I’ve been working from home for over 4 years, since around the time that the Fortune 100 company I worked for split itself in two. I’ve been mentored in the move to a home office, and want to share some of the great tips I’ve received over the years. This should be a series of posts, but this will be a first post with some overview.
Continue readingCategory Archives: software engineering
Year of Travel continues
My abstract got accepted!!
So now I need to figure out if it is even practical to get through the Visa process for China. Oh, and to create some content to share. Heh.
OpEd: OpenStack wishes for Monasca
This is my first attempt at an editorial post for my blog. I usually just sprinkle in my opinion in whatever I’m writing, but you can see on this site I don’t blog much anyway. But this subject was prompted by a conversation in the Monasca IRC meeting this week (http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/meetings/monasca/2018/monasca.2018-09-05-15.00.log.html) so I thought I’d take a stab at it.
In some ways, this is my wishlist for Monasca and how I would like to see the project get better. In some ways, it is a bit of a gripe about Telemetry.
Summary: better advertizing of ‘official’ projects, small but active projects can still be useful, and project consolidation.
Python and Kivy for an Android app
For my make-up hack week I had a small number of short projects I wanted to try out and get some creative juices flowing. One project was to FINALLY write an Android app (using Python and Kivy) and get to the point where I felt I had a development pipeline for apps I might want to create.
Short version – I got some 3 year old Kivy code into an .apk and got it installed on my old Galaxy S4, and it works!
Skip to the end if you want some tips on what kivy/buildozer configuration worked for me.
OpenStack Dublin PTG – Feb 2018 – Thoughts on Wed to Fri
Continuing my thoughts and experience writing about the OpenStack PTG in Dublin, Ireland. Part 1 can be read at OpenStack Dublin PTG – Feb 2018 – Thoughts on First Two Days.
Wednesday through Friday were set aside as focused team work days. As part of the Monasca team (wiki), we really only had enough agenda for two days, and knowing that many of the attendees (including me) had planned to only stay through Thursday. They were two good days of discussion and planning, shortened slightly by the weather (see the next blog post for more on that.
OpenStack Dublin PTG – Feb 2018 – Thoughts on First Two Days
I attended my first PTG (Project Teams Gathering https://www.openstack.org/ptg) this year in Dublin Ireland from February 24 to March 2. I’ve been working on OpenStack code (and code that uses it or packages and installs it) for a few years now, and recently was made a Monasca Core Reviewer. I attended the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, which was quite a different experience (should blog about that some time – I have lots of notes I could dig up).
The PTG is different from the Summits. This was only the third one that has been held, and the first I’d attended. I had a bit of a sense of what to expect from the meetings after attending some of the developer sessions at the Vancouver Summit, and after the virtual mid-cycle meeting we had for Monasca last year. But the format was still a bit challenging.
Read below for my take on the first two days, and look for other posts about the rest of the week and weather/travel.
Basic vacuum robot algorithm
We just got a new robot vacuum for my wife’s birthday (EcoVac Deebot). I think this sums up the basic algorithm, dating back to 1985.
(Experimenting with embedding a YouTube video – I haven’t tried this before in WordPress.)
The Deebot seems to be working good so far, though it hasn’t had a chance to do much uninterrupted cleaning yet. My 2 year old loves it and likes to use the remote control.
This kind of robot really isn’t that complicated, and it makes me think the only reasons we didn’t have these back in 1985 were battery power and marketing. Batteries have gotten much better, which is needed if you are going to clean a whole room, but with a charging station it doesn’t have to last through the whole house. And marketing is all about the economics of someone being able to make a large enough profit on each one sold to make it worth manufacturing to make it worth their while to convince you that you have to have it. This model was quite a bit cheaper than an iRobot, but has some of the good bells and whistles.
Algorithm wise, there doesn’t need to be too much more than a simple remote control bump-and-go car. Yes, it does need to have a homing feature to be able to recharge, so that is a good feature. And some intelligence to know if there are areas of the room it could explore more. But this model doesn’t do anything fancy with an invisible map on the ceiling or special markers around the room.
I need a new word…
There ought to be a word for a fine balance between procrastinating something because you know it will get changed/canceled/redesigned or getting it in good shape to avoid later pains.
It seems to happen all the time in Software Development. 🙂
Article link – building a career in open source
The bit about imposter syndrome was interesting. I definitely feel insecure in my work at times because I see all the flaws and feel my limitations. But that is often an illusion, and working with a good manager helps that by giving positive feedback on what you are doing right.
The comments about networking and reaching out are also good points for most software engineers to be reminded of.
Security integration
I’m working on a security story that has drug on for close to 6 weeks now. It is the result of an early decision to turn off TLS because the mechanism for setting up the certificates wasn’t ready and just turn it back on later. Yeah, that never goes well. (This decision happened before I came into the team, so I won’t point fingers.)
I’ve finally come to a small epiphany about security. We talk a lot about security algorithms and strength and attack vectors and vulnerability surfaces. But the math and analysis parts of security seem like much more straight forward problems. There are lots of great tools for those things that should be used. The _real_ challenge to security is integration. Getting the certificates in the right places. Turning on those little configuration switches in all the right files. Specifying the right ports and routing traffic through firewalls and load balancers and TLS terminators. That seems to be where the practical complexity lies.
Maybe some day I’ll have an epiphany about how to make that happen more smoothly. 😉