The Gnoll in the Machine

3 weeks on the new machine.

2011-01-30T18:53:00.000-08:00

Over the New Years weekend I put together a new machine and loaded Ubuntu 10.10 on it.

What I learnt.

Power connectors have changed. In addition to the 24 pin EATXPWR socket, there was a 4 pin ATX12V that I'ld not seen before. It's halfway across the board too.

The current graphics card standards has changed. Installed my first PCI Express 2.0 x16 card.

My mother board came with 2 Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s cables and 2 Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s cables. This was the only place I had fun & games with. No marking of cables to say which is which.

The third point was the only one that caused a problem. Initial I built the machine with one SATA DVD drive & one SATA hard disk drive. Worked fine. I then added the drive that contained part of the /home directory from my old machine. After that the boot sequence hung. I then swapped the cable connecting the DVD with the cable on the second hard drive and it all worded fine. So speed was important to the hard drive working, but not for the DVD drive. Go figure.

Jigsaw puzzle for the New Years long weekend.

2010-12-31T16:20:00.001-08:00

Just brought assorted pieces for a new computer.

Bits purchased:

AMD Phenom II x4 965 CPU (3.4 GHz),

ASUS M4A87TD EVO motherboard,

4GB DDR3 memory (2 sticks of 2GB, shop didn't stock 4G sticks, I asked),

Antec case (Noted on the way out that it didn't have a power supply. First time I've ever borough a case that didn't come with a power supply in situ!)

500W power supply.

Hope I got a video card new enough to be backward compatible with the motherboard. That's the only potential issue I can see.

Have a 1TB SATA hard disk on the shelf already.

Going to load Ubuntu 10.10 on it.

I love this jigsaw stuff, should do it often enough.

this month in the machine...

2010-11-30T17:14:00.000-08:00

Had three events this months.

First was the regard ActionHack. I great hacking afternoon at the iLab incubator's boardroom in Toowong.

Second was a big weekend at #railscamp in Perth.

Andrew Grimm (A sysadmin at UNSW) gave in interesting presentation of using an evolutionary like randomly generated programs (mutations) to test Rubinius. He used other ruby implementations (as a group) to validate Rubinius' returns. The other implementations effectively becoming the environment appling natural selection on Rubinius, to determine its fitness.

Andrew's slides

Thirdly, Last week I went to a Linux Users Group meeting. HUMBUG's fortnightly meeting at UQ. Was just a chat & hack session. I had one problem, but solved it that morning.

I had a mial server issue on my first attempt to set up a mail server. I found that courier (I think?), when reading the authpgsqlrc file, is failing to recognize comments and thus getting the auth requests against the database wrong. The fix was to move the comments to the next line, instead on the end of the line they apply to.

Next weekend is a new month, off to ActionHack.

Diaspora releqased, add to #todo list.

2010-09-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

Better late than never. A bit over two weeks ago Diaspora got released.

It's a distributed social media network. Being distributed means you can run your own 'shard' and control all the privacy settings.

Here is where the code lives at github.

Guess what's on my #todo list for Saturday.

diaspora*: a project to watch

2010-06-30T17:14:00.000-07:00

Diaspora sounds like a real cool projects. A distributed 'seed'/shard based social network system. It's open source and allows defaults privacy settings at the 'seed' level.

It's also what four uni students are going to by up to this (northern) summer. To fund it they start a project on kickstarter. They wanted US$10,000, the got $200,642, in just over a month. Good work boys.

They're on twitter too.

Time to revisit Arduino and Ruby playing together.

2010-03-31T18:41:00.000-07:00

In the last month I've read most of Earth Garden Book's Easy Aquaponics. It's a great collection of about 20 essays on all aspects of Aquaponics, from principles and beginer's back yard systems to establishing commercial systems.

It's the automation of system, particularly commercial ones that peaked my interest. I remembers a demo given at a rails camp. The 3rd camp in Sydney, from memory. Had some Arduino hardware on a bread board and using ruby on a laptop to drive it. Cool stuff.

Time to investigate that tech again I think.

Cheers,

Gnoll110

Ganglia, worth a play.

2010-01-31T18:26:00.000-08:00

Just found a blog post call Cluster Monitoring with Ganglia & Ruby. Look like something that could be worth a play.

Might be a thing to look at next Saturday. ActionHack time :).

Been playing with Googlemaps

2009-12-31T19:06:00.000-08:00

Been playing with googlemaps and rails. The first step is geo-coding the address to Lat long coordinates.

Here is my first play code


require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
require 'rubygems'
require 'builder'

addrs = [ "1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA",
          "1159 Gympie Rd Aspley QLD 4034 ",
          "14 Morayfield Rd Caboolture QLD 4510 ",
          "521 Ipswich Rd Annerley QLD 4103 "
        ]

placemarkbase = 'List'
placemarks = Hash.new

xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new(:target => $stdout, :indent => 4)

geocoder = "http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q="
output = "&output=csv"
apikey = "&key=### insert your googlemaps token here ###"

counter = 0
addrs.each do |addr|
    request = geocoder + addr + output + apikey
    sleep 2.0
    url = URI.escape(request)
    resp = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(url))
    fields = resp.body.split(',')
    placemarks[placemarkbase + counter.to_s] = [addr,fields[3],fields[2]]
    counter += 1
end

kml = { 'xmlns' => 'http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2'}
xml.instruct! :xml, :version => "1.1", :encoding => "US-ASCII"
kml.each do |key,value|
    xml.kml(:xmlns => value) do
        xml.Document do
            placemarks.each do |key, array|
                xml.Placemark do
                    xml.name(array[0])
                    xml.address(array[0])
                    xml.description(placemarkbase)
                    xml.Point do
                        str = array[1].to_s + "," + array[2].to_s + "," + 0.to_s
                        xml.coordinates(str)
                    end
                end
            end
        end
    end
end

Action Hack: features research on github

2009-10-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

During Action Hack I did a quick scan of GitHub.

Was looking for ideas for laying out and grouping features. I looked at 20 projects that had features folders.

Almost all of them just had a flat structure. Simply features files named for groups of features.

The one exception had sub directories that grouped the feature files by release.

Would be interested in hearing how people layout their features.

Gnoll110

Ruby: Cloud Crowd

2009-09-30T21:17:00.000-07:00

This post is only a heads up. Seen Cloud Crowd talked about. Looks interesting, but not used it myself yet.

Gnoll110

Ruby: Playing with Colour

2009-08-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

Had an idea for a new twitter background.

I wrote it in ruby, using the rmagick API wrapper for ImageMagick.

Pretty straight forward:

make a big black background,

create a lot of random coloured squares and write the colour on them while you're at it,

write to jpeg file

Here's the code.


require 'rubygems'
require 'RMagick' 
include Magick

buffer = Magick::Image.new(1700,1040) { self.background_color = "#000000" }

x = 10
y = 10
tone = [ '0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', 
         '8', '9', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F' ]

srand 1234
1118.times do
  puts '* '+x.to_s+' '+y.to_s
  red = rand(16)
  green = rand(16)
  blue = rand(16)
  ligthness = red+green+blue
  co = '#'+tone[red]+tone[green]+tone[blue]
  patchObj = Magick::Draw.new
  patchObj.fill = co
  patchObj.polygon(x,y,x,y+30,x+30,y+30,x+30,y)
  patchObj.matte(3,3,PaintMethod::ReplaceMethod)
  patchObj.draw(buffer)
  textObj = Magick::Draw.new
  textObj.font = './fonts/Ghoul.ttf'
  textObj.pointsize=12
  if ligthness > 25 || green > 11 
    textObj.fill = '#000'
  else
    textObj.fill = '#fff'
  end
  textObj.text(x, y+12, co)
  textObj.draw(buffer)
  x = x+40
  if x > 1690
    x = 10
    y = y+40
  end
end 

buffer.display
buffer.write("random_colour.jpg")

exit

Enjoy.

#ToDo: use a resource pool so don't have the cost of creating over 2K Draw objects.

BarCamp Brisbane

2009-07-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

I came, I saw, I had fun.

Lots of great talkfest on tech, culture & business.

Should have posted this almost two weeks ago.

BarCamp Brisbane III was in East Brisbane on the 18 July. Well worth the trip. It's part on BarCamp Queensland (yes, there is a BarCamp Gold Coast).

Gnoll110

Git & Capistrano

2009-06-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

Last month I got my first Vertial Private Server (VPS) at slicehost.

Got it setup. Used Git & Capistrano for the first time, Happy with Both.

Found a good into tutorial for them, that I can't find atm Doh!

Will post links when I do.

Cheers,

Gnoll110

Update: Found it, it's called 'the building of jetrecord episode 3 git capistrano and a test release'.

Whole Series:
the tabula rasa of doom
tell me a story
git capistrano and a test release
cucumbers and webrats

CSS background images & Rails

2009-05-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

Setting a CSS background image in Rails have one quirk, when using a relative url, the base directory is not the base directory of the project. It's the directory where the stylesheet CSS file lives. So the correct relative url is this;

#wrapper1 {
background: url(../images/background.gif) repeat left top;
}

when the image & stylesheet live in the usual places.

Gnoll110

Symfony: rails-ish PHP?

2009-03-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

A friend has asked me to help on a site he wants to develop. It's in a PHP environment. This is not a language I've worked in before. A chance to learn.

Looking around I've come across what look like a rails like framework called Symfony. Not used it yet.

I have a project directory structure like rails and is based in the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern.

Should be interesting. Anyone got any comments?

Gnoll110

Don't default the disk

2009-01-31T13:33:00.000-08:00

Playing with Mythbuntu this weekend.

First lesson, don't let it default to one partition. I had problems finding /boot (I think). After some googling, the most likely cause is partitioning?

About to repartition. Lets see how it goes.

Gnoll110

Nagios and Ruby

2008-12-30T17:58:00.000-08:00

Found these links that might interest people.

This looks like a project with some potential.
http://lusislog.blogspot.com/2008/04/nagios-and-ruby.html

Here is an example that looks like it worth pulling apart to see how it ticks.
http://blog.hungrymachine.com/2007/08/14/using-a-ruby-based-aim-notifier-in-nagios/

I've not had a chance to run either, sorry.

Enjoy.

Gnoll110

RailsCamp4: BackgrounDRb

2008-11-30T17:58:00.000-08:00

It has been two week since I got back from Railscamp4 in Adelaide. Been off the grid mainly. Took lots of notes and idea point during the weekend.

The first I'd like to note in a background processing utility. It looks interesting but I've not had a chance to use it. Hopefully I will in the next month or so.

Here is the link to BackgrounDRb.

Enjoy

Gnoll110

Ruby scripts (book)

2008-10-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

Found out about Basement Books in the Railway Square arcades near Central Station in Sydney.

One on the books I picked up was 'Practical Ruby for Systems Administration' by Andre Ben Hamou (Apress). ISBN-13 978-1-59059-821-4 ISBN-10 1-59059-821-0.

Chapter 2 has a cool beginners script. The first bit on work script in the text.

It's a script to build an empty script and open it in an editor.


#!/usr/bin/env ruby

path = ARGV[0]
fail "specify filename to create" unless path

File.open(path, "w") { |f| f.puts "#!/usr/bin/env ruby" }
File.chmod(0755, path)
system "pico", path

pico is the text editor I use. The example code used "open".

Currently I'm up to chapter 5 and have learn a few thing about Ruby and its what and how.

Gnoll110

Merb in Action

2008-09-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

This week, the newest 'Merb in Action' PDF 'arrived' in the mail.

The new version includes chapter 3.

I've been thinking about a Merb play project. I think I'll spike a blog.

There are a few things I'ld like to see in a blog, but seldom do.

One is a nice 'printable' view. You never see one with two printable views, with and without comments. Also with a nice list of footnoted links, you can't double click a print.

What other things should I have in a features list?

Gnoll110

Ads as online tip jar?

2008-08-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

Over at twitter, I just twittered this comment.

@gnoll110 Ads as online tip jar? - Seth Godin is wrong http://tinyurl.com/6fb5pg - JD is right http://tinyurl.com/3hrm27

Seth Godin has blogged a string of posts that ended with a post entitled "Ads are the new online tip jar".

I agree with JD. Just click when you have no interest and then not buying sends distorting info to the advertiser. It tell 'em there is something wrong with the ads landing page. When in fact the problem is in the embedded ad or more generally, simply offering a product no one wants.

Gnoll110

Digital Nomads

2008-08-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

During the week this great quip and blog post appeared in my RSS reader stream (Google reader).

It introduces a great new community site for those of us trying to use information and communication tech to do our jobs from where we want to do them. That is, not within the commuter zone of some big city.

Should be a great resource!

Noel Kelly
Gnoll110

Agile podcasts: Better late than never.

2008-07-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

This month, I got around to checking Rob Payne’s Agile Toolkit site for new podcasts.

Last month Rob put up six new podcasts. One from this year and the reminder from last year’s Agile2007 conference.

1/ Agile IT Experience 2008 Panel Discussion.
Direct download: AgileITx_Panel.mp3

2/ Agile2007 - Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
Direct download: Agile2007_Ester_Diana.mp3

3/ Agile2007 - Nancy Van Schooenderwoert
Direct download: Agile2007_Nancy_V.mp3

4/ Agile2007 - Deb Hartman
Direct download: Agile2007_Deb_Hartman.mp3

5/ Agile2007 - Ole Jepson
Direct download: Agile2007_Ole_Jepson.mp3

6/ Agile2007 - Rick Mugridge
Direct download: Agile2007_Rick_Mugridge.mp3

They all proved to be great listening. Thanks for the time & effort Rob.

Gnoll110

Discovery: Rubyspaces

2008-06-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

At Rail Camp, the weekend before last.

While flicking through the index of the pickaxe, I came across an entry for JavaSpaces. Went to the indicated section and found a little bit of sample code that shows the concept.

Run it, worked great. This discovery alone make the trek up to Brisbane Water all worth it.

Gnoll110

Rail sand box!

2008-05-31T04:45:00.001-07:00

While at the Canberra Ruby Crew night, on the 30th May, I was introduced to the heroku site.

An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) in a browser.

In this case it a build environment for the Ruby On Rails framework.

Looking forward to playing it.

Will keep people posted, in my copious spear time ;)

Gnoll110

BarCampCanberra1: I

2008-04-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

Hi All

Well last saturday saw the first BarCampCanberra. @trib, @pureCaffeine and the other orginazers did a great job.

About 50 to 60 people attended.

During one of the Open Source session we got onto Open Source design of physical objects and then sustainable manufacturing of goods.

I had one comment to contribute. A major book on the subject is 'Cradle to Cradle', written be an American architect and a German chemist. I also noted Ford and a major up market chair maker were doing this kinda work.

Here a the details:
Title: Cradle to Cradle
By: William McDonough & Michael Braungart.
Ford redeveloped its River Rogue plant at Dearborn Michigan using these principles.
The up market chair maker is Herman Miller.
And the book is not made of paper. It's made of polymer, is waterproof and can be used as an industrial feedstock as is.

Hope this help those interested.

Gnoll110

ruby, xml and hpricot

2008-03-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to play with xml in ruby. After asking around on IRC, using hpricot was recommend to me.

I've been play a city at myminicity.com.

You can get xml of city details from an URL like this http://gnollford.myminicity.com/xml

I've written a small chunk of ruby that read & analysis the xml and generates a web address the help build the city to best advantage.


require 'net/http'
require 'rubygems'
require 'hpricot'

url = ['http://gnollford.myminicity.com/',
       'http://extremesville.myminicity.com/',
       'http://froosh.myminicity.com/',
       'http://griff-stadt.myminicity.com/',
       'http://warlach.myminicity.com/',
       'http://aeoth.myminicity.com/',
       'http://halloranelder.myminicity.com/',
       'http://cricklewood.myminicity.com/',
       'http://twodogs.myminicity.com/',
       'http://iliad.myminicity.com/',
       'http://meatteam.myminicity.com/',
       'http://aushpb.myminicity.com/',
       'http://brisbane.myminicity.com/']
       
source="NET"
#source="FILE"
       
url.each do |cityurl|

  if source == "NET" 
    xml_data = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(cityurl+"xml")).body
  else # FILE branch
    xml_data = File.open('data1.xml')
  end

  doc = Hpricot::XML(xml_data)
  (doc/:city).each do |xml_city|
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["ind"] 
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["tra"] 
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["sec"] 
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["env"] 
    
    region = doc.search("/city/region").first.attributes["code"]
    nm = doc.search("/city/name").first.innerHTML
    ranking = doc.search("/city/ranking").first.innerHTML
   
    typ = ""
    vector = 0
    
    uem = doc.search("/city/unemployment").first.innerHTML.to_i
    if uem > vector
      vector = uem
      typ = "ind"
    end
    
    tra = doc.search("/city/transport").first.innerHTML.to_i
    trap = 100-tra
    if trap > vector
      vector = trap
      typ = "tra"
    end
    
    cri = doc.search("/city/criminality").first.innerHTML.to_i
    if cri > vector
      vector = cri
      typ = "sec"
    end
    
    pol = doc.search("/city/pollution").first.innerHTML.to_i
    if pol > vector
      vector = pol
      typ = "env"
    end

    printf(cityurl+typ+" "+nm+" "+typ+" "+region+" "+ranking+"\n")
  end
end

the output


http://gnollford.myminicity.com/ Gnollford  AU 1743
http://extremesville.myminicity.com/ Extremesville  AU 1450
http://froosh.myminicity.com/tra Froosh tra AU 803
http://griff-stadt.myminicity.com/tra Griff-Stadt tra AU 1029
http://warlach.myminicity.com/ Warlach  AU 1196
http://aeoth.myminicity.com/ind Aeoth ind AU 1304
http://halloranelder.myminicity.com/ HalloranElder  AU 505
http://cricklewood.myminicity.com/ cricklewood  GB 452
http://twodogs.myminicity.com/ TwoDogs  AU 779
http://iliad.myminicity.com/tra Iliad tra AU 81
http://meatteam.myminicity.com/ meatteam  AU 14644
http://aushpb.myminicity.com/env aushpb env AU 82
http://brisbane.myminicity.com/tra brisbane tra AU 3

It easy to take the next step and generate html, I didn't just to keep this blog post's html simple.

Gnoll110

Canberra Ruby Crew

2008-02-29T16:22:00.001-08:00

Last Friday night saw the second crew event.

Talked about lots of stuff, both geeky tech and social.

Learn about some new gem and wrapper lib.

Agree that, given the Sydney meets are on the 2nd Wednesday, we would use the 4th Friday of the month. That way our meeting is never less than a week after Sydney. keen peeps can make both ;)

See http://rubyonrails.com.au/canberra-meetups for more info.

Canberra Ruby Crew

2008-01-31T13:02:00.000-08:00

There is a new special interest group in town.

The Canberra Ruby Crew (CRC). The first get together was earlier this month.

The second will be of the night of 15 Feb. I'll be there. Don't know the venue yet, stay tune.

Gnoll110

2007-12-28T06:11:00.000-08:00

Picked up ‘Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design’ by Scott W. Ambler & Pramod J. Sadalage at the start of the month.

Ask one of the DBAs at work if he had read any book or articles by Scott Amber. His awnser was ‘Who’s that?’. Not an inspiring reply.

Think ‘Refactoring Databases’ is worth the effort. Looking forward to using some of the ideas when I start using Merb, next week.

Think I’ll get ‘Refactoring to Patterns’ or one or the enterprise pattern books in January.

In January, I think I’ll also try to start pulling a Canberra Ruby group together. Will start with a Coffee get together with the 2 other Canberra guys I meet at the RailsCamp2 at Bacchus March and go from there.

Gnoll110

RailsCamp2 and Merb

2007-11-30T15:56:00.000-08:00

RailsCamp 2 was last weekend at Bacchus Marsh, just west of Melbourne.

Was a great weekend. About 40 camper attended.

Learn some new things, including some of the new stuff in the Rails release, due real soon.

Other package I was introduced to include Merb, another framework, that includes a more flexible and extensible structure. Going to look at that this weekend.

There is Flog too. It's a complexity metrics tool.

Lots to play with.

Gnoll110

Agile: new podcast from Agile 2007

2007-10-26T04:52:00.000-07:00

Been a busy month.

I note there is a new podcast on Rob Payne’s Agile Toolkit Podcast site.

Rob talks to Johanna Rothman, an author, consultant and agilist at the Agile 2007 conference.

There is no abstract, so it will be a lucky dip. ;) Rob a great interviewer and pick interesting victims, so it's bound to be informative.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
agile agile+toolkit podcast rob+payne johanna+rothman

Ruby: First hack

2007-09-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

Thursday night, last week, I released some static web pages. That’s nothing special, but the code that built them is, for me.

It’s me first ruby hack. It’s a flikr like doodad.

What it do?

It takes a cd of images (mainly bodybuilding), straight from the developers (I still use an analogue camera, just, but that’s another story). It crops, brands them and then builds a cluster of static web pages around them.

Using Image Magick, via rmagick, I manipulate the images. The images get rotate (if needed), cropped and branded. The data to do this is stored in a mysql data base. Each derived image is also tagged with data, so they can be captioned and grouped later. It is stored in three tables.

Next there is web page formatting. I used staticmatic for this. It based on HAML and SASS.

The formatting data is laid out as a node/leaf arrangement, also in the mysql database. Currently there is only one type of node. That is the root node type of page. All the leaf nodes types currently sit directly connected to the page node. The valid leaf types are navigation, photo grid and album. Currently there is no recursion up a node structure. That’s a future possibility.

That’s two tables, one for node and its one type, page. Not YAGNI (Your Aren’t Going to Need It), but then there is Agile Modelling. There are for leaf tables, Leaf and its three types. Six tables all up.

I’m sure you can guess what navigation and photo grid do.

Album is the complex stuff and the reason I wasted an automated process.

The album is a page cluster. On the page that has the album leaf, you get the results of the specific sports event. The event has divisions. Divisions have competitors, who appear in placing order. If a division or competitor has any photos with their tag, then it becomes a link to a generated page that contains a photo grid with all their tagged photos. The four tables that contain this data are event, division, competitor and place.

Now there is currently only one type of album. If I want an additional album structure for a different event thingy, I’ll refactor. The cluster generating methods would be moved into a command pattern that could be changed by Dependence Injection (DI). But YAGNI says that’s in some tomorrow.

What would I do differently, use rspec from the start.

Well that my first use of ruby in anger.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
first+hack ruby staticmatic haml sass

Projects gone bad: guesses dressed as science

2007-09-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

Been reading the current edition of E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 classic “Small Is Beautiful”.

In chapter 3, “Resources for Industry”, I’ve just found the provoking paragraph.

It is fashionable today to assume that any figures about the future are better than none. To produce figures about the unknown, the current method is to make a guess about something or other – called an “assumption” – and to derive an estimate from it by subtle calculation. The estimate is the presented as the result of scientific reasoning, something far superior to mere guesswork. This is a pernicious practice which can only lead to the most colossal planning errors, because it offers a bogus answer where, in fact, an entrepreneurial judgment is required.

This paragraph really hits the nail of the head, with regard to one reason why big IT projects fail. So much is unknown, then inferred and finally dressed up as the plan that can be done for a tight budget and time frame.

No one says the Emperor has no cloth. The plan says he is fully dressed.

This is an environmental book. A good book for a generalist read.

Well worth the read.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
schumacher small+is+beautiful project+management

Agile Toolkit: Joshua Kerievsky Agile 2007 podcast

2007-09-02T05:27:00.000-07:00

Bob Panye has posted the first of his Agile 2007 podcasts.

It's downloading as I type. Thanks for the effort, Bob.

Agile07 - Josh Kerievsky - Scaling training, e-Learning and certification

Josh presented a session, Introduction to Refactoring & Evolutionary Design. No note or overhead so far.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
agile agile+toolkit training e+learning bob+payne josh+kerievsky

Life in a 24x7 world: Seesaw

2007-08-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

Need to be able to roll your servers processes without bringing a site down. Seewas enables you to increment the version of components in your application, without an outage.

Max Muermann and Matt Allen have written the Seesaw rudy package that lets you roll Mongrel processes.

Matt & Max were working on it at the Hax day, in Sydney, last weekend.

Has a chat to them about the next stage. The hard stage, rolling the database structure forward without downtime. I think it is possible, but the features needed to make it possible need to be part of the bone and muscle of the database management system (DBMS). I'm going to write a post able how I think it could be done and its limits.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
agile ruby rails seesaw mongrel matt+allen max+muermann

To watch: Agile Toolkit Postcast

2007-08-23T15:39:00.001-07:00

Agile 2007 was on last week, 13 to 17 August. Have a look at the site, some of the overheads and handouts can be downloaded.

With Agile 2007 being in Bob Payne’s home town. I’m sure he will have lots of great new podcasts for his Agile Toolkit podcast site soon.

Can’t wait!

I so hope Bob got to talk with Mary Poppendieck and/or Kenji Hiranabe about their Kaizen from Toyota [with MindMaps] session!

Refactoring Databases : Evolutionary Database Design by Scott Ambler & Pramod Sadalage looked interesting.

Lots of other cool sessions too

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
agile lean+software agile+2007 agile+toolkit agile+podcast bob+payne

Ruby: Hax Day

2007-08-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

Ruby on Rails Oceania held a Hax Day at lachie’s place last Saturday. All good value. Like to thank Lachie and his sweet darling wife for looking after us. Wireless, food and drink; what else could you ask for?

This ruby newbie learnt a few things and picked up some new gems (HAML, SASS & Staticmatic).

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
ruby rails ror+oceania roro hax+day haml sass staticmatic

Ruby: Could not find gem in any repository

2007-08-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

Been playing with webgen for static site generation.

Loaded it on 2 machines (one of the demos uses imagemagick), so needed to put it on the second machine. Got the follow error on the second box.

$gem install webgen
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Install required dependency cmdparse? [Yn] Y
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find cmdparse (~> 2.0.0) in any repository

Turns out to be a cache problem.

After a little googling I found a solution on Derek Anderson's army of evil robots blog.

Thanks to Derek.

Ruby: One Day on Rails

2007-07-30T18:56:00.000-07:00

Better late that never.

Last weekend, 21 & 22, I went down to Melbourne to attend Cogent Consulting’s Ruby on Rails EAT workshop. Steve Hayes lead the workshop. The workshop was on the Saturday and was titled ‘One Day on Rails’.

It was a good intro to Ruby, Rails and Cogent’s tools & practices. It was divided about a third each way.

The InstantRails tool was used to ensure everyone started with the same configuration. I had some problems with mysql, it all came down to the fact that Zip didn’t work the first time. After the second upzip, everything worked great.

I’ve been using InstantRails over the last week, as I continue to work through the Agile Web Development with Rails book.

Gnoll110

Good management, Bad management.

2007-07-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

What to do.

The current situation.
This application software redevelopment area is divided into two halves. An accounting system and a 'document' processing system that handles incoming (claims etc) and outgoing (payment, notices etc) messages. Each of these is then divided into two halves. One group of teams converting 'service designs' (from a business area) into 'technical designs' of pseudo code. The second group of teams 'builds' the 'technical design' into modifications to a Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) product. The code is passed on to be compiled and tested.

The division between the analyst and programmer is said to be 'Chinese wall' that ensures quality.

In my book both are part of the software design process. Testing of function is the true validation of the design decisions (that both the analysts and programmers make).

The analysts browse the code base and database/massage/file schemas (no access to any usable dev or testing data) and are expected for get the 'technical designs' right first time. The programmers then code and unit test using some unit tests drawn up be the analyst.

This is madness, it breaks the short term (sub daily) feedback loop of an analyst/programmer doing coding and unit tests, and then feeding unexpected corner cases back into the code/unit test rig. It creates a paper/email feed back loop of days. Often the analyst is requested to modify a 'technical design' that he/she have not worked on for days or weeks.

I know one of the analysts. He told a few people there, that he thinks that the analyst and programmer roles should be merged. That the time resources freed up by the improved/shorter communications should be devoted to testing, particularly automated testing.

Now

Well where has been some movement. They are going to pilot a new team structure. The four person team, 2 analysts and 2 programmers, co-located even! One of the analysts will be the team leader too. Good management!

My friend is the second analyst. The team was setup on a Monday. The second analyst and two programmers found out about the new pilot team and their pending move to it, at about 11 am on the previous Friday. They were CCed in on the 'make it so' email.

My friend thinks it's a good idea, that it’s movement in the right direction at least. But he is mifted that he found out about it as a fata compli. Bad management!

Future

My friend thinks that they may want to keep the 'Chinese walls' in place. He wants to grow some 'grape vines' over it. He wants to learn the programmers tool set. He wants to get the programmers updating the 'technical designs' for more than just spelling mistakes.

Any extra ideas on how to improve this pilot team would be welcomed.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
agile+software lean+software analyst programmer software+management

Ruby: unable to extend cache

2007-07-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I used Ruby in anger for the first time.

The project was to extract JPEG images from a CD of photos I just got back from the lab. The CD has 4 rolls of 36 exposures & 2 rolls of 24 exposures on it.

I used ImageMagick’s Ruby library rmagick. Each photo was rotated (if needed), cropped, resized (for a thumbnail) and branded. So that is a couple of transitory images and two images saved back to disc.

The error text produced was ‘unable to extend cache’. I googled this and came up with four items. None of them these had a solution.

Based on the text, it was either a memory or disc space issue. So I kicked off saidar and ran the ruby code. Sure enough I watch the /tmp partition (2 GB) be steadily consumed and the run then fall over.

After digging around for anything on Ruby destructors & garbage collection, I got a break. My first lead came from a Space Babies blog post and its comments. In the comment, one of rmagick’s developers Tim Hunter refers to a 2004 Hints & Tips post titled Help! My script runs out of memory!.

After adding ‘CG.start’ into the main loop, the run didn’t go over 0.5% of the /tmp partition.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
ruby imagemagick cache garbage+collection rmagick tim+hunter

Broadband: 98 or 99

2007-06-22T00:55:00.000-07:00

With an election due before the end of the year.

The government & opposition have unveiled their positions on broadband roll out.

The opposition wants to roll fibre to the node (phone exchanges) generally and to use public monies to do to. This would give high speed broadband to 98% of the population, they say.

The government policy is to roll fibre to the node in the five biggest state capitals (Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney). It would mix systems & technologies* to roll out some kind of higher speed broadband to rural areas. The total coverage would be 99% of the population. This would be funded by a mix of public & private monies. The government says it would be cheap for the public purse and be delivered earlier.

The opposition says the government’s proposal would introduce two tied broadband. One speed for the biggest cities, another speed for the rest.

How do I see this? Well let me explain my outlook. I’m in Canberra (the national capital), a city of about 300,000. A major city, but not one of the big five. My parents & brother farm, so definitely are rural. Australia's mobile coverage is 97% of the population. This is a mix of GSM and (soon to be replaced) CDMA technologies. At 97%, they don’t have mobile coverage.

So are they in the 98th percentile and get coverage either way? Are they in the 99th percentile and get coverage only in the government plan? Or maybe the 100% percentile and won’t get coverage either way?

I think we need to mandate a minimum service level for 100% coverage.

Ultimately, we need to ensure that that last percentile can get some kind of useable service.

After all, haven’t people been saying we, as a nation, should be trying to encourage people out of the state capitals and north to where the water is. It should also be noted that one of Australia’s most disadvantage groups, its indigenous people would be over represented this last percentile.

The government option looks better to me. Its got greater coverage, sooner and you can always roll fibre out to more nodes later.

Gnoll110

* I assume non satellite ones.

Technorati tags:
broadband australia government election+2007 opposition liberal labor policy

Broadband: Advance Australia where?

2007-06-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

Over on Doc Searls Weblog, there is a post about the current level of Broadband penetration in the US. The original reporting is from DSLreport.com, under the title U.S. Drops Further In Global Broadband Rankings. Currently the US is 15 of the 30 OECD countries. Both Doc Searls and the Kevin Barron say 15th is a sad state of affairs.

So where does Australia sit on the rankings? After a little digging at the OECD site, I found this December 2006 reporting. Australia sits at 16th, just behind the US.

So, what are John Howard and Kevin Rudd doing about it.

Kevin Rudd wants the rob some money from the future retirement funds of some Australians. Is Kevin going to make the commitment to keep the money rolling for ongoing improvement of this broadband infrastructure?

John Howard wants private money to do the Broadband job. The problem with publicly listed private money is that it's looking to short term returns, and won't do the whole job. It will cherry pick the metro areas and bugger the rest. John needs to set (and enforce) a high broadband bar for both Telstra and G9.

Gnoll110

technorati:
australia+broadband oecd liberal+policy labor+policy doc+searls kevin+barron john+howard kevin+rudd

Project Management as servant, not Master

2007-05-22T04:37:00.000-07:00

Jason Yip posted this agility is not the point post to his blog.

Deliver the highest possible quality and service to the customer
Develop employee potential based upon mutual respect and cooperation
Reduce cost through the elimination of waste in any given process
Build a flexible production site that can respond to changes in the market

I've started to work through Agile Web Development with Rails. In Chapter One, there is this section titled Rails Is Agile (1.1).

Let’s look at the values expressed in the Agile Manifesto as a set of four preferences. Agile development favours the following.
Individual and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

Last week we had a talk at work about Project Management (PM), went for about an hour.

At the end I expressed my opinion that Project Management trended to make an organization too lean. Lean in another sense of the work, as in over worked!.

This weakens the organization in three ways.

Insufficient resources to respond to the unexpected, particularly human resources.
Lack of maintenance of corporate assets, like the code base.
Lack of deep infrastructure planning. When I say deep, I mean the shared resources used by most operational activities, including human resources.

Noone actively disagreed with me, including the three Project Managers present.

Been thinking about it more. Thinking triggered by this Seth Godin post & Jason’s post above.

The trouble with PM is when the organization develops a minimum cost/big bang approach to doing things. Be as low cost as possible, gets bodies in to do a job, gets rid of bodies at the end. The public sector is really prown to this!

One issue is that the milestone become the end all. How do you avoid this, it’s natural, the money has got to be tied to something.

PM ends up big on following Process, big on Doco, big on the Plan and big on Contract Negotiation (due to scope creep), putting it at odds with the agile preferences! These are all forms of waste in Lean terms!

Now I’m all in favour of project management (all lower case).

To steal Rowan Bunning’s tag line

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless,
but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

pm makes you think, it’s acting on the useless plans that is a waste.

Where to now?

Well the opposite of minimum cost/big bang management would be maximum effectiveness/steady state management.

What would that look like?

Maximum effectiveness means you’re not measuring costs. You are measuring outcome to expenditure ratios. Further more time and none monetary factors don’t go straight out the front door, as they do when what is being measured, is measured in dollars

Steady state implies that you keep a large core of personnel who maintain existing activities, do projects as needed and are there for the unexpected. You supplement them with specialists and contractor as they’re needed.

Another way of looking at this, is to treat employee as profit centres. That mean the organization tries to develop its employee full potential.

Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
project+management lean agile agile+manifesto

When to kill a product

2007-05-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

After ordering ‘Agile Web Development with Rails’ by Dave Thomas et al, 6 week ago (expect delivery 4 weeks). I final picked it up on Friday. Started reading it on Saturday.

ISBN-10 0-9776166-3-0
ISBN-13 978-0-9776166-3-3
(as I always suspected, the last digit of an ISBN is a check digit :)

One bit in the Preface struck me as being worth a blog post. The last two paragraphs.

... Instead, I found myself rewriting the content. Some chapters from the original have been removed, and new chapters have been added. Many of the rest have been completely rewritten. So, it became clear that we were looking at a second edition-basically a new book.

It seems strange to be releasing a second edition at a time when the first edition is still among the best-selling programming books in the world. But Rails has changed, and we need to change this book with it.

Enjoy!

Dave Thomas
October 2006

For me, this is good example of when to kill a product way before the end of its economic life. All to often you see companies wait for a product to stop being profitable before they release the replacement product.

Know of one case, where a supplement company had a successful protein bar, with three flavours. They let the product get that old before replacing it, that they felt they could only justify redeveloping one of the flavours. Sadly, my favourate was one of the flavours lost. Use to buy boxes (12) of the stuff!

Today, I don’t buy any of this company’s products. Just too trailing edge!

After reading the Preface & first chapter, it looks like an interest and worth while read.

Gnoll110

Google Page Elements suck

2007-05-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

Just being playing with Layout, something added in BetaBlogger.

The Page Element stuff sucks.

A really big suck is LinkLists. You have to add ONE link at a time. No editing the HTML to import a block of new links.

Moving from Editable HTML to Layouts is considered an 'upgrade' so there is no going back. BE WARNED!

Gnoll110

The other 95% are management problems

2007-04-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

I do like this Mary Poppendieck post from earlier this month. Sorry to take soooo long to blog about it.

I do love the ‘The other 95% are management problems’ statement at the very end.

I’ve seen developers thrashing through multiple assignments many times, and in my experience it is usually caused by one of two things:

1) The organization can’t make up its mind what is important for one reason or another, so it tries to do everything. To me this is fundamentally a management problem – it is a basic management obligation to assure that the organization has the capacity to accomplish what it chooses to do. Releasing all sorts of work that is un-prioritized or with changing priorities is neither fair to workers nor an effective way to accomplish work. Releasing a ton of work and expecting it to flow is equivalent to sending a mass of cars onto a freeway (eg. after a sporting event) and expecting traffic to flow. Anyone who understands traffic jams should be able to understand that trying to do too much work is one of the best known ways to get less work done. There is massive evidence to support this – and managers usually know this at some level, yet often choose to ignore it. Those who do not limit assigned work to the capacity of the organization to deliver are ignoring the evidence and not doing their job.

2) There are large caches of waste sitting around the organization that are either invisible to the development team or that are impossible for them to address. This could be lack of clear definition, poor tools, a process which separates different functions and expects them to work sequentially, a practice of not testing until LOONG after coding so that test-and-fix cycles dominate the development agenda – and on and on. In almost all cases, these are SYSTEM problems, not developer problems.

One thing Deming would be sure to say, were he alive today: The likelihood that the organization’s problems are being caused by workers, or can be solved by workers, is maybe 5%. The other 95% are management problems.

Mary Poppendieck

In a previous post, I comment how Mainframe COBOLs two big problems were the nature of the language & lack of active new tool development over the last 20 plus years.

Of cause, for any organization that has these problems today, it really is a management problem. Said organizations have had lots of years to extract themselves from this situation.

The post is at: Yahoo Groups in leandevelopment

I’ve also extracted the sub-thread into this blog post:

How do you break the cycle?

Posted by: sambayer
Tue Apr 3, 2007 12:37 am (PST)

I'm working with a software services organization that wants to transition their implementation processes to lean. Today they are suffering from a lot of wip, big backlog, and lengthy implementation cycles....>8- 10 months. We're dedicating a team to get through one implementation in 1/3 that time. The problem is that everyone in the organization is multi-tasking. Everyone is handling multiple clients at various stages. To add insult to injury, a few employees just left leaving them even more shorthanded. How do we get them off of their "multi-tasking" wip addiction?

Management is behind our experiment because the potential results are dramatic. The challenge we're facing is figuring out where and how to break the multi-tasking addiction. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Tue Apr 3, 2007 11:53 pm

Hi sambayer, you wrote:

> I'm working with a software services organization that wants
> to transition their implementation processes to lean. Today
> they are suffering from a lot of wip, big backlog, and
> lengthy implementation cycles....>8-10 months. We're
> dedicating a team to get through one implementation in 1/3
> that time. The problem is that everyone in the organization
> is multi-tasking. Everyone is handling multiple clients at
> various stages. To add insult to injury, a few employees just
> left leaving them even more shorthanded. How do we get them
> off of their "multi-tasking" wip addiction?
>
> Management is behind our experiment because the potential
> results are dramatic. The challenge we're facing is figuring
> out where and how to break the multi-tasking addiction. Any
> suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

You are fortunate that management is backing your experiment.

To break your addiction I recommend that you use the [i-don't-know-what-its-called] principle:

1) Explain to everyone that their job is to improve how they accomplish their responsibilities as part of how the company delivers value to its customers.
2) Help them learn to see the waste in the way they work.
3) Help them learn to improve how they work using the Scientific method.
4) repeat all the previous steps

That's it. The learning part is where you can bring in the advice and insights of others, such as the advice from the other two people who respond to your post, into your unique environment, i.e. you learn and understand principles and apply them to develop your own best practices.

While multi-tasking is bad, see Peter Abilla's excellent analysis based on the physics of systems showing this,
http://www.shmula.com/375/multi-tasking-leads-to-lower-productivity, you and your colleagues need to understand your context and commitments and what the issues are in your environment before you start making changes. You need to ensure that you make improvements not just change. The good news is that you and your colleagues already are Subject Matter Experts (SME) on your environment, so you just need to change how you look at your work and environment. There is a wonderful example of this in Matthew May's book, The Elegant Solution. In Chapter 15 he recounts how instructors from Toyota, worked with LAPD staff and in 1 day came up with significant suggestions for improvements in many different problem areas. The LAPD staff were the SME, the Toyota instructors just help them to see their environment and what were the root causes of some their problems and then they helped the LAPD staff to suggest ways to they could improve their ways of operating.

Regards
Norbert
-----
Norbert Winklareth
Agile Renaissance

Wed Apr 4, 2007 1:22 am

>>>
While multi-tasking is bad, see Peter Abilla's excellent analysis based on the physics of systems showing this, http://www.shmula.com/375/multi-tasking-leads-to-lower-productivity, you and
<<<

Hey, I'm *against* multi-tasking as much as anyone. But if it's so bad for us humans, then why is it *good* for operating systems? I'm at my best when I'm mulling over several problems at once. To make a broad statement that multi-tasking is bad is awfully sweeping. Maybe some types are ok afterall. The main thing that I I try to provide for developers is an uninterrupted *zone* time of 2 hrs, twice a day. During the zone there are no interruptions, no context switching, no nothing!

Mel Bartels

Wed Apr 4, 2007 1:32 am

Management is behind our experiment because the potential results are dramatic. The challenge we're facing is figuring out where and how to break the multi-tasking addiction. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I think there is a fine line between multi-tasking providing a "cross fertilization" of ideas, and inundating you with so much "fertilizer" that you can't see the daylight.

I guess it's all about moderation.

All of our employees complain about being overworked and too much multitasking going on. How do you know if that's really the case, or if they are just complaining?

Sam

Posted by: Mary Poppendieck
Tue Apr 3, 2007 7:12 pm (PST)

Hi Sam,

I've seen developers thrashing through multiple assignments many times, and in my experience it is usually caused by one of two things:

1) The organization can't make up its mind what is important for one reason or another, so it tries to do everything. To me this is fundamentally a management problem - it is a basic management obligation to assure that the organization has the capacity to accomplish what it chooses to do. Releasing all sorts of work that is un-prioritized or with changing priorities is neither fair to workers nor an effective way to accomplish work. Releasing a ton of work and expecting it to flow is equivalent to sending a mass of cars onto a freeway (eg. after a sporting event) and expecting traffic to flow. Anyone who understands traffic jams should be able to understand that trying to do too much work is one of the best known ways to get less work done. There is massive evidence to support this - and managers usually know this at some level, yet often choose to ignore it. Those who do not limit assigned work to the capacity of the organization to deliver are ignoring the evidence and not doing their job.

2) There are large caches of waste sitting around the organization that are either invisible to the development team or that are impossible for them to address. This could be lack of clear definition, poor tools, a process which separates different functions and expects them to work sequentially, a practice of not testing until LOONG after coding so that test-and-fix cycles dominate the development agenda - and on and on. In almost all cases, these are SYSTEM problems, not developer problems.

One thing Deming would be sure to say, were he alive today: The likelihood that the organization' s problems are being caused by workers, or can be solved by workers, is maybe 5%. The other 95% are management problems.

Mary Poppendieck

952-934-7998

www@poppendieck. com

Author of: Lean Software Development & Implementing Lean Software
Development

Design Improvement and COBOL

2007-03-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I ventured down to Melbourne to attend Cogent Consulting’s Design Improvement workshop at the Northcote Town Hall. It’s the first time Cogent has offered this workshop as a public course. It’s great value, a few hundred dollars, for what would normally be a $500+ a day, for a weekday course at a CBD venue.

I thing that the course brought home to me, is the gap between current best practice and mainframe COBOL. I understood the gap conceptually, the workshop made the gap much more concrete.

The gap has two roots.
1. The nature of COBOL, its global memory model, granularity (particularly regarding testing) etc.
2. Lack of active tool development on mainframe environments for over 20 years.

A primary tool for ongoing design improvement is refacturing. That is, modifying internal design, without changing the codes external behavior.

Why send time/money without added functionality? To bring out new abstraction that lead to more elegant solutions. These new refactured objects/concept make it easier and cheaper to test and easier, faster and cheaper to extend.

It's ongoing maintanence, it extends the life of the system and reduces the total lifecycle cost/annum. It reduces the number and size (cost not being linear to increasing size) of major revamps!

Gnoll110

2007-03-08T14:14:00.000-08:00

During CLUG Programmers' Special Interest Group Meeting I downloaded Ruby.

Installed it when I got home.

Wrote the standard "Hello World!" first off. First interectively then as a program.

Next, I must download Ruby on Rail and play with it!

Gnoll110

CLUG Programmers' Special Interest Group Meeting

2007-03-08T14:04:00.000-08:00

CLUG Programmers' Special Interest Group Meeting was last night.

Tridge (Andrew Tridgell) gave a talk about hacking a binary package for one distro so that it would run on other distro. He used stuff like chroot & LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Lots of tricks and smoke & mirrors :)

Learnt a few new command options too.

A good night.

Gnoll110

Mary on Lean Software

2007-02-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

Monday night last week (19th), I left work early and drive to Sydney to see Mary Poppendieck speak. I think it was worth the effort.

Mary spoke on the growth of Just-in-Time into Lean Manufacturing. The lessons to be learnt from Toyota. How designing things and making things are alike and not alike.

One real interesting point that got made, was that software organizations are designed in a defencive way. Why organize that way? Because they assume failure is the likely outcome!

That the open multi-disciple teams that are needed to good (engineered) design, are not the teams that get put together. The teams a partitioned to protect the different parts of the organization from the fallout of failure! Got to have deniability! We told you that wouldn’t work, and we got it down on paper. It’s not our fault!

I’ll get her new book ‘Implementing Lean Software’, next pay.

Gnoll110

A quality of good software

2007-01-31T08:11:00.000-08:00

Via the SyXPAC mailing list, I found article by Steve Yegge.

And the quality is: Systems should never reboot. Software needs to be plug-n-play too.

Gnoll110

Technorati Tags:
software+quality good+design stevey+yegge

Linux's next chance

2006-12-31T19:41:00.000-08:00

Is Linux's next chance for world domination the move to 64 bits?

What do you think?

Got this link from the Canberra LUG's mailing list.

Gnoll110

Happy Feet Grunt

2006-11-30T06:55:00.000-08:00

Animal Logic is the outfit that did the animation grunt work for the Happy Feet movie.

Who are they? Well they show up on top500.org.

Sounds like an interesting outfit.

http://www.top500.org/site/2587

They have two machines in the Top 500 list for November 2006.
A BladeCenter HS20 Xeon 3.06 GHz, Gig-Ethernet (Rank 260) and a BladeCenter HS20 Cluster, Xeon EM64T 3.2 GHz, GigEthernet (Rank 409), both from IBM

Gnoll110

Technorati Tags:
top500 animal+logic supercomputer happy+feet

Bedding a new system

2006-11-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

I was in Melbourne last week.

I can across an new system that was being bedded in.

At the new Southern Cross station, in the Bus interchange area, they have some new lockers. They are from a Chinese maker.

They have had an engineer from the maker on site, hacking Linux based code. He been on-site from several weeks, installing and hacking daily builds from home!

They got big problems with touch screen sensitivity. It's that bad they got a minder on hand to help traveller!

They touch keypad is none standard too.

The '0' key is right of the '6', instead of being below the '8' key!

1	2	3
4	5	6	0
7	8	9
	0

Now pick up your mobile phone and check its keypad.

Gnoll110

software testing china daily+build interface+design touch+screen+sensitivity

If you can read this...I got the Blogger API working...finally!

2006-10-13T19:12:00.001-07:00

Finally!

And my first bit of advice is...convert your Blogger blog to Blogger Beta...

Once I found the right wall to beat my head against, it worked fine (apart from a typo, on my part).

Thanks to Vijay Bhaskar at Matrix Chronicle for that lead.

Technorati Tags:
google+blogger+api migrating+to+blogger+beta vijay+bhaskar matrix+chronicle cyberneticz java+api

IPv6 - Bring it on!

2006-10-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

While looking around the net for stuff on Stirling Engines, I found this post about Combined Heat & Power (CHP) systems. CHP system are a major area of application for Stirling Engines.

The LowCarbonKid writes...

Householders would receive the benefit of selling their surplus electricity drawn in this way, but would have to accept that for some of the time their units might be remotely controlled. Naturally such a system implies the introduction of an IT network into every home.

However such networks are likely to be introduced into homes anyway in order to roll out so-called smart meters, which can be read remotely by the electricity or gas utility company. It is a small leap from this to imagine that they could actually draw power from your unit and pay you for it when they needed it. This would create a truly distributed decentralised grid.

Bring on the IPv6 Internet!

Even homes that just consume power will need the IPv6 Internet! To spread and even generation load requirement shutting down or time shifting demand at peak times.

The compressor of a Fridge does not need to run 27/7. They could be told be the power companies 'Load spreading' computer system to run before the expected daily peak demand period and the shut down during the peak period. This would save carbon and lessen the amount of capital investment required for centralized peak generation capacity.

To have the number of IP addresses this requires with a level of security needed means an IPv6 Internet! IPv4 don't cut the mustard.

Technorati Tags:
stirling+engine global+warming IPv6 combined+heat+power chp lowcarbonkid

Agile Toolkit Podcast - Class A Resource!

2006-09-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Find this great source of software development podcasts at Agile Toolkit Podcasts.

The podcasts are interviews with speaks a various software development conferences, like Agile 2006.

Here is an Index for the podcasts. So far I've done 24.

40/ Tue, 19 September 2006
Agile06 - Ward Cunningham - Eclipse Foundation
Direct download: Agile2006_WardCunningham.mp3

39/ Sun, 10 September 2006
Agile06 - Mary Lynn Manns - Fearless Chage and Agile 2007
Direct download: Agile2006_MaryLynnManns.mp3

38/ Sun, 10 September 2006
Agile06 - Dot Tudor - Agile Europe/UK and DSDM
Direct download: Agile2006_DotTudor.mp3

37/ Thu, 17 August 2006
Agile06 - Nancy Van Schooenderwoert - From Embeded to The Organization
Direct download: Agile06_NancyV.mp3

36/ Thu, 17 August 2006
Agile06 - Chris Matts - Real Options and Agile Software Delivery
Direct download: Agile06_ChrisMatts.mp3

35/ Thu, 17 August 2006
APLN06 - Mark Salamango John Cunningham - Leading the Agile Way: Duty, Honor, Delivery
Direct download: APLN06_MarkJohn.mp3

34/ Thu, 17 August 2006
APLN06 - Alexia Bowers - Leading from a Position of No Power
Direct download: APLN06_AlexiaBowers.mp3

33/ Wed, 9 August 2006
APLN06 - David Hussman and Tor Stenstad - GMAC/RFC Agile Transition
Direct download: APLN06_DavidTor.mp3

32/ Wed, 9 August 2006
APLN06 - Panel Discussion - Real leaders talk about large Agile Implementations
Direct download: APLN06_Panel.mp3

31/ Wed, 9 August 2006
APLN06 - Tim Lister - Introduction to Agile Leadership
Direct download: APLN06_TimLister.mp3

30/ Thu, 3 August 2006
Agile06 - Bud Phillips, Vice President Capital One - Decisioning Services
Direct download: Agile06_BudPhillips.mp3

29/ Thu, 3 August 2006
Agile06 - François Beauregard - GreenPepper Software
Direct download: Agile06_FrancoisBeuregard.mp3

28/ Thu, 3 August 2006
Agile06 - James Shore - CardMeeting - Online 3x5 cards
Direct download: Agile06_JamesShore.mp3

27/ Thu, 3 August 2006
Agile06 - Brian Robertson - Holocracy - A Governance Sturcture
Direct download: Agile06_BrainRobertson.mp3

26/ Mon, 31 July 2006
Agile06 - Gary Pollice - Teaching a new crop of Software Craftspeople
Direct download: Agile06_GaryPollice.mp3

25/ Sun, 30 July 2006
Agile06 - Tom and Mary Poppendieck
Direct download: Agile06_TomMary.mp3

24/ Sat, 29 July 2006
Agile06 - Sanjiv Augustine
Direct download: Agile06_SanjivAugustine.mp3

23/ Mon, 24 July 2006
Agile06 - BorisGloger
Direct download: Agile06_BorisGloger.mp3

22/ Mon, 24 July 2006
Agile06 - Open Space Kickoff - Diana Larson
Direct download: Agile06_OpenSpaceDiannaLarson.mp3

21/ Mon, 24 July 2006
Agile06 Keynote - Peter Coffee
Direct download: Agile06_Keynote_PeterCoffee.mp3

20/ Mon, 24 July 2006
Agile06 Kick Off with Todd Little
Direct download: Agile06_ToddLittle_Rendered.mp3

19/ Mon, 3 July 2006
Jared Richardson - Just Ship It - No Fluff Just Stuff 2006
Direct download: NFJS_JaradRichardson.mp3

18/ Mon, 3 July 2006
Ramnivas Laddad - AOP - No Fluff Just Stuff
Direct download: NFJS_RamnivasLaddad.mp3

17/ Mon, 3 July 2006
Brian Sletten at No Fluff Just Stuff 2006
Direct download: NFJS_BrianSletten.mp3

16/ Sun, 28 May 2006
Venkat Subramaniam - Practices of an Agile Developer - NFJS Tour 2006
Direct download: VenkatSubramamiam.mp3

15/ Fri, 12 May 2006
Jay Zimmerman - No Fluff Just Stuff Tour 2006
Direct download: NFJS06_JayZimmerman.mp3

14/ Fri, 12 May 2006
Mark Richards - FDD & Agile Architecture - NFJS2006 Tour
Direct download: NFJS06_MarkRichards.mp3

13/ Thu, 4 May 2006
Dave Thomas - No Fluff Just Stuff 2006 Tour
Direct download: NFJS06_DaveThomas.mp3

12/ Mon, 14 November 2005
Todd Little - Agile 2005 - APLN and Agile 2005
Direct download: ToddLittleAgile2005.mp3

11/ Thu, 20 October 2005
Fit with Ward Cunningham and Rick Mugridge
Direct download: RickWardFit.mp3

10/ Sun, 11 September 2005
The AgileGuys Discuss ScrumMaster Certification
Direct download: AGScrumTraining.mp3

9/ Sun, 11 September 2005
Nancy Van Schooenderwoert - Embedded Agile- Agile 2005
Direct download: NancyV.mp3

8/ Tue, 23 August 2005
Mary Poppendieck - Lean Software Development - Agile 2005
Direct download: MaryPoppendieck.mp3

7/ Tue, 16 August 2005
Scott Ambler - Agile Modeling, Agile Database and the Agile Development Conference
Direct download: ScottAmblerAgile2005.mp3

6/ Tue, 9 August 2005
Arlo Belshee - Agile 2005 - Promiscuous Pairing and the Least Qualified Impementer
Direct download: ArloBelsheeAgile2005.mp3

5/ Mon, 8 August 2005
Dave Astels - Behavior Driven Development - Agile 2005
Direct download: DaveAstelsAgile2005.mp3

4/ Mon, 8 August 2005
User Centerd Design Round Table with Lynn Miller, Jeff Patton and Rebecca Wirfs-Brock
Direct download: UserDesignAgile2003.mp3

3/ Mon, 8 August 2005
Mike Hill - Agile 2005
Direct download: MikeHillAgile2005.mp3

2/ Mon, 8 August 2005
Collaborative Leadership with Ester Derby, Diana Larsen and Pollyanna Pixton
Direct download: CollabLeaderNetwork.mp3

1/ Mon, 8 August 2005
Bob Martin - Agile 2005 Conference
Direct download: BobMartinAgile2005.mp3

software+development agile+toolkit+podcast

problem with ant task 'junit' in eclipse

2006-09-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

Been doing some java coding in eclipse.

Wanted to use junit for some automated testing. Write & compiled the code fine.

But could not get the to run, a 'task not found' error.

After a quick google I found this post by Ryan Lowe. Thanks Ryan, a time saver mate!

eclipse junit ryan lowe

I'm a true podder now!

2006-08-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I brought my first MP3 (and MP4) player.

Been listerening to podcast for over a year on my PC.

Now I'm mobile. Now I can listeren to ABC & the podcast network podcast during my morning walk. Currently I'm walking Mt Taylor 5 or 6 times a week.

The MediaManager that came with it is dodge. Its hung twice day (my first attept to move mp3 on to it) and the info on the status panel is wrong at times.

I've started moving files to it in WindowExplorer, as a removeable drive!

Other than that it real cool!

MythTV Project!

2006-07-31T06:47:00.000-07:00

Well the project for the coming week, is to install a Digital dual tuner card in one of my Debian boxes and the install MythTV to control it.

One PVR coming up!

The Canberra Linux Users Group is having a 'hand on' night for MythTV, on the 24 Aug. So if I have any prob, I have an alternate fall back position ;)

How much tech does it take to be a journo?

2006-06-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

Just finished the first chapter of 'The World is Flat', by Thomas L Friedman.

There are a few papagraphs about Bill Ardolino, the young reporter who did some of the ground work that broke 'Rathergate'. This is the one where 60 Minutes(CBS) ran a story about George W Bush's National Guard service, that turned out to be based on dodgie documents.

The week after the 60 Minutes story, Bob Schieffer hosted Face the Nation. As Schieffer was leaving the studio, Bill Ardolino button holes him for an interview for his InDC Journal web site.

So how much tech does it take? This is a US book, so assume $US.

Ardolino used a $125 MP3 player/recorder, "primarily designed to play miusic", capable of doing WAV file that can be upload to a computer.

So $100 - $200 to $300, if you want a camera. (Ardolino used a phone pic of Schieffer on his web site). $400 to $500 for a nice recorder and nice carera.

So $200 is all that is needed to get the job done.

Project for the weekend

2006-06-30T04:33:00.000-07:00

Well this week, I finally got the net setup at home. Setup to run on a Debian box.

The projects to look at this weekend are setting up an inhouse debian package mirror and sorting through java packages for testing, logging etc.

Want to look at a MythTV box soon too.

Google & Sensis - two people chasing the same lunch.

2006-05-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

I picked up the AFR weekend edition (I do this a few times a year, if a front page banner catches my eye). I see that Google looks like a threat to Telstra's Sensis business.

I would post a link to it, but AFR appears to be subsidiary of ‘Dinosaur Press’.

A Search on the AFR site gets you this result.

Google begins to map its way around Australia
Google's assault on Sensis and its dominance of the Australian mapping and directory business has begun with the unofficial launch of Google Maps.
The Financial Review 20/05/2006 Cost - $3.30 463 words

There has to be a lot of scope here for playing around with different Google interface and developing new product for the local market (initially).

Google Sensis Google+Sensis Google+Maps AFR+Dinosaur

ANZ glitch, file processed twice!

2006-05-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

One of the banks has stuffed up real big, 45 million dollars big! 400,000 transactions?

The story ran today on the ABC and in the Age.

This is going to be a good story, can't wait to hear it! I have been asking myself Have these guys/gals every heard of run numbers and file headers? I can't believe they have not!

I will say that the non-bank finance orgs I have worked for have always tested the file headers well.

I once built an audit system for an Interface system between a bank subsidiary & a non-bank finance org (who I was working for). I Interfaces' own accounting checks assumed things about the data coming from the bank subsidiary that were not true (but the bank subsidiaries spec said they were true). The most frequent problem was messages from the bank subsidiary say that a transaction rollback had been done when it had not!

I also ask myself, where were MasterCard’s own transaction checking routines when this was going on?

So we have three parties here, ANZ, MasterCard & the Cardholders bank. They did none of them stop these transactions? It's a 'got to get the transactions processed' mentality. This minimizes the cost. Don't check stuff, because if we find anything, someone will need to check it manually, and that costs money! We will wait to see of anyone complains, and then patch it afterward, if it can't be avoided.

Anyone think I'm wrong about this mentality?

So keep checking them computer generated statements.

ANZ+Bank ANZ+Stuffup ANZ+MasterCard run+number file+header

A new start.

2006-05-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

In future I'm going to post all my tech posts here.

Past tech posts will remain in my general blog, Gnolls in Space!

Tech rules! ;)

Gnoll110