This article is about a project that I recently finished and delivered. The point of this article isn't to talk about the technical nitty-gritty of how it works, or why it works, or how many cans of Monster it took me to complete it (hint: I drank a lot of …
Holy moly, it's been a while since I've written! Well, it's time to fix that. I've done a lot of out-of-band development and side projects since I've last written, but nothing that I've published until now.
For one of my side projects I'm using a Raspberry Pi 3B …
Have you ever asked yourself, "how do I read in 10,000 Excel files and process them using Spark?" I hope not...it sounds like a terrible task...but in case you have, it just so happens I might have an approach your interested in.
PySpark does not …
In my most recent role, we're using Python and Spark to perform a complex ETL process and to produce data that will ultimately be used to produce some model. During this process, we were using PySpark's pyspark.sql.types.DateType to store date information. At some point, we decided that …
Like most apps on the internet, the stuff that I write at Showroom Logic has scheduled tasks that must happen in a predictable fashion. In our case, we have some reports to run and deliver. Our app, like lots of internet apps, is distributed and runs in a Docker container …
Bottom line up front:
At my place of work, I'm in charge of the Data Pipeline team. Part of this team's job is to make data retrieval and processing reliable and flexible. After doing some thinking, we realized that solutions such as …
Yep, that's right...I kicked WordPress to the curb and decided to do the whole staticly-generated-pages-thing. When I originally started this blog, WordPress just made the most sense. It was easy to install, easy to maintain, had plenty of skins and plugins available, and just worked.
So, why the departure …
I previously wrote about a game called Vindinium and how I was writing a client in Java.
Well, I have something that I think is useful: a 1.0.0 realease.
There are two different interfaces for writing a bot: SimpleBot and AdvancedBot. The SimpleBot interface is just a …
I was recently lurking through the Programming Subreddit, and I came across a post about a game called, "Vindinium."
Vindinium is an AI competition. Its a game that is played exclusively by bots. You could create a bot that takes input from a human player, but the …
I came across an interesting and fun project on GitHub a few months back called FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition. FizzBuzz is supposed to be a simple programming exercise. FBEE is supposed to be a joke that pokes fun at "enterprise developers" by terribly over-complicating this problem
There …
I recently started working on a project that has me working with Windows (eww, I know, forgive me). I opted to run this environment in a VM so that I don't have to pollute my gaming rig with all kinds of tools, patches, bit-rot, etc. So, after firing up VirtualBox …
I'll make this one short:
On my Readings page, I use a WordPress plugin that allows me to show off the books that I've read. At the moment, I'm pulling my data from OpenLibrary.org (an Internet Archive project). The last book that I read had no cover listed, and …
At the work place, I've had to do a lot of integration work on my current project. Instead of trying to tie everything together on my own, someone recommended taking a look at Apache Camel. Man, did that have a drastically good effect on my project!
When I was the VP of the Temple ACM, Tim Henry and I headed up an effort to get other ACMers to participate in the Folding@Home project. In short, this project is a way to donate spare CPU cycles to scientists working on computationally difficult problems.
A few weeks …
I've just recently updated my LinkedIn to reflect it, but I left Vanguard back in September to join Coldlight Solutions, a start-up in Wayne, PA.
I've not written it here, but those who know me off-line know that I would like to pursue a PhD at some point in my …
Holy crap, where have I been?
All over the place, that's where. I've had a lot happen since I've last posted:
I almost forgot to brag: 0 A.D. was Sourceforge's Project of the Month in June. Check out the post here: https://sourceforge.net/blog/zero-ad-potm-june-2012/.
It feels pretty good to be on a team that's being recognized by the rest of the open source community. Also, this podcast was …
...but I did it!
I decided a while back that it'd be cool to do some graph analysis on the English Wikipedia database. I want to study how "connected" the articles are. I also want to collect some statistics about the text of the articles themselves, their references, and some …
A few hours ago I finished reading Effective Java, Second Edition by Joshua Bloch. Bottom line up front: totally worth the read!
The book's format is interesting. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked it, but it grew on me. The book is divided into 78 items, each …
For the last few years, I had been using a modified XBox running XBMC. This was great for streaming stuff (movies, music, etc) from my Ubuntu SMB server to my TV. Now that I own a TV capable of high-def, I wanted more. I also wanted to lower my cable …
Twenty-eleven has had it's shares of ups and downs for me. All in all, it's been an amazing year.
Just this past week, I've managed to really live up my last bits of 2011. During the last week of December, I went to Longwood Gardens to check out their night …
I'm writing this partially because I hope to save a few people the headache I just had and partially because there are no babies around to eat.
So, I recently sold a bunch of stuff on eBay (as I previously mentioned). I then used that money to buy a …
So, where have I been?
I've been working as an actor at Eastern State Penitentiary's "Terror Behind the Walls" attraction. It's a lot of work going from a full-time job during the day then down to ESP at night, but it's been worth it. Acting has been a ton …
I decided a bit ago that it was time to clean house. I have a lot of old tech stuff that I have been holding onto for quite some time. The majority of it was still in good working order, which is why I was so hesitant to let it …
Yeah, I'm sorry to say it, but it must happen. Unfortunately, I will not be participating in the 2011-2012 BDPA HSCC program.
In short: I don't think the program is improving. It improved wonderfully for my first year or two, and then went stagnant. To be a little …
Back in the winter, Tim Henry got me hooked on Minecraft. Due to having a life, I probably only played the game for around 20 hours and then put it down for several months. Now that I'm not teaching, Tim and I decided to pick it back up again. Instead …
As a video game website, Wildfire Games wants to be able to do some cool things with videos, images, music, and more. Games are all about media, and any good game website has to do a good job at showcasing their media. After all, what good is the website if …
So, I feel like a bit of a tool. I'm still working on my Java program to download MNDOT traffic data (mentioned in a previous post), but I decided to switch things up a bit. I decided to throw away my old database and to get new data. I decided …
Yeah, right?! This game has come such a long way since I joined the team back in July of 2010. I don't think that there's any moment where I've been more excited to be a part of this game!
I sat down tonight and played …
I've mentioned before that I teach a class of high schoolers how to program in Java. In order to make things manageable and to make the most of my time with the kids, I use Moodleto organize, store, distribute all of my course content. I've fallen in love with …
Despite my apparent lack of activity, I've been doing quite a bit of work for WFG lately. Our messaging board system and some other parts of our website run on the Invision Power Board version 2. We'd happily keep chugging along, but IBP2 is no longer supported, so we have …
In my last post, I used some SQL to help identify breaks in the OpenStreetMap's road map. If you recall, I created a table that contained a list of points and descriptions for each of those points. In this post, I'll use this table to create a WMS layer …
In my GIS work, I use OpenStreetMap as my source of road map information. It was better documented and better labeled than the data that I was getting from the MNDOT. Though OSM has been great to me, it hasn't come without its flaws. In my work, I rely on …
I had the unfortunate experience of finding out what happens when minivans and Ford Foci collide in August of this year. My car got nailed (read: totaled), so I got thrown into the market for a new car. The Focus had always served me well (I've owned two of them …
In my last post, I wrote about the Linode that I won as a door prize at the Central PA Open Source Conference. After the initial setup, I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. After some thought, it hit me: I'll move my GIS project to the cloud …
I recently had a recruiter ask me for some PHP code samples. After doing some digging, I realized that I didn't have much to show. Most of the cool stuff that I wrote was proprietary, so I couldn't just expose it. The stuff that I've written for myself has been …
Tim Henry and I went to the Central PA Open Source Conference in Harrisburg, PA a few weeks ago (16OCT). We had a pretty awesome time!
We got to HBurg kind of late (around 10ish, I think), but we still managed to make it in time for lunch and to …
A few weeks back, Professor Lefkovitz asked me to help him diagnose a problem with a web app. The issue involved the communication between a browser and an AJAX web service used for authentication. The initial struggle was trying to find an easy and elegant way of viewing the AJAX …
Unfortunately, I'm putting my bass and amp up for sale. Instead of trying to Ebay them, I decided to do a consignment deal with Springfield Music. I'm selling a 5 string Peavey Foundation bass and a 100w Carvin ProBass 100 amp. They're currently listed for $219.95 and $189.95 …
A few weeks ago I submitted a proposal to speak at CPOSC. I recently received an email notifying me that my proposal was selected! I'll be speaking at Harrisburg University on Saturday, October 16th. I'll be talking about open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and my traffic research project. If …
Yeah, you like that rhyming! Don't lie, it's catchy. Onto something meaningful:
I've spent a lot of time doing WordPress work. I've spent some time in the community and a lot of time using, hacking, and theming WordPress. As I've stated before in other posts, this site is powered by …
Back when I started my GIS research project, I purchased a used computer from Temple University's Computer Recycling Center. To be more specific, I purchased a Dell Optiplex GX270 SFF. It runs a 2.x GHz Pentium 4 and came with 512 MB of RAM (later upgraded to 1 GB …
This song played while I was listening to one of my Pandora stations. The song is "The Cyborg Slayers" by Dethklok.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YogCId14CA
Brutal.
That's right! After being a consumer in the OSS community for around 10 years, I'm finally committing something more than helping posts on a forum -- I'm a webmaster!
When I was growing up, I was hooked on RTS games. I used to love playing Age of Empires and …
I recently wrote about the HSCC class that I teach and posted a link to the course's website. While thinking the other day, it occurred to me that I have yet to write about my experience using Moodle, which powers that website. Since its such an awesome piece of OSS …
I've never written a post about it, but if you read the "About Me" section, you'll see that I teach a few different technologies to high school students (I know: who'd trust me with kids?! :p). I wanted to write about two things: Our recent trip to our regional competition …
So, as part of my GenEd work, I was asked to move a WordPress MU installation to a new server. I found several articles about moving around standard WordPress installations, but nothing for the MU (MultiUser) version. In particular, I had a hard time with changing the domain name. In …
So, I was perusing ArsTechnica earlier today and came across this article: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/crowd-sourced-world-map.ars
In short: they recapped the origins of OSM, discussed their goals, and then went on to discuss some of the projects that have stemmed from OSM's data. Pretty cool …
I've never mentioned it here before, but for the last 2-ish years, I've been the webmaster of Temple University's GenEd website. The site was originally developed by Temple University's Computer Services group. I took over the maintenance and have only done small things with it -- add new videos, replace some …
Sorry that I haven't written in a bit -- I've been out-and-about instead of living in front of my computer for a chance.
So, here's a pretty cool thing that I recently saw (did?). Last week, I traveled down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with a few friends to celebrate their …
I've been coding in PHP for a few years, but I've never been exposed to any of the PHP frameworks. I've been curious about Code Igniter and Symfony for a while, but I haven't had time to play with either of them. Until now.
I decided to pick up Symfony …
Well, I finally got around to posting the stuff that my Future of Computing poster talked about. My final project can be seen here (http://www.ist.temple.edu/trafficdemo/displayComparison.html). Some notes about it:
22APR2010 was the CIS/ACM Annual Awards Dinner. This is the one time during the year that the CIS department invites out all of the students, faculty, staff, and alum for a formal dinner and awards ceremony. As always, Sandy Sorkin took a million and one photos of the event …
Every year, the CIS department (College of Science and Technology, Temple University) hosts the Future of Computing competition. For graduate students, it's an opportunity to show off some of their research. For undergrads, it's a chance to show off some of their projects or some of the cool things that …
Sorry for the late post, but Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week is the Philadelphia Regional FIRST Robotics Competition! Unfortunately, I will not be working at the event this year, but I'll be going anyway. This year's goal is to try to get as many people as possible to …
Last night, I spent some time checking over a graph that I created (This particular graph was the graph of connected traffic sensor stations throughout the Minneapolis road network). While looking through my results in QGIS, I came across some strange behavior. It turns out that I found a possible …
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking: Why PHP?
Well, I have a fairly small graph (< 650 nodes), so trying to get a C or Java to interact with my preexisting PHP software isn't worth the boost in performance. The implementation I found can read my graph from my database …
So, I've been telling myself for a few years that I'd start a blog so that I could keep track of some of the cool things that I've done. Well, here it is.