Tuesday, January 25, 2011

brazier, brassserie and brassiere

Easy to confuse these words. Especially if you hear them with the novice ear.

brazier - container for fire

brasserie - literally, a brewery in French, but in actuality, a more informal restaurant. Some put restaurant, then bistro and then brasserie and finally cafe...

brassiere - bra in French

Forvo makes it easy to learn the ways to pronounce these words too.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Tomcat should not be confused with the Apache web server

If it's been awhile since you've been in the Apache tool space you may have wrapped up Apache into Tomcat.

They're still a separate product offering and NOT bundled together. Wikipedia even mentions it here.

If you're looking for httpd.conf and configure files, those only are for the Apache web server, NOT in Tomcat...

I used the Apache server for a lot of Perl programs I wrote in the late 90s and early 00s; especially when I first started at Sun and had to maintain some legacy Perl scripts.

While I was an intern at Sun, Tomcat had been introduced by one of Sun's engineers and I began using it (in addition to JRun) for hosting JSP/Servlet applications.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Agile

There's a few tenets to agile programming/development.
  • Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software
  • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
  • Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
  • Working software is the principal measure of progress
  • Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
  • Close, daily cooperation between businesspeople and developers
  • Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
  • Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
  • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
  • Simplicity
  • Self-organizing teams
  • Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

Maybe it should be made into a rhyme like, "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick...," just for easier memorization of some of the tenets.

That rhyme could be updated for agile methodologies!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Shenanigans

Love the word shenanigans.

Maybe it means questionable goings-on with the understanding that whatever is going on can be treated with levity, irony and good sense of humor.

Seems to be a more popular word in my vocabulary these days :)

Exploring ELK (Elastic) Stack for hack-a-thon

At my current gig, our group finally got to do hack-a-thon week and I joined a team project that tied together a few of the technologies I&#...