Beilabs.com

Wordle makes my crap look pretty

Jonathan Clarke — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I'm really loving wordle.net. Tag clouds made easy, just key in your RSS feed or delicious username or just some random text and receive an automatic arty cloud of what your into. Very cool stuff especially with the number of customizations that can be made to it.

Here's the one for this blog -

And this is for my delicious username

Me, China and naivety

Jonathan Clarke — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post is about something I wrote on the request of an old English teacher in my secondary school whilst working in China. It was part of a project by some transition year students who were asking past pupils of the school for real world experiences of their life to date living in a foreign country.

I wrote it when I was 24 years old and 6 months into my Chinese story. Bear with me, I sound terribly niave and exactly the type of optimistic young traveller that I cringe at when I see now. I loved my China experience and I hope to someday return to the Middle Kingdom ready to accept new views and experiences. I'll soon be heading off to Australia, hopefully my optimism remains with me throughout my stay there.

Q1 Did your way of life change much when you went to China?

Imagine moving to a new country, away from friends and family, with the bare basic command of the language; you may then imagine how much my life has changed. The language is the largest barrier to surmount when you move out here. The small, everyday things that you take for granted in Ireland have to be planned and studied before taking action. Think about going to a barber shop without knowing how to communicate how you want your hair styled or stepping into a taxi without being able to tell the driver where exactly you wish to go.

Ordering food from a restaurant is yet another experience, as Dalian is not renowned for having foreign tourists everything is written in Chinese so you do not know what you are ordering at first. I remember my very first breakfast which consisted of luke-warm water, celery and tofu (what I really craved was a breakfast roll). Tofu, regardless of what your vegetarian colleagues insist, is not a delectable meal first thing in the morning. As for my own experience I believe it was my diet which changed the most. Living in China on a western wage allows you to go out to different restaurants every night. It actually costs less to eat out every night than to cook yourself. Food poisoning is not uncommon in China, kitchen standards are low in some places and you know which places to avoid after a while. The lack of people eating in these places is a good sign to stay away. However I found that in general my diet had improved immeasurably through the constant consumption of sticky white rice and seafood.

Q2 As you love to travel and learn about new cultures do you find that the Chinese culture contrasts a lot with others?

Where do I start with this question? Chinas recorded history stretches back over 5000 years. There is no place in the world similar to China; every culture in the world is different from the other. What I found with China was that it is embracing the west. I would dare anyone to walk down the main streets in Shanghai and not draw similarities between Tokyo, New York and London. High rises and skyscrapers are all the rage; however this comes at a cost. McDonalds, Starbucks and KFC are now on every corner and western ideas are being implemented constantly throughout the country. Through the great leap forward much of Chinas heritage was destroyed. Many of the things that we take for granted in Ireland (Literature, art, architecture, history, etc.) was destroyed during this period and is still being destroyed today to make room for industrial pursuits. Did you realize that in a few years America will be purchasing nuclear reactors from China? This all comes at a high price, through building the world's largest dam; China has effectively destroyed millions of livelihoods and eradicated thousands of species of animals. This all leads to one important point: China's culture is being taken away from the Chinese people.

As is commonly known, China is a communist country. This means that there is an unbelievable amount of propaganda on the television. The people of China believe what their beloved government tells them and this is the main point which separates China from the rest of the world. Through media restrictions many Chinese people are ignorant to the outside world. I'm sure that the deal the Peoples Republic of China made with Google is well known you now so try to imagine researching a topic as well documented as democracy and not having it appear on your computer screen. Other sensitive topics such as Tibet, human rights and Falun Gong are not openly discussed in China. Discussing these topics inside China or even the Internet as a Chinese blogger (MSN Spaces) found out can lead to lead to difficulties for the parties involved.

I know that I've spoken about much of the bad side of China however I'll take some time to discuss the up-sides of living there. There is no-where I know in the world where you can encounter such a variety of friendly people. Throughout all that this people has come through in the past 50 years it is a testament to them that they are still surviving, at the forefront of technology and part of the world's most powerful economy. Such a diverse people that are very family orientated, things such as old-folks homes are almost unknown in this country. All holidays revolve around 3 things, family, food, fireworks.

One thing that is prevalent throughout every single culture is a passion for alcohol. Although it is commonly thought that Chinese people do not often drink they have a potent spirit known as baijiu which they toast with during festivals and holidays. Baijiu is just as potent as poitin and very legal. They also have perfected the art of fermenting beers, a trick they picked up from the Germans.

Q3 Do you find that the houses and apartments in China are different from other houses and apartments that you have lived in?

Accommodation as you would have in Ireland is non-existent in China. Due to population restrictions in China much of the accommodation centers on the small two bedroom apartments. This would have a small kitchen and a very small dining area. This area would consist of the TV hooked up to a karaoke system which is a national pastime of the Chinese people. A large apartment is not needed as the one-child rule per family comes into effect within the large cities. By the way, Dalian in China is considered a small city within China as it only has 5 million people living there. Depending on what region of China you live in your heating may be supplied by the Chinese government. This usually comes into operation in late November and is turned off in mid February. Up in Dalian you really need it during the winter as it can drop down to -15 degrees Celsius during the winter and reach up to 30 degrees in the summer. It's not really the snow and frost that is the worst however it is the Siberian wind which cuts like a knife that is the worst part of living up in northern china. This is the reason that many Chinese men and women wear long-johns here, a habit I have resisted to date.

You would find that within many communities there are small parks where people can exercise. It is not un-common to see old-age pensioners taking advantage of this opportunity throughout the morning time to get in a workout either by practicing their Tai-chi or by doing calisthenics'.

Q4 Do many Chinese people understand English?

English in China is taught from a very early age and although much of their grammar is perfect it is unfortunate that their accents are not. This cannot be said for all Chinese however as there is a huge illiteracy rate in China as many cannot even read mandarin. However, within my department in DHC, it is required that everyone speak English at all times. This can be quite a lengthy process to try and get a programmer to explain something technical in English so I have applied myself to learn Chinese.

Q5 As you say you come from a business background do you think this has been an advantage to you working in a big company like Dalian Computer Technology?

As with any business in the world there is a hierarchical system, from the receptionist to the CEO. Once people find their place within this system they should have absolutely no problem working within any Chinese company. I'm a firm believer that hard work will lead to success and believe me that should you come to China you would have no problem finding work to do. The average worker in my company clocks in 60-70 hours a week working. The average wage for these people would be around 4000 kuai (400 euros). People wonder why China has grown so fast, they put it down to the booming economy, the cheap wages. Personally I feel that it's the hard work of the average worker. Many of them take pride in their work and as well as their companies profits are improving at a very substantial rate per year. What you must remember however within a Chinese company is that you should never publicly shame either your boss or your company. That is the hardest lesson to learn when working here I believe. The Chinese people view the notion of a company much the same as a family, you would never shame your family so you should also never shame your company. Simply criticizing your boss in a meeting could be perilous to your future advancement within the company however this could also be said for working within an Irish company.

I believe that through my experience through dealing with many different types of people allows me to excel within this field. In essence business is not all that different no matter where you work; you are subject to two things, the almighty dollar and the satisfaction of the shareholder.

Q6 As you have knowledge of a number of European languages do you think that Chinese is a hard language to learn?

Chinese is completely different from any language I have ever learned. Although I have only been learning the language since last August I have made progress within that time, even if I was here for 10 years I would not be fluent, however I would certainly not embaress myself. Chinese is a tonal language which means that one word could have over four different meanings depending on how it is pronounced. Languages such as French are more concentrated on learning tenses of a verb, although your tone or accent is important you can still be understood speaking French whilst speaking in a Dublin, Kerry or Offaly accent. Chinese is completely different as tenses do not play a part however the pitch of your voice does. Still I believe that learning a language is beneficial to the career of anyone within any business. It also helps while traveling the countryside on holiday, the Chinese are much more accepting of you should you be able to converse with them in their native tongue and the same can be said of the Irish.

Q7 As you are working with computer systems and documentation do you find this a demanding job?

I work with computer systems every day, mainly through designing and programming. At the moment I am working with General Electric (GE). GE are the 5th largest company in the world and they supply most of Americas energy needs, from nuclear power to wind turbines. It is a very demanding job which leads to a very hectic work schedule as well as a lot of travel opportunities. Right now I am based in Atlanta, Georgia however I shall be returning to Dalian later this month.

Computer programming is something that I have been interested in since a very early age and something with which I take great satisfaction from every day. This is one of the professions where there is constantly new and emerging technology which has to be embraced and learned, the programming profession also allows me to tackle complex real-life problems and come up with new and innovative ways to deal with these problems. Although I create a lot of software solutions for the company I work for I also give back to the Software community by being involved, through creation and participation, of Open Source projects throughout the internet which are free for all to use.

Q8 Are there many Irish people where you are and are there any opportunity to play Gaelic football or hurling?

At the moment there are 13 Irish people in Dalian. Six of those are teaching English as a foreign language, two of those are working with my companies biggest rival in Dalian (Hi-soft) and one of those is a colleague of mine working in DHC. There are also a number of Irish business men that have set up some very successful Irish bars in Dalian which are doing fantastic business.

When I first came out to Dalian I brought a few hurley sticks with me with the intention of setting up a hurling team out here. However I soon learned that despite my best intentions and hectic work schedule that there is no hurling league to play in here, however each year there is a tournament held for Gaelic football in China. This is known as the Asian Gaelic Games and just goes to prove that the Irish culture has extended its reach throughout the globe. I hope to be involved in this years Gaelic games which will be taking place in Shanghai this coming September. Teams from all over Asia come to participate, from far reaching places as Taiwan, Dubai, Japan, Singapore, Beijing and hopefully this year Dalian.

Q9 Do they have publicised sports leagues in China?

There are many sports leagues in operation in China. China has a huge fascination with Basketball and Soccer. They follow both the NBA as well as the premiership intensely. All of the information regarding these leagues is readily available on the Internet. As China shall be hosting the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing the country has gone Olympic crazy. The stadiums have already been completed well ahead of schedule in stark contrast to the Greek effort; there is a national hunt for translators throughout the country to aid in the Olympic effort. There is already a wide marketing campaign to get the Chinese interested in many of the sports that shall be on display in the games. China has always had a very strong Olympic team and I believe that this games shall prove to be no exception.

Fin.

ME is about ripping YOU off.

Jonathan Clarke — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I attempted to buy two new .ME domains. The .ME domain was officially opened to the public yesterday afternoon, as GoDaddy were the main suppliers their servers just ground to a halt. Processing for two new domains took so long that I doubted if they would ever get processed. Anyhow, proccessed they were

I received an email shortly after informing me that jonathanclarke.me was mine to own, which was great news. jonathanclarke.com just points to an empty black page, that kind of waste pisses me off.

Not long after that acknowledgement I received another stating that the second domain I applied for was rejected. What's the point in accepting payment for a domain that is not available. Was it available when I searched? GoDaddy claimed it was. When was it purchased? During the main landgrab or was it already owned by a citizen of Montenegro? I was all set to develop a nice little application for it last night, but I decided to just get an early night instead.

I think the main reason I was annoyed was that Blacknight were looking for €20 per year per domain, GoDaddy were seeking $19.99. It's this kind of bullshit that annoys me about Ireland, rip off Ireland is alive an well.

Anyhow, GoDaddy state the following in their FAQ, perhaps there is still hope after all.

"During the Sunrise and Landrush periods, we may receive multiple applications for the same .me domain. During the Sunrise period, we validate the applications to ensure applicants entered the appropriate trademark information. If an application does not pass validation, we reject it. If we still have multiple applications for the same domain, we auction the domain to the highest bidder."

So right now, you have failed domains. It would seem that if you really must have that domain you're going to have to buy it from auction. http://auctions.domain.me/

pri.me, feck.me are still available to be bid on, lastminute.me just fetched $3,605. Looks like squatters are alive and well. God help any small business trying to get a decent domain on the cheap.

1Time FTW

Jonathan Clarke — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Having missed last weeks Tuesday Push let me now start talking about 1Time.

1time is a web-based time and expense tracking application that allows you to easily keep track of real time project costs. It reduces non-billable time in your company and keeps everyone up to date. Each employee gets their own login and reminders so you don’t have to micro-manage recording timesheets. It is ideally suited to anyone who has a need to record time for billing or project cost analysis.

Derek Organ is the founder of this nifty application, met him in CrunchLudd last month. Some interesting prices for the app which are listed below.

Disclaimer: I went to college with his sister, so this app definitely gets the thumbs up from me.

Defining success and getting outta dodge

Jonathan Clarke — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So you've built your prototype and are suddenly making money. Now what direction do you take? In what sense do you measure your companies success? For many software companies they are always asked "What's your exit strategy?" by VC's. It's something that I've been giving a great deal of thought to, at what point will I stop doing what I love so much?

Now that you are now the hottest shit since "Vampire Zombie battles" in the tubes and you have developed the coolest application ever, what are you defining your success to be? When looking at an investment I would imagine that questions will be asked of your user base. Whats your demographic, how many do you have and are they paying money for your app? You can have a million people using your service, if you are not making revenue off of them, well, what use are they? Obviously you have not thought this whole business thing out properly then eh? With Google having re-defined free service offerings apparently no-one wants to pay for anything anymore. Just remember that if it's a good enough service, the money will come. But to get them hooked, give them an incentive, get them thinking that this is the best service since bread was sliced and they just cannot live without it.

So, the business is now profitable, money is coming in, but you want to go to the next level. So now you are suddenly being told to sell, sell, sell your baby to a larger organization. Being bought out by the larger business is heartbreaking stuff, Watching it being taken in the wrong direction is something which would tug on the heartstrings of any entrepreneur. The wad of cash that is now your bed will defintely help, as will the steady supply of toilet paper printed with presidents faces but should you give up something that you have worked so hard for for so long? I guess that is a decision everyone must grapple with one day, take the money, live the life of luxery, pay some bills or continue on with your company.

A huge wad of cash, is that success? It's everyone's wet dream, the VC's swoop in, give you loads of lolly to go public with your company. This is the pipe dream, something that can happen to the rare few in their wildest fantasies. You would want to be offering something truly unique in order to get to this level, not everyone can be the next Google or VM-Ware. The founders are usually kicked off to the side at this point, left to come out during press conferences and used as the face of the company, in the meantime, a new CEO is hired and all the important decisions are now made by the board of directors. Everyone has a price, it's just finding what the currency is that is the problem.

Normal startups outside of the Internet space take years upon years to flesh out and develop, software startups are no different. Give them a chance, give them some love, sweat and blood and they will repay you back tenfold. The reason why I'm looking to commence my own business is that I want to develop something that that succeeds, something that gives people a bit of freedom in their day to day lives and something that I am satisfied with. I just hope that I never forget the reason I wanted to build a company; corporate life does not interest me. Being like any other company does not interest me, being exciting, unique, innovative and loved by your customers, I don't know a single entrepreneur who does not dream of that. To me, that defines success, not money nor fame. Doing a good decent job and knowing that you have helped people out, that is my motivation. How many of you feel the same?

Hitting the mainstream market

Jonathan Clarke — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It was something that Robin mentioned that got me thinking about this blog post.

"If your idea is technology for technologists it probably won’t go anywhere. Go find a real problem that real people have and solve that. Move away from the computer - socialise with the 99.99% of people who haven’t heard and don’t want to hear about Flickr, Twitter or RSS."

I agree with him 100%. Here's the thing, there are so many applications which are tailored for the same small niche of geeks out there. It's not until something is tailored to the mass market of technophobes out there that things truly do explode. Take Bebo as an example, it's easy to use, horrible to look at and people out there just love it. I can't explain it, the whole thing just seems voyeuristic to me, but yet I still have a profile there because all of my non-techie friends have one too. I'm not saying that website is a socially responsible one, or even that it is solving a real world problem, but it is so easy to use that even the most non-techies out there can just use it.

While out at CrunchLudd a few weeks ago I managed to bump into Daniel Becker of GlowDay. Although much of that night is a bit of a haze from the free bar available (Thanks Anton and dotMobi) I do remember quite clearly much of our discussions about developing a beta app for a new startup. The main drive from him was to keep things unbelievably simple, if people need to do things with 4 or 5 clicks, then it just won't be done. Why not have them do it in 1 click? Anyhow the anagram KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) is now firmly engraved in my head. Focus on one simple thing that would be popular with users, thats the aim.

Lately I have been thinking about developing applications my family would perhaps like and use, (3 sisters), I've been looking into various area that they would generally be interested in, fashion, travel and music having figured highly in my thoughts lately. Are these things interesting from a technological standpoint? Probably not, but at least my family might use the app, thats all that matters in my mind. Once they can just get the idea with minimal explanation, then that's where success begins. When ever I look at sci-fi TV shows, I always see everyone adapting to their environment, using cool gizmos and gadgets.

Our environment is always changing with new technology coming out every day, there are always early adopters to this technology, at this stage it is considered niche and techy but for some reason a breakthrough is made. It's when your technology hits the mainstream, when your family are using it, when your friends are using it, when your friends technophobe granny is using it, thats when you know you have suceeded.

I've been seeing hundreds of Twitter clones the past few months, with the new Apple application store coming online this week we are going to be inundated with thousands of geo-location applications coming on stream too. Are these applications socially responsible? No! Are developing them fun? Hell yeah. Most of the developers of these applications are designing these platforms for their own tech friends, not for the mainstream use. We only need look at Twitter for an example of such an application, it was only once it became popular that issues cropped up with it's architecture every other day. Discussing the ins and outs of twitter is beyond the scope of this post which has become something other than what I expected but what the hell...publish!

Viacom has got balls....

Jonathan Clarke — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Viacom had astonishing balls to ask for the source code for the search functions that power Google and YouTube, the source code for YouTube's new "Video ID" program, a complete set of every video ever removed from the site, databases containing information on every video ever hosted at YouTube, and a copy of every private video.

So in the ruling by a Judge in the District of New York awarded Viacom's representatives to all of YouTubes logs. I have a number of concerns about this whole debacle which I'll talk about here. What the hell is Google doing with over 12 Terabytes of data just containing logs? I can really sense EU lawyers salivating over this, the EU have unbelievably strict privacy laws.

Why was Viacom looking for access to source code? There are hundreds of cloned services out there that mirror YouTube, they were not the first to create this service, obtaining and possibly leaking code would just enable more clones to be made available.

Whatever happened to YouTube's amazing technology that would automatically weed out copyright content from the site? Was this implemented? If so, how many videos were removed as a result? Who are Viacom looking for information on, uploaders or the actual content consumers?

Lastly, I personally find it hilarious that Viacom were requesting the search technology behind Google and Youtube. They are the same technology, can you imagine for one second Viacom actually aquiring the most intimate details of Google's core business? That's right, neither can I. What is really astonishing is that a division of Viacom, CBS, has major deals with Youtube, that involves having a large CBS channel within the site.

It's fast becoming very clear that despite all the press releases and lawsuits there is a major battle waging between old media and new. Content owners are trying to figure out what to do and how to do it before the old medium of television dies a lonely death (Not for some time I expect). Youtube, Justin.tv, and many more of it's ilk, divide and conquer.

Google may shortly begin regretting buying the service, . Mark Cuban once famously commented “Only a ‘moron’ would buy YouTube”, he may be right after all. These types of lawsuit are only the tip of the iceberg. It happened with book publishers, it has happened with radio, it's happening with record labels and artists. Video is the new battleground...

Technorati Profile

It's just a difference of opinion...

Jonathan Clarke — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

As so often happens in the world of software, someone aquires a version of Dreamweaver and instantly think that the website that they have spend hours working on is now the bees knees. Everyone has gotten this feeling at one time or other, I certainly have (blinking lights and ms clip art was all the rage back in the 90's).

A guy I knew during my my time in Dalian, China, got back in contact today proclaiming that he now has an outsourcing team asembled working as soldiers of fortune. Their mission, to crack open the mythical giant of the US & EU software industry and reap the rewards. Anyhow, we get to chatting about the venture of his and his plans for world-wide domination, he then shows me his website.

My eyes are still bleeding, it looks terrible, it is terrible, small children would run away from this colourful behemoth, grown adults would roll into the fetal position and cry out for their mother. Let's just say it was bad. So anyhow I proceed to give him the benefit of the doubt, I remember saying that blue backgrounds full of ships and bright yellow links have no place in an outsourcing website, that the 90's want their webpage back, that messages to their customers should never contain the phrase "Just do it ,man!!!" and above all that practice of harvesting links pointing to the 90% of the worlds spam resources is just one very bad idea.

To top it all off, during my browsing of this site (I was wearing protective glasses at the time), I was infected with a number of nasty trojans and viruses. My friend has become a spam king. He was wondering why he had no US & EU clients, so I gave it to him straight. Every company, usually gets to give their first impression via their website, getting infected with anything is always a negative in their view. These days so many mediums of information are are all inspected before a deal is done to ensure that the opposite party is legit. My first google search for my friends page yielded results of Viagra, Erectile Disfunction and JS_DLOADER.JS, it's a very weird combination.

One thing I always noticed was a huge divide between website design in the western world and design in China. It's not a bad thing, it's a matter of culture. I always equated it with walking down the main streets of the respective cities, in the middle kingdom you are faced with glaring neon lights proclaiming KTV bars, electronics and noodles, Ireland, thankfully, is a bit more quaint in that regard. So when I see websites in China with all the bells and whistles I don't particularly pay much notice but do spend a lot of time trying to see past the junk for the nuggets of gold that are off to some side. In the western world, things are much more minimalistic, each page focuses on a specific are, one which automatically draws the attention to the users point of view. At the end of the day, it is chalk and cheese, I would have great difficulty designing any Chinese site and vice versa.

I do hope that he takes some of the advice I gave him, but I doubt he will. I'm a minimalist type of guy, I like clean lines, some curves and good content. Flash, FLEX, Silverlight, well those are things I am not into, sure they have their uses, can look very eye-catching but mostly they are just used for evil purposes. I know what I like and can definitely tell you what I hate. Bells and whistles = FAIL. Spam url's = EPIC FAIL....

Code reviews, feel that squirming feeling?

Jonathan Clarke — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

For the past year that I have been working within this company I have found myself with a number of significant applications that have fallen under my mandate. Some of these applications have been designed by myself, others by third parties external to the company and some I have inherited as legacy applications. There is not one set framework between all these applications, some are coded in Ruby, others in Java, PHP, VB, Rails...the list is pretty much endless. So as you may know I have handed in my required notice for the company and with about 1 and a half months of notice remaining here I have begun the unenviable task of documentation.

Yes, yes, I hear your cries of procrastination, yes much of the documentation should have been completed with their original owners, however times have changed. This company is no longer a startup, processes are beginning to mature and documentation must be completed at all costs. So now as I sit before the lists of applications which must be handed over I'm discovering all sorts of pesky yet vital applications which I have had some impact on in some form or other this past year. Apparently I am the technical owner for all of these applications, some of which I have never heard of before. Most modern IT companies are like this, back 5-10 years ago it was natural to fire up access and pull up an application that does a bit of importing of raw data, tidies it all up and shoots off a pretty looking report full of breakdowns.

Much of the code is well written, others not so much. Not all of the code contains comments and some code contains such horrors that leave me wanting to gouge out my own eyeballs after viewing it. Such treats that I talk about should never be mentioned or ever see the light of day. Code reviews are vital however are not as common as perhaps they should be within many companies. I will be facing a number of code reviews whilst doing these handovers over the coming weeks and came up with some thoughts on the process

Review the code, not the developer.

Let's face it, people can be assholes at least some of the time during their life. Don't be one during a coding session, everyone makes mistakes but it is how they learn from them that counts.

Short regular sessions

Don’t make it too long, an hour is ideal per session. Reading code at the best of times can be a tedious exercise, reading other peoples code can be even more so. Remember that this should be an on-going process and is a vital necesscary part of creating productive and efficient code.

Be prepared

I had this sudden image of the scouts motto there. Anyhow most of your time should be spent in preparation. Of course, you want the handouts, program listings, documentation, diagrams, flipcharts, and other meeting necessities prepared in advance so as to not waste people’s time.

Own your code

Don't be afraid to stand by your code. It is a learning experience and these sessions will make developers write better code in the future. All participants in a review should feel that they can speak openly. As a reviewer, give comments in a constructive and positive way. As the developer, don’t take comments personally. You’re all there for the same purpose.

At the end of the day, laugh about screwups, don't take it personally and learn from the experience. Everyone wins!

Presenting PutPlace.com

Jonathan Clarke — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

PutPlace.com is the first company in the Tuesday push initiative by Damien Mulley. Hopefully it gets some companies some needed attention and hopefully some exposure to investors and customers. I know not many are reading this space, I havent put much effort into it lately, but to family and friends who are, well, let me say this simply. BACKUP YOUR JUNK!

The whole premise is this, 2GB free space. What's not to love about that. It also has a few more nifty features:

Set and forget automated backup
Access your files from anywhere
Quick and secure
Full backup of all your changes
Share files with Family and trusted friends

It's not a sexy business, it has a lot of competition and everyone should be backing up. After the catastrophe I faced a few months ago losing 1TB of data it is something that should be really pushed out to normal computer users. I really hope they do well...

What's changing in Beijing?

Jonathan Clarke — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Quite a few things have changed in Beijing lately. Gone are the foreigners, so many of the ex-pats who lived there have left over the past number of months due to new regulations with visas. No longer can one person claim to be a tourist for 6 consecutive years within the Middle Kingdom, you know who you are. Visa's are now incredibly difficult to come by, no longer can you call someone up, hand over your passport and a wad of cash, wait a day or so, get the visa back and then repeat year after year. I never engaged in such activities...

DHL recently issued a memo on many other changes, which I picked up via the China Law Blog. I found the following quite interesting:

20 enterprises around Beijing notorious for heavy pollution are requested for a 30 percent reduction in emissions.
Enterprises which can not meet emission standards are requested to shut down temporarily.
Work at all construction sites around Beijing, including cement and concrete mixing will have to stop on or before July 20.

I can see a huge amount of work being shifted inland temporarily as a result of this. I'm going to be very interested if many of these regulations will be still in place when the Paralympics commence from 6th - 17th September 2008. By the way, for those not in the know, the above picture is one of the FUWA's. Trust me, come the Olympics in two months we shall be brainwashed by the little fellahs...

Office Necessities 101

Jonathan Clarke — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So I've been thinking quite a bit about what facilities should be provided within a company to it's employees. So for a startup company I kinda figure that it should be minimalistic to the extreme. As I kinda figure that for an IT company, I would initially be bootstrapping the operation I have for the past year been thinking about different areas vital for the success and happiness of the company and employees. Making your employees happy does not have to break the bank, it just has to show you care about their wellbeing. Remember, it's the small things that count. I've narrowed it down to the following items for a small startup:

Fast Internet Access

In this day and age, Internet access is a necessity. Browsing the web may be regarded as a hinderance in some industries however in mine it is often regarded as sources of inspiration, discovering new techniques and methods for problem solving. I really do figure that a sure sign that a company is dying is when they start sending their employees on extremely expensive training courses to learn for example a new programming language or tool. It seems very strange to me to waste large amounts of money on those courses especially when all the required material that is taught on these courses are available directly from the web. I should emphasise that the access should be as fast as possible. Many interesting resources are now coming over in screencast form which requires decent bandwidth to watch, besides, if an employee is waiting an age to do something like this, you are losing money due to lack of productivity.

Having lived in China for some time I was often quite annoyed by some of the speeds outside of the mainland, this was due to mainly government filtering however I can imagine many others were in a worse situation than me. Having worked in this Chinese company for some time I can only imagine the difficulties their IT department encountered daily to get direct stable connections to the United States for rapid development, testing and deployment of large solutions.

A Clean Comfortable Adjustable Environment

I don't know how many times I have heard about people complaining about bad backs, sore eyes and migraines. I myself notouriously suffer from extreme cases of migraines however I am often spending 16+ hours a day in front of a monitor. Solutions such as enforcing breaks between coding sessions, comfortable erogonomic chairs, correctly positioned monitors and desks, really do make life a lot easier for your employees. As I said, it's all about the small things. Having coffee at hand 24x7 is vital. Startups do not keep regular working hours, it is often a case of working hard all day, working hard all night. It is not something I recommend to everyone but some people need more in their life. They need to be part of an idea and seeing it through. So back to the office, having clean facilities makes a huge difference. Working in a logistics company for a time I noticed that for an office of 5 people they had a maid come in every morning, just to empty garbage, clean floors, freshen up desks and take away stale cups of coffee. It's really worth noticing the smiles on the staffs faces when they were smelling fresh scents around their work environment, it really does make a huge difference.

My personal favourite was when I was working in Dalian, every evening without fail during the winter I was privy to some of the most epic sunsets of my lifetime. Having a great view from where you do your daily slog is extremely beneficial, especially when you just need to take 5 minutes out of your day with your jaw open, gaping at it's beauty. The chances of this happening in a small startup are remote as hell with the likelyhood of working from your parents basement much more plausabile.

An Efficient Storage Solution

Investing in hardware at the start while working on a prototype is probably a venture doomed to deadpool hell, spending over 5 grand on a server is a bit much initially with zero capital coming in so I would think about perhaps using a third party solution like say slicehost to manage a virtualised solution. Extra machines can be daisy-chained together to provide quite an efficient clustered environment. Alternatively leverage various clouds that are in existance through their API's, such as Amazon and the upcoming Google Apps service. I have had first hand experience working with companies who have not thought far enough ahead to anticipate these types of issues, they are a nightmare to workaround as once employees get comfortable with one insufficient solution, it is a difficult challenge to break their mindset and habits.

The reason I really do mention storage solutions is that it is incredibly annoying when that piece of code you wrote 2 weeks ago was not correctly backed up, or the drive that it was on crashed out. I have seen companies rely on one storage system, there was never a backup of that backup. I myself have lost over 1 TB of data this past month with not just 1 drive failing, but both, simultanously. I think there was a gremlin and coffee involved.

So I'm coming to an end with this blog post, in future episodes I'll be talking about the main requirement of a startup - incredibly smart people. Also, coming up with an idea will be something I'll be also dwelling on too. If you have any other suggestions I'd love to hear from you, as always, comments are extremely welcome.

Zed is indeed so AWESOME!

Jonathan Clarke — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So with the whole thing of a serious ruby vulnerability hitting Slashdot earlier this week I feel that I may as well make my opinion known. Over the past year I have been actively pushing Ruby as a solution for our Internal Systems within a large financial company. All of this work came crashing down yesterday as our security expert brought the vulnerability to our attention. We had a choice of 2 things which we could do:

Update to Ruby 1.8.6 p230
Leave the entire stack well alone

The whole problem I have is this. Ruby 1.8.6 p230 does not play well with Rails whatsoever, if I upgrade, the application will break with quite a few segfaults. This has left me with a conundrum, not upgrade to the latest and greatest patch that Ruby recommends and not have an unhappy user-base. Alternatively I could upgrade, break the system and damage the applications reputation within the company.

So at the moment we are waiting for a new patch to come out that plays well with Rails and pray the application doesn’t break in the meantime due to malicious users. Thankfully it is only an intranet application however that fact does not guarantee any users will be safe and not tinker with the code or system.

The problem I have is this. I am up to my ears in code fixes, third party apps and general firefighting in my current position. I have not been looking at the commits within Ruby at all and don’t make a habit of doing so, which is my own fault. Thankfully Zed Shaw has been and although he ranted quite a bit this week on this issue, he has some valid points. If he did not comment on this serious issue it is unlikely to have made Slashdot and very unlikely not to have come to my security experts attention.

Zed has given the community some great code, mongrel FTW and in general comes across fairly colorful in his blog and the community would be definitely less without his presence. While some have personally attacked Zed for his style of communication he has without doubt brought attention to a very important issue.

Ruby and Ruby on Rails has been awesome for hobbyist programmers. It's coming on strong for the enterprise. Although there has been great coverage about Twitters failure (None of which I blame on Ruby/Rails), it is without doubt one of the most famous platforms for Ruby on Rails. It has heralded the arrival of the Ruby platform for enterprise systems; shouldn’t the community start to get a bit more grown up about how priority issues get handled? Instead of hiding serious issues with the code we should be broadcasting them, brainstorming together and working for a solution.

Here's the thing, what’s the best place to be looking for these issues? Google Groups, GIT, trawl through the source or just constantly monitor the news vines. Is there a RSS feed with specific ruby vulnerabilities of this nature that I can subscribe to? Anyhow, at this stage I'm ranting and not being coherent so I’ll sign off on this point. If a dedicated framework stack within an enterprise gets a massive vulnerability due to base library code and causes applications to keel over and lose the company millions (Yes, I’m talking about large scale systems), who is ultimately responsible? Is it the engineer or the community?

And so the great migration to Australia begins..

Jonathan Clarke — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So what does the future hold? Some may argue that the future is set in stone, some sort of cosmic karma dust flitters throughout our day and steers us towards a date with destiny. Me, well, I just believe that whatever happens, happens for a reason and so it is with great excitment and intrepedation that I announce my voyage to Australia.

The plan is to get up, board a flight and somehow through some strange magic of tubes land in Sydney Australia on the 29th August. I'm heading there on the working holiday visa and the Australian government in their infinite wisdom has decided that due to living with the Chinese for a number of years that I may have the plague. I believe it is definitely something to do with protecting their sheep population. It may do it for the Australians but beastiality just ain't my bag baby....

Anyhow, the idea of what to do when I get over there is a bit hazy at the moment. I have an expectation of working on an idea that has been slowly forming in my head this past month, however ideas, well, they just don't pay the bills. So I'll be chancing my arm contracting at any number of establishments, doing 100+ hour weeks all the while working to my end goal of starting the mythical startup.

So wish me luck on this epic voyage of self-discovery, hard slog and beautiful bondi beaches. I'm going to need it...

Upgrading from ipw3945 to iwl3945 Intel Driver

Jonathan Clarke — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So I bought myself a beautiful new laptop for myself last week. It cost under €1000 and I saved about €600 by not ordering it through Dell and searching for a good bargain on Ebay instead.

So within the day I had a lovely install of Ubuntu Gutsy working perfectly on the machine. Everything was purring nicely apart from one niggling thing. Even though wifi was working 100% out of the box it was working well below the speeds I am accustomed to. With a maximum download speed of 20kpbs something had to be done. I determined that the root cause was the ipw3945 which is a restricted driver in gutsy. However, with Hardy Heron, released this month btw, the ipw module will be deprecated so I decided to look into the new alternative iwl3945. Details about the installation are now below. Enjoy.

Delete the following 2 lines from /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules :

# PCI device 0x8086:0x4222 (ipw3945)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:1b:77:19:62:9a", NAME="eth1"

Then add the following to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist :

# disable ipw3945 old intel3945 driver
blacklist ipw3945
blacklist ieee80211
blacklist ieee80211_crypt

Add the following to /etc/modules :

# new intel3945 iwlwifi driver
iwlwifi_mac80211
iwl3945

After editing the above files, issue these commands at the command line :

sudo modprobe -r ipw3945
sudo modprobe -r ieee80211
sudo modprobe -r ieee80211_crypt_tkip
sudo modprobe -r ieee80211_crypt_ccmp
sudo modprobe -r ieee80211_crypt_wep
sudo modprobe -r ieee80211_crypt
sudo modprobe -r mac80211
sudo modprobe iwlwifi_mac80211
sudo modprobe iwl3945

Your wireless interface should now appear as wlan0. Fast downloads are mine once more :D

In conclusion, the M1330 is a bitching machine. It is lightning fast with Linux and has all the creature comforts that I was expecting. Go get one now.

Some new stuff going on here

Jonathan Clarke — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

So as you can see I've finally began to start making some small adjustments to this website. The small things are finally a new AJAX comment box area which stop page refreshes, also are some html tags are allowed.

There is a small summary of each blog post on the very front page and I've decided to extend it a little further so that everyone can see the latest stuff that I am doing on last.fm, del.icio.us and flickr to name a few. I'll also be working on a tag cloud as well as making the blog more AJAXy in general over the forthcoming months.

So I am working for a company called Arvato Finance as a Senior Business Analyst, and much of the stuff I do is designing internal system applications on Ruby/J2EE/Rails/PHP/VB/J2EE. It's a bit messy with all of these different frameworks at the moment but we will be merging most of the internal web applications into Ruby on Rails so that will be interesting for a time. The core business applications are of course not written in Rails, it is viewed like the plague, something the core team wishes to stay away from. MySQL it should be known, for a core application, is viewed as a dirty word where Oracle apparently reigns supreme. Hopefully my time here can change such perceptions of Open-Source code and products.

I've been developing with Ruby for the past three year and rails somewhat for the past two years now and I am still very much in love with the language as when I first saw it. It is to this effect why much of my own code written as a hobby is primarily written in Ruby. Having seen the Chinese mass produce J2EE code by throwing as many bodies at the problem I saw that for a one man team J2EE really doesn't suit me and my methods of fast prototyping and in this regards rails suits me perfectly.

Anyhow, at the moment I am an extremely busy guy, deadlines due and all that jazz. If ya like what I am doing to the site over the coming weeks lemme know and leave a comment. If of course you have any suggestions just let me know and I'll think about it further... :)

Claiming Technorati Blog

Jonathan Clarke — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Technorati Profile

Testing Technorati and XML-RPC

Jonathan Clarke — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Below is a little bit of code that updates technorati once a blog article is posted. Once technorati has been updated then it filters out through to other various websites. The aim is to keep both technorati as well as ping-o-matic updated on a regular basis. Anyhow, going to test it out now. Hope that it works. Technorati Profile

def self.technorati
       begin
           server = XMLRPC::Client.new("rpc.technorati.com","/rpc/ping",80)
           begin
               puts result = server.call("weblogUpdates.ping","Beilabs","http://www.beilabs.com")
           rescue XMLRPC::FaultException => e
                 puts "Error: [#{ e.faultCode }] #{ e.faultString }"
           end
       rescue Exception => e
             puts "Error: #{ e.message }"
       end
   end

My slant on the Chinese IT Bubble

Jonathan Clarke — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I was just completing the first year of college when the dot com bubble burst. I remember one of my lecturers coming into the class, tears brimming in his eyes as he related to us how all of his shares in Ericsson had lost most of their value. Quite a substantial amount of money at the time.

So in 2000, the bursting of the information technology bubble had marked economic implications for Sweden. Ericsson, the world's largest producer of mobile telecommunications equipment, shed thousands of jobs, as did the many of the world's once fast-expanding Internet consulting firms and dot-com startups. Ericsson's shares nosedived from $20 to $0.98. My lecturers warning about how quick things can change really rang loud and clear.

With America's economy now in crisis mode, everyone is now looking towards the next cash cow, which astonishingly to quite a lot of peoples surprise is now China. Well, its not astonishing now but 10 years ago it was unknown for IT and B2B solutions. I moved over to China in 2005 working for a large Chinese software company and although I was confident about taking quite a step into the unknown I was very excited about the industries future. The industry was bouncing back. At the time India was regarded as the main outsourcing capital of the world with many jobs from America being outsourced there for a long period. Having entered the Chinese software market just when things were beginning to get interesting I am now starting to get extremely apprehensive about where things are now heading in the Middle Kingdom.

So to date Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, GE, Google and Yahoo have committed their futures to the Chinese market. Intel Corp, the world's largest chipmaker, won China's approval to build its first semiconductor manufacturing factory in a small place called Dalian (Awesome place, I recommend JD's nightclub for the uninitiated). With many new graduates coming on-stream from second and third tier Chinese cities institutes of technology these companies are guaranteed a large talented workforce for years to come. China is incredibly hot right now and everyone wants to get in on the act. It doesn't hurt that the Chinese Yuan is unbelievably good value for money with a very cheap and affordable workforce with an extremely low corporation tax rate.

With these well established companies now gaining a foothold in the country there are now an enormous amount of startup Chinese IT companies in China being incorporated. Many of these business are getting very high valuations even though they are not even making a profit yet. Venture capitalists have been pumping large amounts of money into small Chinese startups that are by and large clones of existing applications for the past 3-4 years. Many of these startups have been formed by 20 something talented Asian developers with little management experience and it certainly reflects in todays industry. When youtube initially surfaced in the west, there were hundreds of clones created by Chinese developers. Today it has whittled down to about 3 Chinese companies, the most popular of which, toudou, has not made had a single profitable quarter. Leasing thousands of servers around the country is not a cheap enterprise, especially when most Chinese couch potatoes like nothing more than watching their favorite version of Mandarin dubbed Heroes. Seriously, Hayden Panettiere sounds very cute when speaking in Mandarin. /me does a french whistle.

Although much of the investment has been on individual websites, however there are many other areas where China are beginning to take over as world leaders, most notably on telecommunications devices, chip design, biomedical devices and many more. There are many more places for the venture capitalists to invest in however all valuations are sky high right now. People have reason to be worried, with the credit crunch in the US investors have perhaps over extended into the Chinese market. If the Chinese economy even shows the slightest sign of slowing down then the entire world will feel shock waves and scream in Unison.

Many of the changes that have overcome China in the past few years are astonishing. Billions of dollars has been invested in the smaller cities of China with education being a priority for the people. Software parks have been cropping up all over with the Oracle being the latest to open up shop in Shenyang, Liaoning. Indian companies were seeking relationships with any outsourcing company who would have been interested in forming a partnership. With prices in India beginning to rise much of the outsourcing is being transferred, Chinese accents are slowly replacing the Bangalore Kannada slang.

So where does the future rest? The cost of living in the main cities of China is starting to increase exponentially. Rent is rising as are salaries, it is only time before the Chinese government re-values the Chinese Yuan which will mean that it will cost even more to do business with China, however as China will have most of the expertise, local infrastructure, desire to succeed and innovate it will be absoloutely impossible to not do business with China in some form or other. The world has too much vested in China to see the entire IT industry there implode. China may be in a bubble but it is not just the IT sector that is floating within its confines. The Chinese government actively promotes its citizens to invest in Chinese companies and so patriotism and national pride is certainly alive and kicking especially when investing in the likes of Baidu (Also the name of my favorite BBQ joint in Dalian, I wonder who would object to the name).

So to leave on a lighter note I embedded a video below that has caused some controvesy over the past few weeks around the tubes. Anyhow, its worth a look if your interested in the bubble that is the American IT industry. Enjoy. By the way, with this post I am officially declaring that my writers block has vanished. Clarity has entered my life and I have officially become enlightened. I should get drunk more often.

http://mobile.beilabs.com is launched

Jonathan Clarke — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

So as I promised last night I decided to get off of my lazy behind and do a light implementation of beilabs on rails 2.0. So 20 minutes later, 5 of which involved making coffee and cleaning my apartment, http://mobile.beilabs.com was developed.

It renders nicely on my ipod touch so hopefully it should be nice for the mobile safari browser. As for any other browsers, well, I just haven't used nor tested their mobile versions.

Its behind the scenes where I am most interested in. Twitter updates as well as administration features are embedded in the site, but for the people reading this blog it is now easily accessible from the mobile optimized version.

Anyhow, another thumbs up for rails in my book. Development and deployment was as easy as pie. I'm planning on rolling out some new applications over the coming months, free time in the evenings and all that jazz. Yes I'm a boring old shite.