Category: All

All posts across the whole website belong to this category. They might also belong to some other categories as well, but this one holds all of them. Hence the descriptive name – All.

Parting ways with FxPro

Today was my last day with FxPro Financial Services Ltd.   Looking back at how much I’ve learned and at how much the company changed during my time there, it’s really difficult to believe that I was there for only two years.  In that time, the IT infrastructure was totally redesigned, several major versions of the corporate web site were launched, MyFx.Pro was developed from scratch and much improved over hundreds of iterrations, the company moved into a new (and bigger) office, and the staff grew in numbers.  While internal changes are not always visible to the outside world, an accumulated effect is rather obvious – the company is now well established, known, and respected in the industry.

For me, this work was personal.  And how it couldn’t have been?  During the last two years I enjoyed working with and learning from a lot from a number of people.  Each and every one of them left a trace in both my personal character and professional career.  And for that I’m thankful.

As much as I enjoyed working at FxPro, now is the time to part our ways.  I wish good luck and all the best to the company as a whole, as well as to everyone individually.   It was a blast!  Thank you.

Google Checkout – an example to follow

My Gmail free space has been running out way too often recently.  I got bored with cleaning it up all the time and decided to upgrade my account.  While the process of buying something online is often trivial, I was pleasantly surprised by Google Checkout.  It was even easier than ever.  It felt like every little detail has been thought about.  Here are the things that I particularly liked:

  • Simple, straight-forward interface.  No bragging about coupons, special offers, promotions, and a trillion redirects.
  • Sensible defaults.  Google knows my name, address, and telephone number.  They can use this information to make order form submission easier.  And they do.  Including the default for the “name on card” field.
  • Clear information about the amount being charged.  Order submission button itself displays the amount that will be charged.  This way you can’t be confused by all the sub-totals, taxes, etc.  Crystal clear!
  • Excellent email notification.  The email clearly states what I have bought and when I will get it.

While none of the above sounds like rocket science, it actually is.  Go and buy something, enjoy the experience.

Back to Mozilla Firefox

About a month ago I praised Chromium browser (and Google Chrome incarnation of it).  It’s fast, slick, and like Firefox has a gadzillion extensions.  Unfortunately, I switched back to Mozilla Firefox for now.  And as much as I’d like to use Chrome, there is an issue that annoys me enough not to – profile corruption.

As any other young application, Chromium crashes quite often.   That is understandable.  But the problem is that every time it crashes, my browser profile is corrupted, which results in loss of history, saved passwords, and open tabs.  That’s just something I can’t tolerate.  Crash  all you want, but bring me right back to where I was, when I restart your sorry butt!

Hopefully this problem will annoy enough people for someone to step up and fix it.

Day in brief