The Niko-niko Calendar is a tool for automating this process and measuring abnormalities over time. Like many modern manufacturing innovations, it originates from Japan. The Niko-niko Calendar plugin for Redmine is a modern version of this tool that should integrate easily with our existing processes.

The value I see in this technology applied to my work specifically is in the harmony of business interests and developer’s needs.

Imagine a report containing a single table. Across the top horizontally you see each numeric day of the month, and down the left side vertically you see people’s names. In the center you have a matrix of emoticons.

Real-life Niko-niko Calendar

Each day, each member of the team chooses one of three options: happy, sad, or in-between. Everyone who participates has a voice and a platform; transparency is encouraged.

Although it may seem like a kindergarten approach, it provides amazing power and leverage to help management identify abnormalities and make correct decisions before defects occur.

In applying this technology to your organization, a few of the fundamental benefits you can expect include:

• “How are you doing?” becomes a sincere question.
• “Why?” and “How can I help?” begins to occur more frequently.
• Encourages cooperation and creative solutions.
• Becomes more difficult for management to neglect employee safety and morale.

This is important because it allows us to measure and track “abnormalities” as they occur. The definition of “Abnormality” in this context of means “State that is not normal, although it is not defective.” or “State between normality and the defect”. This system of measurement can benefit any type of project where there is a work product being manufactured.

For example, the developer is asked to work on a ticket but the instructions in the ticket are not clear. The manager is never around to answer questions. The developer keeps developing, trying the best he can, but feels unproductive because he is forced to make several assumptions that could end up being wrong.

Left unchecked, this can lead to defects. Moreover, the state of abnormality shows the symptom to the defect. Suddenly arriving at the defect is not desirable at all. By tracking abnormalities, we are able to resolve problems before they occur.

Also, it is important ahead of the defect to see the change little by little every day. It is important to see the tendency to the change. Because we realize abnormalities are not so abnormal and we are willing to measure them, the defect is not overlooked, and the corrections are realised instead of taken for granted.

See this page for details and usage examples:
“Niko-niko Calendar”, an article by AKATA Akinori

• We can have the same development environment regardless of our desktop environment.
• We set the VM to 512mb memory to start, which is like the remote VPS server environment. This is nice because you can scale memory and/or cpus up or down at will, and instantly with a few clicks. A great way to test your application under various loads.
• By starting the hardware resource limits low (mem and cpu), we limit how greedy the stack can get. If the vm freezes, the rest of your system does not.
• Starting with constraints forces us to build efficient code from the start, instead of refactoring for efficiency later (which realistically never happens). The same is true for bugs affected by the environment, which previously you would only encounter once you attempted to deploy to a remote development or production server. When you are deploying to production, that is too late to be finding out you have bugs related to environment differences.
• With VMs you can take snapshots of the hard drive at any given point in time. Snapshots taken thereafter are similar to version control in that only the differences are actually saved. So it’s efficient, quick, which means less expensive. When you mess something up with the install or environment you can just roll back to a time when everything was working.
• The use of snapshots can become like a form of unit testing. You can make copies of working environments to start new projects. You can test source code (e.g. from outside the VM over a mounted vboxsf or nfs share) in different points of the snapshotted environments.
• Also, consider your other projects not in a VM. When you need to switch gears, you just start or stop another VM. It takes a few seconds, and you can be running several different versions of Apache, PostgreSQL, Ruby, PHP, and all other sorts of programming tools. This gives you precision in developing. No longer do you have to hold back to the old verisons of software in order to stay compatible with all projects. You can develop your applications on the bleeding edge of technology. And save resources by only running the tools you need when you need them.
• Once you get the vm setup correctly, you can quickly send the entire environment to your peers. For teams on a gigabit LAN, the time to transfer a typical 1GB virtual disk image (*.vdi) is trivial. For teams across the planet, preparing instructions like the ones below are often faster and take on average 1-2 hours to complete. Not to mention if you put it on a USB drive you can take it with you anywhere you go.

There are more benefits as you will see through using it, but you’ll need memory; at least 1.5-2gb is preferable. Less is technically possible but you’ll see performance hit depending on the size of your VM.

Ultimately, the result for those using the vm image is an instant development environment, with no dependency conflicts, configuration quirks, or hardware differences. On average with this I have new development team members able to join the team brand new and start contributing meaningful code in as little as 6 hours on average, versus 24-32 hours for the non-vm approach. But with the non-vm approach you have to consider all the problems you face down the road that end up being  environment differences.

Below is a pseudo bash script outlining how to prepare one of these virtual machine images (*.vdi) using Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) 64-bit.

# download an ISO of Ubuntu 10.4 LTS Server
# NOTE: If your pc is 64-bit and can emulate 64-bit VMs get that one. If not, use the i386/32-bit iso
#   http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/ubuntu-10.04-server-amd64.iso
#   http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/ubuntu-10.04-server-i386.iso

# download and install latest VirtualBox (3.2.4 r62467)
# http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
# run VirtualBox
# click Machine > New (Ctrl+N)
# click Next
# type Name:
# select Operating System: Linux
# select Version: Ubuntu (64 bit)
# click Next
# click Next # keeping memory at 512 MB, the default
# click Next # to "Create new hard disk", the default
# click Next
# click Next # for "Dynamically expanding storage", the default
# click Next # for 8.00 GB size, the default
# click Finish
# click Finish

# right-click on new vm for context menu
# click "Settings... (Ctrl+S)"
# click "System" > "Motherboard"
# uncheck "Floppy'
# click "System" > "Processor"
# check "Extended Features:" "Enable PAE/NX"  # very important or you will get errors with Ubuntu Lucid
# click "Storage"
# under "SATA Controller", right-click on the .vdi and chose "Remove Attachment"
# right-click on "IDE Controller", choose "Add Hard Disk", and then select the .vdi file you just removed.
# This is because you have to use IDE; SATA is broken at the moment.
# under "IDE Controller", highlight "Empty" and ensure the right "Slot:" says "IDE Secondary Master"
# click the yellow-folder-with-green-up-arrow icon to the right of "CD/DVD Device:" to open the Virtual Media Manager
# click "Add" toolbar icon button to open the file browser dialog
# browse to and select your Ubuntu 10.04 Server .iso
# click Open
# click OK
# NOTE: sometimes at this point there is a bug in VirtualBox where the left menu that used to show General, System, Display, etc. is now collapsed. To fix you have to close the window and repeat steps to select .iso
# click Audio
# uncheck "Enable Audio"
# click Network
# select "Attached to:" "Bridged Adapter"
# NOTE: click "Advanced" and make note of the Mac Address if you need to have it added to your router. I prefer this way because I have mac address filtering enabled on my router.
# click USB
# uncheck "Enable USB Controller"
# click OK to close the window and save all your settings changes

# highlight the vm and click Start tollbar icon button

# when Ubuntu setup boots, it prompts you to select your language, with English being the default
# select language as you wish (e.g. English)
# press F4 at main menu and select "Install a Minimal Virtual Machine" then press enter twice to begin installation
# answer localization questions as you wish (e.g. US Keyboard)
# if asked, select "Do not configure network at this time"
# hostname can be whatever u like (e.g. development)
# chose your time zone
# choose "Guided - use entire disk"
# choose NO to "Encrypt my home directory" when prompted; it causes problems with keys
# choose "no automatic updates" when prompted
# do NOT choose any software to install when prompted, instead hit TAB and ENTER to skip
# YES to install GRUB bootloader
# CONTINUE to reboot

# once booted to prompt, login
sudo -i # become root
# NOTE: wherever you see the username 'mikesmullin' replace with your own in these instructions
# install ssh
aptitude install openssh-server
logout # of root
logout # of your user
# outside the vm, i also prefer to add a host entry for mysite.local to my /etc/hosts

# from outside the vm, ssh into the machine from now on
ssh mysite.local
sudo -i
visudo
# change line 28 to read:
%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL
:wq
rm /etc/motd
logout # of root
logout # of your user

# now would also be a good time to install your ssh key
# so you don't have to type your password every time you ssh into the vm
# from your localhost (outside vm):
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub mysite.local # this assumes you already have generated an rsa ssh key

# install vbox guest additions
ssh mysite.local
sudo -i
aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade
reboot # to switch to latest kernel

# once vm is rebooted:
ssh mysite.local
sudo -i
aptitude install linux-headers-virtual build-essential psmisc wget vim
#aptitude install xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core # NOTE: uncomment this for 32-bit systems
# in the vm window
# switch focus to the window entitled "[Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox"
# click Devices > Install Guest Additions... (Host+D or RCtrl+D)
# NOTE: for some people the menubar at the top of that window is gone. if this is you, you can still use the keyboard shortcuts above and use the arrow keys left/right to switch menus or up/down to make your selection
# now resume from your ssh terminal:
cd /media && mkdir cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom cdrom && cd cdrom
./VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run
reboot

# once vm is rebooted and at login prompt,
# at this point it is a good idea to make a snapshot of the virtual machine:
# switch focus to the window entitled "[Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox"
# click Machine > Take Snapshot... (Host+S or RCtrl+S)
# name the snapshot "fresh ubuntu install"
# this way you will always have this point to roll-back to if you manage to mess up the next steps
# feel free and please remember to make as many snapshots as you like; you can never have too many, only too few.
# now resume from your ssh terminal:
ssh mysite.local

# setup src
# add your localhost directory containing your src code dir to vbox vm as a permanent shared folder named 'src'
sudo -i # become root
cd /media && mkdir src
echo "src   /media/src      vboxsf  rw,uid=1000,gid=1000    0       0" >> /etc/fstab
mount -a
# NOTE: If you get the following error, go to vm Devices > Shared Folders...
#       and make sure you add the ./src dir and check "Make Permanent"
#       then run above cmd again.
#   /sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error
cd /var/www && ln -s /media/src src && cd src

Lots of fun. I have played the board game, the CD-ROM version, as well as this latest online version. The online version is cool because there are new cards and you can find real people to play with online. Great way to meet like-minded. There are a few other subtle improvements to the game over the previous versions which I enjoy such as the comic book style introduction and the things that can happen in the game which make it feel quite true to modern life. Unlike Monopoly.

Check it out. I think during the Beta you can play for free. If not, the Rich Dad Insider membership is worth it!

via Rich Dad – Welcome to Rich Dad!.

For now, recommended you check out the following projects:

• Compass; specifically video demo
• SASS markup language; better than CSS
• HAML markup language; better than (X)HTML
• 960.gs, its sketch pdf, and its SASS Compass Plugin equivalent
• 960 Gridder javascript overlay bookmark
• A List Apart: Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid article
• Text Gridder javascript overlay bookmark (my own)
• Sparkup markup language; specifically video demo
• Sparky my Compass-like compiler for Sparkup

Very cool combination for Rapid Application Development (RAD). Especially applied to web design.

Realize that if you are not, your presence is a high cost to the project in terms of the cascade of poor quality, and additional time you place as a burden on your customers and end-users. (see also: six sigma; cost of poor quality)

Maybe you have heard of the terms before, but you just haven’t taken the time to do it personally. Well that’s precisely the problem–you shouldn’t be the one doing it at all–your software should.

Define continuous integration: a software development process emphasizing frequent, comprehensive, and automatic integration (e.g. checkout, building, compiling), testing (e.g. unit testing, code analysis), and delivery (e.g. scheduled releases).

By automating these processes, you speed up development time and ensure important steps are being taken that are otherwise so tedious they are often avoided or forgotten.

CI is often used in, but not limited to, Agile methodology. Extreme Programming methodology teams also integrate and build the software system multiple times per day to keep all the programmers at the same stage of development. Usually each developer integrates their code into the code base at least daily.

Here I found an excellent presentation on Continuous Integration as it relates to PHP. In it, Wilco explains a few of the benefits of practicing CI in your software development projects:

• The earliest possible detection of problems in the software
• Detection of integration problems, no last minute hiatus before releases
• Early warning of broken/incompatible code
• Early warning of conflicting changes
• Immediate unit testing of all changes
• Constant availability of a “current” build for testing, demo or release purposes
• The immediate impact of checking in incomplete or broken code acts as an incentive to developers to learn or work more incrementally with shorter feedback cycles

Check out CI projects like: CruiseControl (Java), Rephlux (PHP), Damage Control (Ruby), and a whole slew of others. As well as the links off of their individual pages. Another good post about this is here.

While you’re at it you may find this list of 50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools interesting.

NetWars is one of the key competitions in the United States Cyber Challenge. For an overview of the Challenge, please click here to download the description from the White House web site.

Do you really know your way around computers? Do you think you can recover the password from a computer? Take control of a service? Protect the system against other users who might want to take it over?

Netwars is the ultimate online game: an adventure across the Internet. You can play as an analyst, a penetration tester, a defender, or any combination. You earn points by finding keys, moving to higher levels, capturing services such as a website, overcoming obstacles (attack techniques) and protecting resources (defensive techniques). You can see the other players scores and your own points scored, live, or on an overall scoreboard.

"Spend your time innovating, not replicating."

Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.

Blueprint offers:

• A CSS reset that eliminates the discrepancies across browsers.
• A solid grid that can support the most complex of layouts.
• Typography based on expert principles that predate the web.
• Form styles for great looking user interfaces.
• Print styles for making any webpage ready for paper.
• Plugins for buttons, tabs and sprites.
• Tools, editors, and templates for every step in your workflow.

Of course, Blueprint isn’t the only choice. It’s just the most popular, according to Google Trends:

keyword searches on Google

You may also be interested in 960 Grid System, or Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI).