Anthony Panozzo's Blog

Last month I gave a presentation about making recommendations with Apache Mahout. Since the presentation, Manning books has released the final version of their book, Mahout in Action, which should be an even better resource than the book that I was using for my slides and presentation. Here are the slides:

(Having trouble seeing the slides? Try here.)

I was getting an error from Slim template saying:

Failure/Error: render
ActionView::Template::Error:
  Unexpected end of file
    my_file.html.slim, Line 15

, where the file had only 15 lines

Here were some of the things that I had to do to Devise to get things working correctly with Twitter and Facebook. YMMV, as this was six months ago and I had some special requirements potentially.

# config/initializers/omniauth_patch.rb
# see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1960957
module OmniAuth
  module Strategies
    # override authorize path to force user to login each time
    class Twitter < OmniAuth::Strategies::OAuth
      def initialize(app, consumer_key = nil, consumer_secret = nil, options = {}, &block;)
        client_options = {
          :site => 'https://api.twitter.com'
        }

        client_options[:authorize_path] = '/oauth/authorize'
        super(app, :twitter, consumer_key, consumer_secret, client_options, options)
      end
    end
  end
end

# config/environments.rb
config.omniauth :twitter, 'XXXXXXXXXXXXX', 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'

# Created multiple Facebook apps for testing because you can only have
# one per domain. One way to lessen these would be to set up staging.myapp.com, etc.
# since Facebook respects subdomains as being on the same domain. Would still need one for
# localhost testing though (unless I set up hosts file differently?)
# This seems simplest for now though.
id, secret = case ENV['RACK_ENV']
when 'production'
  ['XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX']
when 'staging'
  ['XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX']
else
  ['XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'] # localhost
end
config.omniauth :facebook, id, secret, { :display => :touch }

The last line ensures that we use the facebook touch view because I was only targeting mobile devices (iPhone). I'm not sure how we would easily do this at runtime besides further patching. Basically this limits us because we have to use the touch even though we want to use the web version on the web.

Here's a pep talk that I give to myself when thinking about not writing about something

The talk

You have a reasonably well founded position, you almost certainly have enough to write about. You have arguments and counterarguments for the major things people are going to say. You have experiences that no one else has. So just write them out. Who can argue with what you have experienced? You've already done the hard work of thinking about this problem, why not get the benefits of writing it out? If anything, this will help clarify the thoughts that you have.

The specific phrases don't matter, as long as you are getting out the main thoughts. You can always refine it over time–the great is the enemy of the good here. That's what the edit functionality is for. I know you would love to include a beautiful graph or venn diagram to illustrate something, but just say it now and add it later if you must.

I think people should create a formal model of their knowledge portfolio and use this model to actively manage their knowledge and skill acquisition. This applies both to organizations and individuals. I could see this looking similar to the Thoughtworks technology radar. The skill model would have a list of skills and interests and how much knowledge one has in these. Experience could range from:

• hearing about something
• reading a book about it
• knowing a similar technology
• writing a Hello World program
• doing a small project in an area
• having years of experience doing something

I think there could also be a weighting as to how much the person feels like they know a particular area. Maybe they "read" a book but didn't feel like it really sunk in. Perhaps they don't know a particular technology, but have two good friends who are well versed in that technology and can help in a pinch or introduce them to people in that space. In this way, an overall view of what a person has done and may be capable of can be more easily assessed. Take for instance someone has not done much C# but has done a lot of Java development. By understanding that these technologies are similar, someone outside of the development field can understand that this person has a higher capability for C# than in, say, embedded development.