JudoGeek Blog

Perl baby!

Lance Wicks — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:21:44 GMT

So in my $dayjob, I have for the last couple of months been working almost exclusively in Perl development.

I have mainly been doing PHP web stuff for the last couple of years, so it's been interesting looking at Perl again. Coming back to Perl has reminded me how nice a language it is to work in and how many powerful tools it has.

What is interesting coming back to it is noticing how much talk there is about how Perl has lost ground to PHP, Python, Ruby etc. There is the Modern Perl movement and a push currently to up the social media war. For example the "Ironman" challenge trying to get modern articles on Perl online.

What has not changed is Perl 6 is still vapourware prety much.

Anyway...

So Perl Best Practices is great, especially when coupled with PerlCritic.
My tendency is to work like this:

1. Run PerlTidy on whatever code I am working on.
I have some local standards setup to match the style of the team I work with.

2. Hack away
Preferably I "try" to start by writing a t test file or a script that automates testing the script I am working on when the code is not a module. So TDD with unit tests where possible and TDD with regression testing when a script.
I'd love some guidance in this area if anyone wants to comment.

3. Run the code through PerlTidy again

4. Run the code through PerlCritic.
I have this setup at level 3 or 4 currently. Depending on how clever I am feeling or how messy the code is, I tend to run PerlCritic over and over at different levels and try and fix up as many things as I can.

5. Commit the code and get a colleague to review the code.

6. Fix the changes recommended and send it back fro review again until it passes.

7. Merge it into the main codebase.

It's been great to get back into Perl and I shall post more about it over the coming days, weeks, months. :-)

P.s. If you are interested in Learning Perl, you should check out Gabor Szabo's Beginner Perl Maven course on Udemy.

Digital Natives, Social Media, Social Hardware.

Lance Wicks — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:52:47 GMT

On the 27th of October I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to deliver a talk at Anglia Ruskin University on coaching digital natives, social media and social hardware.

The talk is the v2.0 of the original DIgital Natives talk I gave at the University of Bath in 2008.

In the talk I tried to cover in a fairly short time what a digital native is, what social media is and why either of them matter. I also added a section on Social Hardware or the "Internet of Things" and how it relates to coaching.

Anyway... I was able to take a video of the talk and here it is:

Lance
If you can't see the video, try it on Archive.org:
http://www.archive.org/details/DigitalN ... lMediaTalk

Reflections on becoming a Marathoner.

Lance Wicks — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:49:07 GMT

On Sunday September 25th 2011, I became a marathoner. I completed the New Forest Marathon in the abysmal time of five hours and forty minutes. It was one of the most painful experiences in my life and I have informed my wife that she has permission to slap me if I ever suggest I run another!

The idea for running a Marathon has been bubbling under the surface for quite a few years. Mainly thanks to the Pheidipidations podcast from Steve Runner. I've previously run a ten mile race and a half marathon (January this year).

As with my half marathon, I used a training program from Runkeeper.com.
Sadly, unlike the half marathon, this time I slacked off the last two months before the marathon! And that is what did me in!

I had been training like a trooper, keeping to the program, fitting in the scheduled runs. But unfortunately for me, all that great base work was wasted. The way my run went proved the old adage that "Piss poor preparation, leads to piss poor performance".

When I look at the mile times I did, I also suspect I went too fast too soon. I didn't feel like I was running hard, but all of my first 5 miles were run under 9:30 pace. In fact only two of my first 10 miles were over ten minutes per mile.

After about 15 miles it all went horribly wrong. From about 16 miles my leagues were cramping and the going was bad, really bad. I tried to walk some of it off, but I was walking REALLY slow. The alternative was trying to run through the cramps, but that hurt and tended to generate more cramps.

I was hurting and came very VERY close to quitting a bunch of times. It was on reflection, interesting how my mind played tricks on me. At about 19 miles for example; I decided a marathon was only 23 miles long. So I only had 4 miles to go. A couple of miles later, my mind realized that a marathon is 26.2 miles. Weird. Two miles of confusion.

I don't know where it happened, but around the 23 miles mark, the sweeper vehicle caught me up. The sweeper, is a van that comes around and picks up stragglers or hands out disclaimers saying you are outside the end of the race and you are on your own.

Being caught by the sweeper van, spurred me on and I managed to catch up with the van and overtake it and get "back in the race". Shortly afterwards I was overtaken again; then overtook it again with maybe two miles to go. And I stayed ahead till the race finished!

Coming down the final length, I was greeted by my wife and my twin 8 year olds. And they ran with me the last 200 yards or so and the ordeal was over!

I am very happy to have finished the race, it hurt like hell. But I am pleased I finished. One of the little conversations I had with myself, was saying that I had to finish, else I would feel like I had to run another one so I had actually completed one� and there was no way I wanted to go through that again.

The interesting think about running the 26.2 miles that makes a marathon is that you body is not designed to do it. You can't run that distance without training, nutrition, hydration and lots of perspiration.

It is obvious to me that the last two months of training is key to a marathon. I had hoped that the base training I had done would carry me through; but it was no where needed. I needed a lot more miles under my belt and more long runs.

I had good hydration and nutrition, plenty of sweets and carb gel packs. And I drank at every drink station (approx every 4 miles). Which was something i worked on and planned for.

The legs were what gave out. And today I know they gave out bad. I have a sore lower back and also pain around my lower ribs. I am presuming the lower back is form the strain and the ribs from the grunting, groaning, wheezing and swearing and of course gasping for breath as I tried to run.

I should have seen it coming, the last few runs I did managed to fit in that were of reasonable length (8-10 miles) I felt some discomfort/pain in my upper thighs/hips. This was what I felt at about 10-11 miles into the marathon, before it expanded and blew up into full blown cramps shortly after.

It was rather an emotional experience, I was a broken man by the end. I gave it my all, more than I knew I had in me. I managed to finish in a poor time, but I finished just inside the official race period (out running that evil sweeper van).

I don't desire to run another marathon, I am happy to have completed a huge challenge. Even if I didn't get the performance/time I had hoped for.

An ordeal, but the marathon is supposed to be an ordeal, a trial. I made it the full distance and that is enough for me, I feel like I discovered and exceeded a physical/emotional/mental limit within myself. And for that experience the 5 hours and 40 minutes of pain was worth it perhaps.

A quick update while I hope the rain stops.

Lance Wicks — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:56:17 GMT

I am writing this as I wait to go for a 5 mile run, sadly being summer in England; it's pouring with rain. So, a quick blog update till it drys out a little (hopefully).

So, running, yeah doing a lot of that. I am running the New Forest Marathon in Spetember and am on week 9 of my training programme for it. Running 4 times a week, last month I ran 123 miles! My training runs include upwards of 15 miles. I have found running in summer has it's own set of problems (compared to last years winter training programme).

I have also been very busy Judo-wise. Coaching two clubs as well as my recent involvement with the European Judo Union and International Judo Federation computer teams. This has been a great new thing in my life, I LOVE IT! I get to go to some of the top Judo competitions and do my IT thing with other people who love Judo and IT. This month for example, I get to go to the Cadet and Senior world championships. How cool is that!
Earlier I went to the Moscow Grand Slam, which was amazing both on the side of Judo and of course going to Russia. I had forgotten till I got there that I really was fascinated with Russia in my mid-late teens. I was lucky enough to get a quick tour of Moscow before departiung and got to walk Red Square... WOW!

IT-wise, blogs and podcast are neglected as a result of the two items above I guess and also because of my latest project "CarMindr", which is my response to that "has my MOT expired??" panic. I've built and just launched a simple email and text message reminder service. It is different from other services out there as it is simpler and does not make a "land grab" for peoples personal information. My feeling was/is that the service should give value for any personal information it collects; not just get that info as a matter of course and then try and spam people.

I launched on Monday and so far the traffic is growing steadily and reminders in the system are growing steadily. Please do check out the site and let me know what you think.

Another project that I have been involved in is the 2012 Commonwealth Judo Championships. I am the IT director for the project, working with my JudoSpace colleague Dr. Mike Callan to put on the most innovative and exciting Judo championships you could imagine! It's going to be amazing! It is being held at the Wales Millenium Centre, which most people recognise as that place on Torchwood. It's an amazing venue and the format includes shows for teh finals blocks that include not just Judo but singers, dancers, bands and other performers! (All to be confirmed of course).

Well, the rain has dropped down to slightly wet, so I had better run.

ex.fm is ex.cellent

Lance Wicks — Tue, 24 May 2011 20:43:20 GMT

Sometimes you find something that is just earth-shatteringly cool. This week I found one of those things, ex.fm.

ex.fm is a extension to the Google Chrome browser that turns your browser into your music player. It has totally transformed the way I listen to music and only in a few days.

Ex.fm once installed puts a little icon to the right of the address bar in Chrome, when you visit a site with MP3s or a site like Soundcloud, a little blue box appears with the number of tracks on that page in it.

You click on the icon and a small media player appears and below it all the tracks on that page. You can hit play or add them to your queue. Every site you come across with compatible music gets automatically added to your collection.

You can then browse music by site or artist, add it to your queue and listen away!
Typically when you find a good music site it'll flag up 20-30 files, so after a couple of sites it gives you a couple of hours music easy. I've found I am listening to loads of music just from the queue.

ex.fm also has the usual social options. You can follow others and be followed. You can tweet a song or post it to facebook. It also scrobbles all your listening to last.fm too.

It's great stuff and if you start using it please let me know and follow me at http://ex.fm/lancew

Lance

p.s. you can follow their blog over at http://blog.extension.fm/ which has all the latest news, like today the picture of an iPhone which hints at an upcoming iPhone app. :-)

DojoList 0.8.0 Release.

Lance Wicks — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:52:32 GMT

Hi all,
so after a very slow dev iteration, I have pushed the latest version of the Dojolist codebase up so people can download it from http://github.com/lancew/DojoList

For those of you unaware of the project, DojoList is the open source project I started to maintain a list of Judo clubs online (specifically for the Hampshire Judo Association website originally).

The software is evolving and the project website http://dojolist.org now lists in excess of 4,000 Judo clubs from all over the world! There is just about 40,000 lines of code and it is starting to be something that I think should be looked at by anyone looking to maintain a list of clubs.

The 0.8.0 release is pretty well tested and has some nice new features (not least a tidier dojo display page. I am moving onto the 0.9.0 release that is a pretty big piece of work as it is the one that has all the syncronisation functionality in it. It'll be able to keep club details in sync between installations in other words.

In this release I have made a variety of tweaks and bug fixes as well as the following specific additions:

* Improved data validation
* Update date field on each dojo record
* Ability to upload photo of the coach
* more tests
* automated build script
* PHP CodeSniffer improvements
* A number of import options

I have more time to work on the code currently, so shall hopefully get the 0.9.0 release out sooner rather than later. No more than a couple of months I hope. Then the big 1.0.0 release about mid 2011 once I am happy with the stability of the code.

Obviously, the more use the code gets and the more eyes on the code the better it will be, so any geeks wanting to critique and or assist me improve the code please do let me know.

Lance

Welcome to 2011

Lance Wicks — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:54:44 GMT

Happy New Decade everyone!
2010 was a good year for me, 2011 I am intending to be even better.

This year I have lots planned already and lots I am adding to the plan. Between running my own business, running several Judo clubs, creating an academy, running a bunch of Judo websites and projects, doing a research project and continuing my education I expect to be swamped!

I shan't dwell on the work stuff on this blog, but will share a little about the Judo and Lance stuff here.

The first goal I have scheduled in the calendar is to run the Portsmouth Coastal Half-Marathon on February 13th. It coincides with when my fellow New Zealander Judoka Mahana Clutha competes in the World Cup in Austria.
I mention that because I have decided to use the run as a fundraising opportunity for Mahana. Sadly Judo in New Zealand does not get the millions of pounds that other countries (like Britain) get for example. So every trip is a huge investment, and it all comes out of the small amount of money Mahana has. To have a shot at the 2012 Olympic games, Mahana has to earn as many points at the international level that she can, so lots of trips. Just budgeting up to April is several thousands pounds.

So this is where you come in; you can have a huge direct impact on the hopes and dreams of a young Judo athlete! I am running 13 and a bit miles, if everyone who reads this blog threw a pound per mile Mahana would be able to easily pay the airfares and entry fees for the european leg of the World Cup circuit.

You can easily donate, it only takes moment online with Paypal. It would really mean a lot to Mahana and to me if you could donate something to the cause. Just click the button below and give what you feel comfortable with.

www.pledgie.com !' src='http://www.pledgie.com/campaigns/14331.png?skin_name=chrome' border='0' />

(The 13 miles is not all I am doing, there is the 60+ miles a month in training.)

It is not all for the fundraising, I initially started running again in part because I intend to get the points for my competitive 3rd Dan this year. So, I needed to burn some calories, get the spare tire under control, get some lung capacity and pretend to be fit again.
So (if you are in the UK) you may get to see me turn purple as I fight for points for my third this year.

As well as this, I want to work more on www.judospace.com and helping more coaches get academic knowledge of Judo coaching. I am also practising what I preach in this area and have accepted onto the EJU Level 6 coaching programme, which is a Masters programme from University of Rome Tor Vergata. This will be challange for me as there are only two native English speakers on the course (including me!). All this goes along with running and coaching three Judo clubs and also trying to grow the Hampshire Judo Academy project. My rough goal is to be working closely with 6 young athletes by the end of the year (with more involved of course).

In August, I plan to attend the www.judoresearch.org research symposium held during the World Championships and present my www.rwjl.net project, so I have lots of work to do there.

Then there are all the other projects I have on the go and also in my mind. I am going to get all my various blogs and podcasts and other projects onto a schedule, so that although the projects may move slowly they will move steadily. www.dojolist.org is a priority as I have let it slip lately. :-(

So, 2011 is looking like a very busy year for me. My hope is that it will be even better than 2010 and it�s already looking like it will be.

A quick update...

Lance Wicks — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:59:55 GMT

So, I looked at this site and realised that my last post was in AUGUST! Wow, didn't realise I had let it slip quite so bad. Anywho... so I thought I would put a quick summary of whats been going on, on the blog.

1. Working hard.
So, you know I run my own company right? Well, I do enVirtua. It's a wonderful thing running your own business, all the challenge, all the reward! Unfortunately it also includes all the stress, long days (and nights), lots of travel and it generally making you do things you never thought you'd do or would have to do.

I'm not knocking it, the cloud backup slash virtual network shared drive has started to grow in popularity which is good as it looked like it wasn't a winner for a while there. And I have been swamped with good work for over a year now. So much it is affecting how much more business I can generate (as in new clients) it's a wonderful curse to have!

2. Judo is taking over whats left!
So, for a longtime now (since I left Edinburgh almost), my coaching was pretty much short burst and my focus was theoretical, academic and geeky (websites). This has all changed over this year.
I now coach not one, not two, but THREE Judo clubs now! Kids in Alresford, Students in Southampton Solent and adults (military) at HMS Collingwood. And I should probably mention the soon to start after school club at the local Junior School.
Add on top of that my http://www.rwjl.net Judo research project, which I will post about at some point and also trying to help a young New Zealand Judo athlete... well, it's chewing up the remaining time pretty well.
Again, it's a great curse to have!

3. Getting fat!
People, I have a problem, I'm in my late 30's and I drive a computer for a living... and the result is I'm increasingly a tub of lard. :-(
More accurately, my BMI is rather higher than I like, or a doctor would like. I'm not fit and I feel it. So I am running again.
Being the type of guy I am, I've signed up for a Half Marathon in February. I am also signed up to a training programme from Jeff Galloway which I am following using RunKeeper. It maps and tracks all my runs, so people can stalk my panting around the village. :-)

What else.... loads of stuff, but for now that will do.

Oh did I mention RWJL? BLog post to follow soon. ;-)

DojoList 0.7.0

Lance Wicks — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:07:30 GMT

Last night (23 August 2010), I released DojoList v 0.7.0 via the http://dojolist.org website. DojoList is my Open Source Judo club database system I have been working on for a while now.

V0.7.0 is the first update since 0.6.0 back on April 20th. It has been slow progress as other projects have taken much of my time. All the code as I have written it has been powering http://dojolist.org so I am fairly happy with the stability. So far I�ve not had any big data loss incidents.

In the DojoList 0.7.0 release I have added:

* Sorting of the data
* Data Validation
* Draggable marker on map (during create and edit)
* Ability to delete and replace in edit club logo
* GUID for each dojo
* Source url for each dojo in XML data
* RSS feed of updates
* SW Version embedded in XML data file

I also fixed some bugs:

* 4: XML data file too popular in Google
* 6: Dojo test causes artefacts
* 9: Unable to click on map markers
* 10: Accented characters in dojo name prevent edit
* 12: RSS feeds do not update properly

In the next release I plan on adding the following features:

* Improved data validation
* Update date field on each dojo record
* Training session rating of level
* Ability to upload photo of the coach

Of course there will be bug fixes, both of those found already and those that will no doubt show up.

Summary:

It has been a slow development iteration this one, but it�s been a good one for me personally. I have learnt a lot and found the system even better. The system now incorporates data from http://judoworldmap.com and also from the rather rubbish British Judo Association �Find a Club� database. I can now finally find a club easily in Britain when I am travelling on business.

I have started planning on how to sync data between installations, that will I think be the main feature added in the eventual v1.0.0 release as it will require a lot of work.

In this release I enjoyed working out how to do the draggable map markers, which now update the latitude and longitude of the club. Data validation is proving interesting; it needs more work, but has been interesting to explore. The system has both server and client side validation. The PHP code checks for valid data and I am using the jQuery validation plug-in to make the validation experience a bit nicer on the client side (server side was painful as it was rather user unfriendly).

In the next few months I want to improve the installation process. To make it less manual and to check that all the pre-requisites are there. Preferably to adjust to cope with systems without all the modules required. Specifically this may be relevant for the internationalisation code.

The aim originally was very much to make the system work on pretty much any cheap hosting package. The initial versions I think retain that, but I know that 0.7.0 for example does not work on one of my target servers (cheap IIS hosting). And I have struck problems on another server too.

Finally, the big change I want to see happen with the project is that it goes from being a one man band to being a community developed project. To this end I added some basic info about the project on the ABOUT page of the website, created a mailing list too. Of course all the source code, bug tracking and planning was available freely online. But I want to go beyond �available� to a point where there is two way traffic. I push code and pull code from others.

DojoList and other Judo coding.

Lance Wicks — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:12:46 GMT

Hi all,
just a quick update to say that I have pushed a new feature out onto www.DojoList.org the last user visible one before the 0.7.0 version shall be released. I have one backgroiund feature to add, but in terms of what you see, it's ready.

What I have added is draggable map markers. So that when you are creating a new Dojo, or editing an existing one you can simply drag the marker on the map to get it 100% accurate to the location of the dojo.

I've been working on and (mainly) off on this one for a while. It needed me to move those pages away from the Mapstraction library to using Google Maps direct as Mapstratcion does not currently support the GEvent feature I needed.

Adding this feature took longer than I wanted, mainly because work on it got sidelined by other more important things... and more interesting things. Sorry. But it's there now and I think it means a lot. I know that the BJA for example are trying to replicate what DojoList does, and one of the issues with any dojo list app is that addresses and physical locations don't always map up.
Now if you use the DojoList code, you can have the address find the general location of your Judo Dojo, then just drag the marker on the map to exactly where the Dojo is. Click submit and job done! Give it a try and let me know if you find a bug anywhere ok. :-)

Outside of Dojo List, I have been working on all sorts. Not least of all a trip to Malta to help on the education of some Judo coaches. That has even more work for me to do, mainly audio and video editing... which takes forever!

The other big drain on time/energy for working on DojoList has been a new project I am undertaking. It is a research project for the 2011 International Judo Researchers Symposium, which is planned to happen at the World Judo Championships in Paris next year.
I am looking at researching ranking systems and ranking systems in Judo. Specifically, the IJF ranking system and comparing it to the ELO Ranking system. So I have actually started by writing some software that will run a ranking system using ELO using the current IJF ranking events.
It is now in a private Beta state, it is working and producing interesting results. Needs a lot of polish of course and the research itself needs doing properly (i.e. researching systems and writing it all up into some sort of paper), before Paris, where I would very much like to present it as a work in progress.
After London 2012, I would like to complete it and present the final results and maybe even (with some help) get it to a really good level.. maybe/hopefully to a level where it'll get published in a journal perhaps?

So thats one of the reasons (beyond work, life, Judo, etc) that is slowing progress on www.dojolist.org

If you have an interest (or expertise) in DojoList or in ranking systems please drop me an email ( lw@judocoach.com ) and let me know... all help or encouragement is appreciated I can assure you!! :-)

Till later,

Lancer