my Computer Quest

21 October, 2014

Agile Experience Design: my first take on agile concept

English: This poster provides a good visual of the standard Agile Software Development methodology. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

21-October-2014

It have been over two months now, I never realized that I was not able to post at least a short description of the book that I finished reading some time back in the 2nd week of August.

Anyway, I patiently completed the book, my first on the Agile series, and there was much concept to grasp as written there, and I was glad that while not many, some of the ideas presented therein, I already practice - or believe to be the ideal.

Functional and aesthetic.

Not just functional. Not just pretty. They must be both. Nobody would buy a device that is functional but not pleasing. And nobody stays with a pretty device that doesn't work quite well.

And while I can't remember now which book or which article I came across with in the past, one that I will always practice is this: to engage my users, to see how they use the software, how they engage the solutions and applications that I design, develop and implement.

We are not perfect, but by consistently looking for ways and means of tweaking and enhancing the features of a software, even without the user asking for it, we will be exhibiting continuous improvement.

But then again, I found that in Linkedin, not all software developers believe that Agile is the way to go. Yet there are those who deem that waterfall methodology is one that is already dormant, near extinction.

What's my take?

I go for agile. But the truth is, when you design a software, management will still prefer the written design, in its totality and completeness (whatever that includes and entails) - one that they can "visualize", and put their signature on - rather than a blank sheet with bits and pieces of (well-designed?) software piece parts.

Here's the book again: Agile experience design: a digital designer's guide to agile, lean, and continuous

I learned new things, but new things don't immediately take over the rein. So we're in the balance now.

Till then!

06 October, 2014

Windows Media Player can't save playlist - solved!

Windows Media Player simplified logo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

06-Oct-2014

Okay, I admit I have to put the date. Whenever I browse for solutions to problems that I encounter now and then, and find an article that seems to be the answer, I am very, very disappointed when I find later on, after reading and studying and all, the information and suggestions and solutions presented therein, that the article is already outdated!

Anyway, this one, regarding the solution to Windows Media Player not able to save playlist, is not going to be outdated - perhaps not for a very long time!

As I have said in my reply to a Windows forum, that problem didn't bug me even though I observed it for some time already. And why not? Because I have other players, like Media Player Classic Home Cinema, and VLC. Two classics that is readily available (and able) to take over Windows Media Player!

Until recently, that I had to run over a series of video tutorials, that I had to make Windows Media Player be able to save playlists, as I had to run the videos in sequence.

Now, the articles I found was in a Windows forum, and surprisingly, to the disappointment of the users airing the same exasperation and frustration over and over again, the situation was even made worse - because the suggestions and solutions offered by MS folks were, well, not fixing the problem, and what's more, there were more than one from MS who gave solutions that didn't work!

For example, they suggested to:
1. Run Windows Media Player Settings - didn't work
2. Uninstall/Reinstall Windows Media Player - didn't work
3. Delete the folder 'Media Player'

I simply listed the suggestions and omitted the details. And mind you, item #2 isn't one simple task. That entails restarting your machine!

Now, one user gave one suggestion, which is to select the folder where you'd keep your playlists and all, well, that worked! I would deduce from that step that when installing Windows Media Player, some defaults are set, and if users log in and use the computer, then that default would clash or conflict with the other users' settings. I was wondering why MS guys don't know that. Too much advises 'by the book'?

How is that solution executed?
1. Open up Windows Media Player.
2. If menu isn't showing, click on 'Switch to Library'.
3. Click on 'Organize > Manage libraries > Music' (you can do 'Video' afterwards).
4. Delete/Add as you desire.

What I did was delete whatever was in there, then selected my own folder for Music. Then Videos. Curious still, I assigned the folder 'Media Player' for my user account, the one that didn't work, as mentioned in item #3 above. Interestingly, it worked, when done from the Windows Media Player 'Organize' menu.

So there, it was that simple, but took some time to get fixed. I now can save playlists. Hurray!

Till then.

25 August, 2014

Partitioning, GRUB and Boot-Repair

Tux, the Linux penguin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sunday afternoon, 24-Aug-2014

I was configuring the pagefile.sys partitions in my Windows 8.1 laptop, which is currently also having dual-boot feature – yes, I am running Ubuntu Linux and Windows 8.1 in the same machine, and I am always enamored by the simplicity and ease of use of Linux. But that time I was in Windows, and having read some useful article which tells of how to make pagefile.sys work better, I proceeded to execute the necessary changes.

First point is to use a space in a drive other than where your OS is installed, and better yet, create a partition all for the page file’s use. However, you can’t ever get away from creating a page file in the OS’s same drive – this has its own use. So now, you need to have 2 partitions for the page file, one in the drive where your OS is installed, and another in a separate drive. How big is the size? This is a big question, and the standard answer is 1.5x your installed RAM size. Not exactly correct, the guy said. Primary use of page file is to move from RAM whatever memory of inactive programs into the page file. So how big is that? Not really big. Minimum? 1GB. Maximum, twice of that. So simple math would yield 2GB. That is all you need. Quite small, eh? Just enough. That is why you need to have the page file in the (usual) installation drive for the OS, which is C: drive, because of error and crashes, when there is no time to reach the other paging file in the other drive. To be convenient, just set aside 4GB to 8GB. How you divide between the 2 partitions, that is entirely up to you.

I thought that I was all set, and proceeded to go and create the partition, so I downloaded and installed EaseUS Partition Master, and get it to work on my requirements. Easily I identified where I would be slicing off the 8GB, and that was divided into 3.5GB from C: drive, and 5GB from P: drive. With the ease of use provided by EaseUS Partition Manager, that was a breeze. Just right-click on the drive, and drag either the bar on the left or on the right, to create a space before or after it. Really, it is all that easy. I clicked on OK, then on Apply, which asked for a restart.

I yielded. And that’s when the problem started.

GRUB failed, and it stopped on a prompt that I have never seen before. And it is indicating something like ‘unrecognized drive’ or ‘unknown drive’. I immediately guessed that it was the newly-partitioned space that is still pending processing. I remembered that it was after P: partition that the \sda14 formatted as EXT4 is located, and that might have impacted GRUB.

I almost panicked. Hey, it is only about 5 months since the last disaster happened – Ubuntu Linux installation was done by mistake, overriding Windows, and fortunately, I was able to recover much of my documents, especially the important ones.

I composed myself for some time, trying to figure out, what happened, and what can be done to do recovery. At least I reasoned to myself that Windows and Linux are still intact, since nothing was done, except that the additional partition may have affected GRUB – I still don’t know why.

And to verify my guess, I turned on my other laptop, thought hard on what I should be searching for, until I typed, ‘how to fix GRUB’. One guide told of doing some manual recovery using a Live Linux stick, which I could say works to a certain degree, but no completely. I got to see GRUB, but not the usual menu, which is supposed to show Windows and Linux. Only Linux shows, and when I selected it, it still didn’t boot up to Ubuntu Linux.

I continued to search for other possible recovery methods, and that is when I saw Boot-Repair – one that you install, and it will do the recovery for you.

I installed it, and run it. First time, I didn’t get it to work; I still wasn’t able to get GRUB boot into Linux.

I did another Linux Live stick session, and this time, using the data from the manual recovery article, which identifies the Linux installation partition, and the GRUB partition (which indicates ‘boot’). I went to the Advanced settings, and assigned the MBR to the partition carrying ‘boot’ ID, run the recovery as provided by Boot Repair apps, and that fixed the problem.

When I did a restart, I see the Windows and Ubuntu choices, and yes, there is another, I guess, from the previous run, where I didn’t specifically indicate the MBR partition. I guess I will look for ways to remove that, so it doesn’t cause any other problem, but point is, my GRUB was repaired, and that only took some time, about one hour or so.