posts: convert to Markdown.

Author: micrypt

_posts/2009-12-9-Google-Android-Developer-Lab-.textile renamed to _old_posts/2009-12-9-Google-Android-Developer-Lab-.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: "Google Android Developer Lab "
+tags: 
+- Android
+- Programming
+postdate: 2009-12-09 14:02:06
+summary: I spent yesterday at Google London attending the Android Developer Lab. It's a great time to be in the mobile applications space.
+---
+
+![](/images/android.png)
+
+I spent yesterday at Google London attending the Android Developer Lab. There're some really awesome devices on the Android platform (Motorola Droid!!!). I had a great day overall meeting some really bright people who are clearly passionate about building great applications. About 6 hours of fun with the Android 2.0 SDK and some multi-device testing.  It's a great time to be in the mobile applications space.  :)
+
+PS: I'm definitely picking up the Motorola Milestone when it finally gets a UK carrier (Wake up O2!) .

_posts/2009-9-18-London-Android-User-Group-September-17th-2009.textile renamed to _old_posts/2009-9-18-London-Android-User-Group-September-17th-2009.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: Londroid September 17th, 2009
+tags: 
+- Android
+- Programming
+postdate: 2009-09-18 05:50:07
+summary: Spent an evening with the London Android User Group at Skills Matter. Three talks/presentations in all covering; using the GPS to measure race car performance, OAuth and a MotoDev talk.
+---
+
+Spent an evening with the London Android User Group at Skills Matter. Three talks/presentations in all:
+
+USING ANDROID GPS TO MEASURE RACE CAR PERFORMANCE
+Paul Thomas talked about using GPS hardware on the G1 to turn the phone into a datalogger for lap times, G-forces and car positioning on the track. <sup></sup> I actually missed this talk while rushing through the London Underground to get to Skills Matter and finally getting stuck outside their HUGE office doors (if they intended for visitors to get the feeling of being outside a castle drawbridge... I think they nailed it!). I did finally get in though.
+
+OAUTH AND THE INTENT ECOSYSTEM
+Carl-Gustaf Harroch from novoda presented his OAuth provider and explained its integration to the platform. He had a rather interesting presentation - demonstrating using the provider as a central management system for different OAuth implementations. Might this be the future of web application authentication on the Android platform?
+
+<http://github.com/novoda>
+
+MOTODEV, BEGIN YOUR ANDROID DEVELOPMENT WITH MOTOROLA
+Karan Geddam from Motorola presented an Eclipse based development platform created by Motorola - MOTODEV. It aims to facilitate the creation and deployment of Android application. From the development process to the deployment on the market. All contained within a single IDE. It seems like pretty handy toolkit, I'd expect some level of widespread adoption simply due to the fact it simplifies many tasks related to Android development and eases the development process.
+
+<http://developer.motorola.com>
+
+Had a great evening overall. It's cool to hang out in a room filled with bright people building interesting things. :P

_posts/2010-1-14-2357.textile renamed to _old_posts/2010-1-14-2357.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: 23:57!!!
+tags: 
+- Art
+postdate: 2010-01-14 18:57:43
+summary: A pretty lame attempt at writing again. I hope future writing attempts are better than this one. As they say there's nowhere to go but up from here.
+---
+
+![](/images/time.png)
+
+New post! :P
+
+I'm sooo lazy :(

_posts/2010-1-21-Kendo-Zanshin.textile renamed to _old_posts/2010-1-21-Kendo-Zanshin.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: "Kendo: Zanshin"
+tags: 
+- Kendo
+- Programming
+postdate: 2010-01-21 20:39:29
+summary: A few notes on what I've learnt lately in Kendo practice. An imprecise attempt at covering the topic of Zanshin.
+---
+
+![](/images/kendo-zanshin.png)
+
+I've found myself relating more of my kendo practice to the rest of my day to day life lately. Concepts such as <em>Zanshin (loosely translated to continued focus)</em> are important even outside the dojo. My dojo's sensei, Victor Harris, explained a breakdown of <em>zanshin</em> into 3 aspects: the initial <em>zanshin</em> of preparation, that of execution (of the cut in the the Kendo context) and the <em>zanshin</em> of finishing up, ready for the next task.
+
+Continual correct practice could lead to a perpetual cycle of focused activity. Taken into my every day life as a software developer and student of life, I find a lot of time is spent without much focus. Applying this concept to simple day-to-day activities helps one trim the fluff, so to speak, and promote consciousness of one's environment and the tasks at hand. Focus and analyse the problem at hand, approach the task heartily and survey your work on completion.

_posts/2010-1-28-Scala-with-Miles-Sabin.textile renamed to _old_posts/2010-1-28-Scala-with-Miles-Sabin.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: Scala with Miles Sabin
+tags: 
+- Programming
+postdate: 2010-01-28 03:03:21
+summary: Attended an "Introduction to Scala for Java developers" talk at Skillsmatter. Presented by Miles Sabin, of Chuusai (the chaps who make the Scala IDE for Eclipse), the talk covered an overview of functional programming.
+---
+
+![](/images/scala.png)
+
+Attended an "Introduction to Scala for Java developers" talk at Skillsmatter. Presented by Miles Sabin, of Chuusai (the chaps who make the Scala IDE for Eclipse), the talk covered an overview of functional programming and the Scala language (traits, duck-typing, "everything is an object", case classes...) .  I managed to ask him about his thoughts on the growing comparisons between Scala and Clojure (as they both target the JVM). He seemed rather enthusiastic about the trend and praised the efforts of the Clojure team. Bottom line was - it's up to the developer to choose according to personal taste, if you want a more LISP-oriented language then it'd be Clojure otherwise Scala. I'd have to vote Scala for now as it feels rather like Python...

_posts/2010-1-7-How-does-this-writing-thing-go-again.textile renamed to _old_posts/2010-1-7-How-does-this-writing-thing-go-again.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: How does this writing thing go again?
+tags: 
+- Art
+- Science
+postdate: 2010-01-07 18:47:06
+summary: Chiming in a bit late on a Thursday night. Getting started on Project 52. (Update - this did not go too well in the end.)
+---
+
+Signed up for [Project 52](http://project52.info/). I guess I'd better get writing then. :P
+
+Chiming in a bit late on a Thursday night. At least another 51 posts to go... Welcome to 2010.

_posts/2010-2-11-21st-Century-Communication.textile renamed to _old_posts/2010-2-11-21st-Century-Communication.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: 21st Century Communication
+tags: 
+- Life
+postdate: 2010-02-11 17:56:11
+summary: These days there are so many ways of reaching people in remote areas of the world at strange times. It makes one wonder how the human race has adapted for these differences in such a short span of time.
+---
+
+![](/images/communication.png)
+
+I find it a bit amusing how many means of communication there are these days. I'm old enough to remember a period where the primary means of reaching anybody, apart from one's immediate neighbours, was the solitary home phone. However, these days there are so many ways of reaching people in remote areas of the world at strange times. It makes one wonder how the human race has adapted for these differences in such a short span of time. As a quick catalogue of the services I currently actively use {Facebook, Twitter, 3 E-mail addresses, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Skype, IRC and 1 mobile phone} It's no wonder my sleeping habits are borderline non-existent.

_posts/2010-2-18-Kendo-Goals.textile renamed to _old_posts/2010-2-18-Kendo-Goals.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: "Kendo: Goals"
+postdate: 2010-02-18 19:04:09
+summary: A reflection on how one paces out goals on a journey that lasts a lifetime.
+---
+
+![](/images/kendo-goals.png)
+
+It is a tad complex trying to figure out how one paces out goals on a journey that lasts a lifetime. It's a bit easy to work out my practice as just a drop in the bucket of doing Kendo for the rest of my life. However, as with other things I'm involved in, I feel a need to pace myself and at least set small achievable goals. It's proving a bit difficult to find advice on what is possible within a measure of time, so that one can figure out how effective one's training is. The advice almost always seems to boil down to "keep trying, it will come".
+
+My issues are not about hurrying or a complete lack of patience (I'm aware that even 8th Dans still learn new things), it's a question of trying to work out what's effective in my training... or perhaps this is something one has to work out for himself.

_posts/2010-2-4-Twitter-Developer-Nest-February-2010.textile renamed to _old_posts/2010-2-4-Twitter-Developer-Nest-February-2010.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: Twitter Developer Nest - February 2010
+tags: 
+- Programming
+postdate: 2010-02-04 20:43:08
+summary: Attended the February Twitter Developer Nest #devnest at Sun Microsystems. Saw some really cool apps and presentations.
+---
+
+![](/images/devnest.png)
+
+Attended the February Twitter Developer Nest \#devnest at Sun Microsystems. Saw some really cool apps and presentations. <Updated long post coming up>

_posts/2011-1-12-On-Being-Different.textile renamed to _old_posts/2011-1-12-On-Being-Different.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: "On Being Different"
+postdate: 2011-01-12 19:04:09
+summary: The aspects where one is different are inevitably the same parts which lead to a loss of empathy  and being able to understand what others need.
+---
+
+![](/images/different.png)
+
+> Empathy is: "…the projection of one’s own personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better; intellectual idenfication of oneself with another." (Webster’s 1979)
+
+A lot of geeks, while growing up, feel a gnawing need to differentiate one's self and be special. This passion for being unique and differentiating the self contributes to interests ranging from languages to art to programming. One could go as far as saying it is an essential key to being better than average at any of these interests. However, on the flip side is the fact that becoming accustomed to being different could be detrimental to having a normal perspective on things. The aspects where one is different are inevitably the same parts which lead to a loss of empathy and being unable to understand what others need (which is rarely OpenID.)
+
+If one has any plans of building applications which would be useful to "normal" people, it is important that one not lose touch with what others find important and focus solely on technical brilliance. It is important to go outside the tech industry and talk to to people. Being able to observe how people work in life, and unobtrusively augment these processes with technology… that is where the key lies.
+
+We need genius to shape the future, yet we also require a capacity to understand those who might be less inclined to our ways.

_posts/2011-1-28-Amazon-Dynamo-Notes.textile renamed to _old_posts/2011-1-28-Amazon-Dynamo-Notes.textile

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+--- 
+layout: post
+title: "Notes on the Amazon Dynamo Paper"
+postdate: 2011-01-28 21:04:09
+summary: Caveat emptor - My incomplete notes on the Amazon Dynamo paper. These are probably not suitable for public consumption.  
+---
+
+The following are some notes from reading the Dynamo paper. If anyone're reading this... it's not even a weak substitute for reading the paper. "Man up and go read the [paper](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/files/amazon-dynamo-sosp2007.pdf!"). Instead, these are my notes on the aspects of the paper that I found particularly interesting. Being what it is, the points are somewhat disjointed and probably wouldn't make sense to anyone. It's a quick reference I can pull up sometime in the future when I'm "old, frail and weak of mind". Enough of caveats, here go goes nothing.
+
+Apache Dynamo is a highly scalable data storage technology. In order to explain what this means, it's useful to expand on two elements of the description.
+
+"highly scalable" - this is achieved via replication with tunable eventual consistency using a quorum system
+"data storage" - it's a key/value store
+
+Consistency
+-----------
+
+In cases where high consistency is a requirement, it is impossible to also provide high availability as the instances have to come to an agreement before the data is made available. In Apache Dynamo, the quorum system allows the admin to set the number of nodes that need to agree on a condition before an operation is carried out.
+
+Conflict resolution
+-------------------
+
+In order to have a good customer experience, Amazon pushes the resolution of conflicts to the read step. This reduces latency from attempting to implement conflict resolution at the data store level. The node that receives the request can just push out all the results from other nodes with data and let the application layer handle resolution. In this case that the application developer chooses to let the data store handle conflict resolution, the default approach is that "the last write wins" (this is similar to conflict resolution in Apache CouchDB.) As would be expected, this is done with object versioning.
+
+Heterogeneity
+-------------
+
+Being able to add more powerful nodes without needing to upgrade the whole bunch. Rather than dealing with the issues from non-uniform data & load distribution, Dynamo uses the concept of virtual nodes where actual nodes can be assigned more than one virtual nodes, meaning that there is always more than one instance to handle an operation.
+
+Notes
+-----
+
+[Pastry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastry_(DHT)) and [Chord](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_(DHT))
+They use routing mechanisms to make sure that queries can be answered (satisfied) within a bounded number of hops.
+
+[Oceanstore](http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu/info/overview.html)
+Resolves conflicts by creating an order of updates and consistently applying those updates in that order.
+
+[Antiquity](http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu/publications/papers/pdf/antiquity06.pdf)
+Uses a secure log to preserve data integrity and replicates the log to multiple servers for durability. Uses Byzantine fault tolerant protocols to ensure data consistency.
+
+Vector clock
+(Node, Counter)
+e.g (Sx, 3), (Sy, 1), (Sz, 1)
+
+(Sleepy now... this will be an evolving document anyway.) - Till next time.