Last week I stumbled over yet another buzz term in digital. Big Data. For sometime I’ve known that lovely people are working very hard on Hadoop projects, secretly in glamorous places. Telling me snippets of exciting news. I really didn’t get the link till I went to see my brilliant friend Hilary on a panel with Hadoop founder Doug Cutting at London Big Data.
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Tag Archives: code
Uploading Video on Cisco EOS
My notes for uploading video on Cisco EOS platform. If the video is more than 100Mb then you’ll have to use FTP to upload (which requires FTP login gained from contacting Cisco).
- Login to the Eos admin system
- On the top of the screen hit the ‘Library’ tab
- On the left hand side choose ‘Web Uploader’
- Choose a Group and Folder (I have everything set up into Default Group and Default Folder – but what would happen if I were organised?)
- Upload Media (navigate hard drive)
- Now I don’t enter a description and title (because it isn’t shown to the public)
- Once the red bar completes hit submit
- It appears in your list ready to use
- Next the video needs to encode – in the deafult list choose to make available on the screen
- Once done it sends you an email
My First Steps with Ruby On Rails
It is time I become acquainted with the Ruby programming language. It served me well on a recent project and my friends at Indaba Music love it.
Installation on a Mac
I did try the following, but I think actually you can go straight to the tutorial and follow the steps there.
- Download the latest zip file
- Unpack into a directory and move into your directory
- Open a Terminal
- cd from your home directory into the new directory (cd rubygems-1.3.X/)
- run: sudo ruby setup.rb
Warning
It appears that Ruby on Rails has changed a lot between versions. So starting the server was harder than the Internet said it would be (as script/server approach has become defunct). So I spent some time getting confused by online tutorials, such as Apple. Installing XCode from the Apple Developer Center however was useful.
Learning Rails
I have found much more joy by following the tutorial at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html and a basics tutorial. Oh and my good friend jcn helped explain some stuff too.
Creating a Basic Form
Next I wanted to create a basic HTML Form where the Controller catches and processes the results. I got most of what I needed from an online answer. However I needed to know that creating the controller is done at command line using
rails generate controller Searches
and then place in the following code.
class SearchesController < ActionController::Base
def search
lookup = params[:lookup]
@models = Model.find_by_lookup(lookup)
end
end
And place in the following code for the view.
<% form_tag searches_path do %>
<label for="lookup">Lookup</label>
<%= text_field_tag :lookup %>
<%= submit_tag "Submit" %>
<% end %>
But the stumbling block for me was linking the View to Controller by placing the following in the config/routes.rb file
resources :searches
Adding a new Module on Drupal
The location for modules is [drupal site name]/sites/all/modules.
Drupal Logs and favicon’s
Where are my Drupal Error Logs ?
Weirdly I found them inside the Admin http://[domain]/[site name]/admin/reports/dblog.
However I don’t know where this is physically on the server.
How do I add a favicon.ico ?
I added the icon to both the root and the /[site]/misc/ location where I found the drupal favicon. Then remembered that I needed to refresh the cache inside the Drupal /admin/settings/performance section
XBRL and UK accounts
The team at KSL Consultants who produce the accounts brought to my attention that by 2011 we will no longer be able to provide our accounts to the UK government in PDF format. Instead some scratching of heads occurred as we googled XBRL formats.
As a SME we of course had the immediate panic, our current software doesn’t produce such a format and will we need a costly systems upgrade, but this is just a new file format. We will probably just need a new version of whatever we are using or widget that creates such a file (bit like the PDF creating software for Mirosoft word). A quick search showed that isn’t actually anything on the market that yet so we shall be parking this decision till next year.
The cynical side of me was impressed by the adoption. The HMRC technology team has created a great role for themselves and are now able to run across the globe working with the leading software companies to create a XBRL widgets. Lining up their next job in the process. However I am not that cynical the benefits of having a both parties providing their accounts in a form that can be easily understood will be beneficial (as the Documentum case study will show).
However I was wondering if you are going to make such a widget especially for SME’s then lets take it to the next level and create a BOBBooks like integration. When I am doing my due diligence and judge a company on the quality of their website and the accounts. A glossy accounts is very impressive. It is considered so impressive that a charity I know in Glasgow received a donation from a leading city organization to create an glossy set of accounts. Therefore I would upgrade to a system that created my XBRL format file for the government but also something that formats beautiful looking accounts and sends it to the printers.
Anyway I shall probably have look again for a widget this time in 2010…