A few days ago Troy Howard, Jeremiah Peschka and I all traveled via Amtrak Cascades up to Seattle. The mission was simple, Jeremiah was presenting “Riak in a .NET World”, I was handling logistics and Troy was handling video.
So I took the video that Troy shot, I edited it, put together some soundtrack to it and let Jeremiah’s big data magic shine. He covers the basics around RDBMSes, SQL Server in this case but easily it applies to any RDBMS in large part. These basics bring us up to where and why an architecture needs to shift from an RDBMS solution to a distributed solution like Riak. After stepping through some of the key reasons to move to Riak, Jeremiah walks through a live demo of using CorrugatedIron, the .NET Client for Riak (Github repo). During the walk through he covers the specific characteristics of how CorrugatedIron interacts with Riak through indexs, buckets and during puts and pulls of data.
Toward the end of the video Joseph Blomstedt @jtuple, Troy Howard @thoward37, Jeremiah Peschka @peschkaj, Clive Boulton @iC and Richard Turner @bitcrazed. Also note, I’ve enabled download for this specific video since it is actually a large video (1.08GB total). So you may want to download and watch it if you don’t have a super reliable high speed internet connection.
Ok, in the end, let’s just call these things tablets. I know there is the attempt to call these phablets, but that’s so freakin’ stupid. They’re called tablets Microsoft. Just go with the flow. Here’s an unboxing, initial application viewing & a bit more via video. I’ve broken this review into three sections; A Video Review & Unboxing, A Few Product Photos and A Few Notes. On to the review…
A Video Review & Unboxing
A Few Product Photos
Samsung ATIV (Click for full size)The ATIV with Windows 8 Start Screen displayed. (Click for full size)The side view of the ATIV; power button, the something another button, headphone jack and USB port. (Click for full size)The button, connectors removed for attachment to keyboard. (Click for full size)Close up of the screen. (Click for full size)The Connectors between the bottom and the keyboard. (Click for full size)ATIV connected to the keyboard. (Click for full size)Power chord side. (Click for full size)Base of it, folded with keyboard. (Click for full size)
A Few Notes
On an Atom device, a ton of software is incompatible with Windows 8. NOTE this. It is vitally important to be aware of. Especially if you’re under the impression you’ll do any type of “Microsoft” Application Development. Also much of the 64-bit software won’t run even in compatibility mode. All things to keep in mind when making a purchase.
Strava, Pandora, Spotify and many other apps just do not exist for Windows 8 – still. Microsoft is either going to have to win market share in the app market or they’re going to have to pay companies to build Windows 8 versions of their applications. This isn’t entirely out of the question, as Microsoft has basically paid for most of the applications that are in the Windows 8 store.
If you’re an Evernote power user, or any type of power user for that matter, you will likely need to download the regular Windows version of any application in addition to the Windows 8 Start bar, tablet style metro interface contraption that is available via the store. The Evernote application for instance is cumbersome and requires more fiddling about clicking and moving things on the screen to be truly useful.
Amidst all of these problems there are a few gems in the Windows 8 application space. The one that stands out the most to me at this time is the Amazon Kindle Application. It is truly one of the more polished applications, but in addition it looks good and works well in the Windows 8 touch universe. Another application that holds up is the Weather Application. Yup, the simple built in Windows 8 Weather Application.
The Evernote application, fact is it doesn’t synchronize effectively nor does it actually show you how or were it is within that process. In the end, even though the application appears, at first to work well with touch, it doesn’t work well overall. Maybe it’s Evernote or Microsoft that is at fault. I don’t know. As the consumer I don’t need to know because it’s their responsibility to make these things work. Hopefully, that’ll happen eventually.
I’ll be using the tablet in an ongoing basis to build and test Windows 8 applications and for some everyday tasks; email, twitter and other applications as they become available. I’ll definitely have more to say about this device. Another review in a few months when I get really used to the Windows 8 interface and the hardware itself.
NOTE: I don’t get paid to do any of these reviews. I merely do these because I enjoy good, candid reviews and want to contribute back to the tech community. I am not paid to advocate Windows 8, Samsung, Apple, Tablets or Phablets or anything in this video. This is merely a product that I have purchased that I intend to use for software development and testing in the near future.
My Shredding Code videos are slowly but steadily coming together. You can follow the channel on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/channels/shreddingcode. The videos I recently put together are the specific instructions for installing Erlang R15B01 on Cent OS 6.4, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and OS-X. These are a part of an overall project that will eventually cover a complete introduction to distributed systems with Riak and more. If you’re interested in this, sign up and follow my Shredding Code Channel and you’ll have first access to them.
I have been playing around with Windows Azure again, as it has gotten really solid and feature rich in the last year. So much so that it’s provided reasons for me to use it versus some of the default go to providers. One of the things that I’ve found immensely useful is the brain dead simple application deployment for Node.js using Github and Windows Azure.
Also, if you’d like to see other videos I’ve put together and see new videos I’ll be publishing, follow my Vimeo Account at https://vimeo.com/channels/shreddingcode/. This video is kind of a sneak peak of a full episode of the Shredding Code series I’m putting together. So follow my Vimeo or subscribe to the blog to catch the premiere episode and subsequent episodes I’ll be producing.
I was going to write this up. I stumbled upon this video of John Seddon presenting. But seriously, WATCH the video, especially if you work in an enterprise. If you’re in management or in executive leadership you desperately need to watch this and know it, understand it and listen to it. To benefit of yourself and those around you and those that interact with you business. Whatever I write is tertiary in relation to what John says here.
Watched the video? Well, either way here’s a quick overview of things. John breaks out why targets make organisations worse and controlling, or managing costs, actually makes them higher. He explains, in a rather entertaining way, why the public sector along with the private sector is doing horribly compared to what they should be doing. As stated in the video description, the best way to put it is “Target Obsession Disorder” laid bare!
It’s like a breath of fresh air.
How does this tie back to programming and code? Simple. To truly draw together what needs to be built, to see the big picture, the focus of the consumer and where we’re heading one must try, as hard as it is, to understand the whole of a system. Thus, systems thinking is the cerebral approach to actually write software well, for what it is really needed for. As I’ve been saying a lot as lately, “Never make a decision on a single metric, it’ll very likely be the wrong decision.”
As John states, I’ll leave this article with, destroy your “failure demand“.
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