What type of data is it supposed to capture? Passwords

nahh, voltage readings from another system board

@Psycogeek At least you managed to order a kindle book on Amazon. I have tried and failed.

@rlemon Does it need to be in MySQL format?

@CanadianLuke it is easier for me

because I need to display it in a reporting view.

What about NoSQL, or SQLite, or Text Files?

Using MongoDb as a NoSQL driver, you can create a capped collection (table) that will never take up more than a specified size on disk

you can say "use no more than 500MB" and it'll just drop the oldest records when it gets full

ventured down the text files path, had some code written. but it wasn't as easy to work with as a DB - can't use mongo on this board, won't compile.

another nosql option might be better.

but deadline is end of the month

so changing that now likely isn't going to happen. maybe after I do the client demo will I have time to toy with that

But it only reports the last 24 hours, and that's it, correct?

purge old records manually whenever you insert new ones?

How often in the 24 hours do records get updated? What is your database structure?

@CanadianLuke once a minute. 1440 total rows. one table for read voltages, one for alarm register bits.

@DarthAndroid that is what i'm doing right now

insert();
if( rows.length > 1440 ) {
  delete_first();
}

Can you dump the structure of your database, or is that confidential?

well I can give you an overview. it isn't a hard to map table.

id, timestamp, reg_1, reg_2, reg_3, reg_N (a good number of columns, all appropriately named ofc)

all reg_* are doubles

alarm registers are just storing bools.

Can you shorten the timestamp to only store the time, and not care about the date?

nope

Are the bools stored as 0/1, or ENUM(true, false)?

0/1

That's good

I'm confused about the time stamps though, why do you need the date on ALL of them?

I am writing a script to look at every file on the board and to list anything > 300 meg

Alright

@CanadianLuke because it is for automation control.

reporting / accountability needs to have this information

if the line stops for a few days then resumes I need to see that gap

... But aren't you dumping the data after 24 hours?

Oh, OK

Nevermind

That's the only table?

no i'm keeping a window of 24 hours - the main system board holds infinite memory

however it doesn't allow me to read it back in chunks. I get the entire memory or nothing

@rlemon Can't find the files that filled up your board?

I'm gonna go grab my lunch, then I'll be back.. Gimme a few minutes

so the solution (until we get a re-write of our core control system) is to just hold the last 24 hours of running memory.

(this is bridging a mobile solution onto a very old technology)

Any way of attaching a small flash drive?

well I'm moving away from the onboard memory and using a SD card now

I am starting with a 4GB but I can buy larger if need be

also, does anyone know of a faster way to image a sd card than dd ?

Alrighty, that should work then

DD is pretty much the only good way

because of this crap sd card it writes at 388kb/s

3+ hours to image a card

@rlemon If you're imaging the whole card, you might try bumping the block size

hrm, good call.

Or, image the partition only

I know when imaging disks, using something like bs=1M gives a nice boost

Also, holy hell. I googled "dd default block size" and Google returned "This makes dd write bytes per block. The default is 512 bytes." at the top before showing any actual links

Not for me. I have to see the links first

@DarthAndroid google is getting quite good at that

I like asking google now random questions.

I miss MWC... I liked when the parents would do cameos or cross overs in their later shows

@DarthAndroid The more small files, the less should be block size for optimal free disk space?

@CanadianLuke I want it to come on netflix.

You're in the US, right?

nope

Another Canuk like you

(Ontario)

(profile picture of a native american mountie and all)

iirc you are on the west coast right?

Yup... Forgot, you are in ON...

I was gonna suggest Hulu though

Boastfully So, how bout them Winter Olympics and the Mens/Women Hockey teams?

@Boris_yo yes, that's for the filesystem setup though

For copying large files, you want to set a larger block size with the copy utility so that it copies in larger chunks. This has nothing to do with the filesystem block size.

@CanadianLuke :D

woot - re-wrote my entire app in two days without testing along the way. only like a dozen bugs and most are typos :)

@rlemon seems safe.

new branch ofc.

couldn't test along the way because I didn't have a physical device I needed to test on :P

@rlemon Unit tests ;)

What are those? :derp face:

Unit tests are basically designed to systematically test your code in bits and pieces, and verify that each public method/API conforms to it's contract

they're done as part of the build process, and make it really easy to catch if you rewrite/refactor and break something that used to work

They're also a really great way to make sure that new code conforms to the API it's supposed to present

The Design section of the Unit Testing wiki has a great, simple example

heh going through my imgur profile and found this cool cinemagraph I made of my sister a while ago:

I need to learn more about Unit Tests... Mostly, how do I do it in Visual Studio with their 'Test' functions

If you're talking about .Net, I recommend using nUnit for the testing library. Resharper+VS or MonoDevelop or SharpDevelop all have support for detecting the Testing annotations and making it easy to click->run or click->debug

(The built-in testing stuff from MS/VS isn't all that nice)

@MichaelFrank aww, I do that.. but with GIMP and I just make two frames and an animated gif.

I also put regulars onto star trek characters

and I take requests

Who is that?

@rlemon Yes, but what happens to the requests after you take them? Where do they go? Is this like Witness protection? Will I ever see them again?

@MichaelFrank jAndy (so user) as Picard

it looks good!

@DarthAndroid depends on which brand of milk you buy. They don't advertise on all cartons.

@allquixotic your advice was useful in my comment to this question superuser.com/questions/722128/…

@MichaelFrank please man, that is verging on pedophilia, careful there! people have animations of Gina Carano doing her eyes like that, not little girls!

@barlop she's 22

@MichaelFrank oh that's ok then!