stfnkhlr.de Stefan Kohler feed

When skipping ideas does not feel wrong or you better be prepaired

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:35:41 -0500

A few months ago there was a new platform released for group communication. The goal back then was something like the next step of message boards / forums. As a result, Convore was born.

Convore and their API

Convore was developed by a team who is known for their open source work and their commitment to transparency. So it came as no surprise – at least for me – that they would offer an API right from the start. In fact, they were using the same API for most of the stuff they were doing. One of the more interesting features of the API was the Live API that uses a technique called long polling: “A request to Live can hang for up to 30 seconds so be prepared to wait. The response will return sooner if there are new updates.”

One would place a call to a certain URL and receive messages as they were entered in Convore. Then, when the request ended you would just place another call, you could do this in a loop and have realtime updates to whatever you were using the data for.

Fun app idea

I did not come up with an actual business idea, but a little app came to mind that would probably be fun to implement: A realtime map of the world updated with data from the API, so you could track the activity on a map. At least I thought this could have been fun. I put that idea into my idea backlog on May 16th 2011. That was like only a few months after they opened for business and were added to Ycombinator. What do you think of the idea?

The end is near

Just a few days ago now, the Convore team issued a blog post that it will be shutting down on April 1st. Though this is a weird date to be shutting down, I believe that they are serious about this, as they seem to already have moved on: grove.io. So now I might be sad and/or mad that I will not be able to work on my lovely idea, others have reason to be really mad, as they have already put work into apps for Android. I do not want to speak for them, so no further judgements on shutting down.

It is of course the Convore team’s right to be shutting down, on the other hand, I found their platform fun and easy to use and it is sad to see it leave. Now I think there are a few possible solutions:

Release Convore’s source code, so others could run ist for them or others could just have their internal Convore
Sell it. But I am not sure, if and who would buy it and what they would do to/with it

Be prepaired

As a devloper nowadays it is easy to find APIs to build products on. There are several new and old companies opening up their data for others to use. One just needs to be prepaired that this is not a guaranteed service and it might be shutting down any other day. Though I think this is unlikely for bigger companies, it might more true for startups, that are being bought or that just run out of business. All I am saying is: be prepaired!

To the Convore team

In case you read this, it is not my intention to make you feel bad about shutting down. The Convore API is not the only one that was getting shut down after a while, and it certainly will not be the last. This is just an example that was currently known to me while writing this post. I wish you all the best for your new adventure!

Free app/game idea: Brand spotting

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:59:21 -0500

A couple of weeks ago I watched basically all episodes of Foundation – a series of interviews conducted by Kevin Rose. He talks to several entrepreneurs and startups and gives you an idea of how they got started and what kept/keeps them running.

One of the startups covered was kiip.me which offers real rewards for virtual achievements:

http://vimeo.com/22201693

I thought this is a great idea, but how can one make use of this?

Fast forward 10 days. I was watching a movie (I do not actually remember what movie it was) when I saw a couple of ads in the movie. Those are not TV commercials, but signs of brands in the real setting of the movie (could be put there on the movie set, too). Think of unintentional product placement of billboards, a scene on Picadilly Circus would be a good example for this. Another example would be someone drinking a certain beverage (Coca Cola, Pepsi, Insert popular brand here). Then I thought to myself wouldn’t ist be fun to make a game out of this?

The idea: brand spotting

The idea is a game. If you follow Twitter while watching a movie or a TV series you will soon find out that you are not the only one watching. Now to the game idea:

Users can set up game rooms (to which they can invite friends to play with)
Points are given for each brand one is spotting on TV
the one who discovers the most brands wins
Points are kept accross multiple game rooms, after each milestone players get rewards (1000 pts=Price X, 2000 pts=Price Y, etc.) – rewards handling could be done via kiip, maybe!?

How does that sound?

Possible problems

I see two main problems. One are the users. I don’t want to be one calling on prejudace, but the more users you might get, the higher the chances there will be players trying to cheat. The second problem, which is semi related to the first problem: how can you be sure to find out which brands were actually visible in a show/episode/movie? Suggestions in the comments please.

A different problem is the rise of streaming services, so the idea of schedulable game sessions according to the TV program maybe needs a bit of rethinking. Well, one could still be playing on his own and have his score compared to others lately. I kinda liked the idea of a real time game though. This would be a Lot easier to accomplish if it is a movie/show that has a fixed time that ist is running.

Making money with this

With this idea I am sure one could make money, too. Though I am not a marketing expert, I could see companies being interested in the crowd sourced data that would be collected in the form of a game to see how and where their brand is being (mis)used outside of their official marketing campaigns.

This could also be interesting for ad agencies to figure out ways to improve product placements and such.

The platform

There are several platforms this could be a success on. One could just have it as a web application. In my opinion chances for actually getting people to play, is by integrating it in a social network, maybe as a Facebook app? Most important though, it has to be usable from mobile devices, in an ideal case even as a native application for iPhone, iPad or Android phones!

Would you play?

Let me know what you think of the idea and especially if you would actually play such a “game”? Recommendations, ideas, hints, critics, everything is welcome! Even let me know if this is the dumbest idea you have heart yet! ;-)

Would you like to work on it?

If you are a developer of any kind, frontend, backend, mobile or web or whatever and you would like to work on this, let my know. I currently just do not have the time to work on this, but maybe someone else has!?

Using Vim and Janus on Debian

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 08:46:55 -0500

I have decided to intensify work on private projects that I call micro projects, because usually they are small. Though I have a few ideas that would result in bigger projects, the outcome would be less successful because my time is already kinda limited. And that is intentional, because I do not want to spend the whole day and then the night in front of a computer. At work we use J2EE. I do not want to use this for private projects, because a) I use it every day b) I want to learn something new c) other programming languages widen your horizon which I think is important for a software developer. So here I am wanting to work on smaller projects using Python – a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively.

For development one needs an editor, I chose to use Vim (a while ago) because, well, actually I do not remember why, but I got used to the keyboard shortcuts and got to like its two modes etc. This post will not be about Vim, though if you have not tried it, give it a shot. Now to use Vim there are a gazilion plugins that make it easier / more fun to work with. A couple of days I stumbled upon a link tweeted out by (not sure) @jezdez about Janus – a distribution of plug-ins and mappings for Vim, Gvim and MacVim.

Meet Janus

To install Janus follow the instructions provided on their homepage. Once you got that done chose a color scheme that you want to use, for me it is Molokai:

$ echo 'color molokai' >> ~/.gvimrc.after

Now when I start up gvim to do some coding my screen looks like this:

And I actually do like that a lot, makes it fun to work with. You can see the Git branch this is on, you can use CTRL+T to search for new files (similar to Textmate’s Open File) and many many more features. I am sure I will figure out new features when I use it even more.

Install on Debian

As I am using Debian on my main Desktop machine, that I also use for development, I had to make a few adjustments to get Janus and its installation script to work:

Add the current user to the sudoers file, as the script will try to run something with sudo you need this and by default this is not the case on Debian.
I guess Janus was developed by/for Ruby/Rails devs mainly. It requires Rubygems to fully function. I got that working with doing: apt-get install rubygems
Well, a kind of a general requirement, though I already had taken care of it: git.

What do you use and why?

I would be interested in what you are using for your #micro projects? Do you have any? What kind of are these? Programming, hardware-“hacking”, building something, beating some kind of computer game? Tuning your car? What are you doing and what tools are you using to accomplish your goals? Let me know in the comments or @skohler me.

iOS apps I miss on Android - and why is that so?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:44:31 -0500

As probably anyone knows who knows me, I am an Android user and fan. My phone is a great device, but nowadays a smartphone and the platform it is built on is only worth as much as there are apps one can and wants to run on them. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why the new Palms did not work out as planned. But on to the apps I would like to see implemented for or ported to Android!

Oink

“With Oink, you don’t rate places — you rate the things inside. We need you to help fill Oink with all the best stuff.” Oink is an intersting app by Kevin Rose of Digg fame. It’s basically about rating everything that one can think of, see the video for a more detailed explanation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xADESocujo

Instagram

If you are into the internet and mobile apps and social networks and you have not come across Instagram yet, you have done something wrong. According to their website, they try to make sharing your life as instant and magic as those first Polaroid pictures must have felt.

Rumors have it that Instagram is actually working on an Android application. That would be really awesome and for sure an application I would be happy to use.

Flipboard

OK, I admit it, I love Flipboard. As I own an iPad I am a happy Flipboard user since the beginning. They improved the app already and it changes the way one consumes news, or their social network feeds. It makes Facebook and Twitter more fun by applying a journal like layout to your social feeds. Check it out. And they just released an iPhone app. Makes a sad Android user, aka me.

Reason to get an iPhone?

Are those apps actually a reason to get an iPhone? No, I do not think so. There is another thought that comes to my mind when thinking about it though. As far as I can recall, there is much news, that Android phones outsell the iPhone. There are more people developing software on/for Android than there are for the iOS devices. At least that is my impression when reading news and surfing the web. I feel like there is a lack of quality in the Android apps compared to iOS apps (of course there are exceptions to this rule).

Then, how come most must-have apps are released on iOS first and not the other way around? How come when someone tells you about a new app or you hear about a really successful app on the web, that it is an app deceloped for iOS first? Do you know why? I would love to hear your thoughts.

2011 Geek Holiday Gift Guide

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:55:08 -0500

Hoilday season come every year and so it is coming up this year, too. If you have any geeky friends, family or are looking for a gift for yoursevle, the following list might help you find an interesting gift for the geek inside you.

Up to $50

Charge smart: Most chargers continue to use power as long as they’re plugged into the wall—even after you unplug your device. The Conserve Valet Smart USB Charging Station lets you charge all of your mobile devices in one convenient place, and automatically shuts off power—including standby power—after devices are fully charged.
Flickr Pro Account: Unlimited uploads and storage, Unlimited sets and collections, Access to your original files, Stats on your account

$50 – $100

Up – by Jawbone: Use the UP wristband and iPhone® app to track your steps, distance, calories burned, pace, intensity level, active vs inactive time, GPS routes and more.
Uncharted 3 for Playstation 3

http://vimeo.com/28976717

$100 +

iPod Nano watch: You need an iPod Nano, too, that will get you to over $100.
Amazon Kindle Fire: Full Color 7” tablet with multi-touch Display and Wi-Fi

http://vimeo.com/31886133

Your turn

What’s on your wishlist for the 2011 holidays? On my list are also a few books that I am interested in (HTML5 and Android development), those are only interesting for people with a development background – if you need more recommendations, let me know.

Hints for your next job interview

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:38:25 -0500

Lately I have been given the oppertunity to take part in job interviews. Job interviews are nothing new for me, but now, I am sitting on the other side of the table and I am one of the interviewers who are asking the questions. That means no need for me to be nervous, though it was kinda weird during the first two to three interviews. My role in the job interviews is to find out if an applicant has the technical knowledge to be of any help for us in case we hire her. That is not all though. My opinion is also asked for in terms of my personal impression of an applicant. This post contains a few hints and tips for applicants to being able to perform better in job interviews.

The obvious

There are a few obvious parts in a job interview that I would like to highlight. This is mostly due to my (again I have just started being a part of an interviewing team) experience:

Be on time (5 minutes before is OK, 10 minutes is not). Being late is unacceptable! In case you are running late – call!
Do not show up underdressed (in most cases unless you know better: wear a suite – tie is recommended though in our case not required – we are looking for developers)
Do not look like you just got up

I am sure there are more important things, those three are the ones that I found were sticking out in a bad way that I thought would be a “best practice” for job interviews.

Do NOT be nervous

In case you missed it. The company you are having the interview at is interested in you. They would like to meet you just as much – maybe even more? – as you want to meet the company. OK, I know, most people will be nervous at job interviews, but most of the time (there are exceptions, too) the ones you will be talking to are just humans and yes, most of them are nice. They might ask weird/hard questions, but there’s a reason for that, too. They want to see how you react. They want to test you. There are really uncomfortable questions that in most cases do not even have a correct answer to see how applicants react on stress or how they would solve tough problems / situations. In any case, do not be nervous. Think about your answer, give the answer – what else would you do? What’s the worst that could happen?

Be interesting

So, you show up on time. You are wearing a suite and a tie. You did not just get up and look wide awake. You are not nervous ;-). What else should you do to perform well in a job interview? Have something to talk about. Be interesting.

In one of my first interviews as an interviewer I asked an applicant what his master thesis was about. All she could tell me was the title of the thesis. One sentence. I thought, well, someone needs to work on her thesis for let’s say 4 months minimum. After 4 months of working on one single topic I expect you to have more to talk about. This applies to all of the points metioned in your CV. My hint here is, know what you can tell about most parts of your CV, if it is too far back, people probably will not ask you about it anyways. The last job you had – be prepared to talk about it – in detail. Do not give one-sentence replies (Again, there are exceptions to this rule, but in most cases more than one sentence is better).

Another thing that kinda bothers me during some interviews is that applicants keep talking about what their company was doing. How the team did this and that. That’s OK to some extend, but during a job interview I want to know what the applicant was working on, what her role inside the team was, what barriers she took care of, etc. So, again, you should be interesting and have something to tell about your latest job(s) and your role(s) in each of them.

Disclaimer

All points given here are my own personal opinions. I am not really experienced in being an interviewer so do not take everything mentioned here for granted. Think about it, adjust it, ignore it – whatever you wish. I beleive that there are some good points made in this post.

Conclusion

Compliing to the given statements will of course not guarantee you a job, but it would increase chances of getting a job – at least if I am the one interviewing you ;-)

What are your thoughts on this? Am I missing something important? Am I totally wrong on one or more points? Let me know!

Coding competitions: node.js knockout

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:49:48 -0500

Just yesterday I came across the so called “Node knockout”. It was a large topic on twitter and a few of the guys I am following there were tweeting about it in general or about their submissions. The knockout is/was a coding competition using mainly node.js, which is target at building scalable network programs. This post will be more about coding competitions than the Node framework in general. To find out more about Node – which sure is an interesting framework – make sure to check their website.

node.js – an intro?

Actually I was just about to write and post an introduction on node.js. But I was also sure I am probably not the best to write an introduction to it and I am sure there were others with more experience on the topic to write an introduction, so I collected a few links for you:

Also make sure to check YouTube Vimeo and ontwik | NodeJS for videos and or presentations on node.js!

The Knockout

The Knockout is a 48-hour hackathon featuring node.js – meaning that each team (or single participant) has exactly 48 hours to hack on a project or idea using node.js. In the best cases teams have finished websites or apps up and running after this time frame. 48 hours might sound like a lot of time, taking into account that a team can consist of up to four members, so technicall that would make 192 hours of work. 192 hours, that’s 24 working days (when a day has 8 working hours). But those 48 hours are not to be split into several blocks over the course of one or more weeks. The Knockout started 12am on a Saturday night and finished on 12 am Monday night. So if you wanted to work on the project for 48 hours, you would not have been able to sleep. I am sure there were a few contestants that did not sleep (a lot) on that weekend.

Besides the time limit one had to use node.js as the tool for all applications. Not that a surprise when you take a look at the name of the competition. As one only had a short amount of time to work on her idea, one should have been fluent with node.js before starting. I think the time to get to know the tool and start working on a project during those 48 hours would have been too short.

The results

There were some really nice projects coming out of this competition. The actual judging of the applications, which consists of Utility/Fun, Design, Innovation and Completeness, has not yet been completed. I took a look at some of the entries and here are my Top 3:

Let me know what your favorites are?

Benefits for you

By looking at the prizes for the winner one could easily come up with a few reasons to take part in the competition, there are MacBook Airs, iPads, hosting plan, DropBox storage, boxing gloves and more to win. But, more importantly than any prizes:

This is a competition for fun

Most people do it for the fun. They do it for competing against other developers. I think most don’t do it for the prizes, though they sure help to keep the ideas innovative and the designs spectecular.

Coding competitions

The node.js knockout is not the only coding competition out there. Pretty similar to the knockout are other competitions such as

Rails Rumble which is a 48 hour coding competition for the Ruby on Rails framework. The last Rumble took place in 2010, some pretty nice results came out of this one, too.
Django Dash – a 48 hour competition using Python and the Django web framework. I took part in this one in 2010, see Django Dash – Lessons learned. It was a pretty nice experience and I met some nice and helpful people on IRC. Unfortunately I was not able to finish the work on my project idea due to lack of knowledge of the Django framework.

I am not sure if there are similar contests in the Java or .NET community. Grails, Lift (Scala), etc. might be nice tools to use for such a coding competition. Maybe even Java EE 6 and / or Spring might come up with a competition. I am sure there would be a few interested people in taking part. A Java EE 6 vs. Spring competition could actually be really fun, the teams decide what tool to use and the best result wins. Hosting could be handled on JBoss Open Shift or Heroku, which has Java support now, too. The more I think about it, the more fun that sounds.

It is up to you

Signing up for coding competitions is free (as in “no fee” is required). The only expense you are definately going to have is your time (OK, plus maybe a bit of hosting and Red Bulls to stay awake). Noone will ever tell you not to take part besides your inner devil telling you not to do it. Which of the competitions would sound the most interesting to you? Why are you not taking part? Do you have any ideas what to work on during a coding competition?

Let me know in the comments!

My new phone: The Samsung Galaxy S

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:58:37 -0500

I got a new phone. It is an incredible device: The Samsung Galaxy S i9000. It is not my first Android phone, I have owned a Motorola Milestone until last week. It kinda got slower and I felt I needed a new one after seeing how fast new devices are and how they make Android that much a better experience.

Why a Samsung Galaxy S

People who follow the “phone scene” might Be wondering if I got a Samsung Galaxy S II, As this has just been released. But no, I went for the previous model. Why? Money! As there was a new version of the device released, the market kinda had an overflow of older devices because of people upgrading. I got my one for around 250 Euros on an Amazon Warehouse deal.

Wait a minute, why didn’t you go for an iPhone? Again, money. But money is not all. As stated in a previous post (Switching to Linux) I am trying to get more independent of specific software manufacturers. Having an iPhone and not being able to sync to it easily using the tools I want … Well, you get the idea. It’s not that I am an Apple hater (I own 5 Apple products), my phone should just not be an iPhone.

At work, 8 co workers have the SGS. One of the reasons I got one, too, is that I was able to test it before buying one. Another reason is the recommendations of several people.

Technical facts

A short list of some (interesting) facts about the SGS:

1 GHz processor
119 gramm light
4 inch super AMOLED display
WVGA (480 × 800)
122 × 64 × 9.9 mm
5.0 megapixel camera (geotagging)
microSD card slot for up to 32 GB

To the power of Android

My previous phone was running Android, too, and I got used to it and started to like it – a lot. The problem with the Milestone was, that it was basically in an Android 2.1 trap. Motorolla released Android 2.2 for it, but the update process required a Windows system, yeah, that Sicks, right? So I was not able to update (easily).

The SGS runs Android 2.3.4 like a charm and enables apps to use the ladest and greatest techniques included in the operating system. From the last Android version I was using to the new one were just two minor versions, but Android now feels a lot more stable and thus is more fun to use.

Typing w/o keyboard

When I got the Milestone, one of the reasons I chose it was the hardware keyboard that you could slide out and type away. The SGS does not have a hardware keyboard. Through the larger screen size, the virtual keyboard got easier to use with my big hands, but there is an even easier way:

Swype Beta on Nexus One from bcpk on Vimeo.

Swype is a relief for me and my fight against virtual keyboards. It makes it fun again to swype longer texts and to my surprise, it knows a lot of words – even in German. If you own an Android device, make sure to give it a try. It is worth it. I have read bad reviews of swype on the web, too, but my experience so far was awesome and just enjoyable.

Was it worth the switch

Getting the new device was – so far – a really good decision. The phone weighs a lot less than my old one. It is a lot faster and makes Android much more fun. Android in general – the new version (2.3) – seems to be more usable and easier to interact with than with the 2.1 version. Nice work from Google there. I have only had the device for about a week and have mostly used it on W-Lan for surfing, my new phone plan for mobile surfing will be enabled tomorrow – at least that’s what they say. So, if you are looking for an kinda up-to-date phone (there are newer ones) that is not that expensive, give the Samsung Galaxy S i9000 a try. And don’t forget to give Swype a try, too, if you have not yet.

Feedback, comments, experiences are welcome – as always!

Meet Wunderlist - the task management tool

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:00:05 -0500

Last week I received an Email from a somehow forgotten service I wanted to try out: Wunderlist. I like the idea of having my notes/todo lists available wherever I am, so an online solution is perfect for me. Even better is the service offers clients for all major mobile platforms.

The Wunderlist interface

Wunderlist focuses on lists of items. Those items are kept pretty simple to one line at first. Once you added an item you can add more details to it and even add a due date which wunderlist will use to send you a reminder email so you do not forget it (as they did for the task I was talking about above). You can cross items off of a list by marking it done. Pretty simple, right?

Simplicity is key

As keeping things clean off distractions to stay productive, keeping the tools you use as simple as possible and as powerful as needed is important. Wunderlist is a pretty basic application with a wonderful and clean UI. Yet it is still doing a pretty good job at enabling you to manage your todos. You can also manage different todo lists – I keep seperate ones for work and private stuff and am currently thinking about putting a new list for things I can do while on the road.

So far I have been using Evernote for note keeping and todo-management, but Evernote has a different target group. Their primairy use case is a note. Where note can basically be anything – including file uploads and more. This is not the case for Wunderlist or I have not found the feature, but, to be honest, I have not had the desire to upload a file to my todo list yet.

Supported platforms

The easiest way to get started with Wunderlist is the web application. For me the Android and the iPad versions came pretty handy. The applications for both platforms are implemented pretty well and work perfectly fine, as one would expect after seeing the web application, which has a really nice user interface. There is also a native application for OS X in case you are a Mac user!

Conclusion

This is a wonderful application to manage my todos. It is a pretty simple todo list with benefits – such as reminders, due dates, web and mobile application. Wunderlist is so far the best and helpful application, be it mobile (Android/iOS) or web that comes out of a German company. The 6 Wunderkinder come out of Berlin, Germany. They are currently also working on a new idea – the Wunderkit. I am curious to see what that will be like, I sure hope it will be of the same quality as the Wunderlist app.

What is your favorite app – be it mobile or web? What are you using for your todo lists? Anything special or the good old fashioned notebook and pen? Do you keep a todo list at all?

Job: Two months in

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:47:52 -0500

Today ends my second months with the new company. As a follow-up to my last post Two weeks with the new company this post will be about my latest activities, my thoughts on a few things software and the feeling for further improvements.

Working around the core

Like 4 weeks before I joined the company another developer started working for my new employer. Both of us were surprised by how things are/were handled and decided we should change a few things for the product to get better. We gave a presentation on stuff that we think should be improved and asked for officially supported time to work on those things. This presentation was the starting point of stories that we as developers can suggest to put into a sprint (scrum). There are quite a few stories that are really interesting, most of them though are kinda around the product. One for example is the implementation of database migrations and how to handle them to keep track of different versions of the database.

Database migrations

As I was the newest to the company and did not have my special fields I worked on I was assigned with this task. It was interesting to work on it and I found a nice tool that we are now going to give a try and see how it will turn out: flyway – The agile database migration framework for Java During my tests the tool supplied basically all the features we expected and it also comes with a Maven plugin. Did I just say Maven?

Build system

The build system so far is pretty much tied to Netbeans, using Ant in the background to do the work. But it is started and maintained in Netbeans only. I am not a fan of that. Don’t get me wrong, building software using the IDE should be possible for sure, but having to use the IDE to make a build is just wrong to me. So, guess what, another task I got to work on was a concept for the build system. I took a look at different continuous integration (CI) servers and came to the conclusion that we should give Jenkins a try. But before being able to use a CI server, the build has to be decoupled from Netbeans.

Here comes Maven. The developer who started 4 weeks before I joined the company has already worked on trying to build our software using Maven (in his spare time) and has come pretty far. There were a few things that needed to be fixed, changed, optimized and all that, but the ground work was done and I could build on that. It was a big advantage as this was the first time I was really using Maven as the build / dependency management tool. This week I got as far as being able to build the software from the command line (and also in Netbeans) using Maven —> Using the Maven Glassfish plugin, I could even deploy the result of the build. I find that is pretty cool and once I got to know the Maven way of thinking a bit better, which I still think I did not fully get, it was not that hard to adjust the last few things and fix a few minor hickups.

As we are using a few older versions of libraries that no one wants to take the risk of updating, we needed some kind of a local repository. These older libraries were nowhere to be found in the public repositories so we need to have them locally. Fill in Sonatype Nexus which manages software artifacts required for development, deployment, and provisioning. It can be run in an embedded server and is pretty straight forward to use. One can describe it as

a proxy for public repositories, so you would download a dependency from Nexus rathter than a central repository. In case the dependency is not in Nexus yet, it will download it from Maven central and such and keep it for future downloads that then will not be going out of your network.
your own repository. You can upload your own jars/libraries and let Nexus be your repository. Maven will not see a difference, in that way you can use your own custom jars/versions that are not publicly available in your own repository management system.

Both, the build system and the database migrations were pretty interesting as both were a first-time for me! I had other stuff to work on, too, but those were the main areas I was working on. So I have been mostly working around the product, though both topics will improve development and thus the product. It is good and bad at the same time, because I kinda feel like not getting to know the system better, that I am supposed to improve the infrastructure around it. I hope you understand what I mean.

Things software

Tools are only as good as you know how to work with them (I am sure there is someone famous who said that before – so don’t credit me for it). During the last two months I mainly worked in Windows 7, which isn’t that bad I have to say. I have used Linux (Debian/Ubuntu), Mac OS X and Windows (2000/XP/7) before and one of the most important tools supplied by the OS I came to like is the command line on Unix systems. So, sorry Windows, but your command line sucks – really bad in my opinion. But, there is a fix for that: Cygwin – Get that Linux feeling – on Windows! Seriously this is one of the best tools I have found I need installed on the Windows machine. But once I had it installed I was ready to rock:

tail -f -n 100 someserver.log
split -l 100 -a 4 splittedfiles/
cat something* > combinedfile.txt

How would you do that on the Windows command line? Am I just wrong about that and don’t know the right commands and it is included, too? If so, feel free to correct me, I am more than happy to learn.

CI is for Continuous Improvement

CI can have many meanings:

Corporate Identity
Common Interface
Continuous Integration

I want to use CI for Continuous Improvement. As I am talking software development mostly, Continuous Integration can be ssen as a part of Continuous Improvement, because it can help you with it, a lot. I think it is really important to constantly try to get better. Especially in software development I feel there is always something one can do to improve herself, the software, the infrastructure, the performance and/or the user experience. Once you stop improving or start telling yourself: “Why should I change this, we have always done it like that!?” you should sit down, rethink and relook at the topic trying a different angle. There is always room for improvement. Always.

Sometimes you have to invest a certain amount of time (and we all know time is money) for improvement, but I think it will payoff. And even if it does not right away, sometimes it might as well be more expensive to not work on the improvement and leave it the way it is. The later you start the change, the improvement, the harder it will be and the more it will cost.

Nice coworkers

During my first two months I got the feeling that it is more like people working together. Sometimes it feels like some kind of a family. Maybe this is what it feels like to work for a startup, which I still consider us as. My colleagues also prepared my desk for my birthday which I found quite nice of them:

I think it was the right thing to take the opportunity and start this job. I will keep on working on my definition of CI and hope to get everyone on board! So here’s to the next 2 months! Let’s crush it