Angry Rage Monkey

Factoid…

A single Krill is approximately 1/3rd calorie. 

UIWebView is not always the answer…

Note: This is going to be a rather technical post, so apologies to the non programmers amongst you.

When it comes to drawing things on the screen in an iOS (those devices that include the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPod touch), it seems over and over again the answer you find is:

Use a UIWebView

Want to display some rich text on the screen? Use a web view.  Want to show a PDF? Use a web view.  Want to draw a SVG image on the screen? Use a web view.

The last example is especially egregious.  Because what the so called “Experts” are saying is that every time you want to display a illustrated image on the screen, you should create a mini web browser and put it on the screen.

This approach has its places.  I mean, if you want to display some help text, then yes a web view is a great way to do that.  It even makes sense for displaying a PDF to the user — though using Quick Look may be a better answer.  But just for a rich text label? That is insanity.  The web view is not a lightweight component.  You should put multiple of them on the screen just because you are too lazy to figure out another way.

And there are other ways, as it turns out.  But the “Experts” — and by that I mean the people who are most active in answering posts on places like CocoaDev, Stack Overflow, and the like.  Just like in Swing components can take HTML to represent rich text.  This is not the same thing (and not as heavyweight) as embedding a web view.  There is also a whole framework in Cocoa called Core Text, just for rendering rich text on the screen.

But far to many of these experts (enough with the sarcastic quotes) found the hammer that is the web view, and make all their problems look like nails.  It also means that for genuine issues that don’t have easy solutions (like rendering SVG), have aren’t going out and making nice open source libraries to do just those things.

Odd are that someone is going to email me a link to just that thing, and I and I want to make it perfectly clear that it doesn’t disprove my point.

Cocoa and Cocoa touch are amazing application frameworks (though hampered by a language that was the height of what 1985 had to offer), but they are far from perfect.  Nothing is after all.  When you run into one of those odd places where it lets us down, we shouldn’t just grab the hammer, we should make sure we are using the right tool for the job.  And when that tool can’t be found, we should make it, and share it with our peers.

I am far from a Cocoa Expert (though I get the job done), but even I know that. 

So the next person who suggests using a UIWebView to display anything other than a HTML document, is going to get hit across the face with a brining haddock.  

Why? The brine makes it sting more…

Avoid DIYBin.com like the plague

Disclaimer: Every story has two sides.  This is mine, and should be considered my opinion (except for the areas I can explicitly prove).

After 46 days from the day I placed my order, I finally got a refund from DIYBin.  As such I would suggest that everyone avoid them like the plague, and do not do business with them.

I don’t know if DIYBin is a scam (hoping people just cut their losses), or if DIYBin is a ponzi scheme (using money from orders, to pay for their other ventures), or if they are simply incompetent.

My best guess is that they don’t actually have very much inventory on hand at all.  Once you place an order they then wait for other similar orders to come in before they buy from other vendors.

This is what happened to me: I wanted a component from the Chinese company seedstudio.com, unfortunately shipping on the item would have been $60 (on an $18 component). So I looked for a US supplier.  DIYBin had showed up on various google shopping searches and I was looking for good vendors, so I gave them a try — ordering the component in question, and a few other things.

Nearly a week after my order was placed, it was still listed as “pending” on DIYBin, so I contacted them.  Despite the fact that their site claims they will get back to you within 1 day, it was 4 days before they got back to me to say that they were “looking into my order”.

After two weeks they finally told me my order had been delayed because of Hurricane Irene — despite the fact that DIYBin is located in Miami, and wasn’t affected much by Irene — and was then told I would have a tracking number within 24 hours.

It is important to note that by this point I was no longer asking where my order was, but for a refund.  They neither acknowledged that fact, or gave me a tracking number.  During this whole experience I asked for a refund more than four times, and they never acknowledged that fact until the very end.  What I did get was lots of excuses, none of which made a lot of sense.

Finally I felt I had no choice but to file a dispute with PayPal.  I must say that PayPal’s process is easy to use, very friendly, and keeps you updated every step of the way.  This is why I can say that DIYBin never responded to PayPal’s dispute email, until the day before the deadline (when PayPal would have ruled against them).

Two days before the deadline DIYBin contacted me to say that they could not give me a refund while the dispute was still pending.  This is not true.  Indeed one of the ways a dispute can be settled is by issuing a refund.  So either DIYBin was ignorant of the process, or (in my opinion) DIYBin was lying.

I informed them they there could indeed give me a refund while a dispute is still active, and that if I did not receive one by the PayPal deadline, I felt I would have to file a claim with the Attorney General of Florida.

I received my refund the next day, one day before the deadline.

A few facts about DIYBin (some of them catty):

• Despite the fact that the order was played though DIYBin.com, the PayPal payee is Animusoft.  DIYbin is either a side venture of the founder of Animusoft, or a subsidiary of Animusoft.
• Animusoft claims to be a company with products and services that include industrial and military robotics and UAVs.  They claim to be “working with” the Army, Navy, Airforce, DARPA, etc; but give no explanation how. 
• Until recently their careers page used a picture that clearly displayed the iStockPhoto watermark, meaning (most likely) they had not properly licensed the image.  The image was taken down a few days ago.
• Both DIYBin, and Animusoft still link to the Open Robot Kickstarter project, which ended Sept 7th, 2011; and raised only $377 of their $50,000 goal.
• According to this LinkedIn profile, the founder of both DIYBin and Animusoft, and is also a Sr Software Architect with Acceller Inc

I want to be very careful to say that none of these factoids prove anything, but in my opinion, they paint a picture of someone who is overselling themselves, and the ventures they have started.

There is nothing wrong with being employed and being an entrepreneur.  Lord knows companies will claim any high profile organization that has ever bought anything from them as a client.  And there is nothing wrong with ambition or reaching for the starts.

However, if you do play that game, you have to be able to deliver.  You have to be able to keep your promises, or you need to set expectations to what you can meet.  

I don’t believe there was a deliberate attempt to defraud with DIYBin, but something closer (again in my opinion) to incompetence.

So I cannot in good conscience ever do business with any DIYBin, Animusoft, or (by association) Acceller.  It is up to you to make your own decisions, but be forewarned.

Dear Open Source People…

(apologies to people who have exactly no idea what I am talking about here)

The day I will give OpenOffice [nee StarOffice, LibreOffice, NeoOffice] a fair evaluation, is the day I can receive a word doc that contains:

• a table of contents
• structured paragraphs (ie containing numbering and indentation via styles)
• paragraph/section border

Make a handful of minor changes, save that document back to Word format, and have it be at least 99% similar to the original’s formatting.

I have been trying this experiment for more than a decade now, and I have yet to see anything that comes close.

So — random zealot who keeps insisting OpenOffice is “just the same” and has apparently never really tried to use it — until that day, no I will not consider using it.

Nor am I holding my breath…

After 27 years of waiting, I have Finally been summoned to Jury Duty.  I am actually excited!