February 9, 2012
Note to self - Java heap analysis # As I keep searching for those URLs over and over again linking them here. When running into JVM heap issues (an out of memory exception is a pretty sure sign, so can be the program getting slower and slower over time) there’s a few things you can do for analysis:
Start with telling the effected JVM process to output some statistics on heap layout as well as thread state by sending it a SIGQUIT (if you want to use the number instead - it’s 3 - avoid typing 9 instead ;) ).
...
February 8, 2012
Apache Mahout 0.6 released # As of Monday, February 6th a new Apache Mahout version was released. The new package features
Lots of performance improvments:
A new LDA implementation using Collapsed Variational Bayes 0th Derivative Approximation - try that out if you have been bothered by the way less than optimal performance of the old version.
Improved Decision Tree performance and added support for regression problems
Reduced runtime of dot product between vectors - many algorithms in Mahout rely on that, so these performance improvements will affect anyone using them.
...
February 2, 2012
Clojure in Berlin # Though I had the chance to tinker with some Clojure code only briefly it’s programming model and the resulting compact programs do fascinate me. As the resulting code runs on a JVM and does integrate well with existing Java libraries migration is comparably cheap and easy.
Today I finally managed to attend the local Berlin Clojure meetup, co-organised by Stefan Hübner and Fronx. Timing couldn’t have been much better: In this evenings event Philip Potter from Thoughtworks introduced Overtone - a library for making music with Clojure.
...
January 31, 2012
February 2012 Apache Hadoop Get Together Berlin # The upcoming Apache Hadoop Get-Together is scheduled for 22. February, 6 p.m. - taking place at Axel Springer, Axel-Springer-Str. 65, 10888 Berlin. Thanks to Springer for sponsoring the location!
Note: It is important to indicate attendance. Due to security restrictions at the venue only registered visitors will be permitted. Get your ticket here: https://www.xing.com/events/hadoop-22-02-859807
Talks scheduled thus far:
Markus Andrezak : “Queue Management in Product Development with Kanban - enabling flow and fast feedback along the value chain” - It’s a truism today that fast feedback from your market is a key advantage.
...
January 30, 2012
Dorkbot Berlin # c-base - 8p.m. on a Monday evening - the room is packed (and pretty cloudy as well): Time for Dorkbot, a short series of talks on “People doing strange things with electricity” hosted by Frank Rieger.
First talk up on stage was Gismo on Raumfahrtagentur - a Berlin maker-space located in Wedding. Originating from the presenter’s interest in electrical bikes a group of ten people interested in hardware hacking got together.
...
January 26, 2012
Scrumtisch Berlin # After quite some time off I went to the Scrumtisch Berlin. The event was incredibly well visited - roughly 50 people filled the upper floor at Cafe Hundertwasser. Today’s event was organised such that participants first collected discussion topics, prioritised them together and then discussed the top three items in a timebox of 15 minutes each.
Topics collected were:
Best tricks to make teams self organised (20 votes)
...
January 22, 2012
Teddy in Chicago # Last week I spent several days in Chicago mainly to attend a few meetings at the local Nokia/Navteq office. Though the schedule was pretty packed, a few hours remained to explore the then frosty and windy city:
Top three images: Some impressions of the city. Bottom left: Teddy’s new friend. Bottom right: Situation at ORD when flying out - fortunately both, the airport as well as the airline (Swiss) have quite some experience with challenging weather conditions so that we could leave without too much delay.
...
January 22, 2012
Scrum done wrong # “Agile and Lean have a single purpose: to continually challenge the status quo. If you’re not doing that, you’re probably an impediment to it.” agile42.com
Judging from the way some people become overly careful when discussing agile in general and Scrum in particular in my presence I seem to slowly have built up a reputation for being a strong proponent of these methods. Given the large number of flaky implementations as well as misunderstandings it seems to have become fashionable to blame Scrum for all badness and dismiss it altogether - up to the point where developers are proud to finally having abandoned Scrum completely - so that now they can work in iterations, accept new tasks only for upcoming but not for the current iteration, develop in a test-driven way, have daily sync meetings, mark tasks done only when they are delivered to and accepted by the customer, have regular “how to improve our work” meetings, estimate tasks in story points and only plan for as much work per iteration as was done in the past iteration
...
January 15, 2012
Reasons for you to visit Berlin Buzzwords # I’ve heard of several people who are not quite sure yet whether they should visit Berlin Buzzwords or not - in particular when having to travel far and cross 9 time zones to attend. My general recommendation is to plan to spend some more days in Europe. The conference is conveniently scheduled on Monday and Tuesday which gives you one weekend before to explore the city and the whole week afterwards to go and see more either in the city or around.
...
January 13, 2012
Berlin Buzzwords 2012 - Call for submissions # The countdown started several weeks ago - finally in the past days the date for Berlin Buzzwords was announced, the call for submissions published. It’s exciting to see that the first talk is in already. Looking forward to yours.
Compared to last year there are two changes: Submissions are no longer evaluated by Jan, Simon and myself only. Due to the large number of talks submitted last year we reached out for help to be able to split the task of reviewing talks.
...