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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 🙂
The internet is aging again. “All of this has happened before and it will all happen again.” (as heard in http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Information_Society:Seek_200) Some of the previous ages have been the shift from MySpace to Facebook or from custom web sites to blogs.
What I’m noticing in the last year or so is that sites I used to read regularly are slowly losing out. Some to larger aggregation sites, some to life. This week there were a pair of posts on FBTB.net from two of the authors about why they haven’t been posting lately. At least they aren’t quiting completely, like how reallifecomics.com or candyblog.net just went quiet a year or so ago.
Been a while since I posted anything, so here is a quick one.
I finally got the notion to try out Sonic Pi. I was hoping it would be something I could get my two oldest kids in to so they would do some coding and make some music. But I struggled with the interface and language. I was wishing it was more like Scratch. Music is more visual to me, and notation with bars and notes is much better in my mind than three lines of non-intuitive text. Continue reading →
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.
Work has been keeping me busy, plus life, plus side projects, so this blog has suffered. But as this week the mega corporation I work for is into phase 4 of the secret plan to grind itself into pieces, I’m considering what things I need to do to be ready for the many changes ahead.
I have been keeping somewhat busy with little things. Unfortunately I got distracted from the python/pygame program I’d been doing. But I did pick up 5 nano sized Arduino knockoff microcontrollers from China along with various bits and a 50 piece sleeve of 555 timer chips. So I’m dabbling in hardware more now. Which means robotics (using steppers and servos), blinky light arrays, and ‘musical’ instruments. So I may have to expand my “pi” category to include Arduino also.
I even poked at Khan Academy today, while waiting for a 6+ hour install. Their algorithms course leaves a lot to be desired. The nerds from Dartmouth who wrote it expect you to have taken a Calculus course in the last week. Doesn’t help that I was sick that week in high school when we did logarithms so I’ve always had a weak spot there. I had to use a graphing calculator to visualize that log base 2 of (17 raised to the log base 2 n) is the same as log base 2 of (n raised to the log base 2 17). I’ll have to play around more and see if it gets any better.