Airbnb Guest Checklist

 When you search for a room to rent for a day or a bit longer, you may be quite surprised when you see the place, or what you pay for it, if you don't check the following items.  These are just from my experience.  

• The price per night that you see on the list of rentals when you search on the Airbnb portal doesn't include the fees.  These, especially for 1-2 nights start can increase your cost even by 50% from my experience.  For any rental, you consider renting, open the rental details and check for fees.  Some are fees paid by the owner to Airbnb, other fees are for cleaning etc.  Esp. the latter ones differ a lot along rentals. 
• When you are looking for a room with a private bathroom, make sure to check what the owner considers "private".  You may be thinking of a bathroom with an entrance from your room.  But sometimes owners advertise as "private" bathrooms with an entrance from a shared hall as long as you're the only one allowed to use it. Contact the owner and confirm.  Don't assume.
• Quite often, the guest unit that you're renting isn't on the ground floor or in general accessible only via stairs.  Make sure you're comfortable with the stairs you will be using every time to get to your room or to get out of it.  For example, are you comfortable if they're outside spiral stairs? 
• If you rent a room in a shared hall, you may want to check that you'll be able to lock the room from outside, once you check in and decide to go out for dinner or just for a walk.  I've met locations that didn't have such an option.  Do you trust the owners and others guests with your stuff you leave in the room, when you're enjoying a hike?

Please, add your own tips in comments.

pgAdmin

Copy just the schema of a database: do Backup, with any format other than Plain (it requires pgsql to import it) and on the Option tab page select Schema Only.  It runs pg_dump behind the scene.  You will need pgAdmin newer than 1.16 which allowed schema-only option with Plain format only.

The problem is, version 1.20, for example, copies the whole database even if I check Schema-Only.

Back to Plain format.  In pgAdmin we choose a plain format and options as above or use comand line in CMD in folder where pgAdmin was installed as below:

pg_dump.exe --host myhost --port 8035 --username "myuser" --format plain --schema-only --no-owner --no-privileges --verbose --file "filename" "mydbname"

After generating it, in CMD run:

psql -d my-db-name -f "c:\aaa\my-exported-schema-file" -U postgres 

It will ask for the password.  The tool psql comes bundled with pgAdmin, at least it does in version 1.20.

Java - Pass Object by Reference

Facts:

• Java passes everything by value.
• References to objects-as well.
• As long as you use or modify the object whose reference you've got in a parm, you're good.
• When you want to assign a new object to replace the one that was passed-in, you're for a bad surprise.  Doesn't work
• The above case can be hidden:

private MainReturnObject getThatObject(BigDecimal extraValue) {
  ...
  extraValue = extraValue.add(BigDecimal.valueOf(7));
  ...
}
...
BigDecimal objectExtraValue;
anObject = getThatObject(objectExtraValue);

After your program exits from getThatObject(), you'll find that extraValue = 0.0.  The method has modified the getThatObject's copy of the reference to objectExtraValue.

Flex 3 and Flex 4 - Tips

• When manually dispatching an event, using uiComponent.dispatchEvent(your-event), you need to add listener to the same component uiComponent. So, uiComponent.addEventListener(type,handler) will work, but uiAnyOtherComponent.addEventListener(type,handler) will not work.
• The state changes-related transition effects have to correspond to the type of changes between the corresponding states.
  Example: I had a vertical group with two components. In State 1, both components show. In State2, Comp1 is not included. I set a Resize transition for Comp1 and a Move transition for Comp2. The effect was surprising: when state changed, Comp1 disappeared and appeared at the bottom of the screen. There it was re-sized. The right fix was to change Comp1: instead of includeIn=State1, I did height.State2=0. That did the trick.

• Constraint-based layout is supported only in a container with BasicLayout. If you want to use it inside a VGroup, for example, you can put it inside a Group for which you don't specify any layout (BasicLayout is the default).

Android Testing - Tips

• What is Android Context class? It's "an interface to global information about an application environment. This is an abstract class whose implementation is provided by the Android system."
• The native Android OS support for testing is based on jUnit 3. Don't try to use jUnit 4. The results are not predictable. I had the first test run fine, but no more tests would finish.
• Testing support:
  
  
  • Use ActivityInstrumentationTestCase2 for functional testing of a single Activity. The selected activity will be created and managed by the system as specified by the regular activity lifecycle. Tests can interact with the UI widgets to imitate user actions.
  • Use ActivityUnitTestCase to run unit tests of an isolated activity. Activity under test will not be subject to regular activity lifecycle.
• If you see a problem of type error: device not found and shutdown the adb.exe process. It will restart automatically and try to reconnect to the device. Sometimes, starting the intended Instrumentation on emulator (an option in Dev Tools application) does it all for you.
• If adb does not connect after restarting it (shows "DeviceMonitor]Connection attempts: 11..." and LogCat nic nie pokazuje), restart PC.

Android Development Tips and Issues

General

• After importing a project created by someone else, you may need to correct the Project Build Target via project Properties -> Android panel.

UI

• The attribute layou_height=fill_parent doesn't work as usually inside the ScrollView. Set the size explicitly, possibly using minHeight and MaxHeight.

Using Eclipse IDE: Tips, Facts and Tricks

• If a value gets stuck in Eclipse caches/preferences that doesn't make sense and you can't find a way to update to the new value using Eclipse GUI:
  
  • Search the workspace/.metadata folder for the obsolete value and correct it, esp. the .settings files. Don't touch binary files, unless you know what you're doing.
  • clean the Eclipse cache by starting exlipse, just once, with the first command line argument set to -clean
  • export preferences, switch to a new workspace and re-import the saved prefs.
  • reinstall Eclipse
  For more info see this great article.
  
• The Project Delete doesn't delete any files from the project directory, not even from the .settings folder, unless you check the Delete files... checkbox. Question: is any information lost if I delete a project and then re-import it?
• How to add a .jar file to classpath without using absolute paths? Follow these steps:
  
  
  • Go to Windows > Prefs > Java > Build Path > Claspath variable. Add a new variable pointing to the jar or to a folder, if there are many jars to add.
    
  • Go to Java Build Path of your project and click Add Variable. If you have specified a var pointing to a single jar, just select it and click OK. If you have created a var pointing to a folder, select it and click Extend. Then, select the jars you want to add (you can add them all in one step). Click OK.
    
• How can I move project to another folder? For me this works:
  
  
  
  • Delete the project
  • Move the folder
  • Re-import the project
   
  

Windows Remote Desktop Connection Issues

Clipboard Sharing Not Working
* if the RDPCLIP is not running, start it (Start Menu -> Run -> CMD and type RDPCLIP)
* if it's running, restart it. 
That was tested with WinXP.