It's so easy to call the ReadCloud Web API from Go. After obtaining your API Key from us it's as simple as this:

Aaron Hillegass on Data Persistence

The Many Faces of Data Persistence (NSConference 10) from iDeveloper TV on Vimeo.

Oldest Rock

Nature Geosci. doi:10.1038/ngeo941
(2010)
The Solar System just got a little
older. New information from a
chondritic meteorite — a rocky
artefact from the Solar System’s
earliest days — puts the age of the
Solar System at about 4.5682 billion
years, between 0.3 million and 1.9 million
years older than previous estimates.

Published in Nature, 26th August 2010.

What is an Amplitude in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED)?

After looking at some Richard Feynman material on QED I'm putting down some thoughts on amplitudes so that (a) I remember and (b) I remember - yes, I did type that twice.

An amplitude can be described as a line on a plane.  The line can be of any particular length and angle on that plane.  We can use an amplitude to get the probability of an event - to do this we simply square the amplitude, i.e.:

   probability = (ampl)^2

QED is concerned with and can be summarised at a very high level by the following 3 points:

• the probability that an electron goes from place to place
• the probability that a photon goes from place to place
• the probability that an electron will 'emit' a photon

The dimension of time is added to the above so that probabilities can be calculated for electrons and photons to be in a certain place at a certain time.

(more to follow - it's 3am after all ..)

My Notes on Why Agile Works..

After watching Martin Fowler's talk in France I decided to condense the important points from the talk in my own word so that they are easy to remember:

1. we have moved from predictive planning (waterfall) to adaptive planning - because most requirements are NOT static, therefore massive amounts of up-front analysis and planning are doomed to failure (developers have known this for years when having to look at unrealistic project plans)
2. the more traditional fixed type of processes can and often do stifle people and stop them working effectively
3. there has been a shift from people following processes to the process following and adapting to the people - it's now a people-driven process
4. we are moving to evolutionary design
5. it's common that organisations decide to follow agile methods to manage the project but the design of the software is not designed for change - it has been noticed that this is particularly a problem with followers of SCRUM
6. feedback loops are central to Agile 
7. Agile methods are much more effective when combined with XP practices such as pair programming, TDD, continuous integration etc.  This approach combines a flexible agile project management methodology with software that has been designed for change - loose coupling of components for example
8. it's very important when starting and Agile approach to first get the quality of the software under control.  Implement unit tests linked to the build and get quick feedback in case of regression test failures.

Pourquoi, pas comment - Martin Fowler, Thoughtworks

An interesting talk on why Agile works including some of it's history, by Martin Fowler and Neal Ford of ThoughtWorks:

The Go Programming Language

Richard Feynman - Ways of Thinking (Part 2)

Richard Feynman - Ways of Thinking

What can I say.. he's the great Richard Feynman, I'll be forever in awe of him:

The Great Richard Feynman - NZ Lecture

Richard Feynman's final lecture in New Zealand.  I'm not afraid to say he's one of my heroes.  See the lecture here.

This is interesting...

Age of the Genome

Congratulations to C

The C programming language has returned to the No.1 spot for April 2010, leaving Java in second place and C++ in 3rd. Although this has happened for a number of reasons, it still shows the popularity and power of C. It's been over 35 years since C was developed at AT&T Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan and others and yet it's still here as strong as ever.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a big Java fan and have been using it commercially since 1997 but I always have a soft spot for C as it's the first commercial programming language I used and I still believe has the most power and flexibility.

Here is the TIOBE list for April 2010.

Martin Rees Addresses Melbourne University on Life & The Cosmos

Nature is Boss

Of course we all know this already, but it has been brought home yet again with authority in the recent (and I believe still) eruptions of Eyja (for island), Fjalla (for mountain), and Jökull (for glacier).

I generally like to write my own stuff but I read an interesting little article by Christopher Hitchens which I'd like to share.

I've been hearing the term VAV being thrown around recently on BBC Radio 1 - a VAV being a Vocanic Ash Victim! well, there you go.

Now you can program the ZX Spectrum

OK, if you just want to be nostalgic and do some BASIC programming on the ZX Spectrum, click on the image below which will run a faithful emulation of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum complete with BASIC. For more information on Sinclair BASIC you can read the manual.

but here is a very simple program to get you started, follow the instructions:

1. type "10 LET a=10" - (note that the spectrum had short-cuts on the keys so immediately you press L it will display "LET" - you might find this weird at first but after you get used to it it's a very fast way to write a program). Then press RETURN (ENTER) - the code will appear at the top of the screen, that is the first line of the program

2. type "20 PRINT a" - (again, pressing 'P' will result in PRINT being displayed). Then press RETURN (ENTER). Your second program line will be displayed at the top of the screen.

to run the program type: 'R' and 'RUN' will be displayed. Press RETURN (ENTER) and the program will run and print "10" - voila!

Here's another program from the manual that demonstrates taking input from the user and the used of FOR loops:

10 LET total=0
20 FOR c=1 TO5
30 INPUT a
40 REM c=number of times that a has been input so far
50 LET total=total+a
60 NEXT c
80 PRINT total




and here is a screenshot of a program with a background of the original Spectrum keyboard:

The ZX Spectrum - Running "The Hobbit"

Below is a ZX Spectrum Emulator (written entirely in Java) and running the game "The Hobbit" which I spent many hours playing when I was 12 years old.

To start playing, just click on the image and press a key.  You can use basic commands such as:

NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, UNLOCK/LOCK TAKE/DROP, ATTACK, OPEN DOOR etc. and here is the manual if you would like to have a real play :-)

Reversing a Double Linked-List in C++ using a 'reference pointer'

Here's an example I wrote for how to reverse a double (or 'doubly' as some people like to say) linked-list. The main point of this example is to show that reference pointers are actually useful in the real world. In this particular example it has two advantages: to avoid having to return a Node* and to make the code clearer. The alternative is to use a Node** or Node*** but the code is less readable.

Here is the example - and because i'm an ex ZX Spectrum junkie, it's using the original speccy font! If you don't know what a ZX Spectrum is, go to http://www.worldofspectrum.org

A Glorious Dawn

The incomparable Carl Sagan.

My First Erlang Server - A MathServer

Erlang is a very cool language - OK, it's not the most intuitive to learn if you're a Java/C++ developer but it is extremely powerful and scaleable.  I managed to start 15,000 client sessions against my MathServer on my laptop without any problem whatsoever.  Imagine doing that in Java or C++... not easy to get the kind of performance that Erlang gives you for free.

Here is the code:





and for completeness, this is how you start the server (replace AndrewTosh with the name of your PC):



See the Erlang official website for more details. I'll be doing lots more with Erlang so watch this space...