My First Full Lotusphere session

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Woop Woop, I have my first full Lotusphere session! I will be presenting a Show ‘n’ Tell entitled “Write Better Java Code: Debugging, Logging, and Unit Tests” with the great Julian Robichaux, the master of openlog (a tool I use on every Domino app I write)

Anyway, quickly onto the point of this blog entry: After every conference’s sessions are announced there is the usual “it’s only the same set of people that get them each year” grumbles. However, 4 years ago I was not part of the Lotus community at all and this year I get to present properly at IBM’s leading collaboration event and scare the living shit out of myself in front of hopefully not too many people, so how?

  • I did my local LUG circuit (UKLUG & ILUG) which incuded rejections and one total cock up 🙁 .
  • I did LotusIdol last year (a year in which I purchased my own ticket).
  • I followed Gab Turtle’s guidelines on writing abstracts, then passed my attempts round to a couple of peers.This year I submitted 3 abstracts (2 joint) and got 1 session. Of the other 2, 1 had to be retracted due to time conflicts with my co-submitter, the other was a tad fringe and a bit of a gamble, but I may try it again on a LUG this year.

    Soooo, Lotusphere is not a closed shop, new people present each year, and I’m one of that lucky number.

Old Comments

Mark Myers(05/12/2011 23:43:48 GMT)

@joe and to a drink together after

Joe Litton(05/12/2011 23:38:36 GMT)

Your session last year (LotusIdol) was great. Looking forward to your session at LS12!!

Mark Myers(05/12/2011 23:36:29 GMT)

@David @Bruce thank you VERY much

Bruce(05/12/2011 23:34:42 GMT)

Mark – congratulations!!!!!!!! ROCK STAR

David Leedy(05/12/2011 23:22:15 GMT)

Congrats Mark! Looking forward to your session!

Mike McGarel(06/12/2011 00:43:22 GMT)

Congratulations!

Paul Withers(06/12/2011 00:11:20 GMT)

Congratulations, well deserved and a great topic. Looking forward to it

Mary Beth Raven(06/12/2011 03:44:29 GMT)

Congratulations!I volunteer to check all of your “bad grammer” 🙂 and I am sure you’ll do a great job because you’ll be speaking about a topic you know and that you feel passionate about. See you there. I volunteer to sit in first row and heckle you:)

Carl Tyler(06/12/2011 06:20:20 GMT)

Hard to believe its your first time. You’ll be great.

Mark Barton(06/12/2011 09:30:29 GMT)

Well done Mark – I know Java is a subject close to your heart.

Ben Poole(06/12/2011 08:12:29 GMT)

Congratulations old bean; LS won’t know what hit it! I wish I could be there to heckle.

Mark Myers(06/12/2011 07:50:36 GMT)

thank you every one, im sure Julian will be gentle with me

Mark Myers(06/12/2011 10:19:05 GMT)

@ben i wish you were there as well

@Mark same goes for you, it would be awesome

ChrisC(06/12/2011 13:17:27 GMT)

Congrats Mark – look forward to attending!

Mark Myers(06/12/2011 15:43:19 GMT)

thanks Chris, i better make it a good one

Vegan Katsu Curry 2nd Try

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

This is a refinement to Vegan Katsu Curry 1st Try to make it easier and less faff, this time we are killing the battered stuff and using pre fried or braised tofu from our local oriental shop (it costs about £1.40), just wash it with boiling water to get the oil off it, and after you have blended the curry mixture, slice it into bite size chunks and mix it in, much simpler 🙂

how alike are 2 strings

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Showing and ordering how alike strings are is something I have a use for nearly every week, from “name rationalisation” jobs in address books, through admin helper utilities to “did you mean?” on web sites, but I did not realise the best way has a proper name, its called Levensnshtein distance and is defined as:

“The Levenshtein distance between two strings is defined as the minimum number of edits needed to transform one string into the other ”

It is already built into apache commons String utils as “getLevenshteinDistance”

but here is a near complete list of implemlimentions for different languages, I include the Java one from that page below (in case the source page goes down)

public class LevenshteinDistance {
        private static int minimum(int a, int b, int c) {
                return Math.min(Math.min(a, b), c);
        }
        public static int computeLevenshteinDistance(CharSequence str1,
                        CharSequence str2) {
                int[][] distance = new int[str1.length() + 1][str2.length() + 1];
                for (int i = 0; i <= str1.length(); i++)
                        distance[i][0] = i;
                for (int j = 0; j <= str2.length(); j++)
                        distance[0][j] = j;
                for (int i = 1; i <= str1.length(); i++)
                        for (int j = 1; j <= str2.length(); j++)
                                distance[i][j] = minimum(
                                                distance[i - 1][j] + 1,
                                                distance[i][j - 1] + 1,
                                                distance[i - 1][j - 1]
                                                                + ((str1.charAt(i - 1) == str2.charAt(j - 1)) ? 0
                                                                                : 1));
                return distance[str1.length()][str2.length()];
        }
}

Yes its sad, so just go away and leave me to my string comparisons 😉

Hearing it again, out with the old in with the new

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Its funny how history repeats its self, I was listening to the Grails Podcast 122 and listening to the netflix boys describing their working enviroment and the features they used, these include

  • Rapid Application Deployment (Groovy and Grail’s)
  • Everybody building apps all over the place
  • Timed jobs (Quartz)
  • Shared infrastructure (AWS)
  • None Relational Data storage (simpleDB and Cassandra)It sounds as if they are really getting stuff done and making things work for them and growing all the time with the best they can get hold of, I have heard this before, last time was in the heyday of lotus notes.Draw you own conclusions.but mine are:
  • If you think your way is the best and only way, then you have not looked around in the last 5 mins.
  • Always look to grow and change, treat it as fun rather than a challenge.

Old Comments

Jerry Carter(06/04/2011 17:02:05 GDT)

+1 esp. facing change. learned just this week that crutches can be used to turn off lights, activate the power lock toggle on the car door, as a temporary door stop and to entertain children. Oh, and keep weight off a blown out hip.

More in line with this post though, some of the concepts that have come along in the past ten years really make what we already know how to use more useful if we’re willing to take the time to understand and embrace them, even if only for the duration of a single project.

Mark Myers(06/04/2011 21:45:23 GDT)

sage words Jerry sage words!!

New Anime Series- Fate Zero

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

First Episode Review for: Fate Zero

Summary : Once in a generation the holy grail descends to earth to grant a single wish, Magus and their mystic servants fight for that wish (sort of like tag team highlander)

Animation : Good and detailed with particular reference to the excellent integration between the CGI and Normal animation which is a rarity, also the female eyes are very good in this series

Plot Potential: Competition/tournament plots are always well done in animes, and this has a much darker edge to it that the original fate stay night, on a side note as an Englishman I find it great when another nations mangle our countrys legends, I mean we do it enough to every other country so turn about is fair play

Characters: Amazingly lots of full formed characters appear in just one episode, there is no wasted time on this process and no fluff in the anime

Music: Nothing amazing but nice and mystic

Reminds me of: Again, go and watch the original Fate stay Night (there seem to be a lot of twists on an original series being released at the moment)

Overall: As enjoyable as the first series but a good deal darker and with far more intent in the lead fighters (rather than just bumbling though life), one to watch

Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime’s that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!