Writing a good bug report

Have you ever reported a bug to a forum or mailing list, only to have developers pester you with dumb questions or, even worse, no one seems to be interested in helping you? Why do they keep asking you for more and more information? Aren't they interested in fixing bugs? Why won't anyone help you?

Being on the sending and receiving end of bug reports for years, I find that most developers take pride in their software and want to fix bugs but can't action bug reports unless they have at least the following information:

Software version

Quote the version string of the software. For Windows software, you can usually find the version string in the Help / About dialog. If you're using command-line software, check the on-line help for the required command-line option. For example, GnuWin32 utilities display their version string if you use the --version option.

Operating system configuration

If you're using Microsoft Windows, you can open a command console and type systeminfo. You'll see plenty of information about your computer, include hotfixes and hardware information. Some of the information may be private, so you decide how much you want to share when you write your report.

Input data

Sample files or parameters used to cause the problem.

Steps to reproduce the problem

Provide every step you took.

Expected results

What you think should have happened when you found the bug instead.

Often, users (and testers) balk at the thought of writing down every step or the expected results because they seem superfluous. "Don't developers know how their own software works?" you ask? Can't you just write, Stratoblaster feature doesn't work. Fix it! Problem is that unless you write down all the steps and what you think should happen, your bug will probably be ignored (if it's free – beer or libre – software) or developers can't figure out what you're going on about and write back asking for more information (if you're paying for support). Put yourself in the developers' shoes: how can they (1) figure how to reproduce the bug and (2) know if they have fixed it?

If you accept that you have to provide all the steps, then how much detail do you have to give? My rule is to imagine that I want to explain to a friend how to use a feature. For example in Firefox, let's pretend there's a bug moving a bookmark from one folder to another. Here's how I would write the steps and expected results of a bug report:

1. Select Bookmarks / Organize Bookmarks menu item. Firefox should open the Library dialog.
2. In the Library dialog, select the bookmark you want to move using your mouse pointer.
3. Click and drag the bookmark to the destination folder.
4. Release the bookmark. BUG: Bookmark remains in original folder. EXPECTED: Bookmark is moved to destination folder.

Happy bug reporting!

Accelerate and Brake Moderately

There's many ideas to save petrol, but which is the most effective? As a starting point, my Magna TS consumed 16L/100km of petrol in city driving. After some months of experimentation with different techniques, I found that the most effective method was (taa-daa!) … to accelerate and brake moderately. Many other techniques (e.g. leaving appropriate space behind the vehicle in front, drive smoothly) are a consequence of this one. Now, my fuel consumption is down to 12L/100km.

Of course, your mileage may vary!

Edit Base Calendar in Project 2000

How to edit a base calendar in Microsoft Project 2000:

1. Ensure that no or all rows in the Resource Sheet are selected.
2. Select menu item Tools / Change Working Time.
3. In Change Working Time dialog, select the required calendar from the drop down list, then edit the calendar.

Note that if some rows are selected in the Resource Sheet is selected, you can only change the calendar for the first resource in the selection, not a base calendar.

New Web Hosting Service

Transferred to a new hosting service. I kept running out of disk space on the old service and the new one has more space and is even cheaper. This is essentially a test post.

Notes to myself:

• It takes some minutes before nameservers propagate the updated host address for a domain name. Check with the ISP's name server to see if the domain name has been redirected.
• To test the new host, remember to flush the browser's cache.
• Ack! Forgot to copy the PHP header files! Remember to run sync software and test on a second computer next time!

Vista Tablet Input Panel Revisited

Found some better ways to use Vista's Tablet Input Panel (TIP):

• Activate TIP by wriggling the tablet's pen above the tablet's surface (in other words, don't press on the pen's tip). To turn on this feature, select checkbox Enable start Input Panel gesture in Pen and Input Devices / Start Input Panel Gesture Settings control panel. Aside: the instructions are in that dialog but it took a while to sink in that I had to avoid pressing on the pen's tip while moving the pen.
• When using Flicks to navigate, set the sensitivity close to Relaxed otherwise you have to move the pen very fast for Vista to recognize a flick event.
• Use Press and hold to generate a mouse-style Right-click event so that you can display a context menu. This action is useful for browsing (e.g. open URL in a another tab) but any selection (such as highlighted text) is de-selected.

Vista Tablet Input Panel

Vista comes with a handwriting recognition system for tablet PCs, so if you have a tablet device, such as a Wacom graphics tablet, you can enter text using a pen interface. If you are used to pen interfaces on handheld devices, then the Vista version is - um - different. You can only write in a special dialog called the Tablet Input Panel (TIP), not anywhere on the screen and you have to insert the text into your text field or document window. The TIP takes some getting used to. It always appears on top of all windows if you float the window. If you dock it at the top or the bottom of the screen, it fills too much of the screen and you can't shrink it.

After some experimentation and practice here's some tips that may help you use it:

• Use an extra-fine point (ink thickness) so that you can more easily read your own writing. The default point size just makes a smudge if your handwriting is small.
• TIP can better guess your words if you have clear spacing between words and if you write on the horizontal guide with obvious descenders {e.g. g and y) and ascenders (e.g. d and h). After a while, you don't even have to cross your t's or dot your i's or even write every letter for the system to guess the right word.
• After writing in TIP you can just tap your input field to enter your text instead of having to press the Insert button.
• To cross out words, you should carefully draw a horizontal line through the middle of the entire word. If your stroke is drawn too quickly, TIP thinks that you are writing another letter and tries to guess what it is.
• TIP's Writing Pad allows you to correct the guess for a word even if you are already writing another word. For example, if you started writing "XML lag are..." you can go back to cross the "t" and add an "s" in the second word to change it from "lag" to "tags".
If you want to enter special codes such as XML tags, use the Character Pad instead of the Writing Pad, and enter each character separately.

Some improvements to TIP (if any developers are reading this):

• There should be a second horizontal guideline, like preschool writing exercise books to help TIP distinguish between capital and lowercase letters that have the same strokes, such as "x" and "X", and symbols such as "<" and "(".
• It should be possible to make the TIP dialog smaller and semi-transparent so that you can see more of a document or input field. With all the eye-candy available in Vista, it's annoying that the user can't better configure this dialog.

This entry was mostly written using TIP and edited using the keyboard.

Floating Floor Room 1

Started laying floating floors in the dining room. We'd removed the skirting boards last weekend because we wanted new ones anyway. The floor boards had click lock joins which didn't need glue and seemed less messy than the usual ones with straight tongue and grove. Fitting the floor boards together required a certain knack of holding the boards together at an angle and pushing them together until the joins met. I crushed some of the joins initially by whacking them with a piece of wood and hammer before getting the knack. Made a mistake of leaving the moulding around the doors and having to hack some of the floor boards around them, which left a ragged edge on the floor boards near the doors. We'll redo those boards next to the door next weekend. Another mistake was not extending the boards halfway through the door frame, so the expansion joint is in the room rather than in the door. Finally, have to be remember which way to cut the board at the end of a column; the boards only join in a one orientation and I wasted one board.

The kids love the new floor. No more splinters from the old floor or bits of filler sticking to the their soles. They skated on their socks all day and played crab ball in the evening.

Bathroom Renovation Day 12

The shower screen has been installed and the builders have finished. It's finished!

Bathroom Renovation Day 11

The toilet, sink, taps, rails and vanity doors have been installed. Nearly at the end!

Bathroom Renovation Day 10

All the tiling, including grouting and sealing, is done. We're leaving the bathroom for a day, then we'll paint the ceiling around the light fittings before the fittings are pushed into their final position.

Swimming Again

Started swimming again after an 11-month break. No surprise that making 500m on day one was hard. Got to 600m in day two. Aim to return to 1km sessions otherwise I won't lose any cm's. Nice that I didn't gain any kg's in the mean time.

Bathroom Renovation Days 8 and 9

Day 8. Tiling started on the floor, around the window and in the shower areas.

Day 9. More tiling and the frame for the bathroom vanity has been installed.

Bathroom Renovation Day 7

The bathroom has a new frosted window to replace the old glass louvre one. The old one was an ugly thing; the frame was weatherworn, dust collected at the bottom of the frame and the louvres were hard to clean. The plumbing outside is reconnected to the sewer pipe and we have a diverter valve to water the garden from the bath. The builders have painted some sort of primer to help the tiles stick to the walls.

Bathroom Renovation Day 6

The builders have sealed the joins in the walls and floor, and waterproofed them. The old inlet to the sewer has been replaced by a new plastic one. Tiling should start tomorrow.

Bathroom Renovation Day 5

The builders have installed the new plasterboard walls (our old walls were hard to clean and had tiles stuck to them) and laid the new waterproof concrete fibre lining for the floor and the bathtub's enclosure. They spent some time discussing how to tile the walls and how to tile around the window; Terry showed me their pencil marks on the plasterboard where they did some measurements and test layouts.

Bathroom Renovation Days 0 to 4

Day 0: The skip arrived in our driveway. Terry moved the car the night before else we'd be trapped!

Day 1: The builders gutted the old bathroom and filled the skip with all the junk. Terry bought some extra insulation for the ceiling.

Day 2: The bathroom has a new ceiling and insulation.

Day 3: The builders dug a pit to expose the sewer inlet, installed a new underfloor and electric fittings.

Day 4: The bathtub was installed. The builder filled it with water and told us to leave the water in for the weekend until the cement dried.

Comet McNaught

Last night, we went to Mentone Beach (south of Melbourne CBD) to look for Comet McNaught. It was a clear night and would probably be the last chance to see it in the city before the weather changed. We found a small crowd of sightseers, armed with telescopes, at the beach car park. At dusk, about 2130, we started looking for the comet in the sky but couldn't find it. A lady in a wheelchair by a telescope showed us where to look and we spotted it. It was higher above the horizon than we'd expected and very faint due to light pollution. The kids were pretty excited since it was the first comet they had ever seen.

Handmade Paperbacks

Added a little article on making paperbacks by hand to my web site. It's kind of retro to make books, what with PDAs and mobile phones on the scene, but I've always had a soft spot for bits of paper with markings.

Misc: Redirecting Web Visitors

After moving all my stuff to my new web site, I thought it'd be simple to redirect all the visitors from the old site to the new one. After some false starts, I found that the easiest method is the following:

1. Create a moved.html file with <META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="5; URL=http://kamhungsoh.com">.
2. Copy moved.html to index.html.
3. Create a .htaccess file with this rule: ErrorDocument 404 http://members.optusnet.com.au/khsoh/moved.html.
4. Delete all files and folders on the old server and upload the new files.

The META directive in the HTML files tell the browser to load a new URL after 5 seconds. The index.html handles the case when a visitor only enters the URL without any file name. If the visitor enters the URL for a file name, then the ErrorDocument rule is activated and the moved.html is displayed.

Misc: Domain Name At Last

After more procrastination, I finally got myself a domain name. Registering a domain, buying a host service, transferring my pages and blog to the new domain was a bit time consuming; luckily I could consult people who have done the same thing for advice.