leggetter

[leggetter]

Job Openings at Caplin Systems

We've a number of openings at Caplin.

Junior Software Development Engineer in Test

Software Development Engineer in Test

Head of Implementation

We're also always on the look out for Front-End Engineers so please drop me an email ([email protected]) if you're interested.

I don't have a picture of the office space. So, here's a picture from the workshop we ran in our "Big Room" the other week.

[leggetter]

Web Developer - mainly front-end, London

**Role filled**

We're hiring for a unique role within the company since we normally have either software engineers or UX - two extremes between design and develop. However, this role is a bit different.

We're looking for somebody with front-end skills, along with some backend skills. However, my summary of the role would be it's more of a web designer role.

Rather than copy and paste the document I think these probably summarise the role best:

We want to hear from people who:

Have a passion for good web design

Have a thorough understanding of Web technologies especially HTML/CSS

Have good communication skills to enable a clear understanding of site owner requirements

Have a great eye for detail when making designs work cross-browser and cross-device

Required Skills:

Expert HTML/CSS experience in creating responsive websites

Experience of using a Content Management System, preferably ExpressionEngine

Experience in PHP programming

Using Photoshop or similar to produce assets for websites

The following would also be beneficial:

Using Photoshop or similar to produce assets for websites

Experience of UX methodologies

So, if you're interested in designing and building the front-end for website, lots of CSS and HTML, and (if I get my way) helping out with the UI/UX with lots of BladeRunnerJS demo apps, drop me an email: [email protected]

[leggetter]

6 Hours to install Discourse?

The format of forum software doesn't appear to have been updated for a long time. So I was very excited a few months back to hear about Discourse.

Yesterday I set about installing it. It took me about 6 hours. This does sounds like a surprising amount of time. However this did include signing up for linode[referral link], setting up an Ubuntu VM and following the Discourse Ubuntu installation guide.

This may still sounds like quite a long time. Whilst I've used Ubuntu before, it's certainly not my OS of choice. So, even though the install guide is good it took me a little long than I would have liked. Here's a full breakdown of what I did and the gotchas I came up against.

Note: I decided to use the latest release and not the latest source code so it may be possible that if I've come across any bugs that they've been fixed

Here are the resources I used:

Deploying Discourse with Capistrano - I didn't use Capistrano, but this article still has some useful tips in it.

Official Discourse Install Guide

Securing your server guide by Linode

Here are the details:

Linode

Signing up for Linode[referral link] and setting up an Ubuntu 13.04 VM was super-simple.

I next followed the Linode - securing your server guide which didn't take long.

I was then ready to go with the Discourse install.

Installing Discourse

The Official Discourse Install Guide is really good. What I would recommend is that don't simply read a single step and execute it. Instead, read the full step and a little beyond, then execute.

There's also a video of installing Discourse on Ubuntu 12.04 if following a video guide is more your thing.

Gotcha 1: Don't Copy & Paste full command blocks

To start off with I would copy & paste full command blocks e.g.

# Run these commands as your normal login (e.g. "michael") sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade sudo tasksel install openssh-server sudo tasksel install mail-server sudo tasksel install postgresql-server

Now, I can't 100% confirm this. But, when I did this I don't think the sudo tasksel install postgresql-server command properly executed. It wasn't until later that I noticed that postgresql hadn't actually installed.

I think I also experienced this problem when installing redis, later.

Gotcha 2: rvm requirements requires sudo permissions

This is an example of me not reading ahead. I didn't. If I had I'd have seen:

# If discourse does not have sudo permissions (likely the case), run: rvm --autolibs=read-fail requirements # and rvm will tell you which packages you (or your sysadmin) need # to install before it can proceed. Do that and then resume next:

After I'd read this properly and executed rvm --autolibs=read-fail requirements it was easy to work out which additional requirements I had to install (as the standard user) using sudo apt-get install <package_name>.

Gotcha 3: secret_token.rb

This wasn't really a big gotcha. Just a little unclear.

Execute RAILS_ENV=production rake secret

Copy the value that is output

Edit secret_token.rb

Uncomment the line with SET_SECRET_HERE in it

Replace the SET_SECRET_HERE value with the value generated in step 1.

Delete everything else so your file will only contain a comment and:

Discourse::Application.config.secret_token = "some_generated_token_from_step_5"

Gotcha 4: rake db:migrate will fail if postgresql or redis aren't installed

Pretty obvious really! But this is where I found out that postgres hadn't installed. And then when I found out redis hadn't installed and wasn't running.

Gotcha 5: rake assets:precompile take time to complete

As above, this step isn't instantaneous. Nothing has broken, just be patient.

Gotcha 6: rake assets:precompile seems not to have worked

You may not noticed this until you think everything has completed, but if when running the app you get a message which contains something similar to:

<message>preload_store.js isn't precompiled</message>

Basically, anything saying "[something] isn't precompiled" it suggests that this rake task hasn't completed.

I checked and all assets appeared to be in place. In particular the preload_store.js file - and various other versions - where there.

I'm not 100% sure what fixed this. But I did find this discussion on meta.discourse.org which suggested setting the following in config/environments/production.rb to true:

# Disable Rails's static asset server (Apache or nginx will already do this) config.serve_static_assets = true #hack

I did that and didn't see any immediate fix. I then also set the following to true:

# stuff should be pre-compiled config.assets.compile = true # hack

Again, I saw no immediate fix.

It wasn't until I was forced to restart the VM - following my 4 hours trial time with Linode - that the problem seemed to fix itself.

Now, I had restarted discourse after each change using:

RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT=90000000 RAILS_ROOT=~/discourse RAILS_ENV=production NUM_WEBS=2 bluepill --no-privileged -c ~/.bluepill load ~/discourse/config/discourse.pill

Maybe that was wrong? So, I don't know what has actually fixed the problem I was seeing.

By this point Discourse was running.

Gotcha 7: clockwork is not running

If you go to the admin dashboard (see image above) in Discourse you get a handy set of information and warnings. I had a warning that "clockwork is not running".

I found a related and relevant discourse discussion.

As the discussion states this happens if the hostname doesn't match in ~/discourse/config/discourse.pill. However, even though I updated my hostname. See:

How do I change the hostname without a restart

Ubuntu change hostname

And also executed:

echo [required_hostname] | sudo tee /etc/hostname

As suggested in the deploying discourse post clockwork still wouldn't start.

So - since I only plan to run Discourse on a single machine I edited discourse.pill to always run clockwork - no matter the hostname - by commenting out the if statement.

#if `hostname -s`.strip == "your-hostname.com" app.process("clockwork") do |process| pidfile = "#{rails_root}/tmp/pids/clockwork.pid" process.start_command = "/usr/bin/env CLOCK_LOG=#{rails_root}/log/clockwork.log RAILS_ENV=#{rails_env} bundle exec clockwork config/clock.rb" process.pid_file = pidfile process.start_grace_time = 30.seconds process.stop_grace_time = 10.seconds process.restart_grace_time = 10.seconds process.uid = user process.gid = group process.daemonize = true end #end

I appreciate this isn't a big help as it doesn't fix the problem. But, it might be handy of this weren't such a manual step.

Gotcha 8: Twitter auth results in 500 error

If you don't configure the Twitter settings then when you try to login with Twitter you get a 500 error. Simply set the settings by creating an application via dev.twitter.com and the login will work as expected.

The dashboard does actually tell you if social login is set but the appropriate settings haven't been saved. But the 500 error did raise alarms and I'm sure a nicer informative error page is on it's way - or has already been implemented.

Check the logs

The logs can be found in discourse/log and do provide you with the information you generally need to work out what's going on.

I'm guessing, but since I installed for production I don't think I got all that much information in there so may be a way of getting more debug information to work out why things aren't behaving.

Things I haven't done yet

I did set the SMTP settings but email isn't working.

6 hours, really?

As you can probably tell, I muddled my way through the install. So, around 6 hours - with natural breaks when my 2 year old would demand attention - probably isn't all that bad.

If I were to go through the process again I'm sure it would only take me a couple of hours. Maybe less.

Final thoughts

I'm really excited to have my own version of Discourse up and running. And I hope that I can use it successfully and then start to contribute to the project. Maybe even if it's just pull requests against the docs - it all helps!

If you've read this far then you're clearly interested enough in trying out Discourse. I truly hope it does represent the future of discussion platforms.

[leggetter]

How to set Java 7 as the default Java version on Mac OSX Lion

I've only tested this on Mac OSX Lion. It may work on other OSX versions.

Install Java 7

Install Java 7 via the Oracle JDK downloads

Update the CurrentJDK

Update the symbolic link for the CurrentJDK (you may need to sudo these commands):

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/ rm CurrentJDK ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_[YOUR_VERSION].jdk/Contents/ CurrentJDK

Add JAVA_HOME to your .bash_profile

You may also need to add JAVA_HOME to your ~/.bash_profile. The java_home symbolic link in /usr/libexec points (via a number of redirections) to the Contents/Home directory of the CurrentSDK) e.g.

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

If you now run source ~/.bash_profile to reload your profile and then type java -version you should get the new version of Java printed to the terminal.

You can also check the effect by opening up System Preferences and running the Java preferences app.

[leggetter]

Web Developer Vacancies in London (x2)

What?

To contribute to building the next generation web applications using Object Oriented JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3. Strong web development skills required along with familiarality with agile development practices.

Experience of other front-end web technologies and server side development with Java would also be an advantage.

Doing?

Creating rich user interfaces for performance critical financial applications

Working with cutting edge HTML5 tools like Knockout and realtime web frameworks

Engaging with customers to uncover unique visual workflows and UX paradigms

Participating in hack days and exploring emerging technologies

Working with experienced, like-minded colleagues in a relaxed and friendly environment

You?

Experienced in HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

Familiar with Agile development approaches e.g. (Scrum XP, Kanban, Lean, Adaptive)

A team player and enjoy liaising closely with other developers and test engineers

Proactive and capable of self-prioritizing and managing a task backlog

Detail oriented

Educated to technical degree level at 2:1 or above

Experienced in working in financial markets

Must be open to travelling for 3 months out of the next 12 to engage directly with clients

If this sounds interesting please ping me your github details and your CV: [email protected]

[leggetter]

I recently had an interaction with a customer. It wasn't a nice interaction. I felt they were unfair and unpleasant. This means I'm much less likely to every use their service in the future. The interesting things is that during our interaction he was the customer and I was the service provider. Although he was wearing his customer hat he should have remembered that he always represents his company and should conduct himself accordingly.

[leggetter]

The key factor, for me, is that users are more likely to interact with their second screen device if they are prompted to do so. A check-in that they’re watching a program on GetGlue will inform their followers and kick-off a conversation. A comment on Facebook about a film they are watching also triggers an interactive conversational experience. Pushing content that is synchronised with the live event/flim/tv show that a user is watching does have the potential to be valuable. How many of us use IMDB whilst watching a movie or TV show? What have I seen that guy in before? ITV Sport did this during Euro 2012 – interestingly enough they pushed the content directly under the live video so they weren’t directly targeting the 2nd screen. Associated content also has the potential to kick off interactive experiences. This can be a single person experience, such as a quiz (e.g. http://pusher.com/showcase/otherscreen), or a multi-user game or chat session. Live interactions with a show or tv programme are also a very interesting concept. To my point: the survey seems to suggest that building a second screen application is expensive and means money is not being spend on the first screen. The fact is that platforms like Facebook and Twitter can already be used as the 2nd screen experience and all that is required is some marketing. Beyond that, building a more substantial 2nd screen application doesn’t have to be costly. Draw on existing platforms and live content and engagement services (such as http://pusher.com) that offer infrastructure that makes building these applications not only simple, but also inexpensive. The reduced cost leaves room for experimentation. Surveys are nice and very helpful but we’re at a stage where we should be seeing lots of examples of 2nd screen experiences – the platforms and infrastructure are in place. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be seeing amazingly innovative interactive and engaging 2nd screen experiences now.

[leggetter]

The things that hit home to me about this post were: 1. That Evangelism is very much seen as sales and marketing. Whilst I had some idea that was the case when I started my job at Pusher, I still didn't realise quite how much so. Does it have to be like that? 2. The job is hard. Seriously hard. You do a lot of cross discipline things. I mentioned this in my post on [a year as a developer evangelist](http://www.leggetter.co.uk/2012/05/20/a-year-as-a-developer-evangelist.html). 3. Time management is also hard. My experience is a little different to Rob's. I have moments of intensity when I'm traveling. But I have other times when I work from home and have to self motivate. Time management is difficult in both of these cases. During my two weeks in San Francisco I had a brief glimpse at what most weeks must be like for Rob. I'm kind of jealous. 4. "You Can Learn To Schmooze" - I seriously hope so, because I suck at it! In terms of giving talks I'm 100% convinced that practice is absolutely key. 5. "doing something well will always feel magical" - I've had this feeling and it tends to be when I've really helped somebody and they say thanks. It's not that I'm on the lookout for thanks, and I'd be really happy to see customers doing really well. But, when somebody goes out of their way to tweet or write and email it does truly feel magical. Here's an example of what I was most scared of and what I'm most proud of. I've never been a big fan of public speaking but I'm pleased that I've done it a number of times now and that, as Rob says, with practice I'll get better. 

[leggetter]

I’ve started building a list of cloud hosting vendors, including those offering platform as a service (PAAS). I’m trying to get vendors to contribute but as yet haven’t been too successful. I’ll...

[leggetter]

It would appear that the Silverlight runtime creates a file named XCP*.tmp of around 20MB within a users %temp% directory (where * can be replaced by random characters). This file would appear to...

[leggetter]

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[leggetter]

I’ve been a member of the RIA Developers Group on LinkedIn for a short while now and the other day Patrick Bay posted a link to an interesting article on Computer Weekly about the prominence...