Author Archives: Max Hemingway

Is Upgrading to Windows 10 Plain Sailing?

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Tools, Windows

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I decided to take the plunge and join the other 14 million Windows users who have downloadmouseed and upgraded to Windows 10.

Expecting a good experience and easy upgrade I was soon put right on my expectations.

After backing up my data, I followed the Windows Update method of upgrade. My PC downloaded the Windows 10 upgrade and after a while it started to install. Unfortunately my device hung. The only way out was a reboot, so reluctantly the power was recycled.

My PC rebooted back into Windows 8.1 and then started to download the upgrade again! – Same issue occured.

This time I downloaded the ISO image to a DVD and got similar results.

After several times of being stuck in this loop and concluding that my current Windows 8.1 build was corrupt in some way I decided that the only way this upgrade was going to get done was to clean my PC back to its original build and then upgrade.

A reboot straight from the Windows 10 image was fruitless as Windows did not pick up the fact that my device has its Windows Key held in the BIOS at manufacturing time.

Luckily my PC has its build disks on a separate partition so an ALT + F10 was all that was needed to wipe and rebuild back to Windows 8.

With the PC booted up and Windows 10 DVD in, I was able to finally upgrade, remembering to lock down a number of the security settings enroute through the screens.

Build done I then put Office back onto the PC. This was followed by a number of Updates to both Office and Windows 10.

Great back and working. A couple of days later and another Windows 10 Update received I found another issue. Outlook would no longer send emails. Receiving emails still worked.

I carried out some research and it appears that somewhere between Windows 10 and Office some of the config files were out of place and it prevented emails working.

This issue seems to be common for some specific configurations although the actual cause isn’t clear at this point. It can happen with any version of Outlook.

http://www.msoutlook.info/question/cannot-send-after-windows-10-upgrade

I followed this sites instructions and ran the  “sfc /scannow” command in a command prompt with admin privileges. This command sorts out the critical Office files and places them back where they need to be after an upgrade to Windows 10.

So far everything seems to be back in working order, but the upgrade was not an easy thing to carry out. I had similar issues on a different machine with the email not sending. Perhaps a further patch is needed to sort this issue out properly.

Anyone else had issues with their upgrades?

Reference Architectures for DevOps and Continuous Delivery

10 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in DevOps/OpsDev, Tools

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There are a lot of different Reference Architectures available for DevOps and Continuous Delivery. Derek E Weeks has brought together some of the most common ones into two presentations:

A useful reference source.

Visual Introduction to Machine Learning

03 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Data Science, Machine Learning

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I came across this “Visual Introduction to Machine Learning” in a forum. This is an experimental site showing statistical thinking with an interactive web page. The page builds as you scroll down and takes you through a journey of Machine Learning.

It provides a high level graphical view of:Machine

  • Nuance
  • Drawing boundaries
  • Machine learning
  • Forks
  • Tradeoffs
  • Best splits
  • Recursion
  • Trees
  • Making predictions

The URL in the Web page indicates that this is part 1 so hopefully there will be more to follow with the first page indicated further posts on “overfitting, and how it relates to a fundamental trade-off in machine learning”

You can follow this project on Twitter @r2d3us

Other posts on Machine Learning

Think about what you Git on the Hub

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Development, DevOps/OpsDev, Open Source, Programming

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GithubGitHub is a popular repository for developers and users to leave copies of code and information that can be shared with others in an Open Source manner.

However as a recent article highlights (1 in 600 Top Websites Dangerously Exposed) some of the data stored in GitHub without any security enabled may expose a business to issues and security risks.

There are two types of repos available on GitHub*

Public repositories are a great choice for getting started! They’re visible to any user on GitHub, so you can benefit from a collaborative community.

Private repositories require a little more setup. They’re only available to you, the repository owner, as well as any collaborators you choose to share with. Private repositories are only available for paid accounts.

It is possible to create a Private Repo for several users. This is not a free option, but is however available at a reasonable cost https://github.com/pricing

You can also implement 2FA for your account for additional security – 2FA Documentation

* Source https://help.github.com/articles/create-a-repo/

2015 State of DevOps Report

28 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in DevOps/OpsDev

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IGrow last wrote about this annual report on 18th May with the opening of the 2015 DevOps Survey.

The results are in, compiled and the 2015 state of DevOps Report has been released from Puppet Labs and it can be downloaded from:

https://puppetlabs.com/2015-devops-report

Key findings  include: *

• High-performing IT organizations experience 60 times fewer failures and recover from failure 168 times faster than their lower-performing peers. They also deploy 30 times more frequently with 200 times shorter lead times. Failures are unavoidable, but how quickly you detect and recover from failure can mean the difference between leading the market and struggling to catch up with the competition.

• Lean management and continuous delivery practices create the conditions for delivering value faster, sustainably. Manufacturing was revolutionized by the application of lean principles in the 1980s. Today, it’s IT’s turn to go lean. When you apply lean management and continuous delivery practices to software delivery, you get the same results — higher quality, shorter cycle times with quicker feedback loops, and lower costs. And the benefits don’t stop there: These practices also contribute to creating a culture of learning and continuous improvement, lower levels of burnout, and higher organizational performance overall.

• It doesn’t matter if your apps are greenfield, brownfield or legacy — as long as they are architected with testability and deployability in mind, high performance is achievable. We were surprised to find that the type of system — whether it was a system of engagement or a system of record, packaged or custom, legacy or greenfield — is not significant. Continuous delivery can be applied to any system, provided it is architected correctly. We also found that high performers are more likely to use a microservices architecture, and less likely to outsource software development or run their software on mainframes.

• IT managers play a critical role in any DevOps transformation. This year’s report shows us how IT managers can help their teams win and lead their organizations through a DevOps transformation. Managers play a critical role in connecting the strategic objectives of the business to the work their teams do. Managers can do a lot to improve their team’s performance by ensuring work is not wasted and by investing in developing the capabilities of their people.

• Diversity matters. Research shows that teams with more women members have higher collective intelligence and achieve better business outcomes. Our survey shows that few teams are truly diverse with regard to gender. We recommend that teams wanting to achieve high performance do their best to recruit and retain more women, and improve diversity in other areas, too.

• Deployment pain can tell you a lot about your IT performance. Do you want to know how your team is doing? All you have to do is ask one simple question: “How painful are deployments?” We found that where code deployments are most painful, you’ll find the poorest IT performance, organizational performance and culture.

• Burnout can be prevented, and DevOps can help. Burnout is associated with pathological cultures and unproductive, wasteful work. The consequences of burnout are huge, both for individuals and for organizations. Organizations can fix the conditions that lead to burnout by fostering a supportive work environment and ensuring work is meaningful, and that employees understand how their own work ties to strategic objectives

*report findings taken from the 2015 State of DevOps Report

Habits and Patterns

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in Architecture, Tools

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During my recent vacation I was staying along the “Dinosaur Coast” in the UK and took my son fossil hunting along the coastline.  Along the way were several other fossil hunters ranging from Amateurs to Semi Professionals.fossil

The thing I noticed observing the other hunters was their habits and methods used in searching the rock faces and surrounding areas in finding fossils.

These ranged from random searches and tapping on rocks with a hammer to careful methodical searching and testing of the rock.

Much in the same was I have observed in my time as an Architect and in business of peoples habits and patterns, however it was more noticeable as I was not in my normal bubble of work/life.

We tend to apply a pattern based on our own skills, knowledge and behaviours that we are comfortable with. Perhaps we should challenge our own habits and look at where efficiencies and benefits can be brought in.

A habit (or wont) is a routine of behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur unconsciously.

– Wikidpedia

A good reference on habit is “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. Duhigg explains why habits exist and how they can be changed.

With patterns we can create, change or learn based on our needs. Patterns provide that repeatability that is needed for some tasks and solutions.

A pattern, apart from the term’s use to mean “Template”, is a discernible regularity in the world or in a manmade design. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner.

– Wikipedia

A good reference for patterns is by Christopher Alexander

Each Patterns describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.

– Christopher Alexander

Alexander defines a ‘pattern’ as a three part construct.

  • First comes the ‘context’; under what conditions does this pattern hold
  • Second is a ‘system of forces’. In many ways it is natural to think of this as the ‘problem’ or ‘goal’.
  • Third is the ‘solution’; a configuration that balances the system of forces or solves the problems presented.

By observing the other fossil hunters and their habits and patterns, we successfully found a couple of good Annomite and Belemnite fossils by Learning from others.

My lesson learnt on this vacation is to “Challenge the habits and create/follow a pattern where possible”.

Microsoft Free e-Books

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

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Microsoft have released a large number of free ebooks across a number of subjects via a MDSN Blog.

The subjects covered in the books are:

  • .Netbooks
  • Azure
  • Dynamics
  • Hyper-V
  • Lync
  • Office
  • Powershell
  • Sharepoint
  • SQL
  • System Centre
  • Surface
  • Windows 7
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 10
  • Windows Server

Link to MSDN Blog – Free Books

Learning Data Science – Useful References

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Big Data, Data Science, Machine Learning, Open Source

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Firstly thanks to Tim Osterbuhr who prompteLearningd me to create this list of resources that I have found useful in learning about Data Science after he read my blog post on Learning Data Science. Tim has also provided some of the likes below as well.

Here is the list of Useful References for Learning Data Science. (This list is be no means exhaustive)

From my Blog

From Around the Web

Public Data Sets

Data Science Books

Happy to add other links from readers to this list.

Catching up with Dockercon 2015

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Architecture, Cloud, Development, DevOps/OpsDev, Programming, Tools

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Docker have released some of the session videos from the recent Dockercon 2015 conference.

Session Links

Keynotes

Docker, Docker Docker

Day 1

  • Orchestration for Sysadmins
  • Docker Orchestration for Developers
  • Docker Engine
  • Getting started with Docker

http://blog.docker.com/2015/06/dockercon-2015-videos-day-1-of-docker-docker-docker-2/

Day 2

  • Least-privilege Microservices
  • Docker Hub
  • Docker Trusted Registry

http://blog.docker.com/2015/06/dockercon-2015-videos-day-2-docker-docker-docker/

Advanced Tech

Day 1

  • Faster, Cheaper and Safer: Secure Microservice Architectures using Docker
  • Reliably shipping containers in a resource rich world using Titan
  • Docker Plugins
  • Resilient Routing and Discovery
  • Interconnecting containers at scale with NGINX

http://blog.docker.com/2015/06/dockercon-2015-videos-day-1-advanced-tech/

Day 2

  • The distributed system toolkit: Container patterns for modular distributed system design
  • Container Hacks and Fun Images
  • Running Aground: Debugging Docker in Production

http://blog.docker.com/2015/07/dockercon-2015-videos-day-2-of-advanced-tech/

Docker Use Cases

Day 1

  • Analytic Garage on Docker at Capital One
  • Docker in the New York Times Newsroom
  • Enabling Continuous (Food) Delivery at GrubHub
  • Enabling Microservices at Orbitz

http://blog.docker.com/2015/07/dockercon-2015-videos-day-1-use-case/

Day 2

  • Speeding Up Development
  • From Months to Minutes – How GE Brings Docker Into the Enterprise
  • How to Build a Secure DevOps Environment for Government and Beyond
  • PayPal Goes Beyond CI to Production Scale PaaS with Docker

http://blog.docker.com/2015/07/dockercon-2015-videos-day-2-use-case/

Further videos to be released on the Docker Blog.

docker

Learning Fog Networks and the Internet of Things

03 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Architecture, Cloud, IoT, Wearable Tech

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Princeton University have a course set up on Coursera for learning about Fog Networks and the Internet of Things.  

This course teaches the fundamentals of Fog Networking, the network architecture that uses one or a collaborative multitude of end-user clients or near-user edge devices to carry out storage, communication, computation, and control in a network. It also teaches the key results in the design of the Internet of Things, including consumer and industrial applications.

Although no dates available at the moment, its certainly on my watch list of courses I am interested in taking.

The course will cover

  • Overview: From Cloud to Fog
  • Overview: From IT to loTThings
  • Principles of Edge/P2P networking
  • Smart data pricing for new network services
  • Client side control and configuration
  • Client-side measurement & Control Signaling
  • Edge resource pooling and caching
  • Security and privacy in Fog
  • Consumer and wearable IoT
  • Connected cars IoT
  • Smart grids IoT
  • Healthcare IoT

Source: https://www.coursera.org/course/fog