Articles tagged with Reviews

Building Scalable Web Sites by Cal Henderson

I have about three books that I am reading on and off but have been unable to focus on any of them for any length of time. Tom The Architect mentioned a book to me a few months ago called Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web Applications by Cal Henderson, engineering manager for the Flickr photo service, a service that I have used extensively since being turned on to it by, you guessed it, Tom The Architect.

This was the first book in a long time that I couldn’t put down, mainly because everything in the book is geared towards teaching you about how to create really, really, big web sites and the issues involved in scaling them. It was also quite intriguing because the book covers tools you use all of the time, like PHP and MySQL that are hard to find really good books about how they scale.

Cal covers a lot of material in this book, from layering your web application architecture, to creating an environment for developers to work in, which includes source control, issue tracking, coding standards and the like. This section was quite encouraging to me, as we have implemented almost everything that Cal mentions in the book (sometimes its nice to get some external validation). Cal then goes on to talk about internationalization and localization, data integrity and security, using email as an alternate entrance into your application, and how to build remote services.

All of this was great, but the next few chapters I found really valuable. Cal talks about identifying bottlenecks in your web application, scaling applications such as MySQL (where he covers quite a few replication strategies) and scaling storage. He also covers measurements, statistics and monitoring. Finally, Cal talks about adding API’s into your application to support mobile applications, web services, etc.

Cal references quite a few tools that are freely available in these discussions - tools that I didn’t even know were out there, that you can use to simplify your monitoring environment. I was most intrigued with the Spread Toolkit, a self described “a unified message bus for distributed applications” that allows you to unify logging across your applications. Anyone who has tried to debug an issue on a site that has more than one box would appreciate knowing about this tool.

This is the first book that I’ve read in a long time, technology wise, that hit the sweet spot between talking about real issues that I have been facing and possible solutions. I highly recommend grabbing this book and in the very least just keeping it on your book shelf for future reference. This is one thats going to be a constant companion for me in the coming months.

Movies: Rocky Balboa

Yesterday the family went to the movies. Normally the way this works is that Jonna and I will go see one movie, and the three kids will go to another. Its rare these days that we all want to see the same movie.

Yesterday was different. The family wanted to see Night at the Museum, the new Ben Stiller film. I had decided that I was going to break down and see Rocky Balboa, the newest and final installment in the Rocky series.

Now, when I first heard that there was going to be a new Rocky movie, I had decided pretty firmly that I was not going to go see it - I would wait for video. But as I continued to see the trailers leading up to its Christmas release, the urge to see another Rocky movie (which overall is probably my favorite series of movies of all time next to the Godfather) gradually took over - to the point where I decided to go see Rocky by myself while the rest of the family went to see Museum.

I approached the movie with quite a bit of trepidation. Rocky 5 was a huge disappointment - not the best way to end a series of movies like Rocky. But as I sat down in the theater and the movie started, I began feeling that same feeling of excitement that has accompanied every Rocky movie I’ve seen since my first viewing of the first Rocky movie back in the late 70’s.

I thought the movie was excellent. While the tag line for the movie is “It’s not over until its over”, a great little quote from Rocky during a conversation with his son sums up the movie quite well:

But it ain’t about how hard you hit… it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward… how much you can take, and keep moving forward. If you know what you’re worth, go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit.

This quote basically sums up what you get out of every Rocky movie. That inspiring life lesson about going one more round - getting up one more time in the face of adversity. Rocky Balboa wound up being just as inspiring as the rest of the movies - and finally puts a fitting end to the tale of Rocky Balboa - something that Rocky V failed miserably at doing. While you walked out of Rocky V feeling down and depressed, Rocky Balboa has you walking out feeling that the world has been set right in Philadelphia.

Now, on the flip side, there were still some cheesy scenes, but those happen in each of the movies. But overall, it was a great experience. I think the only real disappointment for me is that the rest of the family doesn’t share the same soft spot in their hearts for the characters in this series as I do, so I walked out feeling great with no one to share the experience with.

I do think though, that this is definitely the way the series should have ended. It was great to see the series end on a high note. I give Rocky Balboa 4 out of 5 stars.

The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick

Over the last few months I’ve started a lot of books. There is so much interesting reading out there that between the usual blogs that I read, the effort I’m spending learning Ruby on Rails, and the interesting books I run across in my usual ritual of trolling book stores, I’m finding it hard to focus on a book from start to finish. I think the only ones I’ve been able to read completely over the past few months have been Fight Club, Practical Subversion, Second Edition (reviewed early last week), and todays pick, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security by Kevin D. Mitnick and William L. Simon.

It is rare that a book conjures up such paranoia in me. The book is described on the back cover like this:

The worlds most celebrated hacker delivers the lowdown on today’s most serious security weakness - Human Nature.

Boy does he ever.

When one thinks of computer security, one normally thinks about things like closing unnecessary services / ports on your systems, using strong passwords, and things like that. All things of a technical nature that are necessary, but aren’t truly secure because of the people that surround the technology.

Mitnick and Simon do an excellent job in walking you through extremely realistic social engineering scenarios and make you realize that the basic pieces of human nature, like sincerely wanting to help others, fear of crossing someone in an authority position, or just plain carelessness can open up your systems to security breaches no matter how well of a handle you have on the technology aspect of security in your company.

Each scenario is followed by a section called “Analyzing the Con”, where they explain, in detail, the factors that contribute to the scenario being played out and your systems being compromised. There is a lot of interesting information in these analyses that you may not have thought of before.

The last chapter of the book gives you approximately 70 pages relating recommended corporate information security policies. This chapter was excellent, explaining the different policies you can enact and, more importantly - and something you don’t get very often from corporate security - the reasons WHY they are important to implement.

For me, this book was a total eye opener. It is interesting to think about the amount of information that can be “leaked” that seems unimportant at the time one can be in a conversation that can be pieced together later on for the purposes of compromising a computer system or a business.

If nothing else, this book will definitely make you think about the next conversation you have with someone. It shows you the dark side of human nature, where people can seem completely sincere in their interactions with you but deep down have only one objective. To get information. It also illustrates the effort in which people can put forth to put together a con with so much detail, over such a length of time, that the individual interactions seem innocuous, but in the end compromise your systems security.

This book is a must read for everyone even peripherally related to IT. Let me rephrase that. This book is a must read for everyone who has even remote contact with people. Its extremely informative and engaging - so much so that I could hardly put it down.

I’ve already recommended this book to numerous people at work and will be putting it on the required reading list for this year for my teams. Its an area of computer security that is often overlooked and I’m glad to see it covered in such detail - and in a very non-technical way. Anyone can relate to the content in this book.

Do yourself a favor. Take the time pick this one up and read the whole thing. I can guarantee, no matter what your role, you will get something useful out of this book.

Paul Stanley: Live To Win

Its been 9 years since anything good has come from the KISS camp that wasn’t a rehash of the days before they took their make up off. The last KISS release of original material was Psycho Circus back in 1998, which wasn’t necessarily their best effort.

In 2004 Gene Simmons released Asshole his first solo album since 1978, which is hardly something I would recommend you to buy. However, being one of those goofy KISS fans that have to buy anything new from the band, I just had to buy it for some reason, a decision I regretted soon after making the purchase.

This year, Paul Stanley has released his first solo album since 1978, called Live to Win.

This album is one I’ve actually enjoyed listening to. Its quite obvious when listening to this album where most of the song writing skills within KISS actually reside. I found the songs to be strong and catchy. Its been a while since I’ve bought an album that I’ve been able to listen to all the way through and then start over again.

Some of you might have heard the title track of the album without even knowing it, as it appears in the South Park World of Warcraft episode during the scene where the kids are practicing for hours on end killing boars to up their strength in order to confront the character in the game that is killing everyone within the game.

I felt the rest of the songs were pretty strong on the album as well. This is a good effort by Stanley, and its nice to hear his voice on something new for a change, rather than rehashes of KISS’s 1970’s catalog.

I have thought for a while that it is about time that KISS let go of the make up and old catalog performances that strike one as something to just fill their coffers and get out and do something new. Stanley has made a really good effort in putting some new material out there and this is one KISS fan who actually appreciates the effort and has enjoyed listening to something fresh and new from the KISS front man.

Its pretty obvious. If the band were to break up and stop putting out “Best Of” CD’s, Paul would be the one that still has a career when the dust settles.

Off The Rails - The Review

I just finished reading Off The Rails by Rudy Sarzo this last week. Overall, I would say I liked it.

I’ve been a fan of Randy Rhoads since first hearing the Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of Madman albums in 1983 or so. He was a unique player for his time and these two albums are of the sort that they sound just as fresh today as they did when they were released.

As a Rhoads fan, I’ve always picked up any and all information I could get on him. Every guitar magazine he’s been in, I probably have or have had it. Each article or magazine never really gave you enough, as a fan, as to what Randy was like.

Off The Rails was written using Sarzo’s daily diaries that he had kept during the Blizzard of Ozz and Diary tours between 1981 and 1982 (at the request of his accountant) and gives you an interesting glimpse of what was going on in the band at the time. While this book is probably the most detailed about Rhoads as a person, the book for me seemed to focus more on how screwed up Ozzy and Sharon were during this time, which is actually the stuff I wound up getting more interested in as the book went on.

After reading this book, you will be amazed that Osbourne has gotten to where he did, and that he actually produced the music he did over the years. Rumors have always abounded about his alcoholism and wild antics, but Sarzo gives you a very detailed glimpse into the amount of abuse Ozzy exposed himself and everyone around him to during the early days of his solo career.

Most interesting to me was the circumstances around the planned live album that became Speak of the Devil and Randy’s resistance to doing the album. Given where the band was at the time, with two albums of solo material, its easy to understand that Randy did not want to do a live album of Sabbath material, but the most telling is how Ozzy reacted and treated Randy when he refused to do the album initially.

Over the last twenty some years, we’ve heard a lot of positive things about the relationship between Ozzy and Randy. This book, if nothing else, gives you a glimpse of the “real life” circumstances on the tour and paints a much less rosy picture of the time that the band spent on the road.

That is not to say at all that Off The Rails is negative. Sarzo manages to detail all of the goings on during this time without giving the reader the feeling of reading a “tell-all” book meant to smear the participants for the sake of making money. Rudy does a great job of reporting what happened in a very balanced way that manages to get the reader to close the book and walk away thinking.

Bottom line, the book is excellent. Sarzo does a good job of reporting the daily goings on in the tour, giving you a glimpse into the life of guitar hero, and doing it in such a way that it does not feel exploitative in the least. I would definitely recommend this book to those who are Rhoads fans, or even those who just want a third party addition to the biographies already out there on Ozzy and his crew.

Movies: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

Kelsi, Jonna and I went to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning today. Kelsi had never seen the original, so this was a brand new experience for her. Her choices were to either see this with Jonna and I, or to attend a fine viewing of Employee of the Month (the Dane Cook movie) with the boys. She picked this one, and paid dearly.

Despite the pretty bad ratings the movie is getting on Rotten Tomatoes, I actually enjoyed it. I’m sure Kelsi would have too, if she could have kept her head out from under my jacket, which I generously loaned to her during one of the first “hard to watch” scenes in the movie.

This time around, you see the origin of the Hewitt family, along with the first group of kids they wound up killing. R. Lee Ermey reprises his role as “Sherriff Hoyt” and is, once again, excellent. That “Full Metal Jacket” feel to his character fits perfectly into this story. Kudos to the casting folks for getting him to play this part.

I enjoyed this movie much more than the Exorcist prequel that came out a while back. There was obviously some thought that went into this one and it winds up complementing 2003 remake very well. The thing I enjoyed the most is that the filmmakers successfully answered the biggest questions I had about the original movie ‘lo those many years ago:

Is Sheriff Hoyt really a sheriff?
How did he lose his front teeth?
What was Leatherface’s career before becoming the most feared serial killer in movie history?
How did Uncle Monty lose his legs?
What do these guys DO with the bodies of their victims (aside from wear their faces)?

All of these questions and more are answered in what amounts to 84 minutes of absolute gore. If you get queasy at graphic violence, you might want to sit this one out. I found this one to be actually less gory than the 2003 remake of the original, but it’s still pretty hard core and there were a few areas of the movie which made me uncomfortable. When it comes down to it, as I get older I find it harder and harder to watch slasher films. None the less, it did what it set out to do and I thought it was a good way to spend an hour and a half or so on my day off.

More on Mind Mapping and MindManager

I’ve been playing around with MindJet MindManager over the last week or so and I have to say, overall I really like it. Mindmapping provides a great mechanism in getting your thoughts down on paper and establishing relationships between different concepts, especially for someone who suffers from “chronic editor” syndrome such as myself.

I’d love to post some examples of some of the things that I have been working on, but the only real “work neutral” mindmap I have available is the one I previously posted. Some really good examples can be found in the mindmaps that Cote produces. These are some really good examples of the complexity that can be represented using this technique.

I had first read about mindmapping quite a few years ago in the book Quantum Learning: Unleashing the Genius in You by Bobbi Deporter (with Mike Hernacki). Deporter and Hernacki describe the Mind Mapping technique as “a whole brain technique using visual images and other graphic devices to form impressions”. The key piece of this, for me, has been the connection and breakdown of different concepts into sub concepts. The graphical nature of a mind-map, coupled with the distilling of the key concepts and relationships and visual representation, have allowed me to retain much more information while taking notes over the past week than I have previously experienced.

I had attempted mind-mapping when reading Quantum Learning, but the extremely manual process (actual drawing) turned me off immediately. For me, it just seemed like too much work.

That’s where Mind Manager comes in. With a few natural keystrokes you can string all of these concepts together, attach images or URL’s to the key concepts for further reference material, and flag concepts as priorities or something to pay attention to. The additional benefit of a tool to do this stuff is the ability to dynamically refactor your mind maps without having to throw away your piece of paper and recopy everything. The refactoring of these concepts has been something that I have been doing quite a bit.

The folks at MindJet were nice enough to give me complimentary licenses for both the Macintosh and Windows environments. Since buying a Mac in June, I have decided to use it exclusively at home in order to learn as much about the environment as possible (and, of course, to justify the investment). So, I have had the opportunity to work on a few mind maps across the two environments. There is no ‘import’ or conversion necessary. I store the maps on my thumb drive, work on them at home, take them to work, and they just load and are ready for continued editing on the Windows platform.

There are some differences between the two versions of the product. The Windows version has quite a bit of Microsoft Office integration. You can export your mind maps to Visio, Word, Excel and even Microsoft Project, in addition to JPG and PNG image formats and PDF. Both versions allow you to add task information to map nodes, including flagging nodes as resources and flagging them as quarter, half, three quarters done, as well as completed. I have not experimented with taking these types of mind maps and exporting them to project, but I’m assuming these move along with them (I can mess with it later and validate this).

The Macintosh version has a more limited set of export formats. JPG and PNG are supported along with multiple flavors of RTF (Word, TextEdit) and PDF.

For me, the use of this tool over the past week has been a really positive experience - on the Macintosh. The Windows version has some pretty major performance issues that are being talked about in the support forums as well as being addressed specifically by the Vice President of Engineering on the companies blog.

The Windows machine that I am running MindManager on has 2G of memory and 80G of hard drive space. When docked, I run at a pretty high screen resolution (1280×1024 - maybe even higher). Docked, the software runs well enough to do the work I need to do as another connected concept hits me on some of the things I am working on.

The strange part is that as soon as I undock and run in ‘laptop’ mode at the standard 1024×768 resolution, performance drops to the point where the software isn’t even usable. I’m not sure why this is the case, but at a seminar the other day with the Windows laptop, I was unable to take notes using the software whatsoever, as the software began exhibiting the symptoms mentioned in the above links.

Overall, the technique of mind mapping is proving extremely helpful to me. As mentioned earlier, using the technique has increased the retention that I am experiencing while thinking through problems. The MindManager software is excellent - on a Mac. The Windows version needs some work to fix some of the performance challenges that I am experiencing.

The price tag for the software is not the cheapest in the world either. A single user license for MindManager 6.0 Pro weighs in at a whopping $349, with the Basic and Macintosh versions available at $229. The question then becomes is the price tag worth the value received from the software. While I’m receiving a ton of value from using the software, the price of a single user license would definitely stop me from even taking the time to try it in the first place. While the company does make trial software available (both a 5 day express trial with no registration required and a 21 day “premium trial” of which the premium is registering with the company), I rarely “do” trials on products in this price range for the fear of getting addicted to them and having to pay for them.

So the real question for me as I use the software further is whether I will buy it. Time will tell. I like to (and see it as an obligation) to support software I find useful with my wallet. The only real guarantee that useful software will continue to be available is if there is a community behind it, or, in the case of commercial software, people actually buy it. Once the “newness” of the software wears off, we’ll see if I continue to see value in the process and whether I keep using the software. At the point that I find it indispensable, I will definitely shell out the money to show my support for the product.

And when that happens, you’ll definitely be the first to know.

Related Links

Books: Primal Branding

Walking through Borders last week I came across the book Primal Branding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future by Patrick Hanlon. Since I had recently read The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do, the initial browse of this book intrigued me, so I picked it up.

There are certain brands that build very passionate communities around them. Think of companies such as Starbucks, Apple, or communities such as Linux. This book attempts to dissect the building of brands and communities centered around them into a “primal code” - a set of things that all of these brands have in common that foster the “zealot” type of behavior that these brands exhibit.

The author breaks the primal code of branding into the following seven components:

The Creation Story - If you think about it, any of the brands listed have a creation story that is well known. Be it Jobs and Wozniak building boards in a garage, or Howard Schultz visiting coffee shops in Italy and getting his job at the original Starbucks. Each has a mythos connected with how the founders created the company.
The Creed - This is what the company and / or brand stand for. Think of Apples “Building Computers for The Rest of Us”, or Starbucks “Third Place” (the first two being “Work” and “Home”). The creed is not a typical mission statement, but a short statement that sums up the values or mission of the company.
The Icons - According to the author, icons are “quick concentrations of meaning that cause your brand identity and brand values to spontaneously resonate”. Some examples: The Nike Swoosh, the Linux penguin, the Starbucks white cups, the makeup of the band KISS (yes, this last one was really used as an example - and you can’t really argue with it. The KISS Army are some of the most passionate fans on the planet).
The Rituals - The author describes the rituals as “the repeated interactions that people have with your enterprise”. The main concentration here is around finding the “rituals” that people go through when using your product and making them more pleasant. Some examples of this are things like the Progressive car insurance practice of settling insurance claims at the scene of the accident. Tom the Architect often blogs about “attention efficiencies”. I would put the creation of these efficiencies in the ritual category.
The Pagans, or Nonbelievers - Every strong brand has its pagans, or the people or things which express what your brand is NOT. McDonalds has Burger King, Christians had the Romans, Linux users have Microsoft.
The Sacred Words - Sacred words are described as “a set of specialized words that must be learned before people can belong”. Think “Big Mac”, “iPod”, “iMac”, “Venti or Grande”.
The Leader - Finally, every strong brand has a person who is the visionary who “set out against all odds to re-create the world according to their own sense of self, community, and opportunity”. These are people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ray Kroc, Howard Schultz. Often these leaders have great mythologies connected to the creation story that help to inspire and create passion around the brand.

Companies may have one or more components of this code. The author asserts that the more pieces you have, the more attractive your brand and the more passionate your customers are about your company. I can’t really disagree with any of the arguments. When I first got a Mac, the first thing I did was start reading books about the creation of Apple. Its odd that as I read this book, and the different components that make up a strong brand, I found myself thinking about my own behavior around things I am passionate about and found little things that corroborated the arguments in the book. From the quick three week studies on the origins of Apple, to all of the time I spent on the history of Linux, to the “Tux Tattoo” I have on my upper back, all of these components make sense and map to real experiences I’ve had with strong brands in my life.

The author makes the point that these primal codes for branding or community building are not necessarily to be used only for business. You can use them for organizations (think the Jaycees), religions (Christianity), or even building strong beliefs within a team (a concept I’m extremely interested in as a manager).

In the very least, this book will get you thinking about how to make people passionate about a cause. The book is extremely well written and you move through the concepts very quickly. I found a lot of value out of this reading session and highly recommend that those interested in these concepts pick up the book.

The author is the Founder and CEO of Thinktopia, Inc a company focused on building “primal brands”. They also have a blog and a podcast available (to which I just found while writing this and am now subscribed).

Movies: V for Vendetta

When the boys suggested that we rent the new DVD release of V for Vendetta, I have to say I was not really excited. The movie just didn’t look like something that I would enjoy from the previews. But, being the ultimately cool parents that we are, we gave in and decided to have a nice family night viewing of the movie. On the way home, reading the back cover, I described it to Jonna jokingly as “Phantom of the Opera meets Braveheart meets Batman”.

I have to say, my impressions of the movie from the previews was dead wrong. I enjoyed it immensely. Jonna is sticking with my original description, and when asked if she liked it gives a very flat “eh”.

The story is set in 2015, where the US is in ruins and England is under a Hitler like totalitarian rule of the Grand Chancellor. The “government rules the people” rather than the “people ruling the government”. The regime in power is using people for experimentation in the development of biological weapons and their antidotes.

Then along comes V (played by Hugo Weaving), a vigilante in a “Guy Fawkes” mask who begins to make efforts to organize the over throwing of the government using terrorist like tactics. While V is out to save the people from the government, he also has a need to “get even” with the group of people responsible for torture that he went through while experimented on by the government. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that articulates both the altruistic goal of freeing the people along with a personal vendetta to “get even” with the people who have wronged the hero - another aspect of the movie that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Another thing that I really liked was that though you get some flashback information at a really high level of who V was, you never really get the full story - and unlike all of the Batman movies - no one, including the audience, ever gets to see who is behind V’s mask.

The final thing that struck me about the character was his complete lack of emotion through what he was doing. It wasn’t your typical “I’m angry and want to get even” type of character. The character had something he felt he needed to do, and although it was some pretty intense revenge, he approached it in completely calm way. I don’t know why this struck me the way it did, but I found it as kind of a cool character trait.

I’m not going to go into a drawn out description of the story. You have to see the movie. I will tell you that after watching and returning it to the video store, we went out and bought it. I’m looking forward to watching it again with Kelsi to get her impressions of it.

Definitely a movie to check out if you like “us against the oppressive government” kind of movies.

Ron’s rating: Two thumbs and a big toe up.

A Hard Landing At Galt Airport

Last night we attended the Hard Landing event at Galt Airport in Woodstock. The featured bands for the evening were Hudson McCoy, Rare Earth, and Blue Oyster Cult.

I had never been to a Galt Airport event, so I had nothing to compare it to, but we had a pretty good time. Rare Earth and Blue Oyster Cult are seriously at the top of their game. They sounded absolutely great.

Hudson McCoy was pretty good as well, if you like blues music. I’m one of those people who likes blues, but when I’m seeing a band live its more meaningful to me if I have heard their music before. I tend to me more receptive to unfamiliar music with an album than I am seeing a live band. Most of the Hudson McCoy set seemed to be originals that I had never heard before. So overall, for me, Rare Earth and BOC was the highlight of the evening.

We tried to get pictures throughout the night, but we didn’t get many that turned out well. Our camera just doesn’t do very well at long distances when it starts to get dark.

The event was quite a bit smaller than, say, a Ribfest - and it showed. One of the things that they really have to work on for next year is having more hand washing stations around the washroom area.

I’m a compulsive hand washer - its one of those weird things for me that I’ve never been able to get under control (though, thinking about it, it seems that if your going to have an obsession, hand washing is a good one). For me, there is nothing more horrible than walking around somewhere and having the urge to wash your hands and having one station available that is completely out of water and / or soap. Worse than that though, is watching so many people come out of these washrooms trying to wash their hands and having no water available to do so.

Last night there were two scenarios. In one instance there was no soap in the station. For a neurotic like me, washing your hands isn’t washing them without soap. The second scenario was worse though - only soap and no water. For some reason, having soap all over your hands with no ability to rinse it off just sends my brain off into a ‘tizzy’ - that’s my obsessive-compulsive side at its finest. I wound up going to the beer tent and asking the people attending there to drop large handfuls of ice in my hands so that I could rinse the soap off.

So to summarize, the event was fun. There was great music and the crowd was considerably more laid back and considerate than they were at the REO concert earlier this month. The organizers definitely have to make some improvements in the hygiene facilities moving forward though.

Interview with Dave Thomas on Agile

I found a really good podcast called The Agile Toolkit Podcast, in which the host, Bob Payne, attends agile conferences and interviews people there. Some of the interviews include people like Bob Martin and Mary Poppendieck among many others.

The most interesting show I’ve listened to so far is an interview with Dave Thomas (of Pragmatic Programmer fame) about agile development.

For me, I think I found it interesting just in the fact that it is nice to hear someone that has the same views on development issues as I do. I’ve always been a big believer that methodologies are limiting and that each methodology should be tailored to the project team. One part of the conversation that I found extremely interesting was when Bob and Dave were talking about the dogma attached to many of the methodologies.

Recently I had attended an Agile Development training in which the instructor stated that if you weren’t using all of the components of XP, you weren’t doing Agile development. A good point that Dave made was that as XP was being developed, the teams it was being developed with actually evolved into using all of the practices at different stages of their team development. In other words, they didn’t start using all of the practices specified in XP - because they didn’t exist yet. Dave makes the point that teams need to evolve into all of the practices - and that its very difficult to implement all of them at one time. I actually think that each team will be sufficiently different enough that you may not need all of the practices, but only a core set of practices. Bob Martin also makes this point in his interview and lists the minimum set of practices that include very short cycles, an open office (a room which holds the identity of the project), test driven development (both unit and acceptance tests). He also mentions that its extremely difficult to do test driven development without continuous integration, so there are other practices that will be necessary as you begin to implement the minimum set. I actually believe that source control and automated builds are another of the core minimum practices that should be put in place before anything else - but thats just me.

Another area that Bob and Dave talk about extensively is the necessity of developers to look at other languages in the industry other than the core language they use day to day. One statement Dave makes is that he looks forward to the day that developers refer to themselves as “developers” rather than “Java developers”. I wholeheartedly look forward to that day as well.

I’ve always enjoyed learning new languages. If you run through the articles in this blog, you’ll see that every time I find some language that I don’t know - and understand the practical reasons why they exist, the chances are I start working in it right away (most recently, this language is Objective-C). I enjoyed this part of the conversation a lot, because Dave articulates very well how learning new languages can give you new insights as to how to implement things in different ways.

I’m a firm believer that in software development, you have to have a pretty large tool box. The right tool should be used for the right job. This is why in many of the things I’ve done over the years, different components are written in different languages depending on what I am doing. A web piece might be written in PHP, scripts done in PERL or Python, while other components could be written in C / C++. I’ve made a conscious effort over the years to expose myself to as many different languages as possible.

In order to have the flexibility to use the right tool for the right job, you really have to make an effort to get at least a high level understanding of the different tools available and what their strengths are. Thats the really nice thing about the conversation with Dave is that he articulates the idea that you don’t necessarily have to be an expert in all languages, but know enough to use them and glean knowledge from them and their design.

I have found each of the shows I’ve listened to from the Agile Toolkit Podcast very informative and totally worth the time investment. In the very least, I want my teams to make this a part of their learning program moving forward. There’s no better place to learn about Agile practices than from the people right in the middle of it.

Books: The Culture Code

Over the weekend I found an excellent book by an author named Clotaire Rapaille called The Culture Code : An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do.

Rapaille, a cultural anthropologist, has consulted with large companies for years. His talent is finding the cultural “imprints” that exist for concepts or products and helping people and companies alike to use these imprints to their advantage.

The concept of an imprint starts with the assumption that learning does not happen without connected emotion to the experience being learned. The greater the emotion, the more learning takes place. The combination of the experience and the emotion create an imprint, a strong connection between the concept or experience learned, and the emotion experienced at the time. In NLP parlance, an imprint is a very strong anchor.

A “Culture Code” is characterized as “the unconcious meaning we apply to any given thing - a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country - via the culture in which we are raised”. This unconcious meaning is, within the book, distilled to a one to three word phrase to characterize the belief system or meaning attached at cultural level.

Rapaille covers a number of concepts within this book, including things like food, money, love, work and compares the unconcious meanings of these concepts at a cultural level between different cultures like the US, France and Germany. The differences in meaning attached to these concepts is incredibly interesting when you are looking at it from the perspective of comparing cultures, but for me, the most interesting pieces were being able to relate to the meaning that I personally have for things and seeing the accuracy in which Rapaille expresses them in the book.

For example, Rapaille asserts that the American culture code for work is “WHO I AM”. The American culture, overall, associates their identity with what they do for a living. The American culture code for money, is “PROOF”. In this section Rapaille makes the point that work and money are closely related culture codes, as the meaning we attach to the money we earn acts as proof that we are good at what we do. Our commitment to work is to ensure that we “are someone” and not a “nobody”. It is our feeble attempt to create our identity.

These are just two of the codes explained in this book. Overall, I found the explanation of the concepts extremely valueable (and relevant) on a personal level and got a lot of value out of the analysis. For me, it was almost therapeutic, in that it explained a lot of the behaviors that I have had that I haven’t really been sure where they came from. With the very clearly written and thoughtful analysis and explanations of these codes, I wound up receiving quite a bit of self enlightenment out of the experience of reading this book and found it to be totally worth the price of the book.

Whether you agree with the content of the book or not, theres no denying that anyone could find some value in the information communicated in it. I give this one an enthusiastic thumbs up and highly recommend it as a few hours of high quality reading.

Movies: Superman Returns

We took what seems like a very long 2 1/2 hours of our day yesterday to go see the new movie, Superman Returns. I’m pretty wishy washy about this one. I don’t hate it, but its not the best either.

One of the things I’m trying to keep in mind is a quote that I heard John Carpenter talk about in the DVD extras of The Fog a few months ago. He was essentially talking about how the studios are doing a lot of remakes now to bring stories to the newer generation, as your average kid will not watch a movie that is 10-15 years old now. Updating the story line to look more current, with some current and younger stars, allows a whole new generation to be able to view the story. I totally get it, and this line of thinking got me through The Omen remake without wanting to kill myself by the end of it. Overall, for this purpose, The Omen was OK.

I think it was only a matter of time before a Superman movie came out, with the success of movies like X-Men, Batman, and Spiderman. All of these movies set the bar a little higher for comic book based movies and I’ve liked all of them, especially Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition), which I think is hands down the best comic book super hero based movie made so far (with Spidey and X-Men running close seconds).

I think Superman Returns is a good movie for kids who haven’t seen the original Superman - The Movie. The special effects are great, the photography looks great, and c’mon - Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor — its like butter.

But overall, for me, I enjoyed the original better. The acting was better, the story was more coherent, and the special effects were good enough. During the first half hour of Superman Returns, I had a hard time even figuring out what was going on. The flashbacks were disjointed, with no real context that I could find to place me where I needed to be mentally to understand what had been happening over the last five years.

I thought Brandon Routh did an excellent job in the role of Superman, but I think for me thats more because he totally reminded me of Christopher Reeve. I couldn’t stand this Lois Lane at all, but I can’t put my finger on why. Kevin Spacey was excellent, as usual.

If I were you, I would wait for this one to come out on DVD. Its a cool movie to watch, but if I had it to do over again, I don’t think I would pay todays movie prices to watch it. If you want a great Superman movie, go back to the original Superman - The Movie (ignore the two or three sequels, they sucked too). I think that movie was the definitive Superman movie and still stands the test of time.

Ribfest 2006 in Naperville

We hit Ribfest again this year in Naperville. This year, REO Speedwagon was the headlining band. Consequently, all the 80’s heads (us included) came to see the show and the festival wound up selling out for the third time since its inception.

There were three bands in total that played yesterday while we were there. The first band was called The Hacks. I enjoyed their set (it was a long one). The crowd was minimal at this point in the afternoon and there was plenty of space to walk around, or sit back and enjoy the music.

The second band was a band called Hello Dave. I really enjoyed these guys. They play country / blues / rock and mixed cover tunes with originals. I don’t think I heard one song I didn’t enjoy. I definitely want to look these guys up the next place they are playing and check them out again. During this set is when the crowd really started building up. Hello Dave played until around 7:00 or so.

Once Hello Dave finished is when the crowd really started building. It was literally impossible to get through the crowd at points to get back to your seat if you, say, had to make a bathroom run. People were packed so tight that there were rather large groups just looking for one little piece of free showing grass to set their blanket down and squeeze in for the show.

REO was scheduled to start at 8:00, but the band didn’t hit the stage until around 8:20p. It was really amazing to watch this sold out crowd and how into this band they are. Attending a show like this and watching the crowd that assembles when they play really shows what a huge impact this band had on the music scene in the 80’s. What surprised me was that even the younger kids knew the words to the songs.

The band also played a couple of songs from their upcoming album (due to be released in December or so). They were pretty good, and I might just pick up the album when it comes out. I thought the band put on a pretty good show.

Aside from hearing the songs that really were a staple on the radio during the 80’s (and there weren’t many REO songs that I didn’t like), the most fascinating thing for me through the whole thing was watching the crowd once the band came on the stage. I felt compelled to take as many pictures of how the crowd grew as I could, just to show what a draw this band still is after 30 years.

I’ve uploaded 88 photos from the event yesterday to the photo album. Some are family shots, many are of the crowd, and the rest are pictures of the band that we took from the overhead projection screen next to the stage. One of them is an interesting tattoo that Jonna noticed on a guy who later was quite happy to let me take a picture of it. The tattoo cracked me up.

Overall, the event was fun. I love going to see these bands that we liked so much in high school as they tour these festivals and watching how much people are still into them after all these years. Its a totally cool thing to watch.

Oh yeah, aside from the music, the ribs were pretty damn good too. I think we’ll definitely be heading out there again in 2007.

Book: The Real Frank Zappa Book

Over the last 6 months, I have been getting more and more addicted to the music of Frank Zappa. It would stand to chance then, that when I saw the book The Real Frank Zappa Book on a bookshelf in a local book store, I had to pick it up and leaf through it. As I leafed through it, it became pretty obvious that this is a book that I needed to sit down and read in depth.

The Real Frank Zappa Book is written by Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso and is, essentially, Franks autobiography in his words. He talks about growing up, his introduction to music, his first band, and his struggles with getting his music played by orchestras. Here’s the way Frank describes the book in the introduction:

I don’t want to write a book, but I’m going to do it anyway, because Peter Occhiogrosso is going to help me. He is a writer. He likes books — he even reads them. I think it is good that books still exist, but they make me sleepy.

The way we’re going to do it is, Peter will come to California and spend a few weeks recording answers to ‘facinating questions‘, then the tapes will be transcribed. Peter will edit them, put them on floppy discs, send them back to me, I will edit them again and that result will be sent to Ann Patty at Poseidon Press and she will make it come out to be a ‘A BOOK.‘

The style of this snippet above is a pretty good picture of the writing style of the book. It is a humorous and informative and covers all spans of Franks life from his childhood growing up in Maryland and Florida, where he was a pretty sickly child, to his first exposure to music in high school, through his attempts later in life to get his music recorded by orchestras.

The book not only gives you background on Franks life, but really gives you access to the unique outlook Frank had on life and music. Frank talks about the early days of recording, his outlook on musicians (”Very few people choose to play the bass … electric bassists are often failed guitar players, demoted to this duty after a band meeting in a garage when they were thirteen.”), and why guitarists have to do the “big solo” (he calls it “squirting”, which is, in Franks words, “end[ing] your solo by going up the scale, then grab that last note and repeat it as fast as you can.”).

Other subjects covered in the book:

The PMRC hearings in the 80’s, covered in the chapter “Porn Wars”
Failure (”Success is rare - thats why people get so cranked up about it.”)
Religion
Marriage
Parenthood
Touring

One of the great pieces of the book is when Frank talks about progress. As a matter of fact, he says that he’s been quoted as saying that “Progress is not possible without deviation [from the norm]“. I liked this quote so much that I have it hanging on the door of my office. Its one of many little nuggets you get out of reading this book.

This intimate look at Frank Zappa gave me the motivation to really start listening to the work he produced during his life (and there is a lot of it) and I have to say, I’m loving it. Franks work was different. His compositional ability, coupled with his use of humor and drive to be unique make his albums an absolute pleasure to listen to. The music is different, entertaining, and timeless.

Over the last few months I’ve bought no less than ten of his albums - and each one gives a different look into the mind of a genius. Each album documents a stage in his musical evolution. This book gives the reader a glimpse of Frank from a different angle, in his own words. I would highly recommend that you give it a read. You may not be a fan of his music, but theres no denying what an interesting guy Frank Zappa was. I’m sure this book only covers the tip of the iceberg, but theres enough here to keep you entertained and fascinated.

Alright, I’m going to stop rambling now and start listening to Have I Offended Someone?, my latest purchase from the iTunes Music Store.

Links

Movies: Hostel

Yesterday we went to see Hostel, a new “Quentin Tarantino Presents” film written and directed by Eli Roth.

I had not read anything on the film, so had no real expectations going in except for Tarantino’s name on the film. I’m a big fan, so I’ll basically go see anything his name is on. Aside from that, however; I knew nothing about the film at all, not even the basic story line. I would recommend you go into the movie the same way. If you have read any of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or other review sites, you might find that you know too much to be as shocked as I was and that in a vague way too much of the plot is given away, even on the non-spoiler sites.

Now, on to the movie. The movie is about two kids, Josh and Paxton, going to college who have decided to take a backpacking trip through Europe. Along the way they have befriended an Icelandic man named Oli and the three of them are making their way through the Hostels in Europe, in search of, you guessed it, getting high and getting lucky with European women. Josh has just broken up with his girlfriend, so Paxton and Oli are trying to get him hooked up with someone along the trip to help him forget his problems.

They go out one night in Amsterdam and wind up being out after curfew and cannot get into their Hostel. They are taken in by a guy who smokes some pot with them and tells them about a Hostel not on the usual maps where the women love American men and “will do anything for them”. This is enough to get the three trekking towards this off the map Hostel.

Once they get to the new Hostel and check in, they go to their room, which is shared with two women. They are invited by the women to go to the spa with the three women and begin to have a good time. The women are very “hospitable” and Josh and Paxton get lucky with their respective female roommate as Oli (”The King of Swing”) finds someone to hook up with as the night ends.

Then Oli disappears. Checking at the desk, the boys are told that he checked out early this morning. The boys are worried and try repeatedly to call and leave notes for Oli, but he doesn’t respond. They are shown a picture of him that has been taken showing he went off with the girl he met. The guys think this is weird, as he made no effort to let them know he was leaving — and the girls invite Paxton and Josh to go to the disco with them to distract them from their fear for their friend.

At this point in the movie, you are absolutely convinced that this movie is your typical “freaky homicidal maniac kidnapping and killing people” type of movie. It isn’t — not by a long shot — and that is all I’m going to tell you about the plot of the movie. The rest you just have to see for yourself.

Here’s what I will tell you. The twist of what this movie is actually about is on the order of the The Sixth Sense, but about 100 times more disturbing. As we were walking out of the theater I was completely quiet, trying to come to terms with what I had just witnessed. I have never seen a movie that I found this disturbing and that I had thought about so much after the ending credits had rolled.

So to get to the bottom line, here’s the review. The movie is totally worth seeing and I’d give it at least 3.5 stars on a scale of 4. Rotten Tomatoes currently shows a 69% fresh rating. I’d give it higher than that, as I think its definitely original and not the same recycled plot lines that you find in your typical horror movies. Its definitely unique and extremely disturbing. The movie is full of nudity and what seems like gratuitous violence. As the plot unwinds, however, the violence seems less gratuitous (at least it did to me) and necessary in order to communicate the gravity of the final destination of the plot line.

Normally, I enjoy watching horror movies with Kelsi. I would definitely sit down and watch Saw with her, another movie that I really enjoyed for its originality and total non-hollywood feel it had. I’ve yet to find a horror movie that I wouldn’t buy and sit down and watch with Kelsi if I liked it.

Until now. I don’t think I ever want to see this movie again. I don’t want to watch it, and I don’t want to own it when it comes out on DVD. I think it was a great movie, but the final destination of the plot line is something I never, ever want to see again — as it explores what I think is the darkest side of human nature and one that, quite frankly, I would rather kid myself that it doesn’t exist.

So for me, the movie was extremely satisfying, in a warped way. I finally hit my limit as to what I am willing to watch in a movie — but for different reasons that what I have experienced in the past. Normally, I am frustrated at wasting money on stupid plot lines or over produced special effects that are there for the sake of having the effects. I usually have a movie push the limits I have around feeling like I’ve wasted my time.

My limit here was completely different. This movie had an interesting plot, let you get to know the characters well enough to care about them and then pushed you right over the edge. The subject matter was such that it was real enough that it could possibly happen and yet so disturbing that you don’t want to think about the fact that it could actually happen, if that makes any sense. In some ways, I felt that the subject matter was just one of those things that should never be put on film, which is satisfying in and of itself.

I would definitely recommend that those who don’t find nudity and a lot of violence patently offensive actually go to see the film for the experience. I was pretty blown away by it.

Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel

I do not like what we today call Reality TV. You know, shows like Survivor, Big Brother, Wife Swap, and all of those shows like that. They are all fake and pretty much stupid.

I do, however, like TV about real stuff. Shows like Mythbusters, Cold Case Files, Biography, and shows like that. At times, I’m even enjoying Dog the Bounty Hunter. The best shows are shows in which you can learn something and still get a laugh out of them (Mythbusters is the role model for shows like that).

Andy has been telling Jonna and I about a show called Dirty Jobs that he thought was hilarious. At first we resisted watching it, thinking it was just another stupid reality show. We finally gave in over the last week and watched an episode.

This show is great. The host, Mike Rowe, is nothing short of hilarious. The premise of the show is that the host finds the dirtiest jobs that people do for a living, and attempts to do them on the show. In the episode we saw this week, he attempted to make a surfboard (dirtier than I thought it would be), harvest honey from bees (creeped Jonna out to no end), and clean a ’sludge tank’. During each of these tasks he was brilliantly funny, in a very dry way. We laughed all the way through the show.

If you are a Mythbusters fan, chances are you’ll love Dirty Jobs. Check it out (it’s on Tuesdays at 8pm CT) and leave comments up here telling me what you think.

Kelsi’s First Concert Review

In December of 1998, for Kelsi’s 8th birthday, I took her to see KISS as a birthday present. While I’m not sure if this is her first concert, I do know for a fact that it is the first concert she ever reviewed on the web. The way cool title graphic was “photoshopped” by dad.

As I was digging around today I found it and thought it was so cute that I had to resurrect it. I have to say, it’s not bad for an 8 year old!

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