driver which ensures colour matching and high quality printing, while other manufacturers make compatible PostScript language chips.

So instead of using the original PostScript interpreter, we are going to use Ghostscript (an open-source PostScript interpreter that includes integrated support for the CUPS printing system in Mac OS X.) and Foomatic-Rip (a configurable printing filter to generate appropriate output using PostScript-Printer-Description (PPD)).

• Grab and install the required packages (pxlmono-xxx, foomatic-RIP-xxx and ghostscript-xxx) at Openprinting: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/pxlmono
• Once you are done, open your favourite web-browser, enter http://localhost:631/admin as the address. Authenticate yourself.
• Click on Add Printer – you should see the Ricoh 2051 printer under Discovered Network Printers. If not, select “LPD/LPR Host or Printer” under “Other Network Printers” and continue. Enter the “lpd://hostaddress”. Optionally, enter location, description for the printer.
• Choose Ricoh for Make/Manufacturer. Choose “Ricoh Aficio MP C2051 PXL” for the Model/Driver select dropdown. If there is no such entry, download the pxlcolor-Ricoh PPD at http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Ricoh/Ricoh-Aficio_MP_C2051
• In order to set Default Options to Grayscale and two-sided-long-edge, navigate to http://localhost:631/admin . Under Printer heading, click on Manage Printers, then select the printer we just added. Under Administration dropdown, select Set Default Options, then click on General tab, set Grayscale for Color Mode, Long-edge for Duplex.
• Finally, fire up your terminal and run the follow command (ignore %, it represents the terminal prompt)

  % sudo SystemStarter restart PrintingServices

Even if you have set the default monochrome printing option for the printer, some applications will not pick the default options automatically. So before submitting the print job, you have to select Printer Features in the Print dialog, choose Grayscale instead of Color for Color Mode option. Happy printing!

About a month ago, Z wrote a collection of his thoughts on attracting top talent. Serving as HR Manager at Savant Degrees for about a year, it was something that I had to face on a daily basis. However, a lot of the challenges that I faced came from sieving out the top talent from the not-so-top talent.

One day late last year, I received a particularly bad application that put me in a very foul mood, sparking a rant on Facebook. I wrote a note on my pet peeves from a HR Manager’s perspective and I was pleasantly surprised by the positive replies I received.

So today, I hope you enjoy the view from the flip side. It’s a toned down, less ranty version of my thoughts on impressing your recruiters and getting that job at your fave startup.

—-

My pet peeves and what smart applicants should do instead:

1) Missing cover letter

As we are a small company, all of our applications are done by email. The great thing about email is that it allows you to attach files and documents application systems sometimes don’t allow you to. Furthermore, on the careers section of our website, it says to submit your cover letter and resume. (This is a particularly bad sign for developers, not getting conjunctions right… but moving on.)

However, I often receive email applications saying, “Please see my resume attached for the XYZ position. I hope to hear from you soon”.

Resumes are just a record of what you’ve done, which may or may not be relevant to what I’m looking for. Especially if you’re a fresh graduate and probably have a mish-mash of internships and student gigs. Sometimes I don’t even look at a resume until the interview cos most of the time, it doesn’t add much value to me when narrowing down candidates at the beginning of a recruiting process.

A better way to get attention from the recruiter is to write a letter to tell them why you want to work for their company and in this particular role. A number of our best performers now impressed us with the passion they displayed in their cover letters. We had someone come to us with 5 years of experience as an editor, but wrote us a very spirited letter about why she would make a good programmer. We gave her the job and she’s doing really well now.

2) The super long resume

Google “resume templates” and chances are you’ll get tips that say “keep your CV to one page, max two”. There’s a reason why all these websites say the same thing – it really makes a difference.

I’ve gotten resumes that were 12 pages long listing out the person’s entire work, school and life stories. I really do not need to know every last detail. This problem seems to be more for techies who want to show off what languages and frameworks they know how to use, but my point is, it’s TMI.

And in the words of Mark Twain, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” If you didn’t have time to apply for a job, I’m not sure how much effort you’re gonna be putting into your work. So keep it short. Seriously. (Note: this principle does not apply directly to the one-line “Here’s my resume attached” email)

Like I said on my previous point, the stuff you’ve done may or may not be relevant to the position you’re applying for. What I would suggest is that you pick conversation points for your resume, those jobs and experiences that let you learn skills that can be applied to this job or lets you demonstrate your personality really well.

If you really need to write all your experience down, just use LinkedIn. Then you can add a link on your resume. Tip: It makes great reading material for when your recruiter is bored and wants to look productive Extra brownie points!

3) “Err, what exactly does the company expect me to do?”

As the main inspiration for this post, this is really a problem you can easily avoid.

If you managed to dig up the email address to send your application to, I’m sure you can dig up the job description on my site too. Why would you send me your resume to apply for a job you don’t even know about?! Immediate big red REJECT stamp.

4) Subject title: “Job Application”

Again, this might not apply to big companies that make you fill in application forms on their recruitment portals, but more for smaller companies like mine that still make use of email applications.

I get a ton of emails and although Gmail is awesome with its labels and filters, I’m not diligent at keeping up with them. So if you want me to pull up your application fast, always include the title of the position you’re applying for. That way, when it’s time for me to go through them, I have them neatly searched and yours is definitely gonna be in the pile. Plus you’ve got your kick ass cover letter on that email so I’m gonna sit up and take notice.

Moral of the story: don’t fall through the cracks with lazy subject lines.

5) Don’t call me Mister

First of all, my name is pretty feminine. And also there’s Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. So if you had basic face-stalking abilities or met me before (this one takes the cake), please don’t call me Mr Bi Ying. It’s Miss Wong. Mademoiselle, if you so please.

—-

Well, there you go! So, if you want to get that job, you’ve gotta position yourself as top talent and it starts with the little things. No, hang on, if you think about it, it starts with the big thing – it’s you. Give yourself the best chance and we’ll do the same. Good luck!

We had to setup a EDM/newsletter system for a client. He wanted to consolidated his and his staff email addresses. He sent me a few outlook PST files. We imported it into outlook and found that besides the few thousand emails in the contact list, there’s another few thousand more emails in different folders which held email addresses. I figured it would be easy to extract those emails.

Unfortunately, there’s no built in way of doing it in Outlook or Thunderbird. There’s a couple of paid solutions to extract emails from the inbox folders but I had to try it a few more times. After tinkering around with Outlook and Thunderbird, I found a way to extract emails through exporting to CSV.

Simple steps to get email addresses from inbox. These steps are for Office 2007

1. Import emails into Outlook
2. Export to CSV(DOS) (See Figure 1)
3. Open with Excel
4. Select the email column and copy into a new file.
5. Save as CSV.
6. You have it. Use it anywhere you like. CSV is supported for most applications.

Figure 1

Here’s the instructions to export to CSV file.

Step 1: File > Import and Export

Step 2: Export to file

Step 3: Comma Separated Values (DOS)

Step 4: Select folder

Step 5: Export to CSV

Something as simple as getting the sql dump of a database in Microsoft SQL Server (2000, 2005 et al) to a SQL file could be quite a bit complicated (atleast more so as compared to the way we do it in MYSQL). SQL Server Management Studio does a good job of creating scripts that can help you recreate Database Schema. But when it comes to recreating the real Database data through SQL scripting sadly it simply just doesn’t have any simple method to accomplish it (as far as I know it).

The best way to accomplish this MS SQL is by using Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard 1.1. It seems to be a pretty good tool because of its simplicity, stability, accuracy and ease of use. Once you download & install it, you can choose either the tool’s GUI or the command line interface to generate a single SQL script file which can be used to recreate a database (both schema and data). What is mire, there is even a bonus feature of being integrable with Visual Studio!

Download it from the Microsoft Download Page for Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard 1.1

An important component of my role as UI designer and Project Manager at Savant Degrees involves prototyping application concepts for clients, as well as in-house product ideas. Ever since Savant Degrees started out, we have been working with people from all walks of life – partners who are graphic designer, client who play an active role, new experience team members, etc. I have to admit that working with someone new can really be a pain at times. Especially when the different groups speak in different languages (the design team, the HCI team, the development team and the project managers, etc).

I’m sure many of us know what a wireframe is, but how many of us use a proper software to work on a wireframe? For the benefit of people who are new to the term, it simply meant a visual presentation used in web design. Previously, I build simple HTML or drew simple shapes in word document and run through the process with the web developers. After some time, I turn to mockup softwares. I was happy with some but not as much as with Axure.

Before I talk about the tool, I like to explain why it is so important to use mockups.

1. Designing wireframes the right way the first time, cost no more than doing it the wrong way. Creating a paper prototype adds no cost, either- simply print out the wireframe diagrams for the pages a visitor will use to complete the tasks most closely related to achieving his goals and meeting the site’s business objectives.
2. Web Prototyping saves costs of any marketing communication that may be necessary to undo brand damage resulting from poorly functioning web site and a frustrating user experience. Expensive site redesigns are often undertaken to correct those kinds of problems. Adding a few days to create a wireframe and test a prototype ensures that the redesigned site won’t introduce any new causes for user frustration or further erosion of brand equity.
3. Using simple shapes lets you focus on the information design first, to make sure it meets users needs, before moving on to the pretty pictures. For an existing site, wireframes are abstracted from screen shots, with new content, functional, and navigational elements sketched in.

Usually, your client will want to see visual designs as early as possible in the project. If possible, try to delay giving them a design, not before them the mockup.

Why?

One very important reason is to save money and time. Why spend on graphics before the underlying information design is complete?

Equally important, colors, fonts and stylistic treatments of logos and other graphical elements can invoke emotional responses (“I hate this pink”; “I love that blue”; “That version of the logo makes me ill”) that distract from the task of determining the best information design for the page.

A wireframe diagrams lets everybody focus on what’s important at this step: clearly understanding what goes on each page, where it goes, and why it goes there, so you can achieve the best overall balance and structure for each page. A wireframe is a sketch of a page-layout idea. The sketch may be rendered in the computer using an illustration application or hand-drawn on paper. Either method is fine, as long as it clearly communicates your ideas.

The information design will evolve as wireframe diagrams change, incorporating results from the usability test at the end of this step, to reflect placement of page elements in ways that better meet user needs. Keeping the information design flexible at this stage will help you create a more positive brand experience over the long term, so you don’t want anyone to develop partisan attachments to a particular look this early in the game.

Despite all that was said. Its sometime hard to say no to your clients request when they have more power over you. Hence, how you manage your project depends on the type of project, your relationship with the client, and your company’s work culture.

Note for Visual Designers

At this point in the process, visual designers should conduct exploratory meetings to understand the client’s visual preferences and the visual elements of the client’s brand. Wait until wireframes are set before showing visual-design treatments of the pages to the client.

Note for Clients

For clients who insist on seeing visuals earlier rather than later, you can ask visual designers to design page mock-ups representing possible colors, imagery, and look and feel – possible styles of what is being considered – at this stage. However, you should do this only if absolutely necessary – that is, if they won’t take no for an answer – and be sure to emphasize that these mock-ups in no way reflect the final designs (repeat this warning early and often).

Caution the people in the site-owning organization against developing any attachments to these mock-ups, because such attachments will make it difficult it change the visual design later on. Chances are these people will not be happy when they see the final design with text, links and information added to it. Focusing only on wireframes at this stage helps you avoid building unrealistic expectations about the site’s final look and feel, guarding maximum flexibility to evolve the site’s information design as necessary.

What I use

Now, let’s go on to why I personally choose Axure and what it can do for you. Do check out their website, www.axure.com for some videos. Do note that there are many mockup software out there and you should check them out before making a decision. For a good list, check out http://www.sitepoint.com/print/tools-prototyping-wireframing/

Axure RP Pro

* Price: USD$589 – Single User License (Discounted to $539 for 5+ Licenses)

* OS Compatability: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 Server or Vista

Axure allows the tagging of elements with functional specifications, which is excellent when a wireframe itself will not provide adequate information to allow a programmer to code the feature. Having said that, a programmer will normally prefer to receive specifications whether they be tagged to an element or written in a wiki, rather than code based on an interpretation of a wireframe.

I use Axure when I am planning a medium to large scale application which requires documentation (Axure exports all tagged specifications into a neatly laid out document – a big time saver!), functional specifications and HTML prototype (Axure will generate an HTML prototype for you – another time saver, however if you take a look at the code you’ll realise that there is no way it could be used as a basis for the actual production application. Use the prototype to display UX concepts and provide clients with a realistic and tangible model for feedback.)

I could go on for pages about what the product accomplish, but I believe their website, www.axure.com, do a better job in selling their products than in I do. Furthermore, it is not the purpose of this article to review this particular software.

By the way, did I mention I got my copy of Axure for free back when I was a student? Axure gives out free licenses to “good student”. Just email Axure and show them your transcript. See http://www.axure.com/learnMoreBuy.aspx for more info.

Frontend – List

Let us revisit our frontend controller. Surely by now you’ve gotten a better grasp of the controller and models. So we’ll be revisiting those concepts here. So lets say you want to allow users to view you current Twits as well as create a new Tip.

1. Some new file structure loving

   app/
     design/
       frontend/
         base/
           default/
             template/
               twits/
                 - tip_list.phtml
     etc/
       modules/
         - SavantDegrees_All.xml (Or what ever your company name might be)
     code/
       local/
         SavantDegrees/ (Or what ever your company name might be)
           Twits/ (Or whatever your module name might be)
             Block/
               Admin/
                 - Main.php
                 Main/
                   - Grid.php
                 - Edit.php
                 Edit/
                   - Form.php
                 - New.php
                 New/
                   - Form.php
               - HelloWorld.php
               - Index.php
             controllers/
               - AdminController.php
               - IndexController.php
             etc/
               - config.xml
             Helper/
               - Data.php
             Model/
               - Tip.php
               Mysql4/
                 - Tip.php
                 Tip/
                   - Collection.php
             sql/
               twits_setup/
                 - mysql4-install-0.2.0.php
                 - mysql4-upgrade-0.1.0-0.2.0.php

   We’ve added a whole nasty branch of subdirectories under app/designs. Read on to understand what its all for…

2. Let us return to our IndexController.php

   <?php
   class SavantDegrees_Twits_IndexController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action
   {
    
       public function indexAction()
       {
   		$this->loadLayout();
   		$this->getLayout()->getBlock('content')->append(
   			$this->getLayout()->createBlock('twits/index')
       	);
           $this->renderLayout();
       }
   }

   Hold your horses, this code is EXACTLY the same as the Part 1. Its just a revision. However, that being said, we see that in Part 1, we made the system create a Block called index. That’s an opening…

3. So let us modify our Index.php block:

   <?php
   class SavantDegrees_Twits_Block_Index extends Mage_Core_Block_Template
   {
       public function __construct()
       {
           parent::__construct();
           $this->setTemplate('twits/tip_list.phtml');
       }
    
       public function getTips()
       {
       	$model = Mage::getModel('twits/tip');
       	$collection = $model
       	    	->getCollection()
       	    	->load();
    
           return $collection->getItems();
       }
   }

   What the difference here? We made the block load the template from twits/tip_list.phtml. We can create/find this file in /app/design/frontend/default/default/template/twits/tip_list.phtml. Some explanation is due here:

   • When you say setTemplate in the block, it means, use this file as the presentation/view
   • This file exists in the some subdirectory of /app/design/frontend/default/default/template. That is the path to your default template. Even though you may have other templates, this is the default 1. So when Magento cant find your template file in the other template directories, it always reverts back to this folder. Its a directory form of inheritance/ancestory/precedence.
4. Lastly, the tip_list.phtml file:

   <?php
   $_tips = $this->getTips();
   if ($_tips) {
   	$count = 0;
   	foreach ($_tips as $i=>$tip) {
   ?>
   		<div class="tip">
   			<div class='title'><?= $tip->getTitle() ?></div>
   			<div class='author'><?= $tip->getAuthor() ?></div>
   			<p><?= $tip->getContents() ?></p>
   		</div>
   <?php
   	}
   }
   ?>

   Since the whole purpose of tip_list.phtml is to prepare the view for the list of tips, it obviously needs to get the data from somewhere. It turns out, the Template is the extension of the Block. So by calling $this->getTips(), we’re calling the Block's getTips() method.

5. There you have it! check your tips list at http://127.0.0.1/magento/index.php/twits

If it works for you, leave a comment! =)

read users' comments (10)

Hi all its us again, In the past few months we’ve been asked many a times to help improve the progressbar code. We’ve also been referenced by several websites as THE progressbar to use. In all, we felt we owed it to you guys to make it better.

So here we are, after all those emails and bug reports, we finally got down to it. Always good to take a couple of months to have a fresh prespective of things. We ripped out the old code and made it much better and more extensible than its predecessors. So much that we decided it was enough to qualify as a major revision.

Let see whats been done…

• Cleaned up the code, yes its lighter, cleaner faster. (Still lacks documentation though)
• Callbacks! Everyone’s favourite
• Max values, you can now set it to be 150/2000 instead of just a percentage
• Text formats. Show 75/100 or 75% by toggling the textFormat accordingly
• Steps, how many steps to get to your target value
• Step Duration, how long each step lasts
• Webkit (Chrome/Safari) compatibility. More like, Webkit Hacks

Once again, many a thanks for all those who have so generously provided the feature requests as well as bug fixes every now and then. And thanks for all your patience in waiting for this new release.
If its working for you, drop us a comment and tell us where we can see your stuff!

Download the new jQuery progressbar here: jQuery progressbar
or view the demo here

Having a good UI is 30% of your customer won. No i dont know, 30% was completely arbitrary but absolutely believable. As such, please dont try to make those icons yourself! As all developers know, we try our best not to reinvent the wheel. Unless the wheel sucks and we have the budget, then we knock ourselves out.
So its time to share those little icon secrets! Where do you find nice icons!?

• famfamfam. If you dont know this site, you should be SHOT. Mark James spent good time making a fantastic set of icons so that everyone else could use them. Kudos to him!
• crystal iconsAnother awesome job done by Everaldo. Download link’s not working. Use this instead. Made primarily for the KDE workspace. Which brings us to my next point
• Any other Linux icons sources. These includes kde-look, tango, interfacelift, deviantart
• Iconfinder. Its new, its awesome and apparently they’re license-friendly! If everything’s as promised, they’re gonna kick some serious internet butt! We’re fans already!
• Ok we admit, sometimes we’re really tempted to use existing packages icons. Joomla has a really nice set.

All in all, plenty of icons. And if that doesnt work out. Go buy some from istockphoto and stock.xchng! They’re the pros for a good reason!
And a final word in licensing. Respect it. Not so much for the hard work, but more for the fact that designers can do what we cannot. Even if we tried, we probably wouldn’t have as much flair. Just like magicians.

In our work we like to create Google Maps links for our client’s (offices, stores, etc). However, the larger our clients presence, the more random links there are bound to be. When it comes to using Google Map’s javascript API to control the map, thats still perfectly fine. But how do I create a google maps link that only shows 1 entry? Turns out, there are several ways to do this:

1. Manipulate the request such that it only shows your entryHow? For example, searching for “Holland, Singapore” will lead us to about 1,356 results. See here. So lets tweak it a little:
   • Append &mrt=yp to the url – That returns us all the business listings. (852 results)
   • Append &start=16 to the url – That skips the first 16 results (Shows results 17-26 of 852)
   • Append &num=2 to the url – That returns us only 2 results (Only shows 2 results)

   For a more complete listing of Google Maps Parameters, consult mapki.com. Kudos to those guys for compiling that list. Really useful stuff
   So there you have it, a simple way to link your business such that its the only entry there. However this method is relatively dangerous. Why? Cause you’ve got no idea of the exact ordering that Google maps may return. Today you could be entry 17, surely not in a year (hopefully for the better). As such, this is not the recommended solution.

2. Use the address with your long/lat coordinates to generate your entry.
   • First get your GPS coordinates, there are a number of ways to do this. Check our this link
   • Then create your link via the following structure: http://www.google.com/maps?&ie=UTF8&hl=en&q=[urlescaped address]&ll=[GPS lat,long]&z=[Zoom]&iwloc=A
   • Still too troublesome? We’ve created a simple tool for our clients to use. Save yourself some time. Try it!

   Done! Whats the downside to this? You can only show the address for the business. Because searching by business names returns us way too many results. So instead, we have to search for an address, Google interprets this as an address and only returns 1 result (which is the whole point of geocoding). At this point its easy to the map to what we need. We’d use this typically for this nifty little “Find us on a map” links (instead of embedding the actual map on your site).

Once again, if you’d rather embed Google maps directly into your site via the JS, then your options are much more open.
Good luck! Let us know if it works for you, of if you find a better way of doing things!

Yeah i just love seeing the awe on my student’s faces when i use my phone and my geek geeky geekiest green laser pointer to teach a class. The software is really simple. After trying out Phonepoint and Wireless Presenter (comes preinstalled in my Nokia E66), I’ve come to pick out Phonepoint as the winner!

Its really simple. Bluetooth connect, open the software on ur PC, open the app on your mobile. Hey ho presto! you’re ready to go! Try it! its free to try but $19.99 for a license. I’d say thats worth the money if i get to walk the room looking good.