Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Yet another new look : Carrington theme and more

It’s been a while since I changed the theme of the site.  Today I felt like I needed it again.  I looked around, checked a few options, and decided to go with the Carrington theme from the excellent folks at Crowd Favorite.  It looks simple, yet elegant, fresh and modern.  And it is not just your average WordPress theme.  It is a whole framework.  I didn’t have much to play with it yet, but even from the first few looks it’s very interesting.  The theme files and logic are organized in such a way that makes modifying it and building on top of it extremely easy.  And unlike some other frameworks, it doesn’t force you to start designing your theme from scratch.  It provides already a default look with a few administration options that are handy for people like me, who are just starting up with it.

The second big change that was done today – IntenseDebate plugin was disabled.  IntenseDebate is a nice system, and I totally dig the concept, and all, but it turned out to be slightly annoying for me personally.  Somehow, the moderation never worked the way I wanted it to work.  Comments and the comment form didn’t look the way I wanted them to look (and I couldn’t bother with styling them myself). And it was slowing the site quite a bit by loading all those images, styles, and the JavaScript.   Gladly though, IntenseDebate works well with WordPress and I didn’t have to do anything to get my comments back – they are all here exactly how you’d expect them.

As always, after major changes like these, there will be a brief period of tweaking and tuning.  If you notice any issues with the site, please let me know.  Also, I’d appreciate your opinions and feedback regarding these changes.  Thank you for the patience during the bumpy ride.  Hopefully you can still enjoy this place.

Gmail in console browser links

I was quite surprised today how well the standard HTML (non-JavaScript) version of Gmail works in console browser links.  Everything is there – folders, labels, messages in inbox, search, and even compose.  I don’t think that too many people are actually using this version, but kudos to Google for still supporting it – in those desperate times, when nothing else works, it’s nice to have at least this front covered.

Cloud performance comparison

O’Reilly Radar runs the blog post comparing performance of several cloud services.  While everyone should run their own tests and benchmarks before deciding which one is better, the article provides a nice summary.  Here is the graph based on their results.

Education for IT

For a while now I am thinking and re-thinking the misalignment of the computer science education system and the real world needs of IT industry.  And it’s not only me, and it’s not only in Cyprus.  I’ve seen it myself of course, but also heard it from many people around the world.  There are not enough candidates to hire, and the quality of the candidates even coming out of the top schools is very poor.  It’s not rare to see a candidate who has no idea what a loop is, yet holding not one, but two bachelor degrees from both UK and American universities.

While I understand that there are differences from school to school and university to university, and that Computer Science is an academic discipline, not a practical tutorial for the programmer wannabes, I still think that there is something wrong with how computers are taught today.  And there is more than one problem.  Here are just some of those that I could think of:

  • There should be a balance between theory and practice.  Computer Science graduates should have some practical value, not only theoretical.  They should be able to assemble and disassemble a computer, configure a simple network, and write a simple program, at a very least.  Without that all their theoretical baggage is useless.  Or so I think.
  • Technology in general and computers in particular have evolved a lot in the last few years.  And they continue to evolve.  Academia is too slow to react to the modern world and something has to be done about that.
  • Academia is too slow in adoption of the new teaching methods.  These days pretty much everyone has a computer and access to the Internet.  Anyone can use Google, Wikipedia, and other excellent tools.   But those excellent are only a the beginning of the integration with the official teaching process, even though some of them have been here for years.
  • The world itself is changing.  Younger generations differ from the older ones quite a bit, especially in their attention spans, the breadth of attention, and requirements for feedback.   They have a bigger need to see immediate effect than we had, and we needed that more than our parents needed.  The world is getting faster, snappier.  And I don’t see a reflection of that in academia.

So we with all those things I was thinking what can be done and how.   I don’t have a solution for any of these problems of course.  I don’t know what will work and what won’t.  But one thing that I was fascinated to see, for example, was this interview with Sridhar Vembu of Zoho.  These guys in India see the problem and even think that it’s magnified for them with an even faster rate of development and with lower access of the general public to the good education.  And it is absolutely amazing how they went about solving the problem, experimenting, and also the results that they have achieved!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt5EMnATY_Q]

Via O’Reilly Radar.

On psychological trauma via a content filtering job

There is a rather serious article on Slashdot about unprepared minds being traumatized when working as a content moderator.  There are a lot of sick people around, when they fancy their fancies, any sane person should be as far as possible.  But that understanding is always easy coming.  As it is often said: “Some things cannot be unseen”, and you should think carefully before agreeing to see such things.

On a lighter note, with a subject like this, Slashdot is pretty much guaranteed to have some funny comments.  Here is one that made me smile:

The problem is that most 20 year old kids don’t really know how sensitive they are to things like this until they’re repeatedly exposed to them, by which point much of the damage has already been done. Luckily for me, I was exposed to the Internet and all of the nastiness on it when I was only 13, and I’ve managed to get by with no ill effects at all except for the occasional extended blackout followed by a dead hooker in my bed. Some more sensitive people might really lose their minds, though.