Visualising a Software Project

A big project I was responsible for at a previous employer kept me pretty busy, with several commits to the repository every day. I had a change log script setup to keep a regular change log updated so stakeholders could see the progress of changes.

Just before I left the job, I dropped this changelog into Wordle the results were pretty interesting.

Change Log Visualisation

Interestingly, you can see the level of involvement of various developers, the files which were touched the most and the release tags which had the most commits. When I look at this, it gives me an instant view of the problem areas of code and where the bulk of the effort was spent.

Google Streetview Made Me Famous – The End of Privacy

Last week Google Streetview launched in New Zealand. I knew this because not only was I working in mapping at the time the country was being captured, but also because on the ride home from the best pies in NZ, we saw a Google car driving down the main street of Carterton. Ironically I was not wearing a helmet.

Have a look before they update it (2018)

iPredict: A New Zealand Prediction Market

I’ve been running a $15 portfolio at iPredict for about a month now, and in spite of actually losing money on sensible predictions, I’m really pleased with it. Why am I losing money? Well, when PM.LABOUR shares were low I bought 20 of them, I held on to them figuring the value would improve closer to the election. I then watched them plummet and the value of my portfolio drop to $12 so I sold them to prevent further losses, figuring that as people accepted the inevitability of a National Government the share price would continue to drop in the same way that the US.MCCAIN08 shares have. How wrong I was, a few surprise polls and cooperation from the greens has seen the share price recover, so I’ve made the possibly foolish move of buying 5 more.

Successful outcomes for me so far have been predicting the 100 point drop in the OCR and short selling some OCR.9OCT08 stock.

My current portfolio graph has been removed as it’s no longer up to date.

Auckland Road Alerts – Twitter Bot

Another Twitter Bot, perhaps a little boring of me, but maybe useful to Auckland Twitter users. Based on the Wellington version I made previously, just a slight tweak to the bounding box.

http://twitter.com/AuckRoadAlerts

A note to AA – if you don’t like me doing this, just let me know and I’ll take it down, it should be driving traffic to your site though.

WellyRoadAlerts Twitter bot back in business thanks to JSON

It seems AA have updated their site using the GeoSmart Mapping API. I noticed they use an AJAX request to grab a JSON encoded object that neatly describes all the information I need. The JSON object not only breaks the incident data down into component parts but also includes NZMG map coordinates so I can choose exactly the bounding box I want to capture alerts from.

This change actually made it easier to take the twitter bot from a flaky hack to something a bit more robust in just a few minutes. I’m not sure if they intended that when they built the new version of the site, but it shows how using a really simple format like JSON for data interchange can deliver mash-up potential.
I hope AA don’t mind me scraping their data, if they do, they are welcome to get in touch.
http://twitter.com/WellyRoadAlerts

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex has focus on 3G

I’m interested to see the next Ubuntu 8.10a release introduces 3G networking. It’s pretty exciting to think that an operating system that moves as quickly as Ubuntu will be running on mobile devices. As a web application developer, I see that the mobile browser is a great way to provide a user interface to mobile apps, but that underlying access to the hardware will provide the possibility of the most interesing applications. An open OS will surely make this access much easier.

Universal Wiki Edit Button – Demystifying Wikis

ReadWriteWeb has an article from a few days ago that discusses the introduction of a universal edit button for wikis or pages which allow user editing. From what I can tell, it would appear in the browser in the same way that the RSS feed button appears. I’m not 100% convinced that people know what the RSS button means, but it’s certainly a lot better than needing to know what RSS means.

Having introduced wikis to two separate workplaces, the biggest hurdle I’ve seen so far for non-web people is the name. “Wiki” is something people don’t understand, even when I try to make the Wikipedia example, they still don’t quite get it. Removing buzzwords is key to getting mass adoption of a technology as fundamental as editing of content.

I love the way wikis enable non-technical people to contribute content, and I’d love to see a lot more public consultation like the Future Melbourne project use it to get wide ranging participation in government, perhaps first we need to just say “go online and participate” without needing to say “use the wiki”.
Article:  Wiki Providers Come Together to Offer Universal Edit Button

Oil Price Twitter Feed

After my last post, I realised I hardly ever drive to Wellington anymore anyway, trying not to burn any more hydrocarbons. Perhaps a more political version than WellyRoadWorks, but certainly more interesting to me, is this twitter feed I created which shows the oil price change whenever it moves up or down to the next whole dollar. Whether political, geological, or purely a function of over-eager oil speculators, the message is clear, everything that depends on oil is getting more expensive.
http://twitter.com/OilCrash

Background image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/good_day/152342733/

Scraping content from: http://bloomberg.com/energy

Twitter as Mashup Message Queue

Trying to explain what’s cool about Twitter to a colleague yesterday, I put together a small script that scrapes the road alerts from AA Roadwatch and posts them to a twitter feed.

Why? Well Twitter is unique in that as well as being a social messaging platform, it also acts as a RSS/REST/SMS/IM gateway. I can post a message using the web service, and anyone can receive it as an SMS/text message or in their IM client if they follow it. In a way, it can be seen as a message queue with a publisher and multiple subscribers.

The beauty of Twitter is that I could whip up a first version of the WellyRoadAlerts mashup in just 20 minutes, as most of the work has been done for me.

There are many other examples of this sort of mashup out there, but in the meantime, some Wellingtonians might find this useful.

Check it out: http://twitter.com/WellyRoadAlerts

If you work for AA and don’t like me doing this, please let me know.

Improved $$ performance in Prototype 1.5.1_rc1

The prototype guys have done some great work in improving the $$ CSS selector operation and it’s much faster. If you use prototype, and I use it a lot, this is a major improvement. Old news for some, but very exciting for me. Read the release notes for more information, and check out the speed comparison against other JavaScript libraries.

Technorati tags: prototype, javascript