Writing in Markdown

If you haven’t used Markdown to write in a rich(er) text format, then you are missing out. I pretty much write all my technical documentation in Markdown. It’s pretty awesome and I don’t know why it took me so long to find it. I didn’t start using it until around 2013.

What is Markdown

Markdown was created by John Gruber.

According to Wikipedia.

John Gruber created the Markdown language in 2004 in collaboration with Aaron Swartz on the syntax, with the goal of enabling people “to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, and optionally convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML)”

TL;DR

OpenStack is a massive complicated ecosystem. It is only going to survive by the vendors that support it and probably not what you need.

Backstory

Let me begin by saying that given the proper talent pool, financial resources, and time; OpenStack probably isn’t bad for some people. For most institutions it is just wrong.

I will probably write another article that outlines all the questions that I should have asked before starting this. My assumptions were not all quite valid, but I did have a sneaking suspicion given a couple very relevant experiences.

Building a Dana Sixty

Part of this process was setting up the new axles. I wanted to go 1-ton all the way around. I think everyone knows that finding a good condition d60 for a reasonable price is not possible.

So I bought one from a local guy that had been sitting on a truck in a paintball field. It looked like it was pulled from Davey Jones Locker Room.

Setup - Dymo LabelWriter 450 on Mac OSX

The clinic software requires the ability to print labels adhoc and by event. This requires that the client be able to initiate the labels. There are no requirements that the backend server be able to print labels. Thank goodness. That requires something akin to a fulfillment center and probably integration with a 3rd app. Welcome: disparate stand-alone boxes.

Install App and Drivers

Good job guys. You get a big thumbs up for having a brew recipe.

Text Search - Django Model Fields

Django has a pretty flexible ORM, but sometimes clients need a free-form text search to get down to the content that you are looking for. It is beyond the capability of most engineers to build a comprehensive search tool and shoehorn it into an existing application. There are people working on these problems for years.

This does remind me of a senior boss that asked me to add a fuzzy search field to an application and that it was “super simple”. He said “you just do a LIKE statement against all the fields we care about!” and proceeded to pseudo code it for me. He should read my post about how not to F’k up your engineering staff.

Checking Memory

I don’t know why this has to be as hard as it is.

Fixtures are a Messy Mess

It is quite a pain to maintain fixtures it seems. I am not sure why yet. Maybe there hasn’t been quite enough time on this piece of the product for it to mature.

Django dumpdata

I tried several different variations to dump the data. I’ll include a few of them here since they might actually work for someone else.

python manage.py dumpdata > fixture.json

I kept getting various key errors.

Why Not GitHub

GitHub is Great

Don’t get me wrong. I would recommend using this service for a number of reasons that are not fiscally motivated. It isn’t whether GitHub.com is good or not. There is a matter of economics at play though.

As a startup I just don’t have the extra 25/mo to throw into GitHub business account. It looks cool that I have an organization there and there are more badges. But it doesn’t work at 12 X $25 = $300/yr. Bottom account. Bronze I think it is.

What Does a Data Scientist Do

Uncovering the Key Capabilities of a Data Scientist

Are you thinking of pursuing a career as a data scientist? It has been published that being in this field could mean you will be in-demand for many companies. So, it is not surprising if the number of individuals turning to data science is fast increasing.

But being a data scientist will also bring you huge responsibilities. You will cover various roles from different industries and organizations, with academia, finance and government being just some of them. Some of them will differ from each other. The skills and duties that you will carry, as a data scientist, will hugely vary from each other.

Health, Medical Interconnectivity and The Coming Data Revolution

Johnson Davis’ Walk

Six red indicators breach the serene layout of the medical information dashboard. Gauges, charts and graphs provide human cues concerning the information flowing through the Intra-Medical Services Accountability Pipeline. The IMSAP emerged in evolutionary form as various government, education and enterprises started the race to consume the calculus of living data. And now these machines of data consumption interpret the flow of what some consider the representation of that thing which connects life and machine.