A few things that I have managed to get going were 15 litres of red wine. Certainly no Cheatau Pape du Nerf but something that appears to be getting better as time moves on. I suspect it will be at its best in about 4 months and will need to be consumed very quickly. After bottling that I started up a batch of elderflower cider, 5 gallons of the stuff. Lets hope it tastes good or its going to hurt a lot having to drink that much rubbish. Hopefully will get to bottle that early next week. All of the brewing, and the realisation that it isn’t really that much of a time consumer now I’m in most nights of the week, has really got the passion for brewing going again. Having done many forms of wine and cider before, this time, I decided beer was the way forward. Mostly so I could find something that a lady friend would drink, she still bets that there will be nothing that can convert her!! To make that a little easier I visited a local brewing supply shop. Here I met Paul who was very willing to answer anything around brewing that I could ask. From him I found out the kind of equipment that would be required and most of it being home made got me even more interested. Also Paul runs a practical mashing course on a regular basis, I signed up immediately. It looks as though this brewing thing is a double win, cool amounts of engineering and making the brew. The first thing I am going to make will be something from the Brooklyn Brew Shop book

Programming has also changed, after an introductory conversation with a large internet firm, it was pointed out that possibly C, Python or Perl might be a better choice. Ruby out (for now anyway) and in with Perl to start ( I have a mentor who can help me) and then to top all of this off my raspberryPi arrived. What a perfect place to start playing.

I have an idea of what I want to try with it and will hopefully document that via this site!

If your interested in any pictures you can find them here…

Well day 2 ran a little later than I had expected (basically I kept reading well into day 3), so day 3 didn’t wake up until much later than expected. I also had a fair few things to do and with interruptions from agents calling me about different roles, it never really got started and was abandoned.

But we are back with the program for day 4, once again issue with a lack of phone, telephone interviews for different roles (now you see why the lack of phone was an issue!) and then my need to go for a run did slow down the start but here I am firing on on cylinders.

A nice easy ride through the Standard types, although some nice highlights around Strings but then it was onto regular expressions.

Anyone who has used them will know how great and useful they can be while also being one of the most annoying things to write ever. The numerous books that I have read about programming or systems administration or deployment methods, normally include something on them and it is always a chapter that I read. Sadly I don’t get the need to use them often enough to be able to remewmber them as I would like but the one key thing to remember is that

r*
will return a not null as the * modifier will return on zero or more instances

Ok this has been stored in my drafts folder for weeks now. Have decided to just push it up as is. There will be bad spelling and grammar but I’m going to push another post today anyway!!

p foo

is the same as

puts foo.inspect

so if you want to just print out a load of string information from any object you send it as the Ruby standard message to_s

Short cut to be able to read an attribute

attr_reader :foo

if you want to be able to read and write to an attribute you simply create it as

attr_accessor :foo

Blocks are just chunks of code, either between braces or keywords do and end. Current style is that if it fits onto a single line braces are used, any thing more than one line do and end are used.

Finally the enumerator section has completely blow my mind but not as much as the examples given for how blocks can be objects

So that was a pretty intense day and three more chapters completed. Looks like a slightly easier start tomorrow as it picks up standard types..

Local variables, method parameters, and method names should all start with a lowercase letter or an underscore. Global variables are prefixed with a dollar sign ($),and instance variables begin with an “at” sign (@). Class variables start with two “at” signs (@@). Finally, class names, module names, and constants must start with an uppercase letter.

Taken from the Pickaxe book as it is known. I’m hoping to drop on everyday of code week and provide a snippet of what I consider to be the most important things I have picked up, if not for you lot, at least for myself!!

Ahhhh wheres the package for my distro? Oh it only comes as source you say… hmmmm

Now I can imagine many of you out there are laughing by thsi point and saying things like “bah who needs packages” or “Packages, what are they?? when I was a boy you compiled everything from source” and you would be right. I’ve been there, done that and have both the T-Shirt and a hat. However, just because thats how it used to be or how it can be done, really is that how you want to do it? We all know that packaging has come on leaps and bounds, Debian has been amazing at forcing standards that mean it always just works, RPM’s have been pretty good despite what many say, still problems can occur when you just flinging code in.

So there are ways of doing package build but many of them involve knowing a lot about a lot of random stuff just to fill in a bit of information. Fear not for there is a very simple answer to your problem, A solution thats spits out debs, rpms, solaris and puppet packages, simply by sucking the information in from directories, rpms, gems or python modules.

All you need is fpm from jordan Sissel.

To use this you need Ruby (not got it install RVM just follow the instructions, if you ask nicely I might write about this in the future). If you have that installed then the first step is very easy.


gem install fpm

Now that was easy!

As I’m working on Ubuntu systems at the moment and this was discovered for that exact purpose, thats what I’m going to walk you through, source to deb for Gangila 3.3 . Anything else I’m afraid you will just have to go and look at the site for yourself but it is all very well documented.

tar -zxvf ganglia-3.3.0.tar.gz
cd ganglia-3.3.0
./configure
make

now install it but not to somewhere you want to keep it. A directory in /tmp is normally pretty good

mkdir /tmp/ganglia
make install DESTDIR=/tmp/ganglia

the application should now be ready to run as if you had installed it for your system. Its from this point that the magic happens

fpm -s dir -t deb -n ganglia -v 3.3.0 /tmp/ganglia


and what you should see generally is

tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
Created /home/rhys/ganglia.3.3.0_3.3.0_amd64.deb


Now install the package where you want!!

CIOs at Work (Ed Yourdon), is an opportunity to get an insight into how many influential CIOs got to where they are, what they believe are the good steps to take to get into that role, what its like once your there and what’s key to delivering once you are in that role.

This is part of a series of three books (the others being Founders at work by Jessica Livingston and Coders at work by Peter Seibel) where a section of the technology workforce are interviewed. Ed Yourdon, internationally recognised expert in project management and the software field, is the person who takes us on this tour. An excellent choice as he is able to communicate equally with those that he is interviewing and get some amazing insights through just simple conversation. Each of the interviewees get asked the same questions, in generally the same order. This approach then allows us to see what the differences are in thoughts and processes between each person.

This is something that I have been interested in for many reasons. This first, running my own company, knowing what people have been through to get into these roles and what they are trying to achieve, their needs in that role, their expectations and where they think the industry is likely to move, can all help me develop my business to help us provide exactly what is expecting. At the end of the day the CIO is often the person who makes the final decision when it comes to hiring in external companies.

Another major reason is my own personal development. A lot of this comes from just reading about others and how they have defined themselves, got to where they are, achieved what they have. Through this book a lot of my personal believes for the work place appear to have been, or at this moment in time are possibly, the correct way of looking at things. The need to diversify as much as possible on your way up through the ranks so you get a very good understanding of how business work, form the front line support, sales, finance and HR, well before you even get near the technical departments. I feel that this idea is is particularly highlighted through comparing the interviews with Ashish Gupta (brought up straight through the company technical ranks) and Paul Strassmann (the first CIO in America) and all the others. Their views in many ways are so different to what all of the others are saying and they both appear to miss what many f the others have deemed as very important in the role. There also appears to be a common view on technology and how consumerism is changing the enterprise landscape, new cool things hit users before enterprise and then enterprise has to play catch up while being mindful of the business needs all when users just want to do things instantly in the way the do at home. Something I have been interested in, having been a security engineers for a few years. How is this idea of bring your own device managed with security of the business and the ever shifting point of location of security management. The final big piece of information that is constantly repeated is that you cannot standstill. To make no decision for the future is to immediately fail in your role.
If you have any interest in reaching the top of the technology tree or you just would like to see a potential view of the future this is certainly a book to read.

2011

More running

less drinking

Save money

Blog a week? (a day is certainly not going to happen)

rugby…..

build my company so that its not just my contracting that brings in money

So how have I done?

More running and less drinking, as you would expect, go hand in hand. While not being amazing at it things were certainly different enough that I was happy. Made great headway in the running that I managed to achieve my personal best for a 10K at just over 60 minutes. While all the running was taking place it did meant that I didnt feel like drinking as much. Sadly this all fell apart in December but, it is party season. Back onto it for Jan though.

Save money and work on Sawdit also went together. Due to the workload and the generosity of Global Dawn. I was able to stack enough money away that gave me six months just focusing on the company. New customers, some support contracts and now a full partner in the company. Lets hope this continues for this year.

AS for the final two, doesn’t take a genius to see that blog a week was a failure and I have at least thought about buying rugby boots so that is a step closer..

All in all I am very impressed with what I did manage to do and as I always live by “only regret the things you haven’t done not the things you do” I have once again had an amazing year.

So whats for 2012?

The company work will hopefully continue and will hopefully grow to allow us to start to take on employees.

On a personal note I have two aims.

I will properly learn two programming language this year, not sure which ones but if you have any suggestions, let me know. The second one for now I will keep to myself but I will update as things change with it.

Have a good year all and I hope everything goes the way you want it.

Just so you know my year has started excellently. I am sat on a beach in beautiful sunshine here in Spain. life can be amazing sometimes

But to day something different, after a long week of lots of coding and very little sleeping upon the advice of flatmate, decided to take the afternoon off to buy more fish for my tank and to cook a decent Sunday lunch. This involved a shop that, as always with either of my flat mates more time was spent looking at booze than food. So with new beers in hand, here is the first and hopefully not last of my pointless opinion of beers.

Caesar Augustus  (4.1%)from the Williams Brothers Brewing Company.

This is described as a larger / IPA hybrid due to the brewing process. Initially fermented for at least two weeks, it is then largered for at least four more weeks, during that time they add IPA style hops.

This is a very pale colour, as you would expect for something described as a larger. The taste is true to what they say, this has an initial clean, light and crisp taste that is soon followed by very strong hop tastes. Although I do like an IPA, there are some that push the hops a little too far. I think possibly that the why they throw the hops in really pushed their flavour as it is extremely hoppy, no to my particular taste. So if you love the flavour of hops give this a go as the other flavours do makes this a clean refreshing beverage.

Past Masters, XX Strong Ale (7.5%). Fullers.

Part of the heritage series and hopefully the start of the nice strong seasonal ales. Not sure what to expect as the flavours can be so different, this one certainly didn’t disappoint . The colour is a very pleasant medium brown and it has a very sweet smell. The taste explodes on the tongue, with the smoothness of licorice and then a sweet malty taste. This is certainly something that I will be trying to get hold of again in the future. If you see it I would certainly advise giving it a try.

Now I’m at the end of this I have realised that I should have possibly thought a little more about the best way of judging these things. As both of them have long been polished off earlier today. Will think about that before any more reviews, also it would be nice to try the XX again

That is all folks and if I don’t end up drowned in a big session of booze tomorrow I’m sure we will all talk again soon.

So here I am having to give the laptop to one of the other employees in the company, a man that will never need the linux partition but will certainly need all the space he can get on a drive.

The first step is very easy, just a case of deleting the linux drive space, format and extend all done through the windows tools. This is obviously nice a quick and easy until you reboot. Grub tries to get all of its configuration data from a location that no longer exists. Back to playing with USB drives and ISO images here we come.

As with most laptops (and many other systems these days) no original disks are supplied as you are expected to make disc images when you first get the devices. Me, being the consummate professional that I am, obviously ignored that I was expecting to so destroy the OS at some point, as is normally the case, that I would end up just getting a fresh copy, and putting that on there.

So how did I do it this time.

First step hunt down a USB drive and then hunt down a windows disk. USB was where I expected but for the life of me I could find a single copy of vista or windows 7, silly considering the number of copies I own. Luckily a quick search on the internet revealed the Neosmart website with a nice link to a disk that was perfect for my needs and was easily downloaded using a bit torrent client.

Onto the USB and making it bootable and back to the old school.

open up a command prompt, yep run with cmd in it. Check you know what the drive size is as this is need to identify it in the next step.

type..

diskpart

select disk x (where x is the disk number of the USB drive)

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

active

format fs=fat32

assign

exit

Hopefully by now you will have the iso downloaded so you need to mount it in a virtual drive.

Back to the command prompt and change to the mounted virtual drive

type…

xcopy *.* /e /h (usbdriveletter):\

You should now see all the files copying across.

You can now put this into the laptop and reboot it, select the windows partition and then at the next step repair manually. I didn’t try the automatic repair as I have no idea how it works and couldn’t risk destroying the raw data of the laptop due to the time I had do get this done.

Once in the repair console just type..

bootrec.exe /FixMbr

bootrec.exe /FixBoot

There you go all done, reboot and everything will be back to just windows.