Seek Nuance

I made my first non-trivial diagram using Noteshelf. It was a “learning experience.”

I organized the diagram into three sections. On the left are database and cloud storage symbols. In the middle are representations of background tasks, both periodic and invoked. On the right are our production server farms. All totaled, there are four db’s, 15 tasks, 10 farms, and a bunch of lines.

The results aren’t great.

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I trawled the web for an hour today and couldn’t find a decent iPad case with a stylus holder. The cases I did find were too bulky, didn’t include a stand, or had some other glaring defect.

A work friend jokingly suggested that I Velcro or tape a Baggie to the outside of my stm skinny case, and carry my stylus in it. I laughed at her suggestion at the time, but I’m not laughing anymore.

My iPad diagramming series:

• My Wacom Bamboo Stylus
• iPad diagramming II
• iPad diagramming

My new Bamboo Stylus arrived today! It’s just long enough so that the upper inch or so rests in the space between my index finger and thumb, and hefty enough so that I feel it there. I don’t have the specifications handy, but I’d say it weighs slightly more than a typical rollerball pen, but less than a typical fountain pen.

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I’m playing more with Noteshelf and thinking about how I use a whiteboard. And I’m noticing aspects of my sketching for the first time…

My drawings mutate a lot as I create them:

• I’ll start out leaving space for objects (e.g., server boxes, database symbols), and then decide the objects need more space. (For practical or esthetic reasons.)
• I’ll assign colors to different entities, and later change the color assignments.
• I’ll start recording attributes A, B, and C for state transitions, and then decide to drop B and add attributes D and E.
• It’s very rare that nothing has to change. But even then, I’ll wish I could move the whole diagram on the whiteboard or page in toto, because it’s grown in a direction or to an extent that I didn’t anticipate.

I often wish I could do a diagram twice — once as a dry run, once “for real.”

These alterations happen more often to my drawings than they do for others. At least, it seems that way to me.

The latest changes to Google search, wherein they merge Google+ non-public results into search results, are the last straw. I’ve switched my default browser search engine to Bing.

I often need to diagram things at work. It’s usually something like a system block diagram, a gnarly code problem, or client-server interactions. Sometimes it’s just a list of things I’m comparing.

Whatever the diagram is, I need to the keep it around for a while. And refer to it, scribble on it, and update it. And sometimes share it.

Since “back in the day,” I’ve used a whiteboard for this. Or sometimes pages from a pad of graph paper. I’ll noodle around, sketch things out, and leave it up.

For sharing, I’ve resorted to snapping a photograph of the whiteboard with my iPhone. (Or a couple of photographs, which I then stitch together with AutoStitch.) If the photo’s not adequately square, I straighten it out with Genius Scan. And then e-mail it. The mail message can get pretty large, so this can be a nuisance.

Eventually the whiteboard needs to be erased, or is accidentally erased. Or I lose the graphing paper doodles, or decide to throw out the diagrams.

In December, I received an iPad 2 as a gift. And I’ve gotten around to thinking, why not step up my game and use the iPad for this? (Yeah, I’m being dramatic and rhetorical. Sorry. I’ll re-phrase: “I’ve decided to use the iPad for diagrams and simple drawings.”)

I haven’t completely figured out how I’ll do this. I’ll write about my experience here as I go down the learning curve, mistakes and all.
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After some job market feedback and chin-scratching, I’ve changed our Senior Developer opening’s job description. Now it’s less about Python or Django, and more about search technologies, specifically full-text and LSI search.

We hope candidates will have some experience with Python or Django, but search technology experience (e.g., tuning, tokenizers, parsers, relevancy rank tweaking, aggregates and pivots) in now more important, and emphasized, in the the job.

Here’s the new description:

———

Founded in 2009, IP Street develops and markets software to help corporations, law firms, financial research firms, and government agencies better analyze patent information.  Our goal is to make IP data easy to get, use, and understand, so everyone can have access to high quality and transparent information.

A significant facet of our application’s capabilities are derived from Solr and other search technologies. We’re seeking a great full-text Search developer with experience in:

• Solr, Lucene, or other search engines
• Full-text search schemas, tokenizers, parsers, and rules for returning statistics and meaningful analytics
• Automated workflows that process millions of objects
• Data quality metrics and repairs

You’ll be joining us at a great time! Revenue is coming in, and we’ve done two Angel funding rounds at increasing valuations.

Key Responsibilities.

• Enhance our Solr engine to provide more statistics and meaningful analytics to the product
• Enhance or tune our use of other search technologies, e.g., LSI
• Enhance and extend the existing code base to add new product features. Our application is written in Django and Python, with an almost all open-source technology stack
• Occasionally wear testing or devops “hats,” as the needs arise
• Write unit tests for your code, and do performance analysis
• Demonstrate technical leadership within the team
• Communicate well with the team, in writing and orally

Qualifications.

• Significant experience using and tuning Solr, Lucene, or other search engines with similar capabilities
• 3+ years related experience in Python development
• 1+ years experience in Django development, or a strong interest in learning
• Experience using one or more of: MongoDB, CouchDB, or another NoSQL database; Celery; Redis; PostgreSQL or another SQL database
• Experience using latent semantic indexing search technologies would be a plus
• Experience integrating with open-source 3rd-party libraries
• Experience creating customer-focused software to process data and generate statistics and analytics
• Solid troubleshooting abilities, self-directed, and proactive
• Enjoy all aspects of software product creation — design, implementation, and debugging
• Familiarity with using OS X as a development environment, and Linux as a production environment
• Bachelors Degree or equivalent in Computer Science or Software Engineering
• Excellent communication skills

Salary is DOE.

Please send resume to johnd@ipstreet.com.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 48,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 18 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

My Senior Developer job description had an embarrassing mistake. It asked for 7+ years experience in Python and Django, which, as a commenter noted, limited the candidate pool to about three people on the entire planet.

I’ve fixed my goof. We’re nominally looking for at least seven years of Python experience, and at least three years of Django experience, for this slot.

…and here’s the Senior UI Developer opening:

Founded in 2009, IP Street develops and markets software to help corporations, law firms, financial research firms, and government agencies better analyze patent-related information.  Our goal is to make IP data easy to get, use, and understand, so everyone can have access to high quality and transparent information.

We’re seeking a great data visualization developer skilled in UI look and feel, and user experience. We have graphics expertise already; we’re looking for someone experience in working with page templates, XHTML, JavaScript, jQuery, and charting packages.

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We’re looking to hire two lucky people who desire fame and fortune. Here’s the Senior Developer opening:

Founded in 2009, IP Street develops and markets software to help corporations, law firms, financial research firms, and government agencies better analyze patent-related information.  Our goal is to make IP data easy to get, use, and understand, so everyone can have access to high quality and transparent information.

We’re seeking a great Python developer with experience in: Automated workflows that process millions of objects; data quality metrics and repairs; search, particularly with Solr or Lucene; and/or general data mining. Our stack, and development & production environments, are almost all open-source. The key technologies are Python, Django, Celery, Solr, and PostgreSQL.

Read more…