This afternoon I gave a presentation titled Visualizing MongoDB Objects in Concept and Practice at MongoDB Washington DC. The slides for the presentation can be found in PDF format here:
Visualizing MongoDB Objects in Concept and Practice Slides
And the example code is available online via my GitHub repository here:
https://github.com/cvitter/ikanow.mongodc2013.presentation
Posted in Programming, Technology
I am pretty excited to announce that I will be speaking at this year’s MongoDC March 11th. This will be my third year attending MongoDC and my 2nd year as a speaker. My presentation this time is tentatively titled Visualizing MongoDB Objects in Concept and Practice and will cover Open Source tools and technologies for visualizing data using JSON and JavaScript. Hopefully it will be both entertaining and educational.
More information on MongoDC 2013 can be found here: http://www.10gen.com/events/mongodc-2013
Monday morning I rejoined the world of Mac users for the first time in about 16 years when I fired up a brand new 15″ MacBook Pro issued to me at my new job (more on that later hopefully). Here is my quick review having used the new laptop for almost a week.
Pros:
Cons:
Verdict:
You might have heard the saying, “Once you go Mac you never go back.” So, is that really true? In my case yes and no. Hardware wise this MacBook Pro is the best laptop I have ever used bar none. It blows away the Dells that I have owned and used for the last several years. Of course at a starting price of $1,799.00 on the Apple site you would expect high quality hardware.
Operating system wise OS X isn’t bad. There isn’t really anything about it though that makes it stand out over Ubuntu 10.10 or Windows 7 other than gestures possibly (which can be both cool and a pain and the butt). Frankly I think this laptop would be awesome with OS X, Ubuntu, or Windows installed on it.
I have been using Ubuntu 10.10 for three days and have learned a few things (maybe):
Overall I am really enjoying using Ubuntu but still have a lot to learn before I consider myself as proficient and knowledgeable as I am with the Windows platform.
Last night I installed Unbuntu 10.10 in a dual boot configuration (with Windows XP SP3) onto my Dell Latitude D820 laptop. I have not really been using my laptop very much lately and have been wanting to play with Ubuntu for awhile.
My laptop’s 80GB drive had about 20GB free on it so I opted to uninstall a lot of applications I don’t really need and move a lot of files over to other hard drives. Once that was done I ran some cleanup utilities and de-fragged the hard drive and ended up with a solid 40GB of free space.
The Ubuntu install is very easy and the download page (http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download) walks you through the few, very simple steps in clear English that just about anyone could follow. I am very impressed by the effort that was put into making the install user friendly. Beyond being user friendly the install worked the first time without hitches on my Dell laptop. The installer had no problem finding drivers that worked with my hardware and found my wireless network without a hitch. From what I can tell if you are installing Ubuntu on a mainstream desktop or laptop computer from the likes of Dell, HP, Sony, etc you should be set.
My only frustration was the amount of time it took to complete the installation (about 2.5 hours) but I think some of that is due to my machine and the DVD drive being slow. I had not expected the install to take quite as long as it did so some of the copying of files, etc. seemed a bit like watching paint drying.
Once the installation was complete and I had logged into the desktop I felt relatively at home. The Ubuntu environment is an interesting mix of Windows and Mac UI cues. I am not crazy about some of the interface choices right now but I think that once I settle in and use it for awhile I will find ways to alter the interface and make it feel right for me (much as I spend a lot of time configuring a new Window’s desktop to look and act like I want it to do).
Application wise Ubuntu comes loaded with most everything you need including Evolution for email, OpenOffice for word processing and presentations, Firefox for Web browsing, and quite a few utility applications for things like sound, video, photographs, etc. I downloaded Google’s Chrome browser and will probably be adding some development tools this weekend (Eclipse, MySQL, PHP, etc.) but otherwise out of the box Ubuntu has just about everything you need on a computer pre-installed.
Right now I am giving Ubuntu 10.10 a big thumbs up.
This evening I took advantage of Amazon‘s Give Album or Song as Gift feature for the very first time (to acquire The Essential Journey for the special someone in my life who loves cheesy 80s music). Being able to gift someone whole albums this way is pretty awesome. There are however two problems with this feature:
These limitations don’t really make any sense. Amazon is such a technologically advanced company that has be ahead of the curve in the e-commerce space for more than a decade. Why is the whole MP3 buying and downloading process so limited?
Just managed to grab one quick picture of this billboard in Bangkok’s China Town as someone was rooting around in Windows Explorer to find the next advertisement to load. It would be pretty cool to have a monitor that was roughly 20′ tall. Makes my 28″ monitor look tiny.
Hello Bangkok, Get Files
Posted in Photography, Technology, Travel
Tagged Bangkok, Thailand, Travel Photography
