JudoGeek Blog

Good Morning Monday.

Hi everyone,
Monday is here, December 1st 2008. The sky is blue, the sun is shining and I feel (comparatively) terrific!

The cold/chest infection I have had is almost gone, which is a relief.

yesterday I gave a talk to a group of coaches at the Dartford Judo CLub about "Coaching Digital Natives", which seemed to go down well. It was interesting as it was the least "web-savvy" group I have given the talk to so far. I think it went down well, so I am happy. I really enjoy discussing the web to Judo people as I think it is an area that Judo on the whole is failing to utilize.

Which brings me to the first thing I did this morning. I applied for a 6 month contract with the BJA (British Judo Association) as an events and PR assistant.

Now, you are probably asking yourself "why?". Especially, if you've been following the blog and my other blog over at www.judocoach.com/blog .

The reason is that I am probably the most publicly critical person about the PR/Web presence of the BJA. I have written post after post about their website. I have written to them and made suggestion, some ignored, some replied to, some implemented (although I might add implemented poorly and without bothering to acknowledge my input).

I mentioned the role on my Judo Blog and people emailed me saying "GO FOR IT!"

So I have, my purpose in criticising was/is always to make things better, so I decided that if I want to criticise I should at least offer to be an employee and help them. Given I have publicly offered to take on the BJA website, applying for a job that involves working on that site seemed the only honourable thing to do.

A six month contract is also pretty desirable in terms of my short term finances. As regular visitors will know I am building my own business at the moment ( www.enVirtua.com ) and as you can imagine it takes time to develop a revenue stream, so some regular income would be good right now. After all, enVirtua has only got a couple of clients so far and the incorporation process hasn't even been completed.

Of course there are some things to navigate with the BJA role and running my own business. Not least of all is balancing hours and a working location. The BJA role is based in Loughborough and I am based in Southampton. But I shall cross that bridge when/if I cross it.

---

Today is the first of December and I have my first "big" advertising campaign planned and should start today. It is promoting the Cloud Based backup service enVirtua is offering.

I have been using a cloud based backup for... quite a while, something like 18 months at least, probably more. And it is awesome, cheap and reliable.

I used to backup to external hard disk (in fact I still do via "Time Machine", but cloud based backup is terrific for me. I can archive things like podcast episodes up there and forget about them. If I ever need the files, I can access them from anywhere which has been used on more than one occasion when I have needed something and left my laptop at home.

Cloud Backup means I never run out of backup space. When I upgraded the hard disk in my laptop, the capacity suddenly grew larger than the disk I backed up to. So I had a problem, but my cloud based backup just kept growing to whatever size I need it to be.

The offering I am making via enVirtua I hope will prove popular with laptop users and small businesses. The ability to within minutes be backing up your data "offsite", and minimal cost is really valuable. No ordering expensive tape drives and tapes and waiting for delivery and installation. No having to plug in the external hard disk, just to find it's full.

Cloud backup is great, just click and go. You can backup from the office, from home, from Starbucks, where ever you have internet access. As it's all encrypted prior to transmission, it's safe.

I am hoping that the campaign I am starting today will prove successful and I can get people backing up to "The Cloud". I sincerely/genuinely believe in the concept and the product, I use it everyday and hope lots of other people do too.

---
Playstation Home looks awesome in Beta!
I can't wait for it to open out and the universe to expand. My secret desire is that Sony and Linden Labs make it possible for you to access Second Life on your PS3. That would be amazing!

James Urquhart on Scoble.tv

James from the Wisdom of the Clouds blog, who I met some years ago when he was with Cassatt has made his move to Cisco and helped host Robert Scoble.

Robert filmed the meetup and has posted it online, so take a look over at http://www.kyte.tv/ch/6118-scobleizer/2 ... acenter-30

Lance

New office, first floor, with a view.

This morning I have moved my office from out in the "dojo" to upstairs in my house.

This is mainly because it is Winter and I suspect my working in a cold, damp 'shed' may well have had a little to do with my recent (ongoing) ill health.

So I have moved my computer desk and chair upstairs into the spare(-ish) room. I tried working from the couch (no good), the kitchen table/bench (no good), the study/music room (no good). Upstairs feels good.

Much of working for yourself, is about acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses. Moving upstairs is my being aware that I need separation from my "home". I simply struggle to be productive if I am sat in parts of the house I associate with home life. The Dojo was excellent as it was physically removed from the house and is still my preferred option. But upstairs in the spare room works for me too.
It is a room I have never spent time in, so it is not tainted with experiences of watching TV, etc.

It also has the huge advantage of being the warmest room in the house, so shall help my health. It will also hopefully help the power bill as it is the warmest room and also has a single bulb (unlike the kitchen and living room).

In the long run, I think I will get someone in to fit out the Dojo as a office properly with insulation and so forth. It will be able to seat about 4-6 people in an office configuration so if (as I hope) enVirtua grows, then I'll have a work space as i need to take people on.

But for now, the upstairs room feels right. It is isolated and quiet. It feels productive, and that is what matter.

Lance

3-2-1... and you are back in the room.

Monday morning and here I am sat in front of the keyboard again.

Reviewing my last post, and little has changed, I'm still sick. It's slipped down into my chest, which technically means I have pneumonia! So I am on anti-biotics and not feeling that much better after a weekend of coughing!

On the plus side NZ Rugby was on form!
Both codes (Union and League) were on winning form and won their respective matches.

It was interesting to watch league again, not watched any for a while and it's weird. I find it less sophisticated and less enjoyable to watch than Union.

The Union match was good too, in particular, the second half. It was awesome to see the difference in execution between the first and second halves. I can only assume that "words were said" by Graham Henry at half-time.

It is a sign of the caliber of the All Blacks, that they could respond that well, when things had not been going smoothly prior to the end of the first half.

If anything shouts "well coached" to me, it was the way the All Blacks responded in the second half. They were like a different team.

Anyway...

This week, I hope to make the changes to the Envirtua site I have been thinking about. The more I work on the site and the business, the more I appreciate I was right to leave where I was. I certainly believe that I am going down the right path for where IT services.

The days of "boxes" and "box shifting" are dead!

Physical servers are hosts for services. The service provided by a server in this day and age is simply hosting of service providing virtual machines!

I'll be writing a series of posts along this line on the Envirtua site, even if your business rubs simply off a Windows 2003 SBS server, the days have arrived to not install SBS on bare metal but to install a hypervisor first and SBS on top of the virtualisation layer.

Danger! Danger! ManFlu!

As regular followers may have noticed, I have been pretty quiet the last week or so.

I have caught the cold my son had (he was off school for 4 days), and it's kicking my butt. Nasty nasty bug this one, I've been coughing so much and for so long that I ache and each cough is awful!

It has also affected my productivity pretty badly too I am ashamed to say.

Normally when I get sick I just go to work and get on with things. Sadly, being based at home I have been slack and not working as hard as I should have. Not good!

It meant I have missed getting across to University of Bath on Monday as I had hoped and Camberley Judo Club on Wednesday.

Today I am heading off to see my accountant to collect the paperwork to incorporate enVirtua.

I shall probably try and blog later today.

Thinking about the Cloud.

On Thursday I attended CloudCamp London, it was a fantastic event, so first a "shout out" to Chris & Alexis from CohesiveFT.

It was attended by 200+ people which was quite impressive to say the least. The format was 5 minute lightning talks which was a good format and some of the speakers were terrific. Some less so. Afterward there were "openspaces" sessions where we were able to discuss some selected topics, I was in the "Interoperability and Standards" session.

It was terrific to see that level of interest in Cloud Computing and it really made me realise I should stick with my gut decision to focus in this area. I have been moving in other directions, now I am encouraged to remain more focused on this area.

It is also a great thought provoker.
The discussions and talks are interesting and show how little progress we have actually made towards real Cloud Computing. How few people have implemented solution and how much fear there is. Some of course justified.

It also made me think we have a very immature view of what "The Cloud" is; or will be. Most things seem to be about extending hardware virtualisation, with a small amount of "services". But even that is limited to things like Google AppEngine, SalesForce etc.

Amazon seems to have the biggest lead in extending the Cloud area. EC2 and S3 are the obvious leaders in the cloud. But i think that the other AWS services such as SimpleDB and SQS are pushing into interesting areas. For that matter so is Mechanical Turk! :-)

What other areas of computing can be pushed to the cloud? DB obviously, but what about a HUGE MySQL cluster in the cloud?

I am enamored with Freshbooks (as you know) at the moment. One of the features is the service they provide to print and post your invoices for you. "Post as a Service" maybe? A big mailroom in the cloud?

I am interested also in how services like IfByPhone might enable more interactive things to be pushed to the cloud. "Salescalls as a Service", I myself am involved in something along these lines, using the phone services now available in the cloud.

I like this idea of extending the cloud beyond the obvious compute and storage areas. What else needs large amounts of "x" resource but is expensive/ineffective/inefficient to have in-house?

Thoughts?

The Matrix Parody.

You've probably seen this one, but in case you haven't this is a really sharp piece of satire. What if the Matrix was running on Windows XP?

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I came across it via Popey's blog (who found it here)and the original is here. Like the man says, hang in there till the punchline at the very end.

TDD with Perl, Episode 2 - Getting Started.

Test Driven Development or TDD is a increasingly common phrase and idea that you need to get your head around. The concept here is that you write pieces of software that tests the actual software you are writing.

The idea is that for every subroutine you write, you write a test (or several tests actually) that proves it works. In the purest methodology you write the test first, then the code. But for someone new to it, this is not realistic. That said, the sooner you start writing tests, the more sense it makes and the easier the process.

So how do you begin? Well that is what we cover here, Basically what we will do is create a "Smoke Test" script and a bunch of generic tests and also start of testing some of your subroutines. What I include here is based heavily on .......

What is a smoke test?
Okay, here is my take on what smoke testing is. A smoke test is basically a script that runs a bunch of other tests. The idea being that it'll test all your other tests and come back saying all is well. Your smoke test will be run all the time just to give you confidence that everything is well with your project. Think of it as a summary of all your other tests.

How do I start smoke testing?
Basically you need a smoketest script (mine is called smoke_test.pl) and some .t test scripts. So lets start with the smoketest script, heres mine as an example:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::Find::Rule;
use Test::Harness qw(&runtests);
 
my $rule = File::Find::Rule->new;
$rule->or(
   $rule->new->directory->name('CVS')->prune->discard,
   $rule->new->file->name( '*.t' )
);
my @start = @ARGV ? @ARGV : '.';
my @files;
for ( @start ) {
   push( @files, (-d) ? $rule->in($_) : $_ );
}
 
runtests(@files);

You "should" be able to cut and paste this into a file and save it as smoke_test.pl. Next you need a test script, here is one I have:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::Find::Rule;
use Test::More qw(no_plan);
 
sub check {
 my $filename = shift;
 local $/ = undef;
 open( my $fh, $filename ) or
   return fail( "Couldn't open $filename: $!" );
 my $text = <$fh>;
 close $fh;
 like( $text, qr/use strict;/,
   "$filename uses strict" );
} # check()
 
 
my $rule =  File::Find::Rule->new;
 $rule->file;
 $rule->name( '*.pm', '*.pl' );
 
 
my @files = $rule->in( './');
for (@files){
check($_);
}

You can cut and paste this into a file called say use_strict.t and save it.

Run you smoke_test.pl script (perl smoke_test.pl) and it should run the use_strict.t test on every .pm file in that and sub directories. Now, if the only code you have in this directory, your smoke test will fail... that's ok, its what should happen at this point.

If you look at the output of the smoke test you should be able to see that smoke_test.pl failed the use_strict test, which is right as at the moment it does not have "use strict;" near the top. Go add it just above use "File::Find::Rule;" and re-run the smoke test. Hopefully it will now pass.

Congratulations!
You have now done your first bit of test driven development TDD. Your use_strict test pointed out a flaw in your code (you didn't have "use strict;" in your smoke test). You corrected the error and now you test passes.

So whats next?
Best practise says we should use "Use warnings;" in our code too, so lets test that we are doing that. Here is my example use_warnings.t file, feel free to cut and paste:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::Find::Rule;
use Test::More qw(no_plan);
 
sub check {
 my $filename = shift;
 local $/ = undef;
 open( my $fh, $filename ) or
   return fail( "Couldn't open $filename: $!" );
 my $text = <$fh>;
 close $fh;
 like( $text, qr/use warnings;|perl -w/,
   "$filename uses warnings" );
} # check()
 
 
my $rule =  File::Find::Rule->new;
 $rule->file;
 $rule->name( '*.pm', '*.pl' );
 
 
my @files = $rule->in( './');
for (@files){
check($_);
}

Now run your smoketest script again. Oh no! It fails again right? Similar issue, your smoke_test.pl script hasn't goy "use warnings;" in there has it, go ahead and add it. Hopefully your smoketest should pass now.

You are now a TDD developer!!!
You wrote your test first, it failed, you altered your code, the test passed.
This is basically what TDD is all about, you decide on something you want to write/add, before you add it, you write a test to prove the feature worked. You run your test, which fails. You THEN write the code to do whatever you wanted, then test again, hopefully it passes. Then you repeat this for every change to your project. Write test, run test, write code, run test....

But I have not tested my code?
True, so lets do an example of that now...
We are going to write a little module that tests if testing is cool.
Start of by creating a file called tdd_is_cool.pm and a file called tdd_is_cool.t
Inside tdd_is_cool.t lets write some stuff to let us get started testing using Perl's Test::More (which we have already been using):

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Test::More tests => 2;

So hopefully you get the first three lines already, they are basically just normal for Perl code ok. Now, line three... Line three loads the Test::More module and tells it that we are going to run two tests.
Next we add:

use_ok( 'tdd_is_cool' );

This tests that you can load your tdd_is_cool.pm file ok. You can run your smoketest now and it will fail.

now add this line:

is( tdd_is_cool::test_cool(),'1','TDD is cool!');

This line calls a subroutine in our (unwritten) module and checks if it returns '1', if so then testing is cool. You can again run your test (and your smoketest and they will both fail).

So lets write our module, heres a bare minimum for you to cut and paste into tdd_is_cool.pm:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
package tdd_is_cool;
 
 
sub test_cool {
   return('1');
}
1;

Now run your tests and hopefully they should pass!! You are now well down the path of TDD.

Remember, its as simple as deciding what you want to write, writing a test for what you are going to write, then writing the code that does it.

Freshbooks continues to impress me.

Freshbooks is, to use their own words:

an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional

To use my words, Freshbooks is darned impressive!

With my recent departure from paid employment to working for myself, I needed to sort something out to do billing and I had heard of Freshbooks so I gave it a go. Which is really easy to do as it's free to start off with.

Once you are in, you can customise the setup and start creating invoices etc. I in fact started off by doing an estimate for someone. It emails it to them and they can accept it online. Very cool, you get an email confirmation that they have approved it too.

Then, as you do work you can track your time spent. Which is pretty cool. Especially for iPhone users like me as they have a native application you can install on your iPhone that has a stop watch and lets you log time against projects.

From that time logged, or form the estimate you can create your invoices. The invoices are delivered by email AND by snail mail if you want. Which is really cool! Although being American they do send to the UK/internationally and the rate is reasonable and easy to understand.

I think this is so great! It just takes the hassle away from me. The moment I finish a job I create the invoice electronically and the invoice gets printed, stuffed in an envelope and sent by someone else. And it's pretty quick, couple of days to arrive, pretty much the same as if it was sent from the UK. Sure it's a bit more expensive (argueably), but there is ZERO hassle!

Once payment is received you can tell the system... or Freshbooks also allows your clients to pay online via PayPal. Then it records the payment for you.

They provide reporting of aged debtors and that sort of thing too, so that is great.

It is still early days with Freshbooks, and I am sure their is competitors out there (actually I'd like to check them out if you like to recommend one). But to date I have been blown away by Freshbooks. And in fact it's so great a client of mine actually commented on how cool Freshbooks is.

When was the last time someone commented about how cool your billing software was??

Anyway... I thoroughly recommend Freshbooks at this stage, and totally think they are worth a shot for your small business or "side project" billing.

Signing up is free and easy, all the features are available free, and you only start paying when you send invoices by snail mail or when you have enough clients to need to.

So go give them a try, you can sign up at https://lancewicks.freshbooks.com/signup/ and get started. (and yes there is a referral system so if you sign-up via the links in this post I'd appreciate it. :-)

Lance.

A quick Kiwi post...

As most people who read this blog will know, I am from New Zealand, this post is a quick summary of some things relating to N.Z. I wanted to share.

Firstly and it is even more relevant given Obama's vistory in the USA; this weekend New Zealand goes to the polls too. Despite the fact I now live outside of New Zealand I (and you fellow ex-pat kiwi) are eligible to vote... and should do so.

It's pretty easy to do, and you can still get you name registered, even now! Just hit http://www.everyvotecounts.co.nz/ and sign up.

Voting is a really powerful thing to do, I think it was a friend of mines father who said something along the lines of

"..if you don't vote, you have no place moaning.."

. So get your butt in gear and get registered... it is not too late!

Speaking of friends, (and I think it was his father I mentioned above) my very very close friend Regan Morgan has a blog that I have started following. Regan is a photographer (amongst other things) and it's actually the only blog I follow that is so visual. In each post he puts a photo he has taken with a little snippet of text about it. It's a fascinating RSS feed. So far my favourites have been the Red Baron photos.
The other awesome little feature of his site I have found and think is genius is the "About Me" area. It is really fun, really informative and mostly (I think) really effective.

I don't think Regan and I have ever really sat down and discussed the web, blogging, online reputation, etc. But if we had, I would have suggested he tackle his website just like he has! In fact, I think I see some changes to my sites coming based on what he is doing.

Now the other thing I wanted to post about was NZEdge.com and the NZedge Blog I get their email newsletter and really enjoy doing so as it updates me to the great things we Kiwi's are up to and have done in history. So I do recommend hitting http://www.nzedge.com/register/ and signing up for the emailnewsletter which comes in every few weeks.

So there you have it, a Kiwicentric blog post for once.

Lance