A journey of 1000 miles starts with a single SaaS Solution
Java Development
London Digital Compositing Changeover & Topcoder
May 12th
Its come to that time in the year when everyone in the visual effects industry finishes the films they are working on and goes on holiday! Ready for the next lot of films to be worked on in the next month or so. Effects houses are going to start looking for new talent over the coming months. So all my compositing mates time to start looking for new companies to work for!
Found this cool site www.topcoder.com, the basic premis is that topcoder put up a request for a component to be built and you supply a design or code for it. It then gets reviewed and if it is passed you get the dosh. topcoder then uses the code in one of their client projects and put the code in their repository for everyone to download and use. Found one Guy who calls himself adic and he’s made over $81,000, kinda crazy money.
Google’s lost the love but gained a calendar
Apr 21st
Ok haven’t posted in a while, and since my last post i’ve been duped by Googles April Fools joke… it was good tho!! Its worth a check out Google Romance quite funny 
and I was wondering what on earth they were playing at!
BUT Google have launched another great web app “Google Calendar“. It looks quite good, this is the second project since gmail that directly completes with an existing Microsoft exterprise product Exchange because you can share you calendar with any other people on Google! Google is also making Outlook plugins for it and also integration into gmail so that if you get an email saying “Hi francis do you want to meet up on thursday for a pint at the kings head” gmail scrapes the email and turns it into a calendar item that you can put straight into your calendar! This is cool stuff The only thing that is a little worrying is the privacy concerns, the amount of info google will have on people, their emails, calendar and if the rumours prove correct with GoogleDrive then your personal files as well.
Heres a couple of articles i’ve found recently which are quite interesting. Also a quick Ruby on Rails tutorial.
The State of the Web.
Ruby on Rails Tutorial.
Password Cracking Times.
Free Oracle, Pamela for Skype, my first computer
Apr 4th
The London eCommerce market is booming at the moment. The last couple of weeks my phone has been red hot from clients wishing to either upgrade there site, or to completley rebuild it! I seem to be turning down a lot more people than usual. Even the people i’ve been passing them on to are too busy.
Oracle has launched Oracle Express Edition (XE) which is basically Oracle 10g database for windows and linux. Its a free version of Oracle with only a couple of limitations. Databases cannot be bigger than 4GB and that it will only use up to 1gb of memory and 1 cpu. Which IMH is great because it stops it from taking over your entire machine as Oracle seems to do. I think its obvious that this release is an attempt to get the MySQL/Open Source users over to Oracle and then getting them to pay for a license when they blast through 4GB of database. BUT the BIG improvement for linux. It used to be a total pain to install Oracle under linux, adding users here, groups their.. but now you just answer a couple of questions and bingo… done.
If you use Skype a lot i’ve found Pamela, its quite a nice extension to Skype which allows you to record conversations and setup a “Press 1 for x, Press 2 for y” type thing, you can also get it to create podcast xml files of recordings you have made but the later requires that you register it, but apart from that its free
I’ve been kinda interested in the battle between Flash and the Java VM over the last couple of weeks. The Java VM has never really taken off (I think manly because it takes so long to load! ) but once Sun get openGL working in the VM I think Java will take over Flash… maybe Just think, quake running on a Java VM in your browser. More and more good VM services are cropping up like The Switchboard which is an internet VOIP service. Maybe I should be learning Flex just incase?
Well I haven’t re-installed my lappy for blinking ages and I’ve been pondering if I should or not… but just don’t have the time at the moment so I’ve just found a great little app called JDiskReport. It basically looks at your machine and hunts out large applications or even large files that you have put in random directories which are eating up disk space for no apparent reason and gives you a graphical breakdown. Anyway check it out its a freeware java proggy. My laptop is a litter clearer now
Ok remember when you got your first computer? Well … hmmm… I don’t think I was that excited. But then it was BBC Electron hand me down with the expansion pack on the back so you got a lpt printer port on the back! With the tape player which you had to get the volume exactly right or the games wouldn’t load… the good old days
Oh and have to leave you with this… yes, Simpsons is to be made into a movie and you thought that the repeats on sky were getting anonying hoping its good tho!
Anyway me off to bed.. cya.
Programming head to head…
Mar 29th
About two weeks ago I was pulled in to help out a an extranet project (for a famous battery manufacturer) which really just needed a push in the right direction. Not enough design of the project was done in the early stages which meant some quite major issues were not identified until late on in the project. This therefore meant a load of code had to be re-written. Just even a little more design work or better prototyping could have figured it out … anyway gripe over
My next project is just a brief stint working on an eCommerce site for a couple of weeks. At the same time working on a travel site I help setup: www.qwertytravel.com. I’m going to see if I can improve it by putting a bit more “Web 2.0″ stuff into it. I’m currently looking at google maps and a JSP API (http://www.lamatek.com/GoogleMaps/) Google Maps is just great, Its quite cool technology. I do think that people have gone a bit “Web 2.0″ mad… Its not new technology its just I think the internet is in the “second coming” stage. Its become an everyday resource which people use without thinking about it… ok some people but some compared with the world population is a lot
Just found another good podcast for techies, its language independant and is focused on software engineering. Its great compliment to a programming specific podcast like Java posse. You can find all the info at: http://www.se-radio.net/
I’ve also found a site that pits different programming languages against itself. It definatly shows that C++ is faster a bit than Java but i’m not too sure if the algorithms used could have been improved to show better results. Which really shows that the speed of the language doesn’t matter if you have programmers that don’t optimise their code. Anyway its worth a quick look: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/index.php
Windows so slow? – Interesting article about the issues facing Vista (microsofts new OS) and that Microsoft bundling stuff in the 90s is to blame in the delay.
iPod or not to Pod that is the question…
Mar 24th
I managed to claw my ipod back from my little bro a couple of weeks ago! He managed to find it somewhere. He claims that I said I wasn’t using it anymore (shorly not!), anyway I got it back and i’ve REALLY got into pod casts in a big way. Kinda accidently really anyway found a couple of great podcasts to listen to on the train into work. Sync ma ipod in the morning and off you go!!
Techy:
Java Posse
A great podcast discussing java news and interviews, created by a guy from Kent University
The Twits
Technology chat
Security Now
Hosted by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporta they talk about personal internet/computer security. Its really for the home user wanting to know more about cryptography etc but they have some useful stuff. I did listen to one episode and they kept going on and on about one time pad encyption. They said it was 100% impossible to crack. Which … yes is “technically” 100% full proof, but you still have to transfer the plain text pad to the receiver of your encrypted message and if that gets intercepted without you knowing you code is broken. So I wouldn’t call it 100% myself… they did get around to mentioning this near the end but not after I had shouted at my ipod a couple of times saying “no it isn’t what about transferring the pad!… etc…”. After receving a couple of strange looks from people on Clapham Junction station I swapped tracks to the Simpsons
Info:
New Scientist Podcast
New Scientist has a number of articles and news from the mag in the podcast and has some really good interviews with knowledge matter experts.
FOXCAST: The Simpsons
Well think this one is quite self explanatory.
WOW what a year to go and do the Rookie Snowboard course! For those who don’t know I did a snowboard instructor could in new zealand last year and it was… AMAZING! really good fun and learned so much, not just snowboarding, which have really helped in my professional career as well. You can see all my rookie posts by clicking Rookie Academy in the catagories.
ANYWAY the reason I say its a great time to go is because the UK -> NZ exchange rate at the moment is amazing! Its currently cheaper than when I paid for it so you can get quite a good deal.
I’m hoping to get back out there this coming season. I did the course with my mate Mikal and he stayed out well popped back to the UK got a visa then went out
Todays cool site of the day: http://www.deviantart.com/
Some of the images on it are amazing my favouite sections are:
3d Wallpaper
Abstract Wallpaper
Icon Sets for programs etc
A mate from work showed me the site, he said most of the icon sets are on GPL but to get permission to use them usually only takes a quick email to say could I use them and the fame and recognition for the designers is enough
I feel a blog design update coming on which reminds WordPress (the blogging software I use) has been upgraded to 2.0.2 so i’m now going to attempt to upgrade it. Wish me luck!
