tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86746422364217752202024-03-13T18:07:15.004-05:00HAATHappiness As A TraitVladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-80134704834949185932014-03-01T21:00:00.000-06:002014-03-01T22:52:02.326-06:00OSX analog of the *nix 'watch' utilityOSX does not have a watch utility. Yes, it can be easily simulated using the while loop:
while true; do ls -l logfile.txt; sleep 5; done
I found that having a function for that purpose in the .bash_profile is more convenient. Additionally it timestamps new and weeds out repetitive output. Adjust to your taste:
function lg(){
prev=""
while true
do
curr="$($* 2>&1)"
if [ "${Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-29460997916517577272013-11-04T10:30:00.000-06:002013-12-10T12:00:54.736-06:00Version info and enforced commitsOne of prerequisites to successfully operate multiple software servers is to have a good production code inventory. Read an excellent example of an impact of a failed software inventory if you have any doubts about it. Below is some guidance for building software with inventory data compiled in to the code. It provides running systems with data needed for factual inventory. It also has a benefit Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-62237774215325885722013-08-19T22:00:00.000-05:002013-11-28T21:32:36.252-06:00On justice in BhutanWhile in Bhutan, we naturally happened to compare crime in Bhutan and Western societies when talking to locals, and then switched to how communities deal with criminals. Apparently in Bhutan courts encourage local, "communal" conflict resolution for non-violent issues. This is more than a judicial attitude nuance.
As far as I understand, any society has some people demonstrating deviant Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-42115411025587597512013-03-04T10:00:00.000-06:002013-04-14T19:56:46.307-05:00Patent-less information technology / what is your jobIt seems that patent systems frustrate more and more people in information technology these days. From what I hear so far mostly patent holders, enforcers, their more aggressive practices, and abuse of intent of law are blamed for the trend.I think there is another side of the story. Here is the foundation of my reasoning:An invention patent is an exchange in it's core. A society promises an Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com1Chicago, IL, USA41.8781136 -87.62979819999998241.4995131 -88.275245199999986 42.256714099999996 -86.984351199999978tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-23228962314393883022013-02-25T09:50:00.000-06:002013-04-14T20:13:12.742-05:00Data Science as a scienceFor some time I felt unsatisfied every time going to the Wikipedia article on Data Science, a canonical Radar article and some other sources about Data Science. It does not feel, that there are any actual definitions of the term "Data Science". We see more descriptions of what Data Science includes, requires, or produces. Most of those seem to have a healthy dose of marketing or job security Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com0Chicago, IL, USA41.8781136 -87.62979819999998241.499532099999996 -88.275245199999986 42.2566951 -86.984351199999978tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-5883356339762633032013-01-31T10:00:00.000-06:002013-03-05T10:38:50.244-06:00Compensation components and other terminologyThe way I think of financial interactions between an enterprise and an employee is relatively simple. It has six components, which come together for a total package, if we put other benefits, like pensions, insurance, tuition, and similar aside for now. But before defining them, let me define three time horizons for the purpose of this discussion:short-term - time comparable with the enterprise'sVladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-16367839491709893612012-10-25T10:00:00.000-05:002013-03-06T08:33:11.067-06:00IT Architects in bonus-driven organisationsOver years I observed people being excited and disappointed when approaching IT architecture efforts in mid-size (under 500-600 people) bonus-driven organizations. I can not recall one instance, where a forethought architecture allowed a continuous effort to survive - and continue to extract value from past efforts - for more than three years. Even when business environment was relatively stable,Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com0Chicago, IL, USA41.8781136 -87.62979819999998241.499532099999996 -88.275245199999986 42.2566951 -86.984351199999978tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-81711845035933995172012-09-30T10:00:00.000-05:002015-06-21T17:20:07.550-05:00Cross your "tee"In dealing with bash scripts we often need to troubleshoot a data pipeline. Many times I saw injecting tee utility into the pipeline as means to copy data into a log file. Often those tee calls are left behind - as it seem innocuous. It is a pass-through, changes nothing, right?Not necessarily so. Look at the way we write pipelines:producer | tee file.log | consumerThe fact that producer sends Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09627044484992792275noreply@blogger.com0Chicago, IL, USA41.8781136 -87.62979819999998241.499532099999996 -88.275245199999986 42.2566951 -86.984351199999978tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-29051964972296659042012-04-02T22:56:00.000-05:002013-02-25T14:56:32.800-06:00Should consumer privacy be a regulated issue?Feels like the recent criticism of Google's unified privacy policy is a misplaced focus. The controversy centers on company, while it should focus on practice. There are three new problems with large media companies:
Ecosystems are too big to ignore
Commercial ecosystems on internet become big and unavoidable by definition of their success. It is important, as there are more and more professionsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-4614345639238940642012-02-20T23:18:00.000-06:002012-04-03T21:24:52.484-05:00Parameters for setTimeout payload (JavaScript)A step in building an implementation of Conway's Game of Life with my son - make the game turns going on the web page. What is not obvious for him yet is why it is important to avoid global objects to feed as parameters to setTimeout function or just keep around. But it can be done - easily:var game = function(times, interval){
game.times = times;
game.interval = interval;
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-69611981719982322912012-01-31T22:29:00.000-06:002013-03-24T21:31:48.058-05:00NodeJS: install oddball tarballs with NPMIt is useful at times to install a head version of a module or a branch which is not in the npm.js repository. No big deal, if the module hosted on github.com. Npm can install from tar files available over http, and Github allows simple URL acces to tarballs.The UI process: go to the repository of your choice, click on Code and select a branch. Otherwise go to Tags or Downloads on the right side Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-12075071948743206392011-12-26T03:21:00.000-06:002013-11-02T00:06:27.244-05:00Calculate created files' sizeQuick note to self on calculating cumulative size of regular files created in a certain timeframe:
find . -type f -a \( ! -ctime +6 \) -a -ctime +5 \
-a -xdev -a -exec du -b \{\} \; |
cut -f1 -s |
( sz=0; while read fsz; do sz=$((${sz}+${fsz})); done; echo ${sz} )
In the example above it will add up sizes of files updated between 5 and 6 days ago. Mac OSX users remove the -b option.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-15689783156504789752011-06-15T15:53:00.001-05:002011-08-28T22:35:27.191-05:00To ask or not to askWhile Marina waits for eel to be skinned in a Chinatown shop, Dennis contemplates by the store's frog tank:- I wonder, if Marina may cook that frog...- (me) Ask her.- Oh, no, she will cook it!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-24630412975090235702011-04-01T23:00:00.003-05:002011-04-02T07:09:19.992-05:00Questions about nuclear power industry impactIt would be interesting to learn about studies answering some questions I did not find answers to:
What is the environmental and human impact of the whole supply chain for nuclear energy, not just the power plants? That would include warehousing, transportation, waste disposal.
Most statistics about industrial influence on human life focus on the immediate mortality and length of life. It Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-30445017711975743672011-04-01T22:00:00.049-05:002011-04-02T11:35:10.047-05:00Seth's Blog post: The triumph of coal marketingThe Seth's Blog post: The triumph of coal marketing raises interesting questions. Mr.Godin positions the questions as marketing ones. Overall I understood the general thought flow of his post as:
(a) The graphic allows to experience the perception bias against the nuclear power industry. (b) It is nothing but coal industry's marketing, which moved public perception against the nuclear power Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-40096664991555362892011-02-07T12:50:00.001-06:002011-02-07T12:51:51.046-06:00About notes on document-oriented NoSQL by Curt MonashI feel that couple observations need to be added to the Notes on document-oriented NoSQL by Curt Monash.
MongoDB does not store JSON documents, but rather JSON-style documents - specifically BSON (http://bsonspec.org/). It has important performance benefits for mostly numeric flexible-schema stores (read - health and social statistics, finance). Effectively the data does not need to serialize Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-46502673758235003022010-12-25T07:41:00.007-06:002010-12-25T16:18:48.839-06:00Question to GoogleDear Madam or Sir,
As of today, Dec. 25, 2010, the Google Terms of Service in paragraph 8.3 seems to allow Google to censor the content provided by users. It does not have a reference to overriding documents.
My concern is about email usage. Also as of today, Gmail's terms do not touch on the issue and in fact refer back to that same document which seems to allow censorship.
Does that mean that Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-50433144216476220052010-09-12T21:00:00.003-05:002010-09-12T21:05:03.669-05:00Meta-creation, anyone?Why some religions are so anti-evolution? Would not God which created (programmed) such simple and cool evolution rules be cool? Kinda, meta-creation-cool? I mean, that may move dogma a bit, but it may actually win some extra friends, would not it?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-24245736843381220432010-09-10T22:03:00.010-05:002010-09-10T22:32:56.083-05:00Pain Ray from RaytheonThe NPR story on the Raytheon device followed today the ongoing ACLU reporting and the specific coverage of the terrible invention.
Very, horribly bad development. Patching the result, not the root cause of the problem - and deteriorating the society in process. The device's safety is absolutely unclear. We are still convinced that microwaving eye's cornea to 2/3 of it's depth is a bad thing. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-20909347418222298012010-08-31T22:52:00.007-05:002015-04-07T20:25:00.767-05:00Locking daemons in bashNOTE: Scripts in this post were tested in CentOS release 5.3, Ubuntu 14.04 and may not work in other Unix dialects. For example, flock(1) utility is absent from OS X 10.6.TL;DRShell scripts designed to have only one copy running often require manual clean-up after an ungraceful shutdown or process crash. This solution provides a "self-cleaning" alternative. The full example script is posted on Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-62041663078710449172010-07-02T12:49:00.004-05:002013-04-14T18:55:09.375-05:00Introducing DB RelayDB Relay is an open source project built around the NGiNX web server platform, providing an HTTP/JSON interface to a variety of database servers. It enables database access without drivers and web application development without middleware. Designed for operational efficiency and ease of maintenance. In this session we will introduce DB Relay and show how to deploy and use it for back-end Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-72428697938900034442010-05-23T10:21:00.007-05:002010-05-23T12:22:00.891-05:00If Code is Law ...Does it mean, that:
customers→electorate
users→constituency
developers→legislative branch
testers→judicial branch
operations→executive branch
help desk→law enforcement
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-82001627165259872112010-03-18T21:00:00.010-05:002010-04-24T13:16:12.637-05:00Square display
When it comes to convenient display hardware I have always been perplexed with the absence of square displays.
When per pixel cost in the past was dis-proportionally high, companies would naturally try to maximize usability of one dimension while saving a buck on another. That lead to such inflexible solutions as rotating displays and ugly L-shaped dual display setups.
These days, when pixel Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-23096045218623219832010-03-06T22:50:00.003-06:002010-03-06T22:52:14.505-06:00LXDWould love to see these dancers in Chicago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxOBxlQmho&hd=1. Hope they tour with the show The LXD.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8674642236421775220.post-50884560003902971962010-02-15T23:23:00.013-06:002010-05-23T10:46:51.753-05:00Practical math educationCan not agree more with the TED presentation from Arthur Benjamin (below). Essentially he argues that proficiency in statistics, probability, and meaning of data(sets) should be the pinnacle of high school math education.
I never used differential equations in professional life, yet standard deviations needed monthly. Even when it comes for common knowledge meaning of data is a more common Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0