August 28, 2010 by mensming.

I often use Microsoft’s remote desktop software to connect to various machines. My hands also use shortcuts for various actions via pure muscle memory. However, when using remote desktop, the operating system interprets many keystrokes as destined for the host operating system. This makes perfect sense but usually sends me scrambling to find the keyboard equivalent for the remote session.

The shortcuts are documented on various websites and in Microsoft’s own documentation. I will add yet another page on the web with this information purely for my own convenience.

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August 21, 2010 by mensming.

ReadWrite Web had a post entitled "10 Inspiring TED Talks for Startups" on July 13, 2010. This series of posts are my notes from those videos.

Simon Sinek
September 2009
(18 min, 5 secs)

Why are some companies so more innovative than others? Why did certain historical figures achieve items and others did not?

Golden Circle
Inner - why (why do something, why something exists)
Middle - how (some know how they do it…)
Outer - what (everyone knows what they do…)

Inspired people and organizations work from the inside out.

These rings actually map with areas of our brain and how we think and feel.

If your staff believes in the dream they will work with their heads and hearts. Otherwise, they will only work for a paycheck. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Law of Diffusion Innovation
2.5% - Innovators
13.5% - Early Adopters
34% - Early Majority
34% - Late Majority
16% - Laggards

Need to achieve 15% mind share before tipping to success. (Crossing the Chasm)

Example of Failure: Tivo - technology advanced, well funded, name is a verb, commercial failure. They told us what they had only vs. why they have it.

Example of Success: Dr. King’s March on Washington. How was is coordinated? People took what he believed and told others to all show up. Why did they do it? For what they believe - not just to hear Dr. King speak.

View at http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

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August 14, 2010 by mensming.

The following links were published in the July 2010 ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes in the "Surfing the Net for Software Engineering Notes" by Mark Doernhoefer. This issues topic was Multicore and Multithreaded Programming.

• Intel Multi-Core Technology
• The Linux Bloke - The Difference between Multithreaded and Multicore Programming
• Parallel Programming - Intel Software Network
• Multicore Programming Resources
• Open MP
• Open MP
• The Multicore Association
• Polycore Software
• Dr. Dobb’s Journal - Rules for Parallel Programming for Multicore
• Dr. Dobb’s Journal - Multi-threaded Debugging Techniques
• Intel Software Network - Debugging Threaded Applications
• Multithreading in C++
• Multithreading in Java
• Sun Java Tutorials - Concurrency
• JavaLobby Building Multicore Ready Java Applications
• Sampa
• IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS)
• Clojure

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August 7, 2010 by mensming.

Neither Lowe’s nor Home Depot will quote me wood by the cubit. How can I get my ark built otherwise?
Jul 31, 2010

Managing a really remote data center - http://bit.ly/9Soe70
Jul 30, 2010

Are Bug Sprints a Scrum Best Practice or a Scrum Anti-Pattern? - http://bit.ly/aXfYXt
Jul 29, 2010

New Linux OS REMnux Designed For Reverse Engineering Malware - http://bit.ly/9ECDHl
Jul 28, 2010

WD-40 Goes Retro - http://bit.ly/dbKiRY
Jul 26, 2010

Good article - I use Evernote instead - Use a Daily Log to Keep Yourself Focused on Productivity - http://bit.ly/aQ108D
Jul 24, 2010

"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." - Mark Russell
Jul 17, 2010

RT @testinggeek: Adressing ‘pesticide paradox’ in auotmation by introducing some randomisation.
Jul 13, 2010

Startup Software Quality - http://bit.ly/bRaUhi
Jul 12, 2010

RT @java: How to be a worse programmer - http://bit.ly/9TH1V8 Any additions to the list?
Jul 9, 2010

RT @garrettgillas: Drinking Its Own Champagne - Amazon Moves Its Own Enterprise to the Cloud http://ow.ly/181Uko
Jul 7, 2010

SW Eng Radio: Episode 164: Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin - http://bit.ly/9XnT2L
Jul 6, 2010

Or company name - oh wait it is everywhere: com.company.* RT @mfeathers: Fact of life: Nvr put the name of your prod. in names in your code.
Jul 4, 2010

RT @SeleniumExample: Stack Exchange Q&A site proposal: Selenium http://bit.ly/bDfMW3
Jul 2, 2010

GTAC 2010 Keynote Speakers - http://bit.ly/9zw4oM
Jul 2, 2010

RT @AutomatedTester: Thanks to @erwandf we appear to have hit the minimum requirements for Selenium StackExchange Proposal. WOOOHOOO
Jul 2, 2010

Why engineers don’t like Twitter -http://bit.ly/dmyLgU
Jul 1, 2010

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July 31, 2010 by mensming.

For some time, I wanted to send out a Subversion change log from Hudson after a successful build showing all of the changes since the last build. (This is something I think Hudson should support natively - you can see a change log via the UI.) After some research, I came across Using Groovy with Hudson to send rich text email posted by "Chetan".

This solution works like a champ and is recommended. Two points - 1) if you are using Subversion, see the comments for the email template code for displaying the subversion log in the email - the main template code is not for Subversion; 2) I had to change ${fileEntry.editType} which displayed an object reference to ${fileEntry.editType.name} to display whether the file was edited, added or deleted.

Posted in source code control, build | No Comments »

July 25, 2010 by mensming.

The following links were published in the March 2010 ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes in the "Surfing the Net for Software Engineering Notes" by Mark Doernhoefer. This issues topic was Cyber Security.

• SANS Institute
• US-CERT
• CERT
• Build Security In
• Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center (IATAC)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Computer Security Resource Center
• National Vulnerability Database
• Common Criteria
• NSA Security Configuration Guides
• Stay Safe Online
• Top 100 Network Security Tools
• European Network and Information Security Agency

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July 17, 2010 by mensming.

A coworker pointed me to the following video: Quality Software Development by Yahoo Architect Douglas Crockford (181 MB). The presentation from from the Yahoo 2007 FrontEnd Engineering Summit (March 7-8, 2007).

Below are my notes of the slide titles.

• The Software Crisis
• Craft vs Engineering
• Computer Science has not taught us how to manage software projects
• Software Construction (Good and Bad Analogy)
  
• Nature of Software
• Programming is Difficult
• Lack of Metrics
• Lines of Code - not good
• Programmers are optimists
• Programmers do not understand how they spend their time
• Actual time typing is pretty small
  
• Skeptical of anything that requires more keystrokes
• Programming is a social activity
• Cost of Innovation
• Legacy
• Leaps (of productivity? software capability?)
• Object Oriented Programming (History)
• Failed Leaps
• Software does not have enough self awareness to be afraid of bugs
• Bugs
• Snake Oil / Silver Bullets
• Mythical Man Month (1975)
• Literate Programming (Knuth)
• Significant difference in individual ability
• Surgical Team (Harlan Mills)
• Incrementalism
• Beta (Perpetually Unfinished)
• Application triad (skill, technology, requirements)
• Feature Cost
• Code Value
• Code Quality (Micro and Macro View)
• Simplest thing to enhance value of codebase - make more readable
• Yahoo Javascript coding convention
• Programs are a medium of intentional communications
• Good architecture - necessary structure to keep from collapsing
• How do we change a correct program into another correct program?
• Cruft - “Software Scar Tissue”
• Causes of Cruft
• Bloat - “Software Cancer”
• Insecurity
• Cruft accumulates -> complexity groups -> progress slows
• Refactoring
• Sometimes it is best to start over
• The pain of the crash
• The illusion of completion
• An experienced team can cross that ground again very quickly
• Conclusion

Posted in software engineering, process improvement, security, project management, requirements | No Comments »

July 3, 2010 by mensming.

RT @rodica: "at their core, phone companies are really billing engines. occasionally completing calls is only a favor they do for you."
5:49 PM Jun 29, 2010

Wanted: Young cyberexperts to defend Internet - http://bit.ly/bexXyg
7:15 AM Jun 29, 2010

Why Can’t Johnny Develop Secure Software?- http://bit.ly/cWXYnC
8:28 AM Jun 28, 2010

RT @scottwambler: The best devs have maintained someone else’s code and worked in ops. These are the ppl who understnd the impact of coding.
6:01 PM Jun 25, 2010

LinkedIn communications at center of unprecedented lawsuit - http://bit.ly/bnGpp0
6:26 AM Jun 24, 2010

Where are all the science majors? - http://bit.ly/bfKoXa
8:03 AM Jun 22, 2010

10 R&D Cybersecurity Initiatives Congress Seeks - http://bit.ly/a7wqy9
9:50 AM Jun 21, 2010

Data Show Increase in First-Time Science and Engineering Graduate Students - http://bit.ly/9GBV3Q
1:13 PM Jun 15, 2010

Data Show Increase in First-Time Science and Engineering Graduate Students - http://bit.ly/9GBV3Q
1:13 PM Jun 15, 2010

RT @conenza: All I Needed To Know About Social Media I Learned In Kindergarten: 15 Social Media Tips http://tinyurl.com/244b3jd
1:11 PM Jun 10, 2010

RT @johnhcook: New Capitol Hill bookstore caters to Seattle geeks. http://bit.ly/dlQlIt
6:02 PM Jun 11, 2010

RT @AutomatedTester: [Blog] Selenium StackExchange Proposal - http://bit.ly/atbyRI #Selenium
6:52 AM Jun 11, 2010

RT @yurechko: LimeWire owes $1B, but BP is only on the hook for $69M. Music sharing is 14.5x more damaging than a catastrophic oil spill.
5:17 AM Jun 9, 2010

A Selenium CaptureNetworkTraffic Example in Java - http://bit.ly/9hrWIG #selenium
7:12 AM Jun 3, 2010

NASA Fixes Bug On Voyager 2 - http://bit.ly/brNTZl
8:13 AM Jun 2, 2010

My old company SiteScout bought by Rubicon Project - http://bit.ly/9EdRyu
9:19 AM Jun 1, 2010

Posted in twitter | No Comments »

June 21, 2010 by mensming.

One of the neat things about TestNG is the ability to annotate individual tests as belonging to zero or more groups. At execution time, it is possible to tell the test runner to run all tests in a particular group. In addition, tests in certain groups can be excluded so you can run all tests in a particular group except for those that are marked as broken.

The Apache Harmony project apparently uses TestNG. On their wiki, they describe their testing conventions for using groups. They have groups to identify tests that are operating system specific, processor architecture specific, feature specific, environment requirements, current state and test type. Worth checking out.

Posted in test tools | No Comments »

June 12, 2010 by mensming.

Many months ago, there was Slashdot posting regarding a video discussing how Facebook runs its LAMP stack. I finally got around to watching the video and it is worthwhile to view if you have an interest in how to run a high volume web site. In the video, Aditya Agarwal - Directory of Engineering at Facebook - describes the architecture and the lessons learned from scaling the site.

Recommended - view here.

Posted in operations, social media | No Comments »