Ready for jQueryTO – Day 2

After a mind-bending Day #1 @jQueryTO – even #FirstWorldProblems like learning “the hard way” the pain of form versus function and that it might be about time to trade in my Nexus S for a Nexus 4 (thx Adam!), or even a Nexus 7 (thx Ian!) – I decided to compile my choices for Day #2:

jQueryTO: day #2/2

State of jQuery UI, with Scott González

Keynote

The Holy Grail: Client and Server, with Tim Branyen

An ambitious talk discussing the holy grail of accessible web application development. Discussing CommonJS, RequireJS, and Backbone complications and solutions to sharing. An example application will be discussed and structure explained. Even if you are not interested in sharing code with the server, techniques and structure presented will be useful for any application in any framework.

AngularJS just ain’t just another MVC framework… with Pearl Chen

You’ve probably heard of BackboneJS as a JavaScript MVC framework for building web apps but it’s worth exploring other options when you want to get more out of your framework. AngularJS is highly opinionated which makes it easier for beginners to grasp core MVC concepts, while experts will enjoy its integration with Yeoman. And anyone who wants to write less boilerplate code will enjoy its data binding abilities. If you’re like me, AngularJS just might turn into your favourite MVC framework.

The Dev Process—collaborating with designers, prototyping, & how to +1 your dev knowledge while at work, with Monika Piotrowicz

We’ve all been to conferences where we’re filled with ideas and inspiration, only to come back to work and be forced to put them all aside. Deadlines loom, designs change, and we still need some research time before we can confidently implement that "cool new thing" we saw. Using practical examples, this talk will introduce a process that supports on-the-job dev learning by alleviating these strains. This collaborative process brings developers into projects sooner, builds in research and prototyping time, and is centered around continuous communication with designers and clients. This talk will dispell the myth that process is a dirty word. Instead, it will demonstrate that a well-developed process can push technical boundaries, enhance working relationships, and increase the quality of your applications, all while maintaining dev sanity.

Offline Mobile Web App Architecture & Design, with Boaz Sender

In this talk I’ll step through mobile web application architecture with a focus on minimizing data transactions, and managing client-side state for offline-able apps. This is a framework agnostic talk where the focus is on application flow and design philosophy.

Scaling Backbone.js Applications With Marionette.js, with Derick Bailey

Nearly everyone understands how to build a simple JavaScript application these days. With the recent explosion of JavaScript MV* tools and frameworks, though, many of us find ourselves in over our heads, looking at patterns and practices that work well for small applications and pages but fail when scaling to anything substantial. In this session, Derick Bailey will give you an introduction to many of the patterns and practices that your JavaScript applications need to be scalable. You’ll learn about file and folder organization, the necessity of separating the various concerns of your application, patterns that aggregate and coordinate functionality from other parts of the system, and more. And all of this will be illustrated with Backbone, MarionetteJS and additional plugins that can give you an edge in creating scalable applications in JavaScript.

Fixing Broken Windows: 10 small things that will instantly improve your project, with Sam Breed

Informal social controls have a big impact on how what’s considered acceptable behavior. Building on the theory that a single broken window on an urban block can lead to the perception of lawlessness and actually be a contributor to criminal behavior, my talk will focus on how to spot and repair the "broken windows" in your JavaScript applications. Even seemingly-trivial anti-patterns like commented-out code, mixed spaces and tabs, or missing documentation can be “broken windows” that lead to further decay and software entropy in your large jQuery projects. I’ll cover 10 things to look for, from minor mis-steps, to organization and to common design patterns that will restore order in your applications.

Developing with Grunt, with Dan Heberden

Grunt is a task-based command line build tool for JavaScript projects. We’ll cover its impressive project initialization and scaffolding capabilities, automated task running, and how to extend and customize your grunt project to suit your needs. If you’ve ever wanted an easy way to concat and minify your JavaScript and CSS, run your tests, lint your code, and incorporate custom build functionality: this is the tool for you.

The 2013 Frontend Disapora, with Paul Irish

Keynote

See you tomorrow!

Ready for jQueryTO – Day 1

Yeah, you’ve got it: jQueryTO – the first official Canadian jQuery conference – is coming to Toronto in March 2^nd & 3^rd, 2013 – that’s right, the kickoff is tomorrow!

jQueryTO: day #1/2

Back in AIESEC I quickly learnt that when you’re attending a conference that runs multiple tracks, you’d better do your homework in advance. Even more when it’s going to be a sold-out event, filled up with amazing speakers.

So today I did my homework, made my choices, and here are the presentations I’ll be attending tomorrow:

State of jQuery 2013 with Dave Methvin

This year is a significant one for jQuery; version 2.0 of the library is making a break with IE 6, 7, and 8 for environments where support for old IE isn't needed. Yet the jQuery team continues to develop and support jQuery 1.9 for the open web where old IE is (sadly) still common. Many other projects of the fledgling jQuery Foundation will also debut this year, such as a new Plugins site.

Hardware Access and Device APIs with JavaScript and HTML5 with Wes Bos

The browser on your device is growing up! With new HTML5 APIs we are able to access your device’s hardware and start writing apps that rival native big boys. HTML5 APIs include access the the device’s camera, microphone, GPS, compass file system and accelerometer. This talk will take a look at what we can start integrating into our apps today as well as what we can look forward to in future releases of mobile browsers. Be sure to make it out to this as as it will be packed with fantastic live examples including a mobile based motion detection security camera and a CSS3 speedometer!

You Want Client Side Package Management, with Ralph Holzmann

Node.js users know what I'm talking about. `npm install`. It's a beautiful thing. Guess what? It can be *that easy* for the browser too. This talk will outline where browser package management has been, and where it's going. I'll outline the pros and cons of the various client side package managers and show you how you can start using them in your existing projects today. Learn how to make you and your colleague's lives easier when stitching together third party code.

State of jQuery Mobile, with Ralph Whitbeck

Get the scoop on how to use jQuery Mobile to build dynamic HTML5-based web sites and apps that work on all popular mobile platforms from Ralph Whitbeck, jQuery Mobile's Developer Advocate. We'll cover the basics of how to use the framework, advanced tips and tricks, new features, and take a look into of the project's strategy and future roadmap to see how we will embrace principles of responsive design to create compelling experiences that span smartphone, tablet and even desktop devices from a unified codebase.

Submitting Bugs the Right Way, with TJ VanToll

Bugs: Fixing them is what we do, day in and day out. Yet when it comes to submitting bugs, many developers don't know where to start. In this talk, we'll walk through the process of creating a bug report, from finding an issue, to building a minimal test case, to reporting the issue on a bug tracker. Along the way we'll discuss tips and tricks that can help you with your day to day development. Submitting bug reports is important, open source libraries like jQuery depend on them to remain bug free. Come learn how you can help!

Build an Experience… Not another framework, with Jason Scott

It is time to stop building your own framework, and spend time on what matters, the experience. Your user will not care that you wrote your own page navigation model or you found a workaround for a quirky device you never heard of until yesterday and neither should you. Jason will guide you though creating your own experience, leveraging the power of jQuery Mobile and share with you the lessons that he has learned in creating the BlackBerry 10 experience in jQuery Mobile.

Avoiding Regressions in Third-party JavaScript, with Cameron Westland

There has been a lot of talk about Third-party JavaScript lately. Companies like Disqus, Facebook, and Twitter are literally building their businesses on it. A new generation of Third Party JavaScript is being developed which provides User Experience as a Service which can be embedded into other applications. When you combine the complexity of delivering a user experience to a third party website AND continuously innovating and deploying new code, you expose a new domain of problems. This talk will discuss the solutions that we've come up with at Kera to solve these problems.

Depending on jQuery, with Alex Sexton

Over the last several years people have shifted from building sites that have small chunks of dom-centric code for quick interactions, to building full-fledge web applications that require hundreds of thousands of lines of code. We also see people shifting from centering their applications around jQuery, to using it as a dependency in an MVC app. Let's chat about how you might build a large application with jQuery, how you might modularize your app, and how you might deploy it for optimal speed. Big surprise, Alex is talking about large apps and jQuery. Expect some Backbone, Require.js, and a few boring network graphs.

Gone in 60 frames per second, with Addy Osmani

will tell you tomorrow what this was all about

See you tomorrow!

Looking for a passion for Ruby, cloud and big data

Back in 2010…

…Antonio was announcing that IBM was looking for top notch student hackers.

After a process that provided many skill-building lessons, Henrique and myself joined the team at the IBM Toronto Software Lab.

Today…

…it's time again to look for the right attitude and for a matching potential.
We are looking for 2 students that are passionate about technology and their craft!

I am biased but I believe that these are the best positions that a computer science student can want. Since I flew in straight from Romania, I grew in an Agile environment with Ruby and Rails—from zero to deployment—with cloud computing, big data and related technologies.
Our team is best described as a "Startup within IBM". You get the best of both worlds: a highly challenging environment where you get to try to do absolutely everything and a stable environment where you can focus on developing great ideas without being distracted by the instability of a startup.

If…

• you are keen on using bleeding edge technologies
• you have a hacker mentality
• you are willing to work in a start-up like setting but enjoy stability and resources of a leading technology company

then you will gain experience that is unmatched. You will work hand in hand with some of the best talent in the industry architecting and building the coolest tech. Oh, and this internship is for a period of 16 months, and yes: it's a paid internship.

If you are looking for a rewarding challenge, and if your eyebrow raised in a positive way while reading till here, please get in touch (marius dot butuc at ca dot ibm dot com gmail dot com) and tell me a bit about yourself. I will provide you with the information on how to apply through the official IBM channels and we'll take it from there.

IBM Mobile Database for Android

Today IBM Mobile Database – the new database offering for Android mobile devices – went GA. IBM Mobile Database offers a tight integration between a customer’s mobile solution and their existing DB2 or Informix environment. It is being offered as a free-of-charge web download.

The new offering makes it easier for mobile developers to develop and assemble applications for Android devices. Together with the solidDB offering, IBM Mobile Database provides the capability to synchronize data with DB2 and Informix databases.

Mobile, but fit for the Enterprise

The major highlights include:

• 6 MB footprint, in-memory database to fit on mobile devices
• Full-featured relational DB with standard SQL API, procedures, triggers
• Fast and reliable access to enterprise data offline
• Enterprise level data security
• Persistent data storage and Automatic recovery
• Transactional storage also during connection loss
• Built-in replication capabilities allowing synchronization with IBM databases
• Flexible options such as partitioning data or creating views to customize data for each device or user

What Android mobile app would you build to put these features to good use?

Moodle localization: to enrol or to enroll?

Ever wondered how would language localization affect a Moodle powered online educational site with more than 38,000 active users?

Moodle Trivia

We all know Moodle—the FLOSS CMS/LMS (a.k.a. e-learning software platform)—was first baked all the way in Australia. And you could see that Moodle was Australian at heart long before it grew to be the large international community that it is today.

One of these Australian fingerprints is the language it chooses to speak… err… spell.
The language pack installed and used by default by Moodle is English (en) and it prefers the British English spelling over the American English one.

Going international

No big deal, you might say. Well, the numbers can decide, so let's take a specific example: BigDataUniversity.com.

Big Data University—the online educational site about big data—has more than 38,000 users (at the time of writing). Registering, they follow free big data-related courses on subjects from Hadoop Fundamentals to Streams Computing or to Text Analytics.
Quite the vibrant, diverse community, and it's all powered by Moodle.

One detail worth noting: more than 1 out of 4 users are from US. Now imagine the number of users that were eager to enroll in a course, only to find enrolment options… and how many emails reporting the enrol vs. enroll "misspelling" we got so far.

And this is not an isolated case. The Moodle forums are proof of how many users asked for an elegant way to change this spelling. This question is so popular, it even made it to the Moodle FAQ.

The elegant way to change enrol to enroll

The elegant solution is to change the default language pack used by Moodle:

1. Install the English - United States (en_us) language pack in
   Settings » Site administration » Language » Language packs.
2. Set the new language pack as the default language for the site via
   Settings » Site administration » Language » Language settings.
   
   
   
   Note that this change will only affect the new accounts, while existing users will retain their language setting. If they want to use American English, they can change it in
   Settings » My profile settings » Edit profile » Preferred language
3. …and it works!
   

Sometimes it's the small details that will make your users happy.

Install and Configure S3cmd on Mac OS X

The big, big picture

I've been recently tinkering with the best practices for the backup and recovery of DB2 data servers. So I noticed that many people mainly focus on their backup strategy to ensure the safety and availability of the data. But the best backup strategy is not of much use if not leveraged by a strong recovery strategy. An efficient recovery strategy must enable you to quickly restore access to data after a software, hardware, or user failure.

So my goal is to turn the two DB2 servers powering BigDataUniversity.com into an example of DB2 best practices for backup and restore, by having:

• an effective backup strategy
  • providing continuous availability during backup,
  • and, ideally, the ability to perform the backup process on the HADR Standby instead of Primary (hello, utopia!)
• a rapid recovery strategy
  • including continuous availability during restore
• and a strategy for backup retention.

s3cmd makes your life easy

Part of the optimization is persisting the backups on S3 and leveraging s3cmd to automate their deployment. Inside the Ubuntu powered Amazon instances, everything went smooth. But I first looked into ruby-s3cmd as soon as I wanted to experiment things from my Mac. The ruby gem felt more like bogging me down, so I went back to s3cmd, and simply installed it:

1. first get s3cmd
2. then switch to root just for the install: sudo python setup.py install
3. at last, run s3cmd --configure to set up your AWS S3 credentials

…and enjoy!

Expand and Update your BigInsights

Roughly a year ago, you were reading about how MIT was harvesting big insights from big data, about discovering useful information by turning huge amounts of data into gists that are visually understandable. At that time, I was also in awe of IBM's Watson and how InfoSphere BigInsights is used to create a Smarter Planet.

But that was a year ago... Since then, many things happened.
On the Open Source side, the components integrated in the BigInsights platform experienced a consistent progress; take Hadoop for instance, who matured enough to reach version 1.0.
Meanwhile, InfoSphere BigInsights grew just as much: last Friday releasing BigInsights version 1.4. A nice tradition I wish other companies would copy from IBM is that the BigInsights v1.4 GA was simultaneous to its availability for deployment on public clouds: anyone can create their own Hadoop cluster (based on BigInsights v1.4) on the Cloud in less than 30 minutes.

BigInsights v1.4 available for deployment on public clouds

The very same day, the 61 participants at the Big Data Developer Day hands-on labs used BigInsights v1.4 — delivered via Cloud instances.

***

The new version brings simple administration and management capabilities, rich developer tools, powerful analytic functions, up-to-date Apache Hadoop and associated projects, as well as many enterprise features and enhancements. The new capabilities are aimed to improving flexibility, consumability, and manageability.
Here are some updates I cherry-picked based on my interests and needs:

Update to open source component levels

Here are the new versions of the open source components shipped with BigInsights 1.4:

• Hadoop 1.0.0
• Flume 0.9.4
• HBase 0.90.5
• Hive 0.8.0
• Oozie 2.3.1
• Nutch 1.4
• Pig 0.9.1
• Zookeeper 3.3.4

Consumability and Usability

• Text analytics development: Provide an enhanced user experience for developing text analytics applications, with improved navigation of result views, enhanced sorting and filtering, enhanced pattern discovery and progress reporting.
• Developer tools: Better built-in support for text analytics, support for local mode map-reduce development, improved deployment of applications, and automatic creation of JDBC connections to Hive data sources.
• BigSheets and web console: New chart customization features make it effortless to access and manipulate data the way you want. New sheets, macros, and readers make it possible to access more data and analyze it in new ways, giving you more control and improved browsing capabilities for HDFS and NFS files. The addition of new application input parameter types make applications even easier to run.

Flexibility

Version 1.4 of InfoSphere BigInsights brings support for Cloudera Distributions of Apache Hadoop (CDH). This allows enterprises to either run BigInsights with the IBM provided Apache Hadoop distribution or to deploy to a Cloudera CDH cluster. On the other hand, Cloudera CDH users can now take advantage of enterprise-class features such as text analytics, user-friendly data manipulation and exploration, and developer tools available in BigInsights.

***

If you want to join the Big Data Developer Day participants, you might want to get a
first-hand experience by either getting the free version — InfoSphere BigInsights Basic Edition or whet your appetite with the Hadoop and Big Data courses on BigDataUniversity.com.

Why am I envious of Big Data geeks in the Valley?

1. Hacking your way through Big Data and taking pride with Hadoop on your tool belt?
2. Also living in the Silicon Valley? Or among the Hadoop Summit attendees?

Did you just answer yes to both questions?!?

Well then, I'm a bit envious of you because next week, Silicon Valley is the place to be for us, Hadoop and Big Data geeks. Next week, the concentration of Big Data talent will be so high in the Valley that I tend to agree with Leon on this one:

I am always envious of the people who live in Silicon Valley. It is not the California weather that I crave though it is nice. If you like technology there never seems to be a shortage of meetups, conferences and all around interesting events.

First, on June 13th and 14th, Yahoo and Hortonworks team up to bring you a Hadoop Summit with an attractive agenda and speaker list. So many tracks, so many speakers, so many talks, that I’m not even going to mention them myself; just head over and whet your appetite. :)

The very next day, June 15th, IBM is inviting people over for a free (breakfast and lunch provided) Big Data Developer Day. The day will blend in both hands on labs and interactive discussions with the opportunity to meet other technical folks and exchange knowledge.

If you are interested in

• Hadoop scripting,
• real time in-memory analytics,
• Big Data for social media,
• log analytics,
• Big Data in general

June 15th is your full day of time well spent with senior technical leaders of our Big Data development team.

So, if you are in the Valley and you have the day available to invest it in your Hadoop and Big Data skills, I recommend you register as the number of participants is limited.

Ruby 1.9.3 via RVM on Mac OSX Lion: Success Story

That fast!

After a long time away from Rails and Ruby, I roll up my sleeves today and try to figure out what I’ve missed lately:

• first, Rails 3.2 proves to be engineered to work faster in dev mode, by now incorporating the Active Reload gem by default.
• then reading some more, Ruby 1.9.3 bubbles up — it’s freaking fast bro!

Great news, time for our good old friend RVM:

1. $ rvm get head
2. $ rvm reload
3. $ rvm install 1.9.3

But wait…

The Problem

Installing Ruby from source to: /Users/marius/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p0, this may take a while depending on your cpu(s)...

ruby-1.9.3-p0 - #fetching 
ruby-1.9.3-p0 - #extracted to /Users/marius/.rvm/src/ruby-1.9.3-p0 (already extracted)
Fetching yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz to /Users/marius/.rvm/archives
Extracting yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz to /Users/marius/.rvm/src
Configuring yaml in /Users/marius/.rvm/src/yaml-0.1.4.
Compiling yaml in /Users/marius/.rvm/src/yaml-0.1.4.
Installing yaml to /Users/marius/.rvm/usr
ruby-1.9.3-p0 - #configuring 
ERROR: Error running ' ./configure --prefix=/Users/marius/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p0 --enable-shared --disable-install-doc --with-libyaml-dir=/Users/marius/.rvm/usr ', please read /Users/marius/.rvm/log/ruby-1.9.3-p0/configure.log
ERROR: There has been an error while running configure. Halting the installation.

The installer fails with an error message including checking whether the C compiler works... no even with Xcode 4.2 available.

The Wrong Path

Checked configure.log, found all the questions on SO and went for the fast solution:

$ rvm reinstall 1.9.3 --with-gcc=clang

which didn’t work for me!

The Solution

Following mpapis’ advice, I downloaded the GCC Installer for OSX 10.7+, v2, by Kenneth Reitz, and a simple

$ rvm reinstall 1.9.3

did the trick! So I was happy to jump to the next step:

$ rvm --default use 1.9.3

The Bonus

Downloading and installing the massive Xcode tool suite (2.5GB!!!) is a huge hassle if you just want GCC and related tools.

The osx-gcc-installer includes the essential compilers:

• GCC
• LLVM
• Clang
• Developer CLI Tools (purge, etc)
• DevSDK (headers, etc)

Therefore, since I’m not planning to use Xcode for other reasons, I simply removed it:

$ sudo /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools –mode=all

If the Rails install fails with a message along these lines:

ERROR:  Error installing rails:
 ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

        /Users/marius/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p0/bin/ruby extconf.rb
creating Makefile

make
sh: make: command not found

don't worry, just run the GCC Installer once again.

©the-chosen-pessimist

My "Top Five" IT trends of the next half decade

Big data alone is not information, it's not enough to transmit the message over to your reader. You need visualization to leverage the bandwidth of the visual system to move a huge amount of information into the brain very quickly.

Infographics versus Data Visualization

The other day I started reading about Designing Data Visualizations and I discovered some key criteria to differentiate Infographics from "real" Data Visualization:

Infographics: aesthetically rich, relatively data-poor, specific to the data at hand, manually drawn.

Data Visualization often aesthetically barren, relatively data-rich, easy to regenerate with different data, algorithmically drawn.

The "Big Five" IT trends of the next half decade

Today I was reading about the "Big Five" IT trends of the next half decade:

1. mobile,
2. social,
3. cloud,
4. consumerization,
5. big data.

And yes, it was their infographic that inspired this article altogether:

It does a better job at transmitting the idea than the list preceding it, doesn't it?

From Big Data to Information

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'd put big data first! And moreover, regardless how big is your data set, data alone is just stark. I believe that big data alone not enough to transmit your message over to your reader: data alone is not information.

It's the visualization that can leverage the incredible capabilities and bandwidth of the visual system to move a huge amount of information into the brain very quickly.
So, if we are to talk about the top shifts in Information Technology, I would definitely add visualization to the list:

Big Data + Visualization = Information

Jeff Jonas on Big Data and Geospatial Super-Food

As large collections of data come together, some very exciting and somewhat unexpected things happen. As data grows, the quality of predictions improves (less false positives, less false negatives), poor quality data starts to become helpful, and computation can actually get faster as the number of records grows.

Now, add to this, the "space-time-travel" data about how people move that is being created by billions of mobile devices, and what becomes computable is outright amazing. As it turns out, geospatial data is analytic super-food.

Join Jeff Jonas – Chief Scientist, IBM Entity Analytics Group and an IBM Distinguished Engineer – on September 28^th, to hear his thoughts on hot topics such as Big Data, New Physics, and Geospatial Super-Food.

Who is this Jeff Jonas?

Jeff Jonas is a super-star IBMer; he designs next generation technology that helps organizations better leverage their enterprise-wide information assets. With particular interest in real-time "sensemaking", these innovative systems fundamentally improve enterprise intelligence, which makes organizations smarter, more efficient and highly competitive.

He also leads global think tanks, privacy advocacy groups and policy research organizations. Read more about Jeff.

Why Big Data is the Next Big Thing

Interviewing Jeff Jonas, TechCrunch's Andrew Keen imagines an entrepreneur, scratching his head and thinking "the next big thing is Big Data", yet he doesn't really know what it is.

What does someone do to understand, and not only to understand this, but to take advantage as an entrepreneur or as an investor?

Take 5 minutes to find an answer to this question and a couple others:

Jeff Jonas interviewed by TechCrunch

Personally, I feel like borrowing the concept of context accumulation from the interview, but this is just one of a set of themes woven through Jeff's work, explored on his blog, and captured in a series of evocative phrases, like:

• perpetual analytics,
• non-obvious relationship awareness,
• sequence neutrality,
• "data finds data",
• anonymous resolution and others.

Attend Jeff's talk thanks to TOHUG

In my experience so far, the TechTALKs organized by the IBM Canada Lab were offered only to it's employees. On this occasion however, an agreement was secured to allow the Toronto Hadoop User Group (TOHUG) members to come to the Lab, listen and meet with Jeff.

So if you're in Toronto and interested to hear Jeff's thoughts on hot topics such as Big Data, New Physics, Geospatial Super-Food and more, all you have to do is to join the Toronto Hadoop User Group (if you are not a member yet) and RSVP to the event.

Extended: Hadoop Programming Challenge

October 4^th update:

The Hadoop Programming Challenge just got extended
till Monday, October 10th!

Lately more and more of my interest is invested in Big Data. And the future of Big Data and Data Analytics sounds so appealing that you might be forgiven to believe it's too good to be true.
In this context, I was intrigued by Alex Popescu's reality check:

1. Even if technology costs decreased over time, the investment in creating data startups are still high.
2. Financial institutions are not investing (too much) into data technology companies.
3. There are only a few companies that are able to accumulate significant amounts of useful data.
4. There are even fewer companies that are able to use effectively the huge amounts of data.

When I read of few companies that accumulate significant amounts of useful data and even more, fewer that make effective use of the huge amounts of data, I strongly believe that the efforts made to tame huge amounts of meaningful data were far from few.

The Philosopher's Stone

photo by Ahmed Mater

Speaking of effort, we all know that effort does not mean anything if it does not deliver results! Quoting Leon Katsnelson, those even fewer companies are comparable with alchemists that discovered their philosopher’s stone:

I think of the internet heavyweights like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo! as alchemists. They figured out a way to turn massive amounts of data in to gold. Unlike alchemists of the middle ages, these modern-day wizards have found their philosopher’s stone. They call it Hadoop. Hadoop lets them crunch massive amounts of data to extract keen business insight, which, if applied properly turns data in to gold. How else can one explain these incredible valuations for such young companies?

I think there is an alchemist in everyone of us!
If the philosopher's stone is already discovered, wouldn't you like to turn base metals – Big Data – into gold – Big Insights?
What if you were able to obtain the philosopher's stone for free? You would still need to learn how to use it, right?

Choose your gold!

There are some people for whom gold means knowledge, and there are others for whom gold means money. But why pick sides when you can have both?
BigDataUniversity.com has teamed up with the IBM Big Data Team to sponsor three BigDataUniversity.com students on an all expenses paid trip to attend the Information on Demand (IOD) Conference 2011 in Las Vegas.
Vegas, baby!
Here's all you have to do for an opportunity to be selected, the rules are simple:

1. Register with BigDataUniversity.com.
2. Enroll and complete the free Hadoop Fundamentals I course by October 10^th.
3. You’ll receive a certificate of completion and an invitation to participate in the Hadoop Programming Challenge.
4. On October 3^rd October 12^th, three participants to this challenge will be selected for a free, all expenses paid, trip to IOD 2011 in Las Vegas on October 23^rd—27^th.

But until you get on with the challenge, one more detail: although the course is free, and the trip has all expenses paid, if you will chose to do the course work in the cloud, do expect to incur some cloud-related usage charges! For the time it took me to complete the course, it amounted to approximately a toonie in Amazon charges.

Good luck!

How to install Cisco VPN on Ubuntu

On Ubuntu, you don't need to install the Cisco VPN Client: NetworkManager includes support for Cisco IPSec VPNs. This 3 steps article will walk you through a successful installation and configuration of your VPN client.

If you encounter any issues, or need more details, make good use of the comments form at the end.

Step 0: Authentication details

First of all, make sure you have your authentication details at hand!

Step 1: Install vpnc

Ubuntu ships by default with the plugin for the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), but we need the plugin for the Cisco Compatible VPN (vpnc), that provides easy access to Cisco Concentrator based VPNs.

To install the vpnc plugin, open your terminal and run:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-vpnc

Is your Ubuntu version 10.10 or older?

Installing the Cisco VPN client on a kernel older than 2.6.38+, will result in compilation errors: the cisco_ipsec module crashes and the system is only of limited use.

The working solution is to:

1. download the vpnc client source,
2. apply this patch for the vpnc client,
3. and follow the next steps for setting up your VPN.

Step 2: Setting up your VPN

Find Network Connections in your Dash, and in the VPN tab select Import to choose your .pcf file, or Add if you want to manually enter your authentication details from Step 0.

Step 3: Use Only as Needed

In the configurations, make sure to go to the IPv4 Settings tab, click on Routes and activate the option to use the VPN connection only for resources on its network,
unless you want all your traffic to be significantly slowed down.

You might want to reboot your machine, and you're good to go. Give it a try!

Using RVM to Install Rails 3.1: Best Practices

Wayne E. Seguin describes RVM as:

a command line tool which allows us to easily install, manage and work with multiple ruby environments from interpreters to sets of gems.

This article focuses on the workflow of installing RVM, and use it to install Ruby 1.9.2 (MRI), create gemsets and install Rails 3.1 Release Candidate, while considering current best practices.

Installing Ruby Version Manager

If your Ubuntu 11.04 is still fresh from the oven, you may want to first install git and curl. Having satisfied the prerequisites, installing the latest RVM release version from git is as easy as running:

If at any point you want to start all over, run rvm implode and we'll be ready for a fresh start. For a complete removal, follow these details.

On the other hand, if RVM is already installed but we are behind on the updates,
rvm get latest will do the trick.

Setting up Ruby

1. Feel free to run rvm list known for all the Ruby implementation made available through RVM
2. We are focusing on the latest stable release, so we'll choose to:
   rvm install 1.9.2
3. And we will use it as the default version for our system:
   rvm use 1.9.2 --default

Using gemsets

Gemsets are compartmentalized independent ruby setups, each containing it's own version of ruby, gems and irb. RubyGems — the package manager for Ruby projects — is already available for us, since RVM includes it automatically (try which gem).

For this tutorial we will install side by side the latest Rails stable release (3.0.7) and the latest release candidate (3.1), so let's prepare the terrain:

1. Start by creating our gemset(s):
   rvm gemset create rails307 rails31
2. The result can be verified by listing the available gemsets:
   rvm gemset list
3. If a gem's name still leaves room for confusion, simply delete it and create a more meaningful one (e.g., rails31rc):
   rvm gemset delete rails31

As a best practice, remember to always use one gemset per project*.

Installing Rails

1. Now that we have multiple gemsets installed, we must first select the one we want to use, and we can also set it as the default gemset by passing it the --default flag:
   rvm use 1.9.2-p180@rails307 [--default]
   
2. Installing rails is as easy as installing any other gem: we only need to specify it's name, but we can always choose a specific version, or to speed up the installation process by skipping the documentation:
   gem install rails [-v 3.0.7] [--no-rdoc --no-ri]


3. Next we switch to the gemset created to hold the latest Release Candidate (e.g., 1.9.2-p180@rails31rc) and we install it by passing in the --pre flag.
   Scratch that; the --pre flag is not working as of June 1st. You might want to read this before installing Rails 3.1, but long story short, this should do the trick:
   gem install rails -v ">=3.1.0rc"
   

Bonus feature

Switching from one project to another, from a client to a personal project, from testing the release candidate to developing using the latest stable version, always having to manually switch from using a gemset to another can impact productivity. The project .rvmrc files can increase the development speed by setting up our project's ruby environment when we switch to the project root directory.

The rule of thumb here is to use a .rvmrc file for each project, for both development and deployment.*

* Make sure to check the RVM best practices!

How are gemsets improving your workflow? What other tips & tricks have you discovered while setting up your environment, or while setting up a new project? I would be more than happy to learn something new from you!

Installing and Testing DB2 9.7.4 on Ubuntu 11.04

The full refresh of DB2 Express-C 9.7.4 — the enterprise scale database server from IBM that is free to develop, deploy and distribute — was released last week.

Reading what's new with DB2 Express-C 9.7.4, one of the new features that caught my eye was the Text Search component. This is not the first appearance of Text Search: it was first integrated in DB2 Express-C 9.5.2 and it allowed for fast searches on text columns. But with time, you had two engines to choose from, lacking a unified solution. With DB2 Express-C 9.7.4, this standard solution is introduced to bring improvements in the areas of performance, configuration and tuning.

Probably a first in IBM's history, the DB2 Express-C 9.7.4 template for Rightscale/Amazon EC2 was made available on the cloud well before publishing the product through traditional channels. How about that for commitment to the cloud? :)

Brand new DB2 on brand new Ubuntu

Seeing all this buzz around this new Fix Pack for DB2, I took the quest of testing it first locally: a full install on a brand new copy of Ubuntu 11.04!

My scenario covers:

1. Downloading DB2 Express-C 9.7.4, including the language pack for a proper full install
2. Minimal CRUD testing:
   
   1. create a SAMPLE database
   2. start the current database manager instance background processes
   3. create a connection to the DB
   4. use the CLP to run at least a basic SELECT
3. Check the state of installation files, instance setup, and local DB connections (db2val)
4. Retrieve the current Version and Service Level of the installed product (db2level)
5. Check licenses:
   
   1. Check the limitations of the free, unwarranted licence (2 CPUs / 2GB of memory)
   2. Apply a Fixed Term License
   3. Check the new limitations of DB2 Express Edition (4GB of memory)
      
6. Having had issues in the past, test the uninstall of DB2.

Results of the DB2 Express-C 9.7.4 test

Installing on a brand new copy of Ubuntu 11.04, I bumped right into the error of the missing dependency:

But this can be solved as simply as running

$ sudo apt-get install libaio1

and then running again the db2setup script as root.
The GUI installation wizard is here to confirm:

My plan is to make a full install — more chances to find possible flaws — so I chose Custom as installation type:

Other reasons for choosing custom install are to be able to review the choice of components or see if some of the ones you might need aren't unchecked by default.
For instance, if you plan to install Ruby on Rails and DB2 on Ubuntu 11.04, make sure to check the Application development tools component: it's needed to build the Ruby driver.

The rest of the instalation is almost self-explanatory, so moving forward to the first set of tests, the database creation, connection and the CLP behaved as expected:

The license was also applied successfully, so in the end all 4GB of memory were put to good use:

Following the documentation for the uninstall process, it completed with success, but I couldn't resist and I quickly went through the installation again, eager to test the connectivity between the new Rails 3.1 beta and DB2 Express-C 9.7.4!

But that will fuel another article!

Enabling jQuery support in RubyMine

Last week we saw how to enable jQuery support in your Rails 3.0.x app for all your UJS needs.
But after @dhh's leak, today we know for sure: Rails 3.1 will ship with jQuery as the default Javascript library! That's great news and I believe it will clear any doubt from a beginner's mind on which JavaScript library she should focus on. If you still plan to use the Prototype helpers/RJS though, it will be as easy as upgrading your application to use the prototype-rails gem.

But how jQuery-ready is RubyMine?

While experimenting with Unobtrusive Javascript using RubyMine, there was one improvement brought by version 3.1 that particularly drew my attention:

Autopopup code completion — code completion suggestions appear instantly as you type and work for Ruby, ERB, JavaScript, HTML and other files.

Still, as reported in issue RUBY-5026, RubyMine's autocomplete cannot automagically talk jQuery. By default, the suggestions will be based on Prototype.js; furthermore, if you --skip-prototype, they will be even more limited:

Enabling support for jQuery

1. In RubyMine, go to Settings » JavaScript Libraries and add a new library.
   At this point we have two options for type:
   • Debug: file containing the uncompressed JavaScript code. [jquery-1.5.1.js]
   • Release: the minified version of the code. [jquery-1.5.1.min.js]
   
   
2. Make sure to Apply the changes before continuing, then go to Usage Scope and enable the library for the current project:
   
   
3. Finally, both jQuery code completion and navigation are working as expected.
   Enjoy!
   
   

Update: Thanks to the JetBrains' Easter Sale, you can could get RubyMine for 30% off.

Enabling UJS in Rails3 with jQuery: in just 3 steps!

Here is my approach to quickly enabling Unobtrusive Javascript support for your Rails application, using jQuery:

1. Create a Rails application without Prototype support
   
2. Edit your config/application.rb to include the latest jQuery and the Rails UJS adapter for jQuery:
   
   Update (May 4^th) for jQuery 1.6:
   
3. ...oh, I said 3 steps, right!
   Just continue building your application; here's an example: YouTube-like-comments.
   

Harvesting Big Insights from Big Data: Data + Visualization = Information

We know for a fact that reaching adulthood, most of the memories from our first 3-4 years of life are lost to infantile amnesia.

Deb Roy: The birth of a word

Imagine for a moment having a 200 terabytes dataset containing 3 years worth of audio and video "memories", that is:

• 90,000 hours video
• 140,000 hours multi-track audio
• a 70-million-word transcript

of almost everything that happened in your childhood.

Considering this exercise of imagination, what would you do to harvest usable information out of that huge amount of opaque data? Here is where MIT cognitive scientist Deb Roy found his challenge: gathering and using such a natural longitudinal data to understand the process of how a child (his son) learns language. He described his research on this Big Data at MIT during his TED talk this month:

But it's not easy to strip all the developmental milestones — from one's first steps as a baby to the mastery of any spoken word (e.g., water) — from what is by far "the largest home video collection ever made". Then how about rolling back to see what verbal and physical interactions preceded the acquisition of language during early childhood?

I think this is where the visualization of data comes into play to communicate the message. For instance, Deb Roy's team reaped the power of data and captured every time his son ever heard the word water along with the the context he saw it in. They then used this data to penetrate through the video, find every activity trace that co-occurred with an instance of "water" and map it on a blueprint of the apartment. That's how they came up with wordscapes: the landscape that data leaves in its wake.

Wordscape for the word water – most of the action takes place in the kitchen.

Two years ago, during a research assignment at my University, I was getting a first contact with Apache Hadoop — a software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications. Today, Deb Roy's TED talk inspired me to look for what solutions are available today for doing analytics on Big Data and transform them into information, but considering all the challenges that we meet when rising to the enterprise level. An interesting answer to this challenge can be found in InfoSphere BigInsights, which aims to bring Apache Hadoop MapReduce large scale analytics to the enterprise.

More examples of how to make intelligent use of Big Data can be found in TechCrunch's interview with Anjul Bhambhri, VP responsible for Big Data at IBM. In this interview, several interesting projects are mentioned, such as:

• detecting an onset of infection in critically premature infants;
• solving congestion problems in big cities like Stockholm as part of the IBM Smarter Planet initiative;
• and of course about Watson and how it outsmarted humans on Jeopardy and how this technology helps real business.

Anjul Bhambhri interviewed by TechCrunch

Now consider that you can garner the power of Big Data and create meaningful visualizations that bring information to life: what dataset would motivate your work, what problem would you solve first?

Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson

Oracle and DB2 - An Architectural Comparison

Update—Apr 19, 2011:

Thanks to the guys over at ChannelDB2.com, if you couldn't make it to this webcast teleconference, you can go through the recording at your pace, at your place:

Also available are:

• the slides of the presentation (PDF, 1.8MB) and
• the audio recording (MP3, 17MB, 90min)

---

Personal History

Remembering the Advanced Databases classes taken at my alma mater University in Iaşi, I find that prof. Victor Felea's focus on Oracle-only solutions was a rather limiting one. It was thanks to prof. Sabin Buraga's passion for Web Technologies that many of my colleagues and I were exposed to alternatives, all the way to NoSQL.

Contemporary Fact

Still, most of the extensive Database courses revolve around only one specific DBMS. You guessed that right: that ends up being the main skill of the graduate that wants to tackle enterprise level DBs. But when taking on a DB-centered career path, he/she needs a better understanding of the bigger picture; and this is when advices from his/her more experienced peers are most valuable. Asking a senior colleague what is his suggestion for an aspiring professional, he recommended a toolbox of skills that spread well beyond a single DBMS. How is this an obvious advantage, you ask?

• most enterprises use more than one DBMS in-house;
• therefore it may be useful to get skilled in more than one Enterprise class DBMS;
• first obvious advantage: this improves career prospects if jobs for one database are more in demand;
• secondly, you can have a higher salary if you know about more than one DB;
• yes, the head of the database team will most likely earn more than a DBA in the team who is only knowledgeable about a single DBMS!

Oracle and DB2 - An Architectural Comparison

Following the Chat with the Labs series of webinars, I could not help but notice that the previous episodes mostly catered to existing DB2 users. This is why I was surprised when I read about the Oracle and DB2 - An Architectural Comparison:

Many database professionals and DBAs often ask how DB2 and Oracle compare architecturally, that is, how they are different and similar at their core. They also ask what are the equivalent concepts, names, commands etc. in the other database system. This free webinar will answer those questions by covering the following topics in detail:

• Server architecture comparison (e.g. instances and database model, process vs. thread)
• Memory architecture comparison (e.g. Oracle SGA & PGA vs. DB2 instance, database and application memory)
• Parameters, environment variables and registry variables
• Database storage model comparison (e.g. table space types and layouts, compression approaches)
• Basic database administration comparison (e.g. terminology, create database, start/stop, dictionary vs. system catalog, performance)
• Compatibility mode for running Oracle applications with DB2

This webcast, scheduled for Thursday, March 31 2011, at 12:30pm (EST) is intended for the database professional, fresh or experienced, who is:

• familiar with Oracle and looking to learn more about DB2 (for Linux, Unix and Windows);
• familiar with DB2 and looking to learn more about Oracle;
• working in a heterogeneous environment and looking to expand their DBMS knowledge and career prospects.

Edit: Since the (limited) number of places is filling up fast, I recommend that you register now!

Edit Mar 14^th: With almost 2 weeks left till the live event, it is already sold out and no additional registrations are being accepted at this time.

Coding Green Robots: Debriefing #1 [+video]

I was announcing the other day the first episode of Coding Green Robots: a series of meetings focused on Android development. So right after work, fighting the rush hour, I went today to the YMC in Downtown Toronto to be "in the studio", with the hosts: Greg Carron and Matthew Patience from Mobicartel.

Today's Episode 1 was mainly a beginner's tutorial, but proved pretty useful in brushing up almost forgotten Android development skills. It was also a sneak peek into Mobicartel's workflow with varied ideas, from how Matthew and Greg divide/share the development and the design or how they make use of Dropbox in the development lifecycle for developing, sharing and quickly installing an app within the team, to how they decide which platform versions to target:

[Platform version distribution. Retrieved February 2, 2011]

• On the development side we covered from efficient IDE setup to basic Android components and Views (relative layout, fast prototyping, intents etc.).
  I found it particularly interesting to learn how experience has taught them the best practice of using sp as units of measurement.
• As for the design, I got a better understanding of screen densities and how important is to use vector shapes in your design in order to be able to export nice and crisp 24-bit transparent PNGs that will fit your custom design like a glove.
  I also discovered the ShootMe app: useful for getting screenshots on your Android device.

In the interview with Mark Reale I found insights about organizing AndroidTO, and that it's 2011 edition will most likely be in October. His "be resourceful" philosophy was somewhat motivating for me:

• use everything at your fingertips
• always be around people smarter than you
• never hesitate to ask questions

I found the night's coup de grâce to be in the short talk about NFC: I got to whet my appetite with a device that can write/read NFC tags, and the programmable NFC tags that accompanied it. It was the first real/physical tag that my Nexus S read: even if it was a blank one, it was still an Eureka moment!

Also tonight, the Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) OTA update was announced, so I have to admit: I'm really looking forward to writing (not just reading) rewritable NFC tags, and even program my Nexus S to act as a NFC tag... and imagine the grin on my face when finally getting rid of those "random" reboots! :D

As I guess you can tell by now, every other Tuesday I'll head Downtown, to the YMC in Toronto. If you aren't in the area, but you're looking to learn how to develop for Android in somewhat of a classroom environment, you can always watch the sessions streamed live and/or enjoy the full videos of sessions published afterwards. Just head out to CodingGreenRobots.com.

Update: Here's the 2 hour recording of yesterday's first CGR episode:

...and wait till you read the debriefing on March 8^th! ;o)