Thomas S. Nielsen's blog

Check out TextScream on the App Store!

Yes, it is out. And for only $0.99, you can buy the best way to scream without breaking your voice.

Just write what you want to say, and display in the biggest font possible. Works on iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad! If you want to review my App, just ask for a promo code.

Yes, all the statements above are now facts. My iPhone app is happily waiting to be reviewed by the Apple fairies, my homemade inventory system is now working hard remembering all the hardware serial numbers at work, and just about an hour ago, a pack of pigs flew by my window. An awesome day, in other words.

Okay, one of the above might be a little questionable. But whatever. Let’s celebrate this great day in history by watching a great movie.

Inspired by Kevin Rose’s 10 new years resolutions, I figured I should make some for myself also.

1. Blog at least once a week
2. Find a bigger apartment
3. Publish at least one of my projects as a GPL project
4. Publish an iPhone app
5. Learn more international recipes and cook more varied and healthier food
6. Upload some form of tutorial video on my website (preferably several, maybe even regularly)
7. Pick up exercising again
8. Drink less soda (and generally eat less sugar)
9. Save more money each month
10. Find a tenth item for my list

Inventory system

Thought I would add a screenshot from my inventory system. Text is in Norwegian only for now. I will translate it if I consider uploading it somewhere.

What you are seeing is the search function, where I just performed a search with a barcode scanner (which by the way works flawlessly on Ubuntu Linux, and not at all on my XP machine at work).

Currently the inventory system has the following features:

• Add, edit and delete items
• Add, edit and delete users/owners
• Add, edit and delete owner groups (people, storage rooms, etc)
• Add, edit and delete item types (PCs, laptops, printers, etc)
• Add, edit and delete models (Dell optiplex GX280, HP 1740, Wyse S50, etc)
• Add, edit and delete conditions (In use, Discarded, In for repair, available, etc)
• Search by barcode, owner, type or model
• See statistics of number of items, owners and changes (changes are displayed for past day, week, and total)
• List all owners
• List all items
• Each item is registered with barcode, date of purchase, date of last edit, model, owner, type and condition
• Dropdown lists are used where possible/reasonable

If you are interested, please ask. If I get any response, the chance of me open sourcing it is far greater.

Finally I’ve got time to write an update. This year’s exams and Christmas preparations are over, and I’ve got some time to spare. Christmas is also a quiet time at work, which leads me to this post.

Having completed all the critical tasks and much more, I figured I could use some time to replace our inventory system. Currently we use an Access database on a PC running Windows 98 without any backup.

I figured I could do something about that quite easily. So in the past few days I’ve been programming a web-based inventory system tailored to our needs, but still expandable. I still got a couple of hours of PHP coding left before it’s done, but I feel confident that it will be up and running by tomorrow.

I plan to run the new system on a virtual machine running LAMP, and having redundant backup. Since php is not a required skill for this job, I will of course also make sure that I document it well, and make a guide on how to export an excel spreadsheet with phpmyadmin if needed.

I am still considering if I should open source it or not, we’ll have to see how it goes.

Marry Christmas (and/or other hollydays) and happy new year to you all.