The Porter Method

Amazon.com has pointed their amazing Mechanical Turk towards the task of examining satellite imagery in search of lost explorer Steve Fossett. Fossett’s plane was reported missing on September 3, 2007 after he failed to return from a flight over the Nevada desert.

If you have never encountered Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, you really should go take a look. Basically it allows you to sign up for small units of work that are fairly easy for a human to accomplish but would be quite difficult for a computer. You can complete the task and be paid a small amount of money (from pennies to a couple of dollars depending on the task) for the work. Examples of various tasks are transcribing a video to text, drawing lines on a picture of a road to mark the edges of the roadway, searching for the correct UPC code for a product, etc.

In the case of the search for Fossett, recent satellite imagery has been taken of the Nevada desert where his plane was lost, and your job is to help examine these images. The task does not pay anything, but it is for a great cause. After signing up for the task, your are presented with a small satellite photo and are asked to indicate whether there is anything that could potentially be airplane wreckage in the photo. If you do see something that looks out of the ordinary you provide a comment about the artifact and submit it for further review.

This is a great use of Amazon’s system and very well could help find Fossett. Please head on over and sign up and go through some photos. It is a quick and easy way to help out in the rescue efforts for this adventurer.

So in the same way as my previous two unofficial RSS feeds, I have created a new one. This one takes the writings of House Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) from his House.gov website and puts them together into an RSS feed (since that is really the only way I consume the news these days aside from Reddit.com).

The feed is available here:
http://www.theportermethod.com/ronpaul/index.rss

For those of you that have not heard of Ron Paul, he is a Republican member of the House of Representatives representing Texas that is running for President in 2008. Though he is running for the Republican party nomination he doesn’t really fit the Republican party of today. He tends to be more of a Libertarian in his views or possibly a Thomas Jefferson style Democrat from the days of old. I recommend you check out what he has to say. His message fits with what most of my friends and I think is important for our country going forward. Check out his Wikipedia page for some more information.

If I had to sum up his platform, I would say Common Sense, Personal Freedom and Responsibility, Limited Government, Fiscal Restraint, and State’s Rights. He always looks to the Constitution for guidance in his voting and is not afraid of standing up for his beliefs. And get this, he actually reads the full text of all of the bills he votes on (related see the Read The Bills Act). Contrast this with the majority of Congressman that have no idea what is contained in the bills they vote on (the Patriot Act comes to mind, also the Campaign Finance Reform bill that the Congress voted on and then had to bring in special trainers to teach them how to follow it).

Also, this is one candidate I actually contributed money to (first and probably only time ever) since he really needs help getting his message out. You can help out too by donating here or buying some swag from his cafepress store. He may not win the nomination (probably won’t due to lack of funds), but if he can just get his message out on a national level I think it will get people thinking about what is important long term in this country.

Also, if you want to check out the Ruby script I am using to put this feed together, you can download it here: ronpaulfeed.rb

As with the other feeds, if anyone associated with Ron Paul’s organization would like me to send this feed to them nightly for their use just let me know.

The fourth Alabama Code Camp will be held in Mobile this Saturday, April 14, 2007 at the University of South Alabama beginning at 8:30am (registration and breakfast at 7:30am). The code camp is being put on by the Lower Alabama .Net User Group with the help of some great sponsors.

Code camps are a completely developer oriented endeavor organized and hosted by the local .Net community. There are some fantastic speakers and sessions scheduled that I am really looking foward to. I attended the last Alabama code camp that was held in Birmingham, AL and gave a presentation on the WiX Toolkit and had a great time.

I highly recommend attending if you want to further your skills and expand your knowledge of Microsoft’s .Net framework and SQL Server DBMS. It is also a great networking opportunity to meet your fellow developers in the community (plus to sweeten the deal, they usually have tons of giveaways at the end of the day).

If you are planning on attending, be sure and register so that they can correctly estimate how much food to have on hand for lunch.

Former Amazoner, current Googler, Steve Yegge pretty much says it all with regard to Agile and XP Methodologies in his blog post Good Agile, Bad Agile. That sums up my feelings about the whole Agile thing nicely.

If you haven’t read any of Steve’s other stuff, you really must check it out. Much of it has made the rounds on Reddit and Digg so you may have seen some of it before, but it is really good stuff worth a read: Stevey’s Drunken Blog Rants

Joel Spolsky had a great series of articles last week on how to attract (and keep) great developers. Worth a read if you are in the field.

Unfortunately for those of us that don’t work at companies whose primary goal is to sell software most of these concepts and ideas will never be given a second thought since they don’t follow the old school MBA curriculum that most managers and CEO’s came up under.

Here are the articles:

Finding Great Developers

A Field Guide to Developers

Sorting Resumes

And then might as well throw in an oldie but a goodie that I have linked to before: Hitting the High Notes

The things that stand out to me that I would love.

Casual Dress - I swear these Khakis are decreasing my IQ by the day

Natural Lighting (aka Windows) - Is it daytime, nightime, who knows, I can’t see any windows

Private Offices with Doors That Close - Cubes are great for informal communication and social interaction to build teams, but really bad for hard core heads down concentration. I think I will end up going deaf from having to crank my headphones up so loud to drown out the outside noise.

Dual Monitors - Would it make me more productive? Don’t know, never tried, but studies say yes.

Course this programming stuff is really just to hold me over till I sign my record deal

Have you ever been out at a store and seen an item that you consider purchasing, but you really would like to know what you could get it for online. Now some of you super hi-tech folks have the fancy pants cell phones with data plans that let you fire up a browser on your phone and check it out right there.

For the rest of us, enter a really neat service called FruCall. You simply dial 1-888-DO-FRUCALL (1-888-363-7822), enter the UPC code of the item, your zip code, and then listen as it lists the New and Used prices (including shipping cost to your area) for the item. How cool is that?

I just tried it with the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium (which is absolutely incredible I might add) that I purchased this past weekend at evil Best Buy for $16.99. And I hear from FruCall that I could have orderd it from evil Wal-Mart.com for a mere $12 bucks. This is definitely a service I will be taking advantage of in the future.

Speaking of free cell services, hope you didn’t forget about 1-800-FREE-411 for free directory assistance from you cell phone. Another handy one to remember.

For a limited time, Sun is offering a free second chance to pass some of their certification tests. Get the full program details here: Sun Second Shot Promotion

The summary is:

Limited Time Offer

Purchase a voucher for most Java technology or Solaris OS certification exams between July 1 and August 15, 2006, and should you need it, you can take the exam one additional time for free. The retake exam must be taken by August 15, 2007 the following year. This offer is available in most countries around the world. Use Priority Code WW46CXR when signing up

The fine prints says that the voucher is valid for up to one year, so if you are planning on taking a certification test in the near future, you should go ahead and sign up using this deal before August 15, 2006 to get the second chance offer even if you don’t schedule the exam till sometime in the future. I’m still working on the Sun Certified Java Developer (SCJD) programming assignment, but I may sign up to take the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA) test to get this deal.

Here are the exams that qualify:

Qualifying Sun Certification Exams in Java Technology

Sun Certified Java Associate (SCJA)

• Sun Certified Associate for the Java Platform, Standard Edition, Exam Version 1.0 (CX-310-019)

Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP)

• Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5.0 (CX-310-055)
• Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5.0 Upgrade Exam (CX-310-056)
• Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform 1.4 (CX-310-035)
• Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform Upgrade Exam (CX-310-036)

Sun Certified Web Component Developer (SCWCD)

• Sun Certified Web Component Developer for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.4 (CX-310-081)
• Sun Certified Web Component Developer for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.4 Upgrade Exam (CX-310-082)

Sun Certified Business Component Developer (SCBCD)

• Sun Certified Business Component Developer for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.3 (CX-310-090)

Sun Certified Developer for Java Web Services (SCDJWS)

• Sun Certified Developer for Java Web Services (CX-310-220)

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA)

• Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology (Step 1 of 3) (CX-310-051)

Sun Certified Mobile Application Developer (SCMAD)

• Sun Certified Mobile Application Developer for the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition, Version 1.0 (CX-310-110)

Qualifying Sun Certification Exams in the Solaris OS

Sun Certified System Administrator (SCSA)

Solaris 10 OS

• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 10 OS, Part I (CX-310-200)
• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 10 OS, Part II (CX-310-202)
• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 10 OS Upgrade Exam (CX-310-203)

Solaris 9 OS

• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 9 Operating System, Part I of II (CX-310-014)
• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 9 Operating System, Part II of II (CX-310-015)
• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 9 Operating System Upgrade Exam (CX-310-016)

Solaris 8 OS

• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 8 Operating System, Part I of II (CX-310-011)
• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 8 Operating System, Part II of II (CX-310-012)
• Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 8 Operating System Upgrade Exam (CX-310-013)

Sun Certified Network Administrator (SCNA)

Solaris 10 OS

• Sun Certified Network Administrator for Solaris 10 OS (CX-310-302)

Solaris 9 OS

• Sun Certified Network Administrator for the Solaris 9 Operating System (CX-310-044)

Solaris 8 OS

• Sun Certified Network Administrator for the Solaris 8 Operating System (CX-310-043)

Sun Certified Security Administrator (SCSECA)

Solaris 9 OS

• Sun Certified Security Administrator for the Solaris 9 Operating System (CX-310-301)

I just came in from outside, and sure enough. I can see Jupiter from my house. How, you may ask, did I figure out which bright shiny dot was Jupiter? Elementary my dear Watson, I used a free open source program called Stellarium.

I just heard about it from a blog post by J Aaron Farr and had to give it a try. I must say that it is pretty amazing. I would love to get away from the city lights and give this a try with some good binoculars, but even from my home in the city I could make out quite a few constellations. Pretty impressive piece of software. And it is open source too.

You can’t beat the simplicity of this program.

Step 1. Install
Step 2. Set your location (this part kind of sucks, but I was eventually able to get Mobile, AL keyed in, just took some good coordination on my laptop touchpad, probably an easier way if I would RTFM)
Step 3. Take laptop outside and rotate it till it matches the sky.
Step 4. Marvel that the bright shiny dots now have names.

Here is a screenshot of Jupiter:

After being merely a rumor for the past couple of weeks, today it was announced that Scott McNealy would be stepping down as CEO of Sun Microsystems (while remaining Chairman) and Jonathan Schwartz (blogger in his own right) would be taking his place. I’m not sure what this means for the future of Sun as they go forward. While they have not been posting great financial numbers over the past couple of years, it seemed they had been making some great strides that would lead them to profitability (OpenSolaris.org, DTrace, New Server Innovations, and OpenSparc.net) not to mention some of their aquisitions of profitable companies.

We’ll see what the future holds. Good luck to Scott and welcome up the ladder Jonathan. Hopefully this will bring good things for the future of Java and FOSS (which Jonathan is a huge proponent for).

Interesting article on Technology Related Pork Barrel Projects. I’ve always joked with friends that if we ever wanted to start our own company, all we would need is a nice government contract. Pork of any kind sickens me. Write your Congressman and complain if it does you too.

If you missed my mention of Vulcan and pork, check out this page and Ctrl-F for Vulcan.