General Musing

I remember first using Spotify and needing to create an account using an UK based proxy and setting the proxy in the configuration settings. Since then the service has changed some. Ironically I only got back into Spotify when my father asked me about it – we has set up for him and he wondered why it didn’t work any more. I too had forgotten about the proxy settings. After I ran the update and set it up for him to work I went on to install it on my own laptop.

^{Spotify Adoption Europe}

A couple of weeks earlier a colleague, who is a paid up subscriber, asked a group of colleagues to name artists we thought would not be in Spotify. Naturally having a hipster as a friend paid off and I was able to name a number of artists which Spotify did not have in its collection, a hipster colleague was also able to name a couple. In good hipster/geek fashion we ridiculed him.

Between you and me I like Spotify, and lament the start up issues they have had in the US. Based on the service offered – and from the articles I’ve read in Wired and some other sources – I am positive about the possibilities it has to offer with its Freemium model.

Spotify will launch in the US sometime in July.

Image source: SimplyZesty (logo), International Federation of the Phonographic Industry & Wired (graph)

I use bittorrent, in fact I use bittorrent often enough that I look for methods to gains extra seeders and extra peers so I can get the object of my obsession quicker. I also like sharing items, with torrent that would mean I go to the relevant torrent sites and announce the creation of a download by uploading a torrent file which contains a reference to my file on my computer. As I have often stated I am also lazy, which means that I would like to get things into the hands of others with the minimal amount of effort.

I have taken the time to read some of the specifications of bittorrent – I wouldn’t call myself an expert – and discovered that it is possible to add trackers to a torrent file and even if those trackers didn’t originally contain a reference, in the form of an info_hash key, to the torrent they will be registered with the tracker. Which saves me some time when seeding files.

So I did a little experimentation yesterday and created a list of trackers which would automatically pick up the file. Naturally I searched for existing files, which include well known trackers using various torrent sites, after collating the list and removing the duplicates I created torrent files containing these lists and added the torrent trackers to the files. And waited for the trackers to pick up the file. Which trackers listed below did, you might recognize PRQ which is a free speech haven in Sweden.

To my disappointment the torrents where not listed on the torrent sites who’s trackers picked them up. So the next step is to discover which trackers, not listed below, will pick up and publish the torrent finding it in a web spider. The torrents can be found in trackerlist – 20110618.torrent and trackerlist – 20110619.torrent, the last one being seeded only by this link (private on pastebin).

Pure Trackers: Read the rest of this entry »

I recently made myself a map of terms I had found related to J2EE. Most of these items aren’t completely unknown to me, and this list is far from complete.

– Denotes the definition of the anagram abbreviation

Image source: Java Logo – Wikimedia; J2EE Mind Map – me

You wouldn’t be reading this if it wasn’t for Trumpet Winsock, after my initial use of Bulletin Boards in the early days of the internet it was thanks to the ISP Netland and Trumpet Winsock that I first arrived on the net. Being a snotty nosed kid I quite happily used shareware programs without a thought to the writers, let alone paying for it. I well remember the joy that this tool brought to me, although the rest of the internet may not be too happy about it.

I was sad to hear that Peter Tattam, the writer of Trumpet Winsock, got very little for the most widely used piece of shareware software^[1]. So now is the time to set it right by paying the fee you should have originally paid using PayPal: [email protected]

Thanks all… I had honestly thought the Internet had forgotten about me.
–Peter Tattam

Image source: Imperial College London

When in 2000 Philips Research first announced their development of e-paper I was very excited I went as far as to investigate what would be needed to attach a microcomputer which could attach to the e-paper and create a real electronic NewsPaper. I got a microcomputer manufacturer, who gave me an option of including bluetooth so data could be transferred via a mobile device and was willing to integrate the e-paper. The specification that Philips had announced for the e-paper were not completely clear regarding the integration of the device, and we didn’t consider this to be too big an issue. And a friend had already been working on a mobile payment system, which I wanted to use. I even had a large content provider willing to fund a possible a PoC.

The specifications for the device contained:

• Mobile ARM processor
• some MBs storage
• some MBs memory
• USB
• BlueTooth using PDA Sync or Serial Port (COM1) with Data Transfer

The microcomputer was able to run a 2.4 linux kernel, with all of the hardware supported by the kernel. The only thing I would be required to do is write a driver for the e-paper, which I didn’t consider rocket science. The only real issue might have been battery-life, although the specification for the e-paper had extremely low power requirements.

Innocent as I was I thought that Philips Research would be overjoyed to have somebody ask them to produce a prototype with no cost to them. They didn’t even reply to my repeated mails.

You might know TinyChat as one of the placed where 4chan hangs out, this is not the only thing that it’s known for.

Yesterday one of my little demons told me that the creator of TinyChat had quit his day job and was focussing on the development of TinyChat. I was wondering how accurate that was until I looked at the CrunchBase profile and the company itself. It looks as if they have gotten 1.5 million in funding from a number of sources, which means that this is quite possibly accurate.

For those who are interested, they are looking for a developer.

Image source: TinyChat

No, it’s not just another p2p/file sharing program. Forban is a local network p2p program, it’s meant for replicating ANY file to computers in the immediate proximity without requiring the Internet. As it is has a narrow focus on the local network it can also be used for Personal Area Networks consisting of laptop’s and mobile devices. I have yet to be able to install python on my digital camera, but I’m sure that this will be possible in the future.

It can be run in two modes, gossip and epidemic. Gossip mode, uses the gossip protocol to spread the files by disseminating the data the peer has to a random peer. Epidemic mode is similar to a real virus epidemic, spreading the files rapidly from one Forban server to another. Like any p2p network it requires that there are others running for it to communicate with, these can be intermittently connected to the network, whether it be a mobile device which comes into proximity of the LAN/PAN or a laptop.

It uses HTTP, and I doubt that adding authenticated HTTPS would be much of an issue once the PKI infrastructure is in place. This would make it ideal for rapidly sharing or backing up data without user interaction when you get to the office. And as it requires little user interaction, and with authenticated HTTPS this service can be left running in the background with minimal risk of the wrong people getting their hands on the data.

Forban is an old French word for pirate.

Part 1 of Mobile Monday can be found here.

Initially Ben van der Burg‘s presentation using DiskSlideJockey failed, so Ville Versterinen presented ShadowCities, which I discuss here. Ben’s discussion centered on the disappearance of Story Telling, and the creation of Emotelling and the pornofication of the story. Lastly Ben Scott-Robinson of We Love Mobile proposed the exact opposite and discussed how important story and narrative are to getting your message accross.

I was forwarded the link to In Synch, a tool which will calculate the Language Style Matching for two pieces of text.

“[In Synch] determines the degree to which any two samples of language are similar in their language styles. It can be most helpful in analyzing two sides of the same conversation.”

All that is needed are two writing examples – instant messages, text chats, text messages, transcribed conversations or other writing samples – with a minimum of 50 words for each the language style can be analyzed and a score can be calculated. The scoring is from 0.50 – 1.00, so the closer you are to 1.00 the more in synch you are with the author.

Possible uses for this could be verification that a piece of written text is from an author. And in combination with text-to-speech and speech analysis this could lead to an additional factor which could be used in authentication.

I’m sure you’ve had the feeling on the last day of the Sprint that the way it went was awful:

• build environments broken for
• User Stories were badly estimates
• team members who had troubles
• team members were stressed about completing their User Stories
• new team member
• Project Owner wasn’t available
• not enough story points completed
• User Stories left uncompleted
• etc.

Let me put you out of your misery, it was worse than you think. As the Scrum Master you probably feel bad, just think how your team feels. Like you they are now possibly demotivated and doubting themselves, and however much it was their and your fault it is now your task as Scrum Master to help get your team back on track.

Who’s going to motivate me?
–Anonymous Scrum Master

To answer that question you must realize that only you can motivate you, and that goes for your team too. Your task is not to motivate them, but to facilitate them to motivate and trust themselves and each other. There are many methods which can be used to achieve this, and I invite to to explore these to motivate yourself so you can motivate your team to become the best Scrum team.

Read more articles on Agile, SCRUM or XP…

Now it’s up to you and the team to align the team to the next Sprint, and complete the next Sprint with a win.

Basics About Employee Motivation (Including Steps You Can Take)

Image source: Jerry Wong