See you at Nagios Konferenz

Nagios Konferenz 2008 will take place in Nuremberg the 11th and 12th of September this year.

This time CAPSiDE will be there with Jose Lus Martinez, CAPSiDE's CTO (view his blog), presenting a paper about Nagios notification methods.


Ton Voon, the CTO of our partner Altinity, will be there too giving several talks.

If you're interested in the conference, you can register and take a look at the agenda at NETWAYS' web site: http://www.netways.de/nagios_konferenz/y2008/.

See you in Nuremberg!

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Book review: "Confesiones personales de un publicitario"

Title: Confesiones personales de un publicitario
Author: Lluis Bassat
Type: self-biography


This is the last book I've been reading and I must say it's very good. It's a kind of selfbiography from Lluis Bassat, the famous publicist, where he summarizes some situations from his life and thinks about it, showing his conclusions.

The book, written in a very plain and easy to read language, is divided by roles he has played in life (publicist, sportsman, kid, student, traveler...) more than in a chronological way, and it's a very interesting and valuable "transfer of experience" that shows you another point of view to the life. The point of view of a passionate man, with an insatiable curiosity, just like a kid, looking always for a way to improve everything he can, both as person and as a professional.

I specially agree with Mr Bassat on how a company looking for the excellence in his work should be (the requirements that he setted up for hs own company):
1- the company should be the best place to work in his sector
2- the company should have a small team with only the best professionals in his areas
3- the company should be the one that pays the best to his employees

This is one of the keys to the success.

A book worth reading it, no doubt.

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Unix toolbox

My colleague Miquel sent me a very nice and useful document for Unix guys: the unix toolbox. You can download it in PDF! It contains a lot of commands reference for gathering system information, encrypting files, managing the file system, certificates, version control systems, databases and lots of other stuff.

Maybe nothing new for "sysadmin masters", but a very nice reference document for any other unix guy ;)

Link: the unix toolbox

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The (right) meaning of words

Yesterday night I was so tired that I didn't want to cook anything for dinner, so I decided to order some food to take away... but I noticed something very curious while reading the menu of my favourite "food to take away" shop. The picture in this post translates as:

VEGETABLES
Vegetable Chicken: lettuce, tomato, chicken, mayonnaise and boiled ham
Vegetable Tunna: lettuce, tomato, tunna, onion, boiled egg and mayonnaise
Vegetable York: lettuce, tomato, boiled ham and mayonnaise

First impression was: "OMG! didn't know that tunna and chicken were vegetarian food!". Then I realized that probably the guy who wrote the menu meant "sandwiches with vegetables (not exluding other ingredients)" and not "vegetarian sandwiches" when he wrote it. However, I understood vegetarian sandwiches at first glance.

If we were talking about software development, this missunderstanding may easily lead to a wrong development and hence to a work redo, deployment delays and general insatisfaction, both for the customer and for the tech team.

The worst thing that can happen in any software project is to develop the wrong project. And the main cause for that to happen is that requirements in plain language don't mean the same for all the actors involved in the project.

That's why one of the first artifacts you should create in any software project is a glossary of terms that clearly states the meaning of any important word for both the business and the project. Doesn't matter if you use user stories, use cases, plain text software requirements, all of them or any other kind of Software Requirements Specifications. The words that are important for the business, the project or the context must be clearly defined for all people involved. Of course, as any other project artifact, keep this glossary versioned.

But, how should this document be? Well, I think that there are no fixed rules for it as long as it works for you, but I will recommend you 3 simple rules that should keep in mind all the time:

• keep the document visible to all team members; put it in the first page of the wiki of the project if you use it, send it to all members every time it's updated... everybody should have no doubts about terms and its definitions.


• take it with you in all requirements gathering and development team meetings; force the use of the correct terms every time ambiguity appears and be sure ti have your ears ready to catch any word that may lead to confussion. If you're in doubt about adding a new term, then add it (I usually record meetings for later review).


• if a definition takes more than two or three lines, check if you can divide it; e.g., if you are writing a definition like "User: anyone who can search in the web, log in in user area, register preferences or anyone who use the backoffice of the web site...", probably will be better served by defining two terms, "public area users" and "back office users".

Also, if you use user stories for requirement gathering, user stories and glossary of terms can provide feedback to each other and serve to you as a way to improve the quality of your user stories and of your requirements.
And remember, a vegetable dish doesn't need to be a vegetarian one ;-).

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Human-Machine Interfaces with Wii Remote

I've just seen what Johnny Chung Lee is capable to do with a $40 Nintendo Wii remote controller. Listen to this Ted talk and see it yourself.

I think that this is just the beginning of a great thing. Not only because of the possible wide spread of its uses because its low cost, as Johhny says in his talk, but because it maybe the start of a brand new set of HIDs.

I'm not talking just about Wii. I'm talking about the way Johnny interacts with the computer. For the whiteboard demo the use is obvious and already well stablished with interactive or digital whiteboards (although more expensive), and the possibilities for the game industry, specially for Nintendo, are clear too. But I think it can be the basis for a lot of other uses: better car driving aid systems, for example to know if the driver is getting slept and reduce speed and warn him is so, to be more productive with the computer (I often said, when I'm working with my computer with 2 screens attached, that the OS should be clever enough to set active the window that I'm looking to), helping impaired people to interact with electronic home devices and computers easily or as a cheap implementation for an interface similar to Microsoft Surface.

There are plenty of uses for this kind of interface, and having it already working with Wii hardware makes it widely deployed already to a lot of home users. Right now, while I'm sitting in the sofa in front of TV writing this post, I think that it can be used too for the Wii, when working as a DVD player, to know if you're really looking the film and pausing it if you go away from your TV. Less remote controls in your hands (btw, I wear glasses, so I just need a couple of IR leds on it ;-) ).

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