Every now and again in my job I am asked to slip back in time and look at some legacy code that is now not playing ball. Today was one of those days as I was given the task to investigate some ancient VBA that sat behind MS project 97.
The most enjoyable aspect of my current role is the variety. Yesterday I was looking at performance tweaks to a bunch of T-SQL stored procedures that were taking an age to run (more on that another day) and today it was some C#, VBA and excel formulas.
The problem that was occurring with the VBA was in the pay rates object of the project file. Basically, the VBA was interrogating the object model and dumping selected elements out to excel. The first problem I encountered was that the project file was linked to a project server that provided some custom elements to the project and enabled access to a lot of back-end data on costs, resources etc. Once I had the project file linked to the server it was a simple case of run the macro that performed the export and see where it was blowing up.
After a few minutes into the export the debugger stopped in a function that was iterating through a table of costs and was complaining about "invalid value for argument". A quick look in the watch windows was showing that the pay rates table object contained a collection of pay rates. The count of the collection showed 27 objects and under closer investigation I could see that the debugger had stopped whilst processing the 26th pay rate. Looking at the 26th object a bit closer it was obvious that it was corrupt and didn't contain any information , as did the 27th object in the list. I flipped back to the project from the VBA editor to look at the table and saw that the table only contained 25 objects. Strange.
A quick Google on the pay rates object found that the table in project can only hold 25 rows but there was no explanation of how I was getting 27 out of the count. I switched the count and index loop for a for each loop to see if there was a bug in the count but again it attempted to iterate through 27 objects before blowing up on the 26th. The quick fix was to put a limiter on the count if it exceeded 25 and stop it processing the last objects and indeed this sorted the problem but I couldn't really explain why it was happening. Further trawls through the forums and blogs found nothing so I was forced to go back to the customer with the quick fix and three guesses on what might be happening.
My first guess was that there was a bug in the collection that was just not returning the correct count of objects in the collection. My second guess was that there might be some cleanup issues where the users had deleted some rows and then overwritten them and the collection had a bug which was not cleaning up the dead rows correctly. This would explain why they were full of junk. My third guess was that there was some other MS project setting that I was just failing to spot that was somehow hiding items in the collection or extending the collection to store extra detail.
I presented my conclusion and quick fix to the customer along with the recommendation that they first look at upgrading the version of project so that at least there will be more support. I also suggested that a more thorough review of the code at some point would be beneficial to ensure that there were no other strange things happening that were going unnoticed.
Overall it was a nice little side problem to get my teeth into and although it still nags me that I didn't find out why it was happening the customer was satisfied with the result. Hopefully I'll be able to give an update soon on what the root cause was.
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
Monday, 29 July 2013
New Wheels
I picked up some new wheels a few weeks back and have delayed the review until I had at least given them a good run in. For a few years I have always maintained that Asics were the best for me and my running gait as the fit was always really great and the quality of the shoe was always high. So with all the hype about bare foot running I decided to replace my primary shoes with a new barefoot model to try for a few weeks and see how I got on.
I generally keep two pairs of shoes, a primary pair for work where I do most of my running and a secondary pair for home that are generally trail shoes for out in the forest. After a bit of research and having decided not to blow the bank on what was really an experiment I decided on the New Balance 110 MT barefoot trail shoe. The shoes selling points were the weight, price and the fact that it combined trail potential with barefoot running.
The shoes are really light compared to my last pair of Asics and very snugly fitted ( I had to size up). I haven't weighed them but they are noticeably lighter and feel more like socks than shoes. They retail at around £40 in the UK so they were a lot cheaper than rival models and are the only model that I had seen in the price band that looked like true trail shoes. Although I didn't want to admit it I also was swayed by the aesthetics as they look pretty cool too.
I have now completed around 100 miles in the shoes and I've been really impressed. My first venture into barefoot has seen a slight change in gait with more emphasis on the mid foot striking rather than on the heel. This, combined with the reduced weight, has seen some noticeable speed increases in my times. I have gone from around 8 1/2 minutes to around 8 minutes a mile for my usual run of around 6 miles. I've had no blisters or any other irritations in my knees or ankles so far and overall I have been really impressed. I've been out to 9 miles with them and to be honest I'm not sure I am ready to take them on the longer runs so I can only really give them a full recommendation based on my 6-8 mile distance runs.
The other selling point I failed to mention is that they are waterproof but with all the hot weather lately I haven't had the chance to test this which is pretty unbelievable living in Britain.
I generally keep two pairs of shoes, a primary pair for work where I do most of my running and a secondary pair for home that are generally trail shoes for out in the forest. After a bit of research and having decided not to blow the bank on what was really an experiment I decided on the New Balance 110 MT barefoot trail shoe. The shoes selling points were the weight, price and the fact that it combined trail potential with barefoot running.The shoes are really light compared to my last pair of Asics and very snugly fitted ( I had to size up). I haven't weighed them but they are noticeably lighter and feel more like socks than shoes. They retail at around £40 in the UK so they were a lot cheaper than rival models and are the only model that I had seen in the price band that looked like true trail shoes. Although I didn't want to admit it I also was swayed by the aesthetics as they look pretty cool too.
I have now completed around 100 miles in the shoes and I've been really impressed. My first venture into barefoot has seen a slight change in gait with more emphasis on the mid foot striking rather than on the heel. This, combined with the reduced weight, has seen some noticeable speed increases in my times. I have gone from around 8 1/2 minutes to around 8 minutes a mile for my usual run of around 6 miles. I've had no blisters or any other irritations in my knees or ankles so far and overall I have been really impressed. I've been out to 9 miles with them and to be honest I'm not sure I am ready to take them on the longer runs so I can only really give them a full recommendation based on my 6-8 mile distance runs.
The other selling point I failed to mention is that they are waterproof but with all the hot weather lately I haven't had the chance to test this which is pretty unbelievable living in Britain.
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Rooted
With the last weeks of my 2 year phone contract coming to and end and my phone long out of warranty I started looking at removing the bloatware from my phone. The HTC Wildfire S I had was a good budget phone when it was released and I was really impressed when I first got it. I had plenty of room for new apps, it was fast and the apps on the original image were really useful. However, as time went by a number of the apps either stopped their services, had large updates or just simply stopped working. There were also a couple I never used but I couldn't stop from running (stocks app) which would use unnecessary data usage. After about a year the phone started running out of internal memory, even with most apps partially stored on the SD card. I was forever installing/uninstalling and wiping user data keep enough space. The other problem was that some apps required about 25MB on the internal storage to be free even to run efficiently.
My first stop was to look at removing the apps but soon realised that to do so would mean a new image. Being the first time I had attempted re imaging a phone I went to look at the big players first and to gauge the most popular custom Roms. The two main players were AOKP and Cyanogen mod. Both these groups have unofficial ports for the Wildfire S but I chose to go with the Cyanogen mod purely on popularity (Baa Baa).
After finding a tutorial on XDA developers net I started to attempt to unlock the bootloader which is needed to install the Clockwork mod recovery image. Unlocking was fairly simple and after getting a token from the website I flashed to the boot image and hey presto the bootloader was unlocked. Once the bootloader was unlocked I installed the clockwork mod recovery tool and did a backup of the stock image (very important before proceeding with any custom Roms). I also did a backup of the SD card and then formatted it for reasons I will explain shortly.
Once the Recovery program is installed its a fairly simple operation to then install items from the SD card. First of all I installed the superuser application to gain root access to the phone. This was a simple case of copying the superuser zip onto the root of the SD card (which has to be formatted) and using the recovery application to install it. After a quick factory reset of the phone I rebooted and we are all done, bootloader unlocked and phone rooted.
Next step is to install the custom ROM and off we go. First I copied the Cyanogen Mod 9.1 and the google apps installer onto the SD card. Then boot into recovery (power + volume down) and install both zips from the SD card. After they are both installed I reboot the phone and waited for the mod to configure itself. Now, the first boot can take time so it was pretty scary waiting to see if it had installed correctly or whether the phone had just hung and my phone was bricked. Eventually the mod booted up and a wizard takes you through the setup. The phone runs really smooth with ICS and there is no lag on any of the screens. The only obvious problem is that the video function on the camera does not work but to be honest I only ever use it in camera mode so wasn't a big deal.
So far so good. However, after a couple of app installs the phones lack of internal memory soon starts to hinder things and performance starts to suffer. After reading some posts on the forums of similarly disgruntled Wildfire S owners I came across INT2EXT scripts. Now these are little scripts you can install to extend the internal memory onto the SD card and the best thing is that it is seamless. I went for INT2EXT4+ which requires an ext4 partition on the SD card which I put on using mini tool. After the partition is made I place the INT2EXT4+ zip onto the root of the SD card and install the script. A quick factory reset and wipe of the cache and I reboot the phone. I have only given the partition 500MB because the script can only address 500MB for every 100MB of internal storage but it seems enough. Once rebooted the phone reports 500MB of internal storage with 1.5GB on the card. I reinstall my apps and everything runs just as smooth. Very impressive. The SD card is class 4 so a faster card is recommended if you need to run some disk access heavy apps but most of the apps I have been running all run fairly quickly.
Overall, it was a worth while activity as it has resurrected a phone that in all honesty I thought was worthless. The custom ROM is stable and the extra storage is an absolute luxury. Its probably not a task to take lightly and some degree of skill is needed (in order to keep the flapping to a minimum) but otherwise the benefits outweigh the risk of bricking your phone, well certainly phones you were looking to replace anyway. I would recommend having an external micro SD to USB reader or some other way of reading the micro SD card without using the phone as this makes things a lot easier. The other key is to backup everything and don't even attempt it if the phone is under warranty. I would also look around and read everything you can before you start. Choosing an actively developed ROM is also a must as problems can be answered on the forums a lot quicker.
My first stop was to look at removing the apps but soon realised that to do so would mean a new image. Being the first time I had attempted re imaging a phone I went to look at the big players first and to gauge the most popular custom Roms. The two main players were AOKP and Cyanogen mod. Both these groups have unofficial ports for the Wildfire S but I chose to go with the Cyanogen mod purely on popularity (Baa Baa).
After finding a tutorial on XDA developers net I started to attempt to unlock the bootloader which is needed to install the Clockwork mod recovery image. Unlocking was fairly simple and after getting a token from the website I flashed to the boot image and hey presto the bootloader was unlocked. Once the bootloader was unlocked I installed the clockwork mod recovery tool and did a backup of the stock image (very important before proceeding with any custom Roms). I also did a backup of the SD card and then formatted it for reasons I will explain shortly.
Once the Recovery program is installed its a fairly simple operation to then install items from the SD card. First of all I installed the superuser application to gain root access to the phone. This was a simple case of copying the superuser zip onto the root of the SD card (which has to be formatted) and using the recovery application to install it. After a quick factory reset of the phone I rebooted and we are all done, bootloader unlocked and phone rooted.
Next step is to install the custom ROM and off we go. First I copied the Cyanogen Mod 9.1 and the google apps installer onto the SD card. Then boot into recovery (power + volume down) and install both zips from the SD card. After they are both installed I reboot the phone and waited for the mod to configure itself. Now, the first boot can take time so it was pretty scary waiting to see if it had installed correctly or whether the phone had just hung and my phone was bricked. Eventually the mod booted up and a wizard takes you through the setup. The phone runs really smooth with ICS and there is no lag on any of the screens. The only obvious problem is that the video function on the camera does not work but to be honest I only ever use it in camera mode so wasn't a big deal.
So far so good. However, after a couple of app installs the phones lack of internal memory soon starts to hinder things and performance starts to suffer. After reading some posts on the forums of similarly disgruntled Wildfire S owners I came across INT2EXT scripts. Now these are little scripts you can install to extend the internal memory onto the SD card and the best thing is that it is seamless. I went for INT2EXT4+ which requires an ext4 partition on the SD card which I put on using mini tool. After the partition is made I place the INT2EXT4+ zip onto the root of the SD card and install the script. A quick factory reset and wipe of the cache and I reboot the phone. I have only given the partition 500MB because the script can only address 500MB for every 100MB of internal storage but it seems enough. Once rebooted the phone reports 500MB of internal storage with 1.5GB on the card. I reinstall my apps and everything runs just as smooth. Very impressive. The SD card is class 4 so a faster card is recommended if you need to run some disk access heavy apps but most of the apps I have been running all run fairly quickly.
Overall, it was a worth while activity as it has resurrected a phone that in all honesty I thought was worthless. The custom ROM is stable and the extra storage is an absolute luxury. Its probably not a task to take lightly and some degree of skill is needed (in order to keep the flapping to a minimum) but otherwise the benefits outweigh the risk of bricking your phone, well certainly phones you were looking to replace anyway. I would recommend having an external micro SD to USB reader or some other way of reading the micro SD card without using the phone as this makes things a lot easier. The other key is to backup everything and don't even attempt it if the phone is under warranty. I would also look around and read everything you can before you start. Choosing an actively developed ROM is also a must as problems can be answered on the forums a lot quicker.
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