Tuesday, October 30, 2007

scratch update

a few days ago i wrote about the lacy veach day of discovery. here is a really cool update. posted on this website are all the kids scratch creations. take a look at all the cool stuff they did.

here are a few to look at:
  • one kid spent about 30 minutes on this one. he even wrote the star wars song, note by note. needless to say, this kid was cool ANDREW_StarWars.
  • robert can dance. okay we cheated. a software engineer created this one. Robert_can_dance
  • one of the better scratches by a kid. DevonMiller_Run
  • this kid spent a while drawing and positioning his demons. this one was cool. XAVIER_DEMONDS_RULE
  • this one was made by a little girl. she couldn't have been older than 6 years old. she did a great job. cady_Monkey
  • another cool one, we got the cat to run. Kayla_Cat

    anyway, every single kid's scratch was awesome. they were able to pick up the technology very quickly. they did great!

    hopefully, we can continue teaching kids scratch.
  • Monday, October 29, 2007

    two roads diverged in a yellow wood

    one road says, "(such as Active Time in Hackystat) would have similarly disastrous consequences were anyone to actually take them seriously" from The Mismeasurement of Science.

    the other road says, "I’m finding that I actually like the time tracking. For one thing, it’s a tool for focus. When you kick off the timer on a task, you don’t want to jump around and multitask because it will just throw off the timer. The timer feature itself is pretty easy to use.” from Some feedback on EBS.

    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- (robert frost)... and i... think its funny how systems like FogBugz and Bamboo are finally adding metrics to their systems.

    FogBugz and Bamboo provide compelling arguments for their features. Just like 6th Sense Analytics. They look nice and make sense from a management point of view. However, I think what I've realized is that from a developer point of view these simple metrics doesn't really make me a better programmer. Don't get me wrong i think it is totally awesome to have those metrics to increase awareness and manage certain things. But, i want to jump to the next curve. I want systems that help me gather as many 10 second vignettes of knowledge as i can.

    Hackystat has already done coverage reporting, timesheets, and automated time tracking. we've done those type of things. and i still think that metrics (as presented by the three previous links) has not improved my development one bit.

    my software development has improved by debating with, communicating, learning from, teaching, pair programming with, yelling at, getting yelled at, blogging for, reading blogs of, emailing, and just working with great hackers. if you can package that up and bottle that, then you've got it! thats how you get 10x productivity and hit the high notes. if you can harness that relationships; improve the ability to share information along with metrics pointing you in the right direction, then you've hit gold. i've realized that context is always the number one thing. the context of the problem and the context of the solution.

    thats the difference between the two roads....

    Sunday, October 28, 2007

    socially conscious programming

    here is a thought... we need more programmers to help solve social problems. i've been reading the book Giving: How each of us can change the world and one of the things that i immediately thought of is that technology can change the world. duh... industrial revolution and the information age.

    socially conscious programming is something that i just made up, to express the idea of applying technology to problems like AIDS, hunger, extreme poverty, disaster relief, environment education, etc. all of these causes need technology, yet i bet little funding is made available to pay for cutting edge technology.

    philanthropy is becoming more main stream now days with the likes of bill gates and warren buffet. and its cool to see things like google.org. its great to see big money and big companies helping out the major social causes.

    but, what about the community level issues, for example helping the Hawaii Education of the ARTS, and organization who is asking for help right now. there are probably hundreds of thousands of NGOs that need minor technology help; from access databases, websites, to information packets. we could and should help. but, i'm not sure how to organize that. hackers are afraid of the constant nagging computer-illiterate friends that need help with stuff.

    going back to the major social causes. wouldn't it be cool to work on something that has a major sociological benefit. something that truly changes the world. my love for hacking is secondary to my love for helping people. an awesome job would be to create cool innovative technology that saves the world from global warming (just an example). i would love that job.

    oh.... and how do i do that without taking a big pay cut. haha. just joking, well maybe not. that is a problem. maybe that separates the true givers from the rest.

    bottom line
    making a little money on the internet is pretty straight forward now days. making a small positive difference in the world on the internet is a lot harder. my prediction is that is going to change soon. it needs to.

    Saturday, October 27, 2007

    lacy veach day of discovery

    today i participated in the lacy veach day of discovery, which is a large scale science fair with exhibits and workshops. we had a great time with all the kids. i even learned a lot! science is cool.

    at the event we taught kids how to program with scratch, an interactive programming language that creates animation, games, music, and art designed for kids to help develop 21 century skills. it was a huge success. the kids at the event were great. my friends did a great job of helping the kids. overall it was a huge success.

    here are some pictures:


    again, today was awesome. i really feel that these little things change the world.

    Friday, October 26, 2007

    wanna try twitter?

    aaron: wanna try twitter?
    ryanK: sure
    aaron: go sign up.
    ryanK: ok...now what
    aaron: who you?
    aaron: found me?
    ryanK: yep
    aaron: pick who you want to follow.
    ryanK: ok...cool
    ryanK: so what do it do
    ryanK: not to sound dumb...but now what
    aaron: haha
    aaron: now its like micro blogging
    ryanK: i see
    aaron: for example...
    ryanK: ok...i'm in
    aaron: "wow i just saw angelina jolie!"
    aaron: haha. or something random like that
    ryanK: mine would be more like.....damn neighbors swearing again
    aaron: haha
    ryanK: ok...sounds good to me....i'm all for daily diversions
    aaron: well, hackystat people are using it for awareness
    aaron: for example.
    ryanK: what kind of awareness?
    aaron: working on Jira sensors. writing a unit test
    ryanK: that's cool
    aaron: http://kagawaa.blogspot.com/2007/10/twitter-sharing-hackystat-goals.html
    ryanK: nice post
    aaron: that why i want you to move to google
    ryanK: ?
    aaron: does yahoo pipes allow you to share?
    ryanK: what do you mean?
    aaron: share the blogs you like
    aaron: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/03700852820011910609/state/com.google/broadcast
    aaron: these are the blog posting that i like
    aaron: so you can read the ones that i like. cause you might like them too
    aaron: google share http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=116568645918095855751
    aaron: share some 10 second knowledge with me.
    ryanK: no...pipes doesn't share
    aaron: i had an idea for a consolidation type thing.
    aaron: for example group rss feeds
    ryanK: basically what you do is you select feeds....then you can combine them, filter out stuff,
    ryanK: it's pretty cool.....a bit limited but it has its uses
    ryanK: not really what you wanted in terms of sharing
    aaron: ok i remember it now
    aaron: i want global labels
    ryanK: what that?
    aaron: so.. look at
    aaron: http://kagawaa.blogspot.com/
    aaron: see the label section.
    aaron: hacksytatv8, hitech, reading, hackylife
    ryanK: yeah
    aaron: i want to see all the posting on "hawaii hi tech"
    aaron: globally
    ryanK: your assuming everyone else will label it the same
    aaron: well. yes
    ryanK: that is sort of way the tagging thing died out a bit
    aaron: so, a website that provides what labels you can use if you want to be global labeling.
    aaron: imagine a search on "hawaii hi tech"
    ryanK: your talking about creating some sort of vocabulary
    aaron: it shows a list of blogs and articles
    aaron: sorted by who says good things.
    ryanK: i sort of know what you are talking about
    aaron: i think it has to do with semantic web
    ryanK: bah....that's a too big problem
    aaron: rss aggregations.
    aaron: http://kagawaa.blogspot.com/
    aaron: rss aggregations
    or a cool rss aggregator.basically, what i want to do is aggregate the blogs that certain peoplewrite into a group of blogs that should be about the same topic. forexample, austen and i could be in a group. to further specifyinteresting blogs on the same topic we could then agree to use the samelabels.
    ryanK: the key is getting people who you know together and gathering the info as a group
    aaron: right
    aaron: yes
    aaron: you can do that in many ways
    aaron: blogs, twitter, shared blogs, shared websites
    ryanK: that last thing about the rss aggregator
    ryanK: i use pipes for that
    aaron: i use google reader for that.
    ryanK: you pipe in the blogs that are similar into a single feed
    aaron: but it isn't global it is personal.
    ryanK: i see
    aaron: i want global.
    ryanK: let me see if i understand...
    ryanK: what you want (in a perfect world) is for everyone to use a set of labels and label their blog entries so that some sort of aggregator could get them and put them together as a related group
    aaron: yes
    aaron: not just blogs
    aaron: but yah. that is a start
    ryanK: what else? links?
    aaron: shared links, twitter, etc.
    aaron: haha.
    aaron: ask.com is kinda what i want.
    aaron: http://www.ask.com/web?q=hackystat&search=search&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir
    ryanK: so...the solution i thought of was basically to do that....but manually without the labels....using people who stumble upon it
    aaron: ic
    aaron: basically.. the goal is to see what other people are saying.
    aaron: using things like word clouds, other 2.0 stuff
    aaron: you can see what the whole community is saying.
    aaron: easily.
    ryanK: the one drawback that I saw with that.....was filtering out the stuff that was labeled as related but was crap
    aaron: haha.
    ryanK: seriously...there's a lot of related stuff that just sucks
    aaron: yeah.. somebody smart needs to figure out how to remove the crap
    ryanK: you dont want to have to filter through that
    aaron: google weeds out crap from search.
    ryanK: how does it know?
    aaron: popularity
    ryanK: by crap, I mean that "you" don't like it
    aaron: hm.. right.
    aaron: good point!!
    aaron: so.. in IEEE software
    aaron: robert glass talked about how common people are writtign crappy blogs
    aaron: and that blogs suck because of that.
    aaron: you read a blog about software engineering from a guy that writes html in one project.
    aaron: that isn't good.
    ryanK: yeah
    aaron: so.. technology can limit the crap
    aaron: i think.
    ryanK: need to find the good stuff.....and to me...the only way to know is for a person to do it
    ryanK: hahaha
    aaron: it needs to do that. to jump to the next curve (reference to guy kawasaki's art of innovation talk)
    aaron: haha. i agree.
    aaron: anyone can be brilliant at a particular point in time.
    aaron: digg uses that model .
    aaron: so digg, plus knowing if the person writes good stuff, relevance, etc, etc
    aaron: adding all that.
    aaron: and you'd be able to know as much as everyone else.
    aaron: presto. instant awareness.
    ryanK: yeah....but if you look at where digg is going
    ryanK: where you get a group of people you know and you use their digg-ing
    aaron: yeah..
    aaron: i think groups improves the current curve
    aaron: i'm talking about busting out into a totally new one.
    ryanK: the good thing about groups is like thinking
    ryanK: no..your idea is good
    ryanK: just .... big
    aaron: and i like groups too.
    aaron: i like groups.
    ryanK: but you know....if you build it....they will come
    aaron: groups and global.
    aaron: personal, groups, global!
    ryanK: i think if you build it so that it works for you and the people around you....it will be easy to go global
    aaron: haha. i just wnat to use it.
    aaron: http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/
    aaron: i'm sure you seen that.
    aaron: imagine if there was a cloud for anyone that blogged, wrote and article, etc, about unit testing.
    ryanK: that's what i mean.....set it up to be useful to you...have your friends use it
    aaron: maybe we'll see that most people think that unit testing is hard.
    aaron: ah.. okay.
    aaron: yes. thats why i want people to use google reader.
    ryanK: i do
    aaron: use google share blogs and google share items.
    aaron: click on the share icon when you read something good.
    aaron: thats all.
    aaron: thats all for now. untill we learn how to use that..
    ryanK: sounds good to me
    aaron: then we'll move up the curve after we learn what that means.
    aaron: i share something every day.
    ryanK: what share icon?
    aaron: in google reader
    ryanK: oh
    ryanK: ok
    aaron: http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=116568645918095855751&aoff=false
    aaron: and this google share thing
    ryanK: i see.....so i can subscribe to your shares
    aaron: yes!
    aaron: haha.
    aaron: yeah.
    aaron: blog shares and item shares.
    aaron: then what i want to know. is whether we share the same things
    aaron: cause that means it is awesome.
    aaron: haha.
    ryanK: what's the difference blog/item
    aaron: google has different areas to do those
    aaron: shared blogs are from google reader
    aaron: shared items are a separate technology for just loose pages.
    ryanK: where's that? i want that
    aaron: i just sent you the link to mine
    aaron: i think you can get your own from that page.
    ryanK: ok....i'll start playing around with it
    aaron: cool. the only thing is you need to send me your links to blog shares
    aaron: and item shares.
    ryanK: ok...i'll send when i get it setup
    aaron: awesome!
    aaron: i think i'm going to edit this chat and put it on my blog.
    aaron: okay?
    ryanK: sure

    Tuesday, October 23, 2007

    no one is sharing

    it has been 5 days since my last blog about sharing information in the hackystat development team. i must say that twitter is being used a lot more in our group. but, where are the blog shares?

    anyway, so for those of you that actually read my blog. i'm looking for some new blogs to read. i'm looking for cool random things. it could be cool random pictures. or something totally unrelated to technology. add a comment to my page with blogs that i'm missing out on. better yet, add your google blog share link as a comment.

    rss aggregations
    i'm looking for a cool rss aggregator. basically, what i want to do is aggregate the blogs that certain people write into a group of blogs that should be about the same topic. for example, austen and i could be in a group. to further specify interesting blogs on the same topic we could then agree to use the same labels.

    Sunday, October 21, 2007

    life design decisions

    this is my first ever life posting in this blog.

    shit, where am i going to live?
    the hawaii housing market is crazy. $650K average! thats just fricken CRAZY. i'm going CRAZY thinking about it. CRAZY, CLUELESS, FRUSTRATED are all words that describe how i feel when thinking about the whole subject. it sucks.

    but...

    note to self: relax. there are much more important things in life. i'm adopting the following motto: if your place sucks compared to your aunty's house, then just spend as much time at your aunty's house as you can. haha.


    finding a balance
    i work hard.. probably too much. i'm not a workoholic, i actually like working. haha. i'm brainwashed.

    anyway, my new goal is to work harder. work so hard that i can find a balance in other things. i just had a great weekend full of family activities. wouldn't it be great to not worry about working on the weekend. haha. i haven't had many of those weekends. in fact, i actually worked tonight, so i still don't know whats thats like. anyway... the point is that i want to find a balance; enough time to satisfy my fun work and enough time to have other types of fun. oh and maybe actually work out a little here and there.

    Thursday, October 18, 2007

    cool random stuff 2.0

    here is a list of this weeks cool random stuff. you can also see more cool random stuff on my shared stuff page:
  • carbon footprint calculator - this was pretty cool. i don't know if their calculation method is good, but still cool. i'm not sure why don't they ask for your electricity and gas intake. anyway, i did the calculation and i seem to be under the average. yay! oh, and also on that webpage is some crazy way to pay to reduce co2. or something like that. check out terrapass
  • hawaii sucks in the cost-of-doing-business index - you say duh, but check out the article. we are getting worse each year. soon, we'll be so crappy that.... well, i don't know whats crappier than worst. haha. i guess this might be the cherry on the crappy cake:
    Ironically, our wage cost index is much lower than other top states. That means we pay our people less than those who live New York or even Alaska. We then have trouble finding people because they can’t afford to live here.

    haha.. duh, brain drain...... booooo....
  • Conferences focus on research grants - those nice htdc guys and gals are holding the 10th hawaii SBIR conference throughout the state. check it out.
  • eating out for lunch - msn says that people that eat out for lunch probably spend about $2,300 dollars a year. ouch. that is a new computer. then again, how many days can you eat tuna and rice, before you go crazy?
  • twitter, sharing, hackystat ideas

    comments on our twittering for hackystat
    aaron: philip is only twittering his hackystat hacking.
    aaron: boo
    austen: im not sure what we are supposed to twitter
    aaron: haha. everything.
    aaron: i think thats more interesting. thoughts.
    aaron: not tasks.
    aaron: like what was the PMD error
    austen: true
    aaron: i think the task is interesting. too
    aaron: but.. to me what is more useful is knowledge
    austen: its hard to type out stuff so short tho and without noticing the context switch
    aaron: ah.. there is the problem.
    aaron: sharing knowledge is hard.
    aaron: sharing tasks is easy
    aaron: sharing knowledge is more useful.
    aaron: this is going on my blog.

    i just just read an article in IEEE software tittled, celebrating peopleware's 20th anniversary. one of the comments in that article is kind of related to our chat above.

    [peopleware] tells stories-vignettes such as the tale of the furniture police. we need to do more of this in universities, and pass on the wisdom of the panelist and peopleware by telling more stories in our cs classes.


    i like the idea of knowing what is going on (project proprioception ). that sort of thing can definitely improve how a teams functions. but, the vignettes of knowledge makes me a better hacker. in addition to project proprioception, i want to gather as many 10 second vignettes from of twitter, blogs, shared items, etc as i can. i want to know what was that PMD error and did philip learn anything useful from solving that problem. i think that could be the overall goal of our collaboration investigation.

    sharing
    sharing is awesome. blogging is sharing to some degree. i like the 10 second knowledge thing as much things as you can fit in your day. --aaron via twitter


    so, i want to share how i share stuff. i think it would be cool if we all tried to do this.
  • blogging - i blog to share information and to retrospectively think about things. here is my blog.
  • shared blogs - i star and share things in my google reader. by doing this i let other people know what types of blogs i think are cool, interesting, and useful. here is my shared blogs.
  • shared items - slightly different from shared blogs, shared items are loose webpages and items found on the internet. i haven't started doing this regularly, but i want to try it more. here is my shared items.
  • twittering - micro-blogging is also pretty cool. random thoughts are as useful as more "thought out" ones presented in "full blogs".
  • emails - a slowly dying technology for sharing. i used to write a lot of emails about my thoughts. but that is such a closed audience. boo to a closed audience.
  • chats - chats are good for detailed communications. but if it leads to any thing interesting; i quickly convert to an email or blog. yay to open source knowledge.

    anyway, the point is that; (1) i would love to read more of the hackystat developers blogs. but, no one is blogging that much. (2) i would love to read what you find to be interesting. maybe i can learn something too; in the 10 second style that i like. (3) i would love to see cool webpages that you find (via google share). (4) the moral of the story, is that we can go way beyond twitter in our quest of collaboration and sharing.

    hackystat goals
    here is a cool idea; hackystat goals! for example, a state goal that coverage needs to be higher than 95% for project foo (its currently 55%). all the effort that i will do until the goal is met is to accomplish that goal (maybe mylyn can help with that task identification). or another example, could be get rid of all codeissues. these goals adds context.

    goals gives context to what you are doing. i see something in between jira issues, mylyn, twitter to accomplish that. austen has been thinking about this as well. comment sdt or even context sdt would be awesome. hackystat goals is a way to do provide context. and i want context to be able to learn, in addition to knowing what is going on.

    i'm liking this whole movement towards hackystat as a hacking collaboration tool. i have no idea what that means; but it seems useful and cool. the best thing about working on hackystat itself is the developer interaction and learning together. hackystat should make that easier (or funner) for us. put together twitter and active time. woah... thats cool.

    hackystat generated twitter messages
    i'm not sure this encompasses philip's project proprioception idea. its probably an extension. anyway. it would be cool if hackystat analyzed the sensor data (via stream analysis, data mining, rules, etc) and sent twitter messages. for example:
  • james just committed without doing the proper build process
  • james is doing TDD!
  • james is hacking on JCS.
  • james is blah blah blah

    at some point, james won't even know what he is doing. and hackystat can say, "woah, james. congratulations, you actually did TDD for a week."

    wow, so this also ties into developer expertise.

    closing thoughts
    the basic idea is that anyone can do metric reporting. see atlassian's clover page . metrics allow us to measure and manage. thats good and can even be great! but, what's more interesting to me as a hacker is getting better. and how do i get better? i get better by acquiring vignettes of knowledge. a system that makes that easier to do would be awesome.

    ToDo
    i think it would be awesome for people to provide insights into their thoughts as they hack. here is how we can start to learn how to do that:
  • create a hackystat wiki page that lists everyones twitter name, blog website, shared blog webpage, and shared item webpage.
  • share, share, share! blog, blog, blog! twitter, twitter, twitter! chat, chat, chat! LEARN, LEARN, LEARN!
  • document success stories. (austen told me about a useful twitter experience)
  • Wednesday, October 17, 2007

    leading in hawaii

    In Hawaii, you have to listen, you have to be a good listener. You need to pay attention to relationships and how relationships are all connected here. And you need to have a certain kind of humility. And humility does not mean that you don't have courage or a certain kind of self-confidence. Hawaii is a people place and if people don't feel you respect them or don't care about them enough to think about them, it is really hard to lead here. --Kelvin Taketa in Hawaii Business Magazine

    see Talk Story for the full story.

    i thought that was a useful insight into how to be a leader in hawaii. then i thought about it. i think you can take out the "In Hawaii,..." portion. it seems to me that leaders in any place need to understand those insights. i think those qualities makes the leaders with hawaii ties better.

    i want to change the world

    this blog is a response to austen's hacking fitness. i think the bottom line, is that people should find jobs that align to their interests.

    wow.. i just got to thinking why i love hacking so much. and i think the answer is that i want to change the world. it seems to me that technology is one of the easiest ways to change the world. look at the information age revolution; microsoft, google, yahoo, myspace, internet news, email, chat. all these things probably changed the world. somehow. everything seems to work with technology. god forbid that we have a power outage!

    there is so many things that we can accomplish in the high-tech world. for example, lets cure cancer, by producing faster algorithms that analyze dna (i have no idea if that works, but maybe it could). or maybe change the environment not only with better and cleaner technology; but high-tech can help socially too. see the blog action day.

    the bottom line for me is that i want to change the world (for the better of course). technology seems like the easiest way for me to do that. there is something out there for me to do. i know it. i just have to find it.

    my plan is to start small. i want to help students. maybe by doing that i help the department and the high-tech industry. maybe by doing that we solve more important problems. and maybe some day, my tech solutions can change the world.

    random cool thing of the day
    blogger play

    Sunday, October 14, 2007

    career fair

    it was great to see all the students at the career fair the other day. your attendance at these types of events shows that you love free pens and other stuff. haha. seriously, it shows that you care about your future by learning whats out there in the industry. there are many good companies in hawaii its your job to learn more about them.

    but don't stop now. here is what you can do:
  • follow up with the companies you talked to. send them an electronic version of your resume, with a follow up statement thanking them for talking to you at the career fair and also mention that you would love to learn more about their company.
  • practice your job hunting skills. if you are close to graduating i hope you are ready for a real interview. if i asked you where do you see yourself in 5 years during an interview you better have a good answer. anyway, that question is a bad example. the point is that you should be an experienced interviewee. go practice. how? well, first of all, there are people in the university that can help. for example, the student employment office should have resume and interview resources that you can use. take advantage of those types of things. ask your professors, ask your mentors, ask anyone for help. my last bit of advice is go on as many interviews as you can to practice. you need to learn how to sell yourself and your skills.
  • i'm sure you all learned a lot about the companies that were at the career fair. think about what you heard. if you heard things that you weren't familiar with, then you better look them up and get familiar with them if you are interested in the company. for example, if an employer said we use the FooBar algorithm to implement BazBaz (i'm just making this up), then you better start learning about FooBar. learn about the tools, practices, systems, theory, and line of business of the companies that you are interested in. every little thing helps.
  • i've already said this, but its important. so i'll say it again. learn how to sell yourself. learn how to display your skills. learn how to show that you are the best person for the job. show it in your resume and show it in your interview. if you have to think really really hard and you can't think of one good example; then we might have a problem. be honest with yourself. if you have nothing to brag about, then i'm sorry this blog won't help you.
  • use your university education to gather skills. you have every opportunity in the world at school. you need to look for them. you need to find them on your own. no professor, no adviser, no administrator is going to hold your hand and walk you down the right path. find the path for yourself! figure it out.

    if you find the right path in school. if you figure out how to sell yourself. if you learn if you learn how write awesome resumes and learn how to be awesome in interviews. if you learn about what the company does. if you go over and beyond. if you separate yourself from the rest of your students. THEN, i know that companies will love you!
  • Monday, October 8, 2007

    cool random stuff

    a couple of random things that i found while surfing.

    sage
    i found sage, an open source mathematics software, while watching another google tech talk. it looks pretty cool. i have no idea what it does yet. but i want to learn. i think it uses phython. but, i've been somewhat interested in finding a java package for both the back-end calculations and a math editor. let me know if you know of one.

    processing
    processing is a cool... hm... i actually don't know what to call it. it is a java api to create cool graphics. stevo clued me into it. it is a way for artsy people to learn how to hack and/or just create cool stuff. it is pretty interesting and cool looking. haha. no practical applications that i can think of tho. i am interested in using it to teach programing though. i'm planning on making a google code project to hold our processing stuff. i'm going to processing up in eclipse and ant; it should be cool. i think other processing dudes and dudets can use it as a base for their eclipse-based processing.

    open source physics
    haha. okay at least open source physics is a java library. i found this while looking at sage. see the connections. endless amount of cool stuff.

    told you they were random... sorry one last thing: a rubiks cube solver with legos!

    Sunday, October 7, 2007

    i quit watching TV

    haha. just joking. but, i've been watching a lot of presentations online. there is a lot of good things out there. here are some examples of what i watched today:

    guy kawasaki's art of innovation
    art of innovation seems to be a keynote at the 2007 Event Marketer Conference. guy says some very cool things like: make a mantra instead of a make a mission statement, make meaning instead of make money, and jump to the next curve. those are cool little thoughts. interesting that it comes from a VC.

    engineers need to learn security
    What Every Engineer Needs to Know About Security and Where to Learn It is a cool introduction to why we suck at security. i totally agree with neil that the universities are ignoring practical security in the curriculum. this presentation is pretty basic, you can jump around. but i found it to be informative when he talked about the actual security issues. i for one, think i should know more about security. the presentation said to look at the google code for educators page on web security

    google clusters and software
    building a computer system for the worlds information - i watched part of this presentation. it actually seems like the title on google video is wrong. anyway, jeff talks about googles approach to hardware, software, etc to address the huge amounts of processing power they need to store and evaluate the worlds (google's) data. he talks about everything from creating clusters of cheap pcs, googles file system, to their map and reduce package for (i think) indexing data. interesting stuff that i don't really understand.

    you'll never find those three things on TV. actually, if it wasn't for these presentations i would have never learned about these subjects. this is the making for an excuse to get the new ipod. i keep telling myself, just think how much i can learn if i download videos. hahahaha.

    Thursday, October 4, 2007

    metrics metrics metrics

    so, i've been monitoring atlassian's bamboo for a while. and they seem to have been doing well in their marketing. and the product actually looks pretty cool. too bad you have to pay for it.

    Bamboo's Build Telemetry helps your software team learn from the massive amounts of output produced by continuous integration (CI).

    Simply put, Bamboo turns raw data into useful information.

    With traditional CI systems, all you can see is that your application is building successfully. But how is it doing compared to three months ago? Are the builds still breaking as often as before? These questions, which are essentially unanswerable under traditional CI, are the core focus of Bamboo's Build Telemetry.




    see what i mean. they even call it telemetry. hahaha thats funny. well, this is nothing new to the hackystat community. its interesting to see all the companies scrambling to add metrics to their products. first it was static analysis tools, then ide support, now integration. even fog bugs has some hackystat-like charts.

    soon, i believe that companies with money might be able to catch up to the hackystat framework. in terms of functionality. heck, its open source and its not crazy complicated software. maybe bamboo is using it. so, what is going to separate hackystat from these new guys?

    the answer is obviously the research and the knowledge we have about measuring the software development process. anyone can collect metrics. any manager can look at line going up or going down. but, i think with the expertise that we have in the research area and the new fancy v8 framework we will soon be jumping way way in front of the industry. then again there is NSB (no silver bullet).

    philip had some initial ideas;
    * Representation of Developer Expertise
    * Addressing the context switch problem using Hackystat and Twitter
    * Grid computing with Hackystat
    * Project Proprioception
    * Hackystat and the semantic web

    software development is hard because there are so many different factors. my continual belief about hackystat is that it won't solve the essence of software. but, maybe it can be the accidental work monitor-manager-fixer so we can focus only on the essence solution that we have all been looking for.

    anyway, hackystat v8 is going to be dope. its going to change the world. i'm willing to be austen's master's thesis on it. and OMG, i wish i could just hack on hackystat for one year straight. those were the days.

    know your industry

    i've been recently very interested about learning about the hawaii high tech industry. until recently, i thought i knew a lot. i actually know a lot of people in many different high tech companies. so much so, that i think of my self as pretty connected. haha. lately, i've realized that i know squat.

    it is one thing to know the companies, its another to learn about their business models, their initiatives, and what makes hawaii's industry tick. lately, i've been trying to soak this stuff up like a sponge.

    take a look this very cool video: dual use video on oceanits website

    here are some additional and random links for you to start your own investigation:

    System.out.println("hello, real world");
    High Technology Development Corporation
    isis Hawaii
    honolulu coders
    HOSEF
    enterprise honolulu

    i have much to learn about hawaii's high tech community. there are many different organizations, leaders, and companies out there. but, what i do know is that it always comes down to the scientists, engineers and students.