2009!

still here. yep, opened this year rather late, but it's no biggie. 2008 was a great year, and i have high expectations of myself this year. nothing works until you make it work by finding how it should work then putting that knowledge into practice. so go out and make it a great year for yourself. and one more thing: new year resolutions suck. don't bother. just make normal decisions and live by them.

ends and rants

been meaning to mention it for a while now: Hellsing is over. bit of a letdown, that ending. ah well. guess one can't have everything. no, i'm not telling you! go read it yourself. also, watched the last episode of Ga-Rei Zero last night. awesome ending. hope we get to see an anime series released soon. yes, i know i wondered what trashy anime was released when i watched the first two episodes. if it wasn't for someone else, i'd not have bothered watching anymore. boy, am i glad i did complete it.

on a not-so-light note, Chromium lacks print preview - and i'm not the only one missing it. what are the developers thinking? what good is a browser with no print preview (quite a bit, but i'm trying to stress a point here)?

i was thinking recently of the fact that Opera 10 alpha passes the Acid 3 test. great news for web developers and designers, but does that mean Opera will get a larger market share? and how does that translate into cash for Opera? passing the Acid 3 test does not mean that more users — a demographic much larger than the demographic of web designers or developers — will use Opera 10. yet, the fact that Opera 10 passes a test that the more popular browsers fail is a good thing - if you ask me

Kindergarten

Thanks, Dayo for sending this to me

A mom was concerned about her kindergarten son walking to school. He didn't want his mother to walk with him. She wanted to give him the feeling that he had some independence but yet know that he was safe. So she had an idea of how to handle it. She asked a neighbor if she would please follow him to school in the mornings, staying at a distance, so he probably wouldn't notice her.

She said that since she was up early with her toddler anyway, it would be a good way for them to get some exercise as well, so she agreed. The next school day, the neighbor and her little girl set out following behind Timmy as he walked to school with another neighbor girl he knew. She did this for the whole week. As the two walked and chatted, kicking stones and twigs, Timmy's little friend noticed the same lady was following them as she seemed to do every day all week. Finally she said to Timmy, 'Have you noticed that lady following us to school all week? Do you know her?'

Timmy nonchalantly replied, 'Yeah, I know who she is.' The little girl said, 'Well, who is she?' 'That's just Shirley Goodnest,' Timmy replied, 'and her daughter Marcy.' 'Shirley Goodnest? Who the heck is she and why is she following us?' 'Well,' Timmy explained, 'every night my Mom makes me say the 23rd Psalm with my prayers, 'cuz she worries about me so much. And in the Psalm, it says, 'Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life', so I guess I'll just have to get used to it!'

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

May Shirley Goodnest and Marcy be with you today and always. I'm sure you smiled! I sure did.

You know your internet sucks…

…when it isn't worth it logging in to Megaupload to download a file for free to cut the waiting time from 45 to 25 seconds. condiments of the seasoning to all.

Updates, updates...

i'm supposed to have moved my focus from the SMS part of my employer's business to IVR. i've had to deal with a flowchart-based development environment i find very annoying. plus, since i had no prior experience with telephony systems, quite a bit is lost on me. i've mostly been fumbling around in the dark.

this morning, my boss called me and asked me if i could develop a voice broadcast application using that environment. since i'd been having problems with it, i said i'd try. since then, i have failed in trying to get the application to make outbound calls. the alternative was to call in a consultant who's very good with Asterisk. i called him, but not after i discovered Asterisk.NET. before long, i had learned a little about the Asterisk Manager Interface and AGI, both of which i never knew existed before today, even though i've played around with Asterisk as part of my job. i also found the Sipek VoIP projects site. hopefully, i'll be able to build the application needed either by using Asterisk.NET or the Sipek SDK. either way, things should work out now.

Python 3.0 is out (i'm a couple days late on this one), and it isn't backward compatible with the 2.X series. looks like they really gave some thought as to where Python should go. i guess that means development of the 2.X series will basically be mostly bugfixes from now on. still, there seems to be a lot to like about the new Python, even though it's slower than 2.6 on the pystone benchmark (i cannot believe they actually took a line from Basic and added the <> operator in Python. thank goodness it's been removed in 3.0!). let's see how things go, especially with open-source projects that use Python. i'm personally wondering where IronPython goes (yes, they did it - got me sold on .NET. doesn't mean i now despise C++ though. i still plan on using it from time to time).

and thanks to Segun who gave me a ride yesterday when i forgot my wallet at home. you're the best, bro!

Looking for a .NET SMPP implementation - Part 2

seems my previous post was somewhat more popular than usual, judging from the two comments i got on it. so, i'm writing this more or less in response to those comments.

my answer is: it depends on a number of factors. what do you want to do? create a client or server? is working with unmanaged code a requirement? what kind of timeline do you have? is reading through code and class diagrams your way of learning, or is it one step above swallowing broken glass? must you absolutely have commercial support? what about licensing? when you look at all these, your mileage will definitely vary. at any rate, below i give some of the things i've picked up about these components. hope it helps!

IP*Works

• You have to pay for it beyond the trial period.
• You get commercial support.
• Since it's a sold product in it's 8th major version, it should have been well-tested in production environments and suited for handling large volumes of SMPP traffic (note the emphasis. it may not have).
• You get other components (well, check out the website yourself).
• You probably don't get licensing issues (note the emphasis again).
• There's an SSL version if you need it.
• They have more than .NET if you need it (but those - except for Java - seem to have stopped in version 6).
• i haven't used it, so i can't tell that you can use the component to develop a server.
• website

RoaminSMPP

• it's licensed under the GNU Library General Public License. as far as i know, that allows you use it in commercial, closed-source applications, but i may be wrong. also, you may not want to use LGPL components. then again, using opensource software may make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
• the developer says he's stopped development. any bug fixes may have to come from you.
• documentation is in the source code. literally. there's no other source of documentation short of looking up the binary in a tool such as Red Gate .NET Reflector.
• it's free.
• having access to the source may just be the thing for you to tweak it.
• SourceForge project page

Devshock

• it's free.
• it comes with example code. in VB.NET, no less :(
• one of the sample projects seems to be an SMPP server.
• the site was supposed to come up two months ago (in other words, unless someone mirrors the component, you're out of luck! as it stands, i've uploaded a copy here. someone please tell me if it's illegal with proof, and i'll remove the files).
• since the site is down, i cannot state the license (it's not in the downloaded file). you may have licensing issues here too.
• the assembly is not obfuscated in any way, so you can look it up in Reflector and figure out how it was built.
• website (under construction)

ALT.SMS.SmppClient

• it's free. you can purchase the source code, and get commercial support, free updates, and whatnot.
• quite a bit of the assembly is obfuscated (i guess they should really add something in it like, "buy the source, you cheapskate!"). good luck poking around with Reflector.
• there's a forum, so you and everyone else who uses it can decide to discuss it. don't compare that to paid support, though.
• no visible license. that may be a problem.
• website

SMPPLIB

• written in unmanaged code. has a COM library too, so it can easily be used from .NET.
• another item with no explicit license. sigh.
• it's written in C++ and is MFC dependent.
• you only get the source.
• frozen since 2003.
• website

EasySMPP

• no explict license.
• frozen since 2006.
• looks simple enough to use, but i couldn't get it to work :(
• example program included. there's a gateway using it (and as far as i know, it's the only gateway/simulator that seems to work with it).
• free. opensource.
• in case you missed it, it can be used for servers
• SourceForge project page

BasheerG asked if i tested for performance & high load. no i didn't - i didn't have the space to, since i was (mostly) moved from the SMS arm of my employer's concerns. to answer your other question, if i could afford it, i'd go for the IP*Works first, then RoaminSMPP, then Devshock. i've no idea where i'd place the ALT.SMS.SmppClient. maybe lurking around the forum might help me decide. i'd hate to use the SMPPLIB component because of COM issues. and since EasySmpp didn't work effectively for me, i'd not use it. i hope this helps you and Sandip.

my weekend was an ass...wait, that's not right!

phew! what a weekend! Dad was out of town, so it was just my brother& i at home till last night. man, this was the illest weekend so far - as regards tiredness. i can't believe Friday & Saturday i was retiring before 10pm. dude, i really need some downtime - but i'm afraid that may not be till next month.

spent some time designing a website. unfortunately, it seems sticky-footer layouts are mutually exclusive with centered layouts. i can either allow the content pane be centered in browser window, or i can make the footer stick to the bottom of the browser window. so far, i haven't managed to let it do both.

i usually dislike the mass mail i sometimes get, but this one's got something in it so i'll reprduce it here:

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

Moral

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt.The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a stepping stone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

see y'all some other time

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Rhymin' on Facebook chat

was just wording with Legzitano on Facebook chat, and for some crazy reason, the conversation went like this:

Legzie: tryna stash cash
me: in a flash, smoking brown hash, flipping the ash
Legzie: brown hash is trash
cos you may crash
me: word bro...just tryna make that rhyme
Legzie: lol
me: maybe we should dash? grab some mash? what a bash!
Legzie: good, bro!
you sing like Nash
me: omo, battery don dey run down
Legzie: no vex!
ryhming no easy

i'm almost tempted to agree with the guy who said, "Of all the things i lost, it's my mind i miss the most". almost. but not quite.

Animal Farm

yesterday i found out (courtesy of friends on Facebook) about an event that has quite a number of people abuzz: the assault of some civilians on Monday in Victoria Island by naval servicemen, including someone i knew a couple of years ago. in the aftermath, she - and some other person - is suing the Nigerian Navy to the tune of N100m. personally, i think this is both bad & good:

• why would not moving quickly out of the way of a military higher-up be an 'offence'? i'm a citizen - he's a citizen. the fact that we both serve our country in different ways should make no difference. if anything, the fact that i pay taxes which help to fund the machinery that pays him should be accounted for. unfortunately, like Animal Farm, it's become a case of all being equal, but some more equal than others - whatever in the world that means.
• why would an elderly man sit & watch his aides brutalize people with no show of what Shakespeare called 'the milk of human kindness'? i side with Elihu on this one (Job 32:7, the Bible) - whatever the offence, the level of beating & the treatment given her was overkill.
• if the higher-up is in such a hurry, he should at least have found out that there's always traffic in V/I around that time, and scheduled his coming for some other time it was lighter
• i believe his oath on taking a uniform had some variation of 'to protect and to serve'. how are the nation's best interests protected by forcing people to disobey traffic laws just because you have an inflated opinion of your own worth? 'now all i need to push people around is a uniform'. isn't that self-service at the cost of the nation's morals. it's no wonder so many people think a uniform is a shortcut to a plush life. is he - or any other egotistical military personnel - any different from people in public office who rob the nation blind? i definitely am not going to be saying to my kids: 'Rear-Admiral Arogundade? now that's someone worthy of emulation'. in my opinion, he's no different from any two-bit thug.
• it's good that she sought out advice (bad or good) & decided to take civil action. it means that Nigerians are learning that they have rights that can be protected. i'm hoping that there will be some win for moderation and common sense...but the inmates are running the asylum.

i could go on, but let it suffice to say that things don't look too bright. i hope the support of Uzoma and the rest isn't just for show, that we are willing to take bullets for what we believe is right, instead of merely talking about it and 'thanking God' secretly it didn't happen to us. Nigeria is ripe for change, but that change will begin with individual action. when we are true to ourselves first, then to each other, we can change things. until then...we can only hope that the pigs don't make us worse off than the humans, to paraphrase Blair.

Firefox 3 spellchecker vs me

better believe it. i win baby!

Waiting for God

ever heard of Waiting for Godot? you can find out more by clicking the previous link. sometimes, waiting for God can seem like waiting for Godot...it seems He never makes it. i realized why we get tired of waiting for God to show up with something promised: every time we're waiting for God, we're presented with the option of not waiting for Him.

today, some things weren't okay at home, and since i returned from church first, i could either go fix them or wait for my dad and brother to return to get them fixed. one of them was lunch. for some unknown sentimental reason, i was loath to get lunch (i wasn't in a position to cook it) without them being around. so i tried calling. all their phones were unreachable. i was hungry. really. so i waited. then i reached my dad. he said they were on their way. i waited some more. fell asleep. woke up. by this time, as Rudyard Kipling would say, my patience had already gone where dead crabs go. so i fixed myself something to eat. while eating it, i realized that this was the same choice we always have to make when waiting for God.

i can no longer stand with my arms akimbo and accuse Abraham of impatience, for i, too, have been impatient. i looked at the clock ticking, and said to myself, "God(ot) will never show up. looks like it's time to take care of business myself". and like Abraham, only the future can tell what i messed up by "taking care of business". i may not have been promised a son the way he was, but God has promised things in His word that i need/want, and sometimes i took the alternative and stopped trusting God. that's right. that's what happens when you choose the alternative. you pretty much say, "God, time's in your hand and all, but You live outside time. i live in time. and the clock's ticking. i need this thing now.". but what you get from your own efforts can never be compared to what God chooses for you. it may be a long wait, but it's worth it.

Looking for a .NET SMPP implementation

i work for a company that's registered as a WASP (or VASP, not really sure which is the official one now) with Glo, MTN and Zain, and we have a messaging gateway connected to these operators. we have clients we resell SMS credits to, and till rather recently we used the web service on our gateway to link our clients to the gateway.

however, due to certain things, my employer recently added the ability to use SMPP binds to our gateway. i cannot be certain until i check using a tool like Wireshark (geek call-out: any other tools that might make the job easier will be appreciated!), but i think that SMPP will consume less bandwidth than using the web service.

anyway, my boss got me and the other developer on our toes with different APIs that allow us build applications that use the gateway. since we already have working knowledge of how to build applications that use the web service, we were stuck with a COM and a Java component which use a custom protocol to talk to the gateway over TCP/IP, the SDK supplied my the gateway vendor, and different components for using SMPP (if you read my Facebook status message about fiddling with Java, i was trying to learn about a certain Java SMPP API).

since i program mostly in C#, i started looking for some component(s) to allow me use SMPP from my applications. i turned up quite a few:

• A library written in C++ with a COM component that uses it: here
• Easy SMPP
• RoaminSMPP
• The Devshock .NET SMPP component (For some time the site has been under reconstruction and so the files are no longer available from their site.)
• InetLabs's ALT.SMS.SMPPClient class library
• /n software's IP*Works: here

since what i was doing was trying out stuff, buying a component was out of the question. i'm also kinda biased toward open source, so that kinda kicked out IP*Works (don't get me wrong: IP*Works is probably very good - but i just didn't want it. i might try it out some other time). i got the others and started trying each one out, using a local SMPPSim server (SMPPSim is a Java program that emulates an SMPP server. great for trying out SMS appliactions)

Easy SMPP came with a demo application (there's also an SMPP server on SourceForge that uses it), but i couldn't connect to my local SMPPSim server using it (oddly enough, i could connect to the Easy SMPP gateway with it), so that was a no-go. i'll try it again some other time.

The Devshock component came with zero documentation (bad), no sources (i can live with that), and demo applications (client and server) written in Visual Basic.NET (i dislike VB, something that carried over to VB.NET. also, translating a program from VB.NET to C# without an automated tool is not particularly easy, even if you can do it). somehow, i got a demo application working with it Friday, even tested it on our live gateway.

i should have been satisfied, but the Devshock component has gone two years with no updates (which really shouldn't be a problem - the SMS specification is frozen and the SMS Forum shut down). so this weekend, i tried getting the RoaminSMPP component to work (incidentally, it was updated in October, but the author won't be working on it anymore) at home, and i sort of prefer the way it's structured than the Devshock component (it uses event handlers quite a bit instead of return codes and error messages). it does have its bad sides though. it comes with zero documentation and examples. i had to load up my trusty copy of .NET Reflector (one of the greatest .NET tools ever!) and the sources to find out how to use it (also did that with the Devshock binary, but the InetLab one was obfuscated - only one namespace of five was not).

i'm yet to test the InetLab binary - and yes i know: i probably am being an idiot, since i already have one that works (two, to be precise. why knock it?). still, if i'm giving the component to someone else to use, i may need to recommend the one that's simplest to use. anyway, you already got here. go read something else for now. i've nothing more to say here (far too many acronyms, if you ask me) :D. have fun!

Installing Silverlight 2.0 Developer Tools

as you might know, Silverlight 2.0 has been released. as i am wont to do, i went over to the site and downloaded myself the Silverlight 2.0 Developer Tools, which updates Visual Studio 2008 SP 1 and/or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 to work with the new release. unfortunately, the setup does not include Silverlight 2.0 Developer Runtime, and always attempts to download it (when i tried it on my computer, even when i'd downloaded the Developer Runtime and installed it separately, the install wizard still downloaded the Developer Runtime setup). to forestall this, download them both, unpack the Developer Tools setup into a folder (it's just a self-extracting package - almost any decent archiving utility on Windows can do this, i recommend 7-zip - WinRAR, ZipGenius and TugZip also can - i can't tell if WinZip does), and copy the Developer Runtime setup executable to the same folder. it won't download anything. well, work calls. later!

back at work...

got back to work today. late. it almost took me 2 hours to get to the office this morning. it only took 20 minutes yesterday!

crazy item of the hour: Exception occurred: OutOfMemor (thanks to edcba)

4x4=16

Biyi told me this joke a few days back, and i thought i should share it. there was this guy who bought a jeep with '4x4' on it, and was seeing a lady in a certain area. around there lived a not-so-balanced boy who saw the jeep everyday. one day, he took a stone and scratched '=16' after the '4x4'. later on, the owner came and saw his vehicle defaced. he got it fixed, but the same thing repeated twice. the owner then decided to add the '=16' after the '4x4' himself, and asked the body shop to do it for him. the next time the schoolboy passed the jeep, he saw the new 'equation'. he then took a stone and scratched 'VERY GOOD' and a tick on the jeep.

Fixed-position footer

i've been working (more accurately trying to work) on the TOS Funerals website design so it works well in older browsers, because it degrades horribly in them. for this to work, i needed a technique to force a footer to stay at the bottom of the window whether or not the content filled the window. the first technique i tried was from Boagworld. it worked like a charm - but only in newer browsers (Chrome, Firefox 3, Flock 1.2, IE 7, Opera 9.6, Safari 3/Win). it completely failed in IE 5.5 and 6 (quite unlike the advertisement. my guess is IE 5.5 and 6 don't understand the conditional comments).

so i got my rubber gloves on and tried getting a new technique - once again a Javascript-free method of getting about it. from yesterday's tests, this technique from Dave Woods' blog worked in IE 5.5 and 6, as well as the newer browsers. guess that's what i'll be using for now.

Update: the fault was with me. the Boagworld technique works. quite well, in fact. and it's smaller in both markup and styling.

here it is in Chrome:

Firefox 3:

Internet Explorer 5.5:

Internet Explorer 6:

Internet Explorer 7:

Opera 9.6:

and Safari 3/Win:

Code Geass is over!

i never really wanted to watch Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, because i read about it and found out Lelouch killed his sister. at any rate, someone got me watching it and i have to admit it has an extremely gripping story.

on Saturday, a friend came over and it suddenly struck me that Lelouch was planning his death, and i mentioned as much. there was only one episode of the second season left and it was to be shown yesterday (Sunday). the name "Zero Requiem" had been tossed around and i realized that a requiem is a song for the dead. it was brilliant how Lelouch executed his death. i kind of was hoping for a happy ending, or some romance, but it was not to be. ah well. i guess he really did make everyone happy. in that, he and Suzaku were heroes, but he was the unsung one. great story. hopefully now the twins will give themselves some peace...

bringing you up to date...

so what's been happening in recent times is i got into some serious trouble i had to take care of, so i've only been to work once this month. heheh...you can imagine what that means about blogging — it had to take a back seat. plus i fell ill for over a week. the one good thing about it is i confirmed i'm not fat, since i hardly ate throughout the period and i didn't lose weight :D. no, i'm not back to work, nor am i at home. you can just keep guessing — maybe i got someone pregnant? or killed someone? just keep guessing!

down to what Neo calls geek-stuff: why, oh why must programs install on C:? and why is the install procedure for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express so involved and such a pain in the butt? i don't have Visual Studio Service Pack 1 — so what? SQL Server 2005 Express was about 240MB, 2008 Express is over twice that - and still without Books Online. why would you give me a product that large and not add documentation? i am not always online! arrgh! at the very least, give me a choice of the packages i want to download if you're really interested in helping me conserve bandwidth. i've stopped ranting about Microsoft alone by now, but every company that will supply software over the internet. Thanks if it's free (whichever way), but there are parts of the world where it sometimes seems God turned off the internet. help the people in those areas too...it might be a pain implementing, but if we can choose before we begin the download, it might help some of us who don't know everything about everything...

anyway, i should soon be back home and i can at least update my antivirus program again. later then!

Waiting for God to turn off the internet...

...but while i'm waiting, i'll say hello - it's been a while since i updated this blog last. hiya doing? hope you and all your important people are doing well

now to today's business. i'm writing this post from Google Chrome, which i must admit, looks pretty good, especially for a beta product. however, it's spellchecker doesn't recognize the words "spellchecker", "plugins" or "google" (specifically in lowercase). and i don't know how it will do with plugins like Flash. and even though it's still early days - why can't i customize where the install goes to? huh?

dude, web design isn't for the fainthearted. seriously. i've been working on a redesign of the TOS Funerals website, and it's not exactly been a walk in the park getting the design to work cross-browser. i swear Internet Explorer has some beef with me. first, the content area isn't set off properly as it is in other browsers (even in IE 7 standards mode!), and i've been unable to fix that so far. something else i got fixed was the fact that IE kept drawing a border around my horizontal rule. i had to do two-step hacking: add extra markup and styling. grrrrrrrrrrrr! i've some idea how to go about it now, but i still think it bears mentioning since i haven't actually fixed it: forcing a page to be at least as high is the browser window so the footer "sticks" to the bottom of the window, irrespective of how much content is actually in the page. my own solution saw the footer somewhere in the middle of a long page in IE (again). many thanks to the guys in #css on Freenode for steering me aright - this dude is much obliged. the testsuite for the new design is available at http://www.tosfunerals.com/newsite/testsuite.html (creating this post revealed that Chrome's text selection drag and drop always moves text, irrespective of whether or not you hold down the Control key...sigh!)

Grouse with Facebook

morning. been a while since i last visited. well, i went to Ife and was offline almost all the time i was there. have you noticed that if you make a mistake signing in to Facebook, you hit Escape/stop the page, then try signing in again without refreshing, you can't sign in anymore? why are the Facebook developers using Ajax for the login page? wouldn't a simple submit form have sufficed? and if the Ajax was completely necessary (for instance, some webmail providers encrypt the password at the client's end before the login form even leaves the client), it shouldn't put the page in a state that the page is unusable if the user cancels it. not good, in my opinion.