Blog redirects

Although it's been this way awhile, as "official" notice, this blog has been retired, with new technical posts to be published at http://redditech.blog

My personal blog posts would be published at http://blog.redditech.com but that's mostly non-technical posts for those interested in what I do outside the tech universe.

Thanks for reading!

- Nissan

Job hunting once more...

On my last post I was announcing the launch of GigJunkie's new website, the culmination of several months' gruelling effort by the team and I to deliver a brand new experience for the avid live music fan through a social network. The global recession has sadly led to me no longer being part of that team, as such is the case sometimes with startups.
I still maintain a great relationship with all the guys there, and will continue to celebrate with them the results of their continued hard work. However that means that I now am job hunting once again.


For those who might be interested in learning more about me and the services I might offer, please refer to my CV online or look out for me on Twitter, I'm @nissandookeran.


While I had hopes for continuing to work the UK, my scenario as a non-EU citizen is making this option quite unrealistic so far. Certain visa changes have occurred in the last few months that have restricted my ability to continue working here in the UK without an employment sponsor. While this is normal in most countries, the process is also particularly long and complex for the UK, and is actually discouraging many employers from getting the right people into their businesses that will keep them innovative and lean in a time of recession if those people aren't from the EU.


Personally, I found the change very short sighted on the part of those who implemented it, since those hard working non-EU folks like me who don't have a Master's degree or Doctorate but do actually have significant leadership and work experience and can contribute to positive growth in a time of recession can no longer do so easily.


The wonderful thing for me, and what keeps me going, is that by being a software developer in a world driven by technology, geographic boundaries are secondary when it comes to pursuing my dream to simply make great things happen in my field of passion, with others who share that passion. I still strive daily to find those great technology teams to join, contribute to, or lead, no matter what country they lie in.

GigJunkie's new improved website launched, check it out!

For several months the team at GigJunkie and I have been working on making massive improvements to the GigJunkie website, with a strong focus on improving our users' experiences with it.
I am proud to say that the team has just launched the live version of the new, improved GigJunkie website, and I invite you to check out many of its cool features.

Some of the (geeky and non-geeky) features which I am particularly proud of are:
1. The Gigs calendar. On the Gigs main page there is a calendar that lets you drill down quickly into a specific day's events. If you sign in or register with GigJunkie this calendar and page becomes even smarter and more powerful as a future gigs listing tool, highlighting days with either your gigs only or those of your friends and favourite artists and venues included. There's even an option to have GigJunkie recommend gigs for you, based either on the geographic area you entered as your hometown during registration, or searching throughout the UK for all gigs.

2. Better search experience. The search experience has been totally revamped, and now lets you search the blog as well when you're looking for your hot gig tidbits. If you've got a friend on GigJunkie you'll now be able to search for this friend's username on GigJunkie as well, and if you're already logged in, this will make adding them as your friend on GigJunkie so much easier.

3. Rate your favourite photos or reviews. If you're logged in, all photos and reviews are open for you to rate, just click the thumbs up (gig it) or thumbs down (junk it) buttons. The best rated reviews will pop up as featured reviews on our main page, and guess what, that review could be yours if the GigJunkies all say they love it!

4. Microformats abound. Each page is not only now well-formed HTML, but also embedded inside each are  microformats.  These little chunks of semantic markup are what make a search engine's or other computer program's job of understanding the context of the data we've published much easier. The microformats we chose to make most use of are hCard, hCalendar and hReview.
Tools such as Oomph for Internet Explorer and Operator and Tails for Firefox will help you exploit these if as a traditional GigJunkie you're feeling the urge to step up your game to the Power-GigJunkie level.
If you're like me and got a bit of hacker/techie in you, these microformats embedded throughout the site are the way I would actually use the data on the website in my own mash-up.

5. Geo tags (where possible). All gigs, venues and photos are geo-tagged with the geo microformat whenever the information was available to us to publish. While the team didn't have time to exploit this cool stuff fully yet, what this does mean is that anyone who wishes to build a mashup using geo-location type goodness can do so on GigJunkie's massive listing of gigs as a source of data.

6. GigJunkie's twitter feed. While this has been on the GigJunkie blog for some time, it's now been brought into the main page. The GigJunkie founders often scour our own gigs listings as they come in to find hot gig deals, and if you're on Twitter and find one that isn't mentioned or have some inside scoop you'd like to share with the world, send a tweet with an @gigjunkie mention and once it's legit these guys will be sure to RT (retweet) it for you on our main page (with attribution to you as the originator of course).

7. Last but not least, all our content is under a Creative Commons license, which allows anyone who's got an inkling of hacker culture to take the site data, mash it up, and re-use it for their own commercial or non-commercial purposes, all you have to do is attribute GigJunkie and the website as the source of your data.

There are many more cool features in the site now, I've just scratched the surface by mentioning the ones I'm particularly proud of having contributed to. I'm sure the guys will mention their own favourites in the GigJunkie blog, but why wait for them to? Check out the site yourself, send some feedback (there's a feedback button on every page) and let us know what you like, what you don't like, and what's missing that you would like to see on the site.
And from me personally, congrats to my team at GigJunkie on the great new website's launch!

Learning from StackOverflow.com

Great software developers know how to write code very well. Great business entrepreneurs know their target niche communities very well.

When the guy behind JoelOnSoftware.com and FogBugz announced StackOverflow.com I knew it would be an instant hit because his talks and blog posts consistently show him knowing not one but both of these things very well.

Here Joel Spolsky gives a talk on building StackOverflow.com, where his continued mastery of these two talents shines, since his talk is non-technical, but gives insights into both user behavior goals and techical decision pointers.

His video should also be a reminder to all just how high he's set the bar on communications ability for collaborators of projects on both sides of this fence. I will often revisit this video since I think these could be considered best practices to encouraging building a strong community-driven site for both the entrepreneur looking to start a new user-based community website as well as the great software developers who intend to build it.
By watching his talk alone I can see he knows the keys to bridging the communication gaps that often exist between these two sides of the 'I have an idea for a great website' coin. I hope one day as well to have learnt to be such a person gifted with Joel's rare talent. For now though, thanks Joel for this shared jewel of knowledge mentorship to me and the community.

Git For Version Control - Why Choosing It Can Define You And Your Team As Developers

The first question one usually asks if one hasn't been exposed it is why use version control software?
My first experience with version control within a team environment was just after I came off a project where two other developers and myself were unable to deliver a first cut of a project because each of us developed in our own way and style, and we just could not get many, many ownership and integration issues worked out in time. I then joined a team that used Sourgear Vault for version control. and where several ground rules placed by our Technical Architect ensured that all code was checked in at the end of every day, and that builds were made automatically on commits. Breaking the build was a big no-no, and the incentive to keep to this was that if someone broke the build, they bought everyone lunch that day, a nice rule which cost me a bit at first in terms of free BK for folks at my expense, but paid itself back nicely in terms of disciplining me to check my code and my tests more thoroughly before committing.

This also gave immediate benefits to me in that not only did I become a better programmer because my code was being constantly checked to ensure I did not break the build, but it also allowed for easier reviewing by my team to ensure adherence to good design patterns, no implementation of anti-patterns or unwarranted hacks, and an adherence to accepted coding standards. For the team it also meant that integration of various components in the project happened much eariler and frequently. Learning from each other's own hacks and best practices also happened much more often, and frequently.

As a single or lone developer, I would also recommend version control as features such as 'code-revert' means quickly 'righting the wrongs' of horrible coding efforts where the neat organised project you started with several hours earlier became strands of spaghetti code you wish you could throw out with yesterdays leftovers.

Recently I came across a video on YouTube about Git by Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux. After watching it and playing around with Git myself, I find it personally appealling to my style of development as I find myself to now be a more mature developer, but still wishing to work closely with younger developers who may be very talented but not have had as many best practice habits in team development ingrained in them.

The key point of this version control system is the term 'distributed' There are no branches, there is no central repository, things common in all systems I met before such as Vault, Team Foundation Server, CVS and Subversion. Instead, every member of the team has his/her own copy of a starting point in the system, and one may choose to include submissions by team members to all to update their own copy of the project system, or not.

In a mentoring-friendly environment of software development I think this can be most effective to training junior developers, as code reviews can be more real time and one-on-one with anyone, from a peer to the lead technical architect. This is not to discount the team dynamics, full team code reviews are great for experienced developers, but for me required a bit of a thick skin as my coding practices are open to a barrage of public, sometimes undiplomatic, feedback from everyone on my team at once. Developers are passionate about their code and coding practices, and so peer code reviews can get a bit heated at times.

With Git, I can see more interaction happening with just as much passion, as well as growth, for a junior developer as a technical architect or senior team member walks through one-on-one with them why certain submissions they make to the technical architect's repository won't make the grade and be included in their build, at least, not yet.

One thing that is great about this is that ownership is so clear here. In this case, the project will be delivered via one person's copy of the project, probably the technical architect or project delivery lead. This ensures ownership is directly attributed, so that in the case of a technical architect code reviews HAVE happened, and no unfixed results of previous code reviews are present.

I missed getting in to today's Open Space Coding so I haven't gotten a 'real world' test with Git yet, but hopefully soon I'll find an opportunity to experiment with it, either at work or on a pet project of my own.

Wolfram Alpha - How it stacks up against Google

WolframAlpha launched at 7pm CST yesterday, against much Twitter hype. If it wasn't tweeted by Peter Kim I probably would not have been interested in yet another search engine claiming to have Googly potential. I went through the WolframAlpha demonstration video, and my interest peaked. After having used it a bit with several adhoc as well as recommended search terms, I realise that, as a database of intentions, WolframAlpha is still a very young infant in the search business, albeit an infant with a potentially high IQ.

One example that started me on this unscientific evaluation was the search for 'Universities near Hounslow, UK', something a little generic, but still near-enough to natural language to be human readable and express the intention of my search. Given the video demo and instructions on the site, it also gave the impression that WolframAlpha would make mince meat of this search. It was very sad to see that it again gave me a 'Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input' screen.
Modifying the search to include a more popular location, 'Universities near Cambridge' resulted in a similar screen. By comparison, Google's seach result returned a mini-map from Google Maps with several univerisities listed, along with their names as website addresses. WolframAlpha failed this search 'litmus test' whereas Google shined brightly.
The second test used was 'September 11, 2001.' Indeed, under noteable events WolframAlpha did list 'World Trade Center destroyed' as one of its results, the result I was searching for. Google, by comparison also had the wikipedia entry for that sad day as its first link. Good litmus test results for both, nice!
A search for a more obscure date of 'September 14, 1979' produced more useful information in WolframAlpha though, since information on a noteable event was there, and the relevancy of its statistical information like moon-phase and sunrise/sunset times seemed a little more appropriate to the possible intention of the search. By comparison Google's relevancy ranking was a bit off to my intention, with links to an archived issue of Science Magazine being its first choice result. 'All technology stories on 14th September 1979 in the Guardian UK' was in the top ten results still around number 5, so still not too far off, given the obscure nature of the search and my unspecific intention with this search.
The tie-breaker for me was using a not-too-popular but still known date, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's birthday of 20 February 1951. Here Google floundered, the Wikipedia link to Gordon Brown was listed in the top 10, but was not number one. By comparison, in WolframAlpha's Noteable Events listing Gordon Brown's birthday was listed, along with actor Edward Albert. The Edward Albert birthday was a result that was NOT in Google's top ten search, but did seem to have a strong relevance to search intention that Google missed, even though it was not my search intention. This is a toss-up, but given my opinion that the intention of a search for a date would be noteable events. Given the missing of Edward Albert's birthday from the test results, I'm not sure if Google passed this litmus test.
One nitpick is that WolframAlpha's noteable events listing is always a bit of scroll down the page, the first result was actually the time difference from today. This is probably a tribute to its Mathematica underpinnings, since it is billed as more of a number-cruncher and statistical analyser than a relevancy-finder, which is more Google's forte.
The final litmus test I used was two stocks, 'MSFT AAPL'. That's Microsoft and Apple's stock names, for those unaware. Here WolframAlpha did work as advertised, bringing up very relevant information about each company, and a 'optimal portfolio return' for each. By comparison, Google continuously listed links to stock alerts for each from the previous day's trading. One additional result that came in with Google was an article from May 1st this year on 'What Microsoft Can Learn From Apple', something that may not have been my intention, but was still relevant, and a good link to me, as a business reader. If I were a stock analyst though, I'm not sure how I would have reacted. Both guys passed this litmus test, however where Google offered variety, WolframAlpha offered more purposeful computational knowledge.
However, this should not say WolframAlpha is a Google-killer (yet). Searches for less mathematically formulated queries, such as my name, or 'Ratio of Men To Women in London' seemed to confuse WolframAlpha's supposedly powerful natural language interpreter, just as my initial 'Universities in Hounslow, UK' search did. Google, on the other hand, had no problem understanding it, and directing the results of my search to the intention, which was the national statistics site for the UK.
So although the score so far seems to lead to WolframAlpha being gifted in quite a few ways, it still has a long way to go to even start to be in Google's league. I don't think is quite WolframAlpha's mission yet to be the successor to Google's crown as search engine king, but it should be the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) of all search engines anyway.
As I write this, Google actually links 'BHAG' directly to the Wikipedia article on it, whereas WolframAlpha thought I was asking about somewhere in Pakistan. I guess that just reinforces my conclusion, that if you follow the script given, WolframAlpha works decently, however as a database of intentions, WolframAlpha has a long way to go still to reach the Google standard.

Presentation on Improving Web Applications - User Experience and Styles

After a few design sessions today everyone on the team walked away feeling very accomplished, except me. In the pit of my stomach I felt quite the opposite, and though it could have been the flu that I am still recovering from, I needed to be sure that we were not suffering from blissful ignorance and hence getting ourselves into serious trouble when it came to pending estimations we are about to do regarding work we intend to complete in upcoming sprints.

This is around the time any good team member should ask for a health check, but in this case there are no ground rules established so far within the team for health checking designs, so the effectiveness of one is questionable. For effective health checks to happen, the ground rules for analysis of materials for formulating the health weighting have to exist, and be understood and agreed to by all participating.

So I built this presentation based firstly on research into the ground rules used by two leaders in design and development, Google and Apple, and using my own past experience as a web developer to help build it.

I hope it helps teams using it (including ours) ask the right questions that setup good, iterative health checks for improving web applications.