Author Archives: Ron Bieber

Cobertura – Java Test Coverage Tool

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As a note to myself, I found a reference to Cobertura this morning as I was reading through the CruiseControl mailing list. Cobertura is a tool to calculate the percentage of code accessed by tests (test coverage).

According to the FAQ, this is a fork of the jcoverage tool, with “prettier reports” and a more open development process.

A sample report is also provided on their web site. It does look pretty cool, and would be a nice addition to an automated build system.

As an aside, a developer from the project has also developed a PHP based reporting front end for CruiseControl. The developer states that the “ugly” source code can be found in his CVS repository in the web module.

Whether the code is ugly or not, it’s definitely a start on integrating PHP based build management systems like SourceForge with CruiseControl.

SVK 1.0 Beta 2 released.

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Yesterday, the release of SVK 1.0 Beta 2 was announced .

The announcements list the following changes since Beta 1:

  • Fix keyword translation for undesired characters. [matthewd]
  • Fix svk switch from a removed branch.
  • Don’t trust LML would return a valid encoding that Encode knows. [Eric Gillespie ]
  • Recognize merge-conflict error, so no stacktrace for it.
  • svk info now skips files not under version control. [#8220] [gugod]
  • Fix locked mirror messages.
  • Various pool usage fixes.

The software can be downloaded from the SVK download area.

Kelsi’s New Photo Album

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Kelsi Blogging Two things Kelsi is into right now is music and photography. Apparently there is a pretty cool local music scene in St. Charles. Kelsi has put together a new photo album on Flickr where she melds her love of music and photography.

The three bands she photographs are Fallacy, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and Caulkin.

Kelsi can explain more about who the bands are later. In the meantime, check out the pictures.

Empowering Yourself – The Organizational Game Revealed

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Empowering Yourself: The Organizational Game Revealed I just completed reading Empowering Yourself: The Organizational Game Revealed by Harvey J. Coleman.

This book weighs in at 178 pages. The writing is excellent and makes it quite easy to burn through the book quickly. I basically read it in about 4 hours total (on and off).

The premise of the book is to explain the “Rules Of The Game” in regards to how one is picked for promotions and how one can increase their status in the workplace (or in any organizational hierarchy really). The Rules of The Game basically boil down to three areas that are necessary in order to succeed, which the author calls the P.I.E. model:

  • Performance – This basically comes down to what you do.
  • Image – What others think of you. How you project yourself.
  • Exposure – What visibility you have inside and outside the organization.

The author does a really good job of explaining the components of the model in a way that the “common man” can understand. As I was reading it I was able to relate the stories or principles to things that have happened in “real life” and understand why some of the things that have happened may have taken the turn that they have.

The author states that each of the components of the P.I.E. model carries a different weight in the ability to move upward in an organization. Surprisingly, performance counts for only 10% of the total, with Image at 30% and Exposure accounting for the other 60%.

For me at least, this was the complete opposite of how I have approached my career. I have always focused on results as the primary means of moving ahead in my career (as did the author initially). The weighting listed above has me thinking seriously about the things I need to improve in order to move forward.

Also covered in the book is the separation of organizational structure into seven levels. For the rest of the book, the seven levels are defined, and explained in a number of different contexts in ones life.

I initially approached this book with some reservation, thinking it was another one of those “self-help” type of books — but as I read it I realized what a valuable resource it could be for everyone in an organization to read. The objective of the author was to take the mystery out of the “game” and explain it to everyone.

He does a really good job of doing so — and definitely has me thinking a bit. This is one book I am going to recommend that each person on my staff read, as it isn’t a management book at all, but a book explaining the world we all work in. Some of it you will find rather disappointing, as I did, but it’s good to know nonetheless!

Once you finish the book, the real question becomes do you really want to play “The Game” now that you know what it entails.

Meeting Steve Vai – The EVO Experience

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Ron with Steve Vai Last night Steve Vai and his band The Breed (Billy Sheehan, Tony MacAlpine, Dave Weiner, and Jeremy Colson) hit Chicago on the Real Illusions: Reflections tour.

This time around Steve put together a special package for his fans in which, for an extra fee, you were able to attend a meet and greet with him, where he would hold a Q&A session with you, and then you would attend the soundcheck before the concert. The package is called the EVO Premium Experience.

It was absolutely amazing.

The total number of people to purchase the package looked to be about 20-30. This made for a very intimate environment in which we could ask Steve questions and just sit and listen to him answer them. The whole discussion was fascinating, especially around one question asked about inspiration and how he comes up with the music he writes. Steve tried to explain the process, in which he visualizes the song in seconds, and in some cases it takes months to realize the original vision. Listening to him describe this process was incredible. You constantly wanted to pinch yourself to make sure you weren’t dreaming.

Steve is a very gracious host and consistently attempts to make eye contact with everyone he is talking to. The Q&A was extremely intimate and worth the extra money in and of itself.

As an added bonus, the people in the room now know the “secret” to the Secret Jewel Box box set we had bought in 2001 and have been collecting as the CD’s come out. I’ll leave that for you to figure out though.

Once the Q&A ended, we were escorted to the main stage where we were allowed to watch and take pictures of the soundcheck as it was happening. This included the whole band and was really cool to watch. I’ve never seen a soundcheck before and I was amazed at a lot of the things that go on during it. What is most amazing is that as Steve was on the stage, he was telling the sound guy the exact adjustments to make to the sound board. I guess that just shows the ear that the guy has.

Autographed Ultra Zone CDWhen the soundcheck concluded, Steve signed autographs on guitars and CD’s. Jonna had bought a special copy of Ultra Zone for him to sign (pictured to the left), as our wedding song was “I’ll Be Around” from this CD. She told him this as he was signing it and he said she was the third person to tell him that they had used that song for their wedding.

Once the EVO portion of the day was over, we took a break, where we had to take the camera back to the car and wait until the concert started. The opening act was Eric Sardinas. I’m not a big fan, so I was rather impatient for the Vai band to get on the stage. Eric played for about 40 minutes and then the stage went dark as we waited for the band to come out.

The concert was incredible. They did a perfect mix of the material off of all of the albums (except Ultra Zone). The highlight of the show for me was finally being able to see “Whispering a Prayer” and “Lotus Feet” live. These beautiful songs are, in my opinion, the essence of Steve Vai as a musician and, after the experience yesterday, as a person as well. Being in the front row just capped off the experience.

I need to also add that the band that Steve has put together is the “Dream Team” of music. You couldn’t dream of a better band than the five guys that were running around that stage.

There are very few times in life when dreams come true. I have idolized Steve Vai since I was a sophmore in high school and had my first exposure to him through a release of “Blue Powder” in a Guitar Player Magazine insert. I have followed him through the David Lee Roth days, through Whitesnake, and through all of his solo albums. The thought of ever meeting him was one of those things that I never thought would have been possible.

Actually meeting him was surreal. Rather than having an image built up of someone and meeting them only to have the image crushed, Steve Vai lives up to the image. He is a very sweet, humble, down to earth guy who is extremely appreciative of his fans and recognizes the importance they hold for him in their lives. The importance of music in his life is also something you cannot walk away from him without seeing.

This experience is something I will never forget. I have now completed another one of those “things to do before I die” items on my list.

Thanks Steve, for the great memory.

Alternate Picking – Mine Sucks

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Yesterday, browsing through the Borders magazine section, I came across the March 2005 issue of Guitarist – The Guitar Players Bible. Paging through it I found a complete transcription of No More Tears, another song from the Ozzy / Zakk Wylde albums that I always just loved the solo from. Since there was a complete transcription of the solo, I bought it and sat down yesterday afternoon to work through it.

While ultimately I want to learn the whole thing, the final passage of the songs solo is the one that I wanted to get under my fingers the most. It’s a pretty repetitive pentatonic pattern that just sounds completely cool. I can play it at some semblence of speed when hammering or pulling off, but Zakk picks all of it. The sound of the pick is what makes it sound so cool. The tab looks like this:

Ending Passage of "No More Tears" solo (Zakk Wylde):

---------------------13-10-13-10-------13-10-13-10-------13-10-13-10-----
--------------------------------13-10-------------13-10-------------13-10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


-13-10-13-10-------15-13-15-13-------15-13-15-13-------15-13-15-13------       
------------13-10-------------15-13-------------15-13-------------15-13-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


-15-13-15-13-------17-15-17-15-------17-15-17-15-------17-15-17-15------
------------15-13-------------18-15-------------18-15-------------18-15-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


-17-15-17-15-------18-15-13--18-15-13--18-15-13--18-15-13--20-17-15---
------------18-15----------15--------15--------15--------15--------17-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------

                                B^^^
-20-17-15--20-17-15--20-17-15--20---(20)-----------------------------
---------17--------17--------17---------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------

(section extricated from this full tab of the song)

So, I started trying to play it without the hammer ons to find that my alternate picking skills are really lacking. This is a pretty hard skill to learn. I tend to do alternate picking by default all the time. The problem is that my practicing has always used alternate picking on three note per string patterns. I don’t deviate very much from the standard routine when it comes to picking excercises. Any deviation from the three notes per string pattern sounds completely sloppy.

The other piece of playing this, aside from the picking that I am struggling with is whether to barre the bottom two strings with the index finger in order to make the finger changes easier. The struggle piece of it is that I feel like it’s cheating and that the left hand should be able to do this type of action without barring. I guess I’ll have to sort that one out on my own. What I do know is that my left hand doesn’t move quickly enough between the strings to do it without barring.

I really need to spend some time and force some patience on the idea of picking starting slowly and building up speed. I think part of the problem is just that I rush into this stuff without really focusing on quality vs. shredding. I have to keep drilling into my head that it is the accuracy of the picking that counts. Speed without accuracy sounds like crap.

I read a book a while back called Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within by Kenny Werner in which he described an exercise that one of his instructors showed him that took five minutes a day. It was a five finger excercise in which the pianists goal is to release his fingers “effortlessly”. This excercise was to be repeated for five minutes and gradually incremented over time until the pianist could “practice effortlessly for as long as one wanted”. The focus of the book is a lot about releasing the tension we put ourselves through to “be the best” and just focus on playing, because, as the author states in the book over and over again, “it’s only music” and “there are no wrong notes”. I really have to read this book again and start applying it, because my head tends to get in the way too much.

Now, on the bright side, while I was searching around the web for picking explanations and exercises, I found some great Randy Rhoads links that I had never come across before. To end the post on a high note, here is a list of the links I found:

Subversion 1.2 Release Candidate 1 released

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The Subversion team has released the first release candidate of the 1.2 product. Detailed release notes are also available, explaining the new features.

The features explained in summary in the release notes include:

  • new locking feature (exclusive locks)
  • full WebDAV autoversioning
  • faster binary decompression
  • a large number of improved API’s

You can find the source tarball on the download site. View the actual announcement on the announcement mailing list archive.

It looks like the official Subversion Source Repository is already running this version.

Subversion Team Posts Open Letter To Developers

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The Subversion team has posted an open letter to open source developers asking them to “stop bugging Linus Torvalds About Subversion”.

This letter comes out on the heels of Linus’ decision to stop using BitKeeper due to Bitmover, Inc’s decision to stop providing a free version of Bitkeeper for open source development.

There is a pretty detailed article on KernelTrap explaining the decision on BitMovers part.

Apparently, Linus is thinking about using a tool called Monotone which, quite frankly, looks pretty interesting.

Related Articles:

20% Time At Google and Built To Last

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Found this on Slashdot a while back. Joe Beda talks about 20% time at Google and how it works.

Its really cool to see a company initiate this kind of environment from the top. In my experience, some of the best work that I have done and the work that, in my opinion, has provided the most benefit, is the work which was started in 20% of my home time due to lack of an official policy like this at work. Oddly, all the benefits that were later realized were not deemed important at the time the ideas were presented at work in many cases.

The idea of allowing innovation to happen by focusing on it as part of ones normal work life rather than having to spend “extra time at home” on it is not new. Jim Collins mentions a number of companies in his book Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials). There is a whole chapter called Try a Lot of Stuff And Keep What Works in which he outlines how companies such as 3M (with their 15% rule) stimulated innovation by encouraging technical people to spend time experimenting with new things in order to find new markets or new ideas to sell. These companies understood that in order to evolve you have to try a lot of different things and figure out which ones work and which ones do not. They also realized that the most effective place to get new ideas was from their technical staff — not the management team.

Unfortunately, many companies do not understand that in order for a new idea to be proven or disproven you have to have something people can see and touch. The only way to get that is to try it out and then show it to people. Similarly, benefits of a given process or automation effort is not able to be articulated as well as it can be demonstrated. In other words, you won’t be able to express the benefit until you can point to it and subsequently point to the waste that used to be there (or in many cases, the empty space that this new “thing” now fills) in order to really justify the “cost” of doing the work.

“Traditional” companies have a lot to learn from newer companies like Google and the histories of companies like those in Built to Last. Some of the greatest cost savings and “revenue generators” may come from just letting your people play with new ideas rather than contracting people to come up with new ideas for you. After all, who knows your business better than your people working in it?

One thing that Joe Beda points out in his article that is really important is that this is not just a “thing” to implement. It is a philosophy towards running your business. You don’t just do it, you live by it. If you just try to do it without making the philosophy a core part of who you are, you are likely to fail, as your core values tend to override all of your good intentions. It’s just human nature.

I find it really admirable that companies like Google are implementing the ideas laid out in the Good to Great and Built to Last books. I personally think these books are gems and would encourage managers and non-managers alike to read these books and to take the ideas expressed in them to heart. Once you are done reading them, look around for companies like Google who are actually implementing the ideas in the books and start asking yourself what would happen if you did the same thing.

You might be really surprised.