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Continuous Integration for Javascript

I have to admit that I’m not very fond (read lazy) of writing tests and, until now, I haven’t worked in a project that was fully tested. But I decided that has to change and, in an attempt to cut some of the excuses, I’ve started searching for a solution to implement CI for our Javascript environment (anyone unfamiliar with CI can read more here and here). Continue reading…

Coreboot

In a previous article we’ve seen some details about a tool that can help you flash a chip, Flashrom. Now we need something to write on the chips we were talking about.

Coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) is a BIOS replacement, the main advantages being:

  • Fast boot timing – 500-1500 ms, compared to, for e.g. a Dell PowerEdge 1950 with proprietary BIOS that starts up in 1.5 minutes;
  • Focused on embedded systems and clusters;
  • No RAM necessary to boot (BIOS will just beep when you have no RAM);
  • Written in C;
  • Fix BIOS dumb errors like “Keyboard error, press F1 to continue”.

Continue reading…

Unit Tests Are Not Like Wine

Unit tests are not like wine. They do not get better with age. If ignored long enough, they become futile and stray down to the outskirts of code society. This is a diluted reference to unit test maintenance during development. But in order to understand exactly how unit tests work, we first need to slightly touch the topic of vinification. Continue reading…

Risk management

Risk is the possibility of a negative or undesirable outcome or event to occur. A specific risk is any problem that might occur, that would decrease customer, user, participant, or stakeholder perceptions of product quality or project success.

In testing there are two main types of risks. The first type is product or quality risks. When the primary effect of a potential problem is on the quality of the product itself, the potential problem is called a product risk. An example of a quality risk is: a possible reliability defect that could cause a system to crash during normal operation. The second type of risk is project or planning risks. When the primary effect of a potential problem is on the overall success of a project, those potential problems are called project risks. An example of a project risk is a possible staffing shortage that could delay completion of a project. Continue reading…

Work and fun make a good team

I work as a Graphic Designer within the Web Applications Team and besides my graphic design responsibilities I’m also involved in User Experience projects that imply conceptual design and documenting.

The biggest project I’ve worked on so far would be redesigning the Control Panel for 1&1 clients into a much more intuitive and user friendly/fancy application. It’s the most important and enjoyable project for me as I was part of the conceptual design team. Continue reading…

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Using Kamailio’s Carrierroute module for Least Cost Routing

Kamailio is RFC 3261 SIP v2.0 compliant proxy. Used for SIP signalling routing in medium to large scale networks, it can have several roles like registrar, SIP balancer etc. Kamailio’s core only performs the lower layers of the SIP protocol stack: parsing and transport, but also provides a plugin  infrastructure that can be built upon. Modules come into place here, starting from AAA, to transaction and UA support, RADIUS and DIAMETER, DB support (MySQL, Postgresql, Oracle), dialog, authentication etc. Continue reading…

Games room

The playing space consists of 2 rooms located at the highest point of the 1&1 building, with a nice view to the surrounding lake, park and residential neighborhood. One room is reserved for table tennis and the other for table football and darts. The latter represents the main attraction, having its walls painted in the Super Mario theme by our colleague Thea. We asked her for a few words about her experience on the “project”:

The idea of redecorating and modifying the games room came as Continue reading…

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FOSDEM

The Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting. Not a title that everyone can understand, I’m not even sure I got the entire meaning myself.

“Why such a ‘high-sounding’ name and an elaborated conference for something that can be found on the internet? We’re talking about open source, right?” That’s a question I’ve received from a non-tech person, but with some knowledge about the terminology. Indeed, why? Continue reading…