Author Archives: Max Hemingway

Walking and Thinking

06 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by in Productivity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Having read two interesting articles recently-“Thought experiment walking conference calls sitting is killing me” and “Hiking makes you happier“, I have been thinking about how much as slave to the keyboard I have become recently and need to break away from it. Unfortunately there is the need to still sit at my desk and type lots of documents and architect pictures, however there is a need to move round more frequently.

Have you summed up how long you sit or use a device?

I combine walking and hiking (outside of my normal work hours of course, mainly at the weekends) with one of my other outdoor pursuits of bushcraft where I can spend time outdoors getting exercise and away from a keyboard.

Lugging a laptop or tablet up a hill detracts from looking at the view, and not the best thing safety wise. Using my own computer “Brain” which is portable within the bounds of my body I can at least use it to process information from the week and gather my thoughts

Taking some inspiration from The Hike Guy and my Personal Journals, I have created a Hike Journal/Log Book. The page below is from a walk I have done around “Hanging Stone” and “Luds Church”. The page describes some of the history about the Hanging Stone and the plaques on it. Hopefully will add many more walks into the Journal.

Walking Journal

Where will your feet take you this weekend?

Architecture in Practice

05 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in Architecture, Cloud, Enterprise Architecture

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

Having worked as an Architect for many years its always good to look at different methodologies and practices as they come up and to refresh your thinking on today’s Architecture practices.

One of the recent additions to the Microsoft Virtual Academy is the  “Architecture in Practice” course which brings Microsoft’s latest views on Architecture using their products as a base for some of the demonstrations and topics. Whilst this centers around Microsoft products and standard practices, (to a seasoned architect may not teach them anything new in Architecture practices), taking a course such as this certainly refreshes that thinking in today’s challenging market place of cloud, visualisation and mobile.

One of the underlying foundations that makes a great architect is their willingness to refreshing and renew skills and thinking when ever the opportunity arises.

The diagram below shows the 7 areas that are covered in this course:

Architecture+in+Practice

Further breakdown of the course with topic areas:

arch2

Source of pictures and link to the training: Architecture in Practice.

CPD is a two way street

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Development

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

,

Another comment from the CPD and Learning Survey:

CPD is a two way street. It requires commitment from both the employer and the employee.

In the main CPD should be a two way street, however there are some cases where this may not apply, such as a contractor who gains their skills through experience, or someone who’s role does not allow for training during their day job,  but have to do their own training to keep up with contracts or market trends that they specialise in.

Two Way Street

The two way street will depend upon the type of CPD arrangement set up by the employer and entered into by the employee. Some employers may make a range of development and training materials available for the employee to consume:

  • Subscription Online Books
  • Access to paid training – Online and Classroom Courses
  • Access to free training – MOOC, Online Courses, Webinars
  • Lunch and Learns (Brown Bag Training)
  • Projects to gain skills and experience
  • Specialised Industry/Vertical training / certifications

The perception of CPD and what constitutes learning should be clearly defined so both employer and employee understand what is needed. This should cover both time and types of learning.

Some resources could be easily overlooked as training materials and development tools by the employee.

One thing that always seems to be contended is time to train.  This is something that the needs to be discussed and set out between the employee and employer, however if time is given, there maybe an expectation for training also to be done in an employees own time.

The are employees who are not able to get time in work due to the nature of their job and industry and spend time at home learning.  Ensuring that you have a good Work-Life Balance is key, so setting out your learning targets and goals will help. Setting a level of CPD to Achieve will assist with braking the training into chunks over a period / year. Some professional bodies require a certain level of CPD to achieve per year which is normally a criteria to achieve or maintain accreditation or membership levels.

One thing to remember is that if your not advancing you career and planning/undertaking CPD, others around you are.

Statistical Inference Resources

03 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Data Science, Machine Learning

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

Here are some useful links and resources to learning Statistical Inference

*check the sites for any appropriate rules around downloading of course.

Rocking your skills in February

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Development, Programming

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Microsoft have set out a challenge for February through the Microsoft Virtual Academy to Rock your skills over the month through a series of Challenges based on 8 different tracks:

  • Cloud Development
  • Game Development
  • Mobile Development
  • Web Development
  • Hybrid Cloud
  • Identity & Access Management
  • Office 365
  • Sharepoint

I have decided to opt for the Identity & Access Management stream which is 38 Hours of learning and challenges;

Take the challenge to effectively implement identity and access management solutions across diverse devices and hybrid environments that require a strong foundation of skills from enabling single sign-on to extending your domain with Azure AD

This is a good initiative from Microsoft showing how you can group the training available in MVA to a set of identifiable skills in the industry instead of the single courses.

No Batteries Required: My Personal Journal

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Productivity

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

, ,

As illustrated in my blog post on Personal Knowledge Management,  I have been keeping a journal since 2007 of personal thoughts and events in a Moleskine  rather than putting everything online.

Just at nearing the final pages of number 13 to move onto the next one, I went back to the previous Journals and found that as I went through them they have got fatter with “extras” being added, more and more. I suspect this is down to recording more, but some of it is probably because life has become faster and busier over the years.

Diaries

Why do I keep a personal journal:

  • Memories so the family can reflect on events
  • Keeping notes and remembering events
  • My journal doesn’t need a battery
  • My pen doesn’t need to be cabled or wifi’d to print with it
  • It doesn’t crack when I drop it (although it can get wet)

If you need some inspiration around writing and keeping your own personal journal here are some links to help:

Personal Knowledge Management System

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Productivity

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , ,

After reading a blog by Stu Downes on “My Personal Knowledge Management Systems“, I have created my own knowledge management system to collect, sort and store useful artifacts, blogs, articles and bits I find on the web.

Here is my Personal Knowledge Management System:

Personal Knowledge Management System

Feedly

I am using this to collect the stories from blogs and web sites I regularly ready. A good tip picked up in the office today from a colleague. This allows you to scan the articles in a few minutes on a single screen without going via multiple sites. Using a series of key strokes you can read the headlines, then move down the articles, opening each one on the screen if you so wish.  Speedy blog scanning here I come.

Instapaper

I am using Instapaper to store the articles that I lie. Ive not gone as far as linking Feedly to Instapaper yet as I am just starting out with this combination and cant really justify the $5 a month ($45 year) for the Feedly premium version that allows the links to be created. Will see how useful it would be.

So at the moment it will be a manual solution, whilst I work out its value.

Twitter

Apart from my normal twitter account (link at the side of the screen) I now have a twitter account to show what I am currently reading. @HemingwayReads

Yes I could have done a link from Instapaper to my normal Twitter account, however I decided to keep this separate as too many apps wanting links into things does present possible security risks at some point. Also I thought @HemingwayReads was akin to “Being Ernest” – yes a play on words.

Publishing my Blog

My blog site publishes posts to other apps that I am use  such as LinkedIn and G+.

Over time my system will develop but works for me at the moment.

Have you tried R yet?

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Data Science

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

If you have not yet had a chance to try “R” as a language, here is a good site for having a go at some of the functions and power of the R programming language.

Code School – Try R

There are 8 lessons in this group

  1. Using R
  2. Vectors
  3. Matrices
  4. Summary Statistics
  5. Factors
  6. Data Frames
  7. Real-World Data
  8. Whats Next

The lessons present you with an R interface so you don’t have to have the R software installed on your end device.

There are also other good lessons available from http://www.codeschool.com such as Try GIT and GIT Real.

Ready for Technet Online 2015

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Cloud, DevOps/OpsDev, Programming

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I am looking forward to this years TechDays Online 2015 which is being run between the 3rd and 5th February 2015. If you cant make the sessions then they normally appear on Microsoft Virtual Academy a few weeks later.

This is being done over 3 days with a packed agenda that you can dip in and out of as needed.

Day One Theme: Client, Devices and Mobility :

  • Day one: Devices and Managing a Mobile-First World

09:30-09:40 Overview of the Day
09:40-10:15 Delighting your business with EMS
10:30-11:05 Devices, Devices Everywhere
11:20-11:55 Windows 10 Client Innovations
12:10-12:45 KEYNOTE: What IT Pros and Devs Need to Know About the New Microsoft
13:30-14:05 Building IoT solutions today
14:20-14:55 Microsoft Azure Remote App
15:10-15:45 Microsoft Azure RMS
16:00-16:35 Azure Active Directory: Much more than a user store
16:50-17:25 Microsoft Intune/SCCM
17:25-17:30 Wrap up of day 1 – Part 1

  • Day one evening: An evening with Office 365

18:30-19:05 Migration of your mailboxes to Office 365
19:15-19:50 Keeping in touch with the online world
20:00-20:35 Building online collaboration inside Office 365
20:35-20:45 Final thoughts for the day

Day Two Theme: Server and Cloud:

  • Day two: The Journey to the Cloud-first World

09:30-09:40 Overview of the Day
09:40-10:15 What’s new Windows Server /Hyper –V – a technical preview
10:30-11:05 How to find out what’s happening in your datacentre with Azure Insights
11:20-11:55 Host your own cloud with the Windows Azure Pack
12:10-12:45 Taking scripting to the next level with Service Management / Azure Automation
13:30-14:05 A new home for your old applications ↓
14:20-14:55 20% + of Azure runs on Linux – why is this important and how to do it well?
15:10-15:45 DevOps in Microsoft Azure with Chef and Puppet for heterogeneous cloud environments
16:00-16:35 Make Azure your DMZ
16:50-17:25 Microsoft Corporate Keynote
17:25-17:35 Wrap up of Day 2

Day Three Theme: Developer

  • Day three: Multi-device, Cross-platform Development

09:30-09:40 Overview of the Day
09:40-10:25 Creating cross-platform apps with Visual Studio
10:40-11:25 How are you going to deploy that?
11:40-12:25 Microsoft Azure Machine Learning without a PhD
13:00-13:45 Debugging and Performance Tuning Web Apps and Sites
14:00-14:45 What is Roslyn and why should you care?
15:00-15:45 Building cross-platform apps with .NET and ASP.NET
16:00-16:45 Creating cross-platform cloud apps for mobile devices
17:00-17:45 Microsoft Corporate Keynote
17:45-17:55 Wrap-up of Tech.Days Online Day 3

Eating a slice of the Training Pie – MicroLearning

26 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Development

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , ,

I have written several blogs now on CPD and have received some good feedback. Following on from my post (How much CPD Training should you be doing)-   and the post with the Survey Results, I received some good feedback from Jerry Overton.

“I noticed a gap between the amount of training IT professionals think they should take and the amount they are actually able to take. I suppose there are many theories about why, but I speculate that it points to a problem with how training is usually structured.

I think there is a huge need for microcourses/microlearning — short (5 min -20 min) focused courses delivered via laptop, tablet, or phone. With microlearning, you can context switcheasier. You can also fit training into the gaps in your life rather than having to make gaps big enough to fit the training. You can take 20 mins while you are waiting for a meeting to start, or 5 minutes while you wait at the doctor’s office.

If training were easier to take and delivered better, we might see an increase in training hours.”

MicroLearning is not a new concept, but is an evolving area of learning and developing that is currently has and is being researched.

Microlearning deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities. Generally, the term “microlearning” refers to micro-perspectives in the context of learning, education and training. More frequently, the term is used in the domain of e-learning and related fields in the sense of a new paradigmatic perspective on learning processes in mediated environments. – wikipedia

A paper called “The Design of MicroLearning Experiences:A Research Agenda(On MicroLearning)” by Silvia Gabrielli, Stephen Kimani, Tiziana Catarci details the main requirements of MicroLearning experiences as:

  • Highly Transferable
  • Easily available and user friendly
  • Persistent
  • Useful
  • Individual as well as shareable
  • Adaptable

The paper also places MicroLearning combining their ubiquitous emergence and life long duration with the ability to consume anywhere through mobile learning.

Types of Learning

(the figure is not the best res in the paper, but you get the point)

Microlearning deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities. Generally, the term “microlearning” refers to micro-perspectives in the context of learning, education and training. More frequently, the term is used in the domain of e-learning and related fields in the sense of a new paradigmatic perspective on learning processes in mediated environments.

Another paper from a study “Micro Learning As Innovative Process of Knowledge Strategy” by Dr. Minimol Anil Job, Dr. Habil Slade Ogalo concludes that ”

Business survival today extensively depends on harvesting, acquiring, retaining and applying fifth or sixth generation knowledge skills and capabilities. In view of these factors micro learning is relied upon to provide strategic solutions which could help enterprise growth through sustained maintenance of knowledge assets by evaluating current and future knowledge gaps. Core knowledge skills achieved under micro learning are intended to enhance organization learning and performance productivity.

Two good examples of MicroLearning are

  • Skillport (Books 24x&)
  • BBC Bitesize

SkillPort have produced a number of 3-7 minute videos on leadership covering a range of topics within this area. each are focused and directed to a particular subject. This method could be applied to a number of subjects and topics.

The BBC has been producing MicroLearning for a while based on its Bitsize series of videos and texts. This platform provides learning and revision for those studying GCSE and School Subjects. Again these method could be applied to a number of subjects and topics.

The term MicroLearning my be new to some, however you may be MicroLearning already and not realising it. People who use Social Media will have carried out a form of MicroLearning reading small chunks of information in 140 Characters in the form of tweets from twitter. Filtering out the “Social Chatter” there are some good nuggets of information and learning tweeted on a daily basis.

How much MicroLearning have you done today?