(Review) Code, by Charles Petzold

published on Jan 03, 2013 by Filippo Diotalevi

I don't remember where I got the suggestion to read this book; it must be something related to my quest to find books that talks about the foundations of technology, rather than about the latest and greatest tool. Anyway, somewhere I found a link to this nice little book, and I'm glad I did.

You can think about Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software as an Introduction to Electronic university course, given by a professor that actually cares about his students. Weird, I know.

(... continued ...)

Read the complete post

Strata London Notes

published on Oct 02, 2012 by Filippo Diotalevi

A few useful (mostly for myself) notes after Strata London 2012.
As other people there noticed, quite a disappointing conference. Not just for the appalling location (note for organizers: hosting conferences in hotels is almost always a bad idea), but because all the topics of the conference felt, at least, three years old. Some of the things missing:

Graph databases, not a single mention
Real time analytics and machine learning: too little. Three related talks, no mentions to Storm and alternatives
No talks on R and related technologies?
Very little on data visualization (mostly driven by The Guardian and Tableau)

On the other side, too much of...

Hadoop everywhere! I do understand many of the sponsors were Hadoop "resellers", but so many talks?
Non technical talks.

Rant
I don't really know who started this trend of having non-technical, "cultural", "i will surprise you with my precious insights" kind of talks at technical conferences. I admit that at times it may be fun, even interesting, like when Bob Martin goes into details explaining how black holes work. However, isn't it boring when you see that happening at every single conference?
Do we really need three talks talking about Turing, Babbage and co, and what Big Data was like 50 years ago?

After the moanings, a list of the few discoveries that are worth a second look (... continued ...)

Read the complete post

London Population Over The Years

published on Aug 06, 2012 by Filippo Diotalevi

After a few weeks of intense work sharpening my R skills, I figured it was about time to start pushing out some code. One of my favourite blog is the awesome Spatial Analysis, so why not starting with some maps?

The maps displayed in this blog post are the combination of two distinct datasets:

The UK "Boundary Line" dataset, downloadable (after a tricky and tedious procedure) from this website
The Historic Census dataset downloadable from the London Datastore website

(... continued ...)

Read the complete post

Older posts

HttpCheck in node.js, published on Sep 09, 2011
Trying node.js, published on May 04, 2011
Week 5, published on Feb 06, 2011
Week 3, published on Jan 24, 2011
Innovation and Large Companies, published on Jan 17, 2011
Noteworthy links, January 10th 2010, published on Jan 10, 2011
Week 1, published on Jan 08, 2011
In Defense of Copycat Businesses, published on Jan 08, 2011
Week 0, published on Jan 02, 2011
Noteworthy links, December 31st 2010, published on Dec 31, 2010
Startup/Tech Events in Europe, January-March 2011, published on Dec 30, 2010
Retrospective, and what's ahead, published on Dec 27, 2010
Printable Lean Canvas (pdf), published on Dec 19, 2010
Customer Development in 10 weeks, published on Dec 18, 2010
Screw it, published on Nov 26, 2010
Noteworthy links, November 20th, published on Nov 20, 2010
Retention vs Conversion, published on Nov 15, 2010
Startup bookstore, published on Nov 13, 2010
Noteworthy links, November 7th 2010, published on Nov 07, 2010
Simplenote review, published on Nov 05, 2010
Startup Ideas, demystified, published on Nov 03, 2010
QWiki, first impressions, published on Oct 26, 2010
The Lean Canvas, published on Oct 24, 2010
Product launch, a checklist, published on Oct 12, 2010
On competition (and Opzi, and Techcrunch), published on Sep 28, 2010
Usability tests for startups, published on Sep 27, 2010
Austin Startup Weekend my review, published on Sep 15, 2010
Startup of a Startup, basic infrastructure, published on Aug 30, 2010
Is there such thing as a Startup Technology Stack?, published on Aug 15, 2010
Mindquilt Updates, published on Jul 24, 2010
Marketing on a shoestring (aka Mindquilt is going to Boston), published on May 20, 2010
Introducing Mindquilt, published on May 04, 2010
OSGi in the Enterprise, published on Nov 14, 2009
Season of (small) changes, published on Oct 18, 2009
End of Summer updates, published on Sep 20, 2009
Modular Java, published on Aug 13, 2009
The OSGiLook, Linode and minor migrations, published on Aug 02, 2009
Where the (OSGi) world is going after Devcon Europe?, published on Jul 05, 2009
Beautiful Architecture, a review, published on Jul 04, 2009
Off to Zurich, published on Jun 20, 2009
Berlin, May 23th 2009, published on Jun 15, 2009
felix4android, published on Jun 01, 2009
Bookmarks for April 30th, published on May 01, 2009