Author Archives: jay

About jay

I'm trying to build something interactive where I can learn from others and hopefully share useful knowledge too. thecapacity@gmail.com

Links as Code

Posted on July 14, 2009 by jay

John Willis’ “Infrastructure as Code” should be a startling epiphany for anyone who has long neglected process and people in favor of technological solutions. Yet, I hope anyone here doesn’t need convincing about the validity of institutionalizing the collective knowledge … Continue reading →

Posted in enterprise, frustration | 5 Comments

Converging Google Services

Posted on July 10, 2009 by jay

The always fabulous Louis Grey makes good points about using GMail in a corporate environment and got me thinking in a different direction. I begain to consider: Why can’t I share emails the same way I can share RSS entries? … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | 6 Comments

Who’s Really Testing Chrome?

Posted on July 6, 2009 by jay

Just a quick gripe to share with anyone using Chrome. For all of Chrome’s new high performance design, there’s a very simple way to bring your tabbed experience to it’s knees, Print something… In my case it was a 100+ page … Continue reading →

Posted in frustration, Google | Comments Off

Mashing up the Dashboard

Posted on July 1, 2009 by jay

This post is for anyone interested in any of the Government Transparency inituatives. If you’ve been following this topic then you’re probably aware that Vivek Kundra sees a dashboard as a way of accelerating the transparency and transformation of the … Continue reading →

Posted in business, frustration, Google, hacks | Comments Off

Cloudera’s Hadoop Education

Posted on June 14, 2009 by jay

A while back, after Cloudera released their lectures and VMware image for Hadoop, I watched the training sessions and worked through some of the initial exercises. I must say I was a little disappointed by the videos but I believe … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mapreduce, opensource, python | 1 Comment

CouchDB Performance – Too much TCP

Posted on May 31, 2009 by jay

It’s been a while since I ran my CouchDB performance test, but many of the comments I received suggested that updating my codebase should yield some significant performance improvements. Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t have spare cycles to invest … Continue reading →

Posted in code, couchdb, python | 1 Comment

A simple twitter library in python

Posted on April 29, 2009 by jay

I’ve been working on a project built on Google App Engine and I’m relying on twitter to mediate some of the interaction with my end users. What I find great about the growing prevalence of social interfaces is that I … Continue reading →

Posted in code, python | 3 Comments

Hadoop Benchmark and CouchDB Implications

Posted on April 23, 2009 by jay

Although I don’t write much about it directly I’m a big fan of the MapReduce approach to computing and data mining. I love the fluid manner with which it encourages partitioning and how little code is required to focus directly … Continue reading →

Posted in couchdb, mapreduce | Comments Off

BookList – Entry 6 & 7: “Outliers” & “Talent is Overrated”

Posted on April 16, 2009 by jay

Here’s a video review I saw on OpenCulture for two books which I really enjoyed, “Outliers” and “Talent is Overrated“. It’s a little tongue in cheek, with a bit of profanity, but it made me laugh and remember how much … Continue reading →

Posted in books | Comments Off

BookList – Entry 8: Wired for War

Posted on April 11, 2009 by jay

If you’ve seen either of my recent robotics projects then you might suspect I have some slight fascination with the more exotic forms our technology can take. Which it not to say that I don’t have reservations, nor do I … Continue reading →

Posted in books, technology | 3 Comments