Some tips on how to cleanup iPhoto

I am not a power Macbook user when it comes to the i[fill-in-the-Apple-application-here] anything. I am a simple user with over 5 years of pictures on my Macbook. So when I noticed the iPhoto application was really getting slow and that all my disk space was about gone (80GB!), it was time to look deeper into this.

Just a few tips here, but they radically cleaned up my iPhoto disk waste:

1. Empty the trash - seems like a no-brainer, but I was unaware that iPhoto had it's own trash bin. Just follow the menu entry to clean out those deleted pictures: iPhoto -> Empty Trash. This got me over 9 GB of disk space back.
   
2. iPhoto Diet - this is a very nice tool which will allow you to scan your entire library of pictures for more iPhoto nonsense (chuff, duplicates, and even more stuff you don't want to know about). 

This second tip took some time as I have something like 3500 plus photos. But patience pays off and I now have gotten rid of an amazing amount of crap in iPhoto. It even performs better now.

Open source expert panel - the sinking ship metaphor

As previously stated, awhile back I was added to the Computable Open Source Expert Panel. This week they published two different follow up articles on the latest round of layoffs at Sun (sorry, they are in Dutch):

1) Experts: Sun moet stoppen met koppelverkoop
2) Experts: Sun blijft zwalken

A bit of background story here on the photo posted here from the second article. My approach to commenting on this topic was to do my best to come up with a visual aspect. A perfect way to visualize something is through a good metaphor, like the leaky oil tanker I used in my comments. This seemed to work, as this is the theme in the second article. Spot on!

Creating an ISO image from DVD on macbook

When copying a DVD on my macbook I was sure there must be some way to do it without buying software or having to download lots of new burning applications. Here are the simple steps needed to do it:

# insert DVD and lookup the device your DVD is mounted on,
# (partial output shown here, look for the Name field).
#
$ drutil status
 Vendor   Product           Rev 
 MATSHITA DVD-R   UJ-857D   GAND

           Type: DVD-ROM              Name: /dev/disk2

# unmount the disk.
#
$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Disk /dev/disk2 unmounted

# create a local iso file from the DVD.
#
$ dd if=/dev/disk2 of=mydvd.iso bs=2048

# you can test the iso file with 'hdid mydvd.iso'
# and/or burn it by inserting a blank dvd and burn
# the iso using Disk Utility app.

Linux World 2008 Jaarbeurs Utrecht

Today I gave my talk on Open Source at SNS Bank that I announced earlier, at the Dutch Linux World 2008 in Utrecht. The turnout was around 50-60 persons and the location was big enough for 200 or more. Kind of a strange feeling that you are talking to an empty room, but there was plenty of interaction and questions with the public throughout the session.

After the session I was approached by a number of persons asking to be provided with a copy of the presentation. I understood that they would all be put online, but I can't find anything about it on the Linux World 2008 site. Until it shows up somewhere else, you can get the PDF of the presentation here.

JFall 2008 presentation and conference

As I previously announced in an earlier posting, I would be presenting a session based on my accepted paper today at JFall 2008.

It was quit a bit of fun and there were around 50-60 persons attending my session. Many questions were asked, but I was guilty of encouraging these questions with some nice gadgets provided by the SNS Bank.

You should be able to find the session over at the JFall 2008 site in December, but for now you can get the PDF presentation here.

Tomorrow I will be presenting a more Open Source focused presentation over at Linux World 2008 in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht.

Should I know you

I was approached today; "Do I know you...", with a pause followed by "...should I know you?"

It really struck me as having a profound difference in meaning.

The first line is a standard way to open the conversation in English speaking countries if you just can't quite grasp the person out of the depths of your memory. You have the feeling that you have met before, but are unable to put a name on the face. It tends to put the person being asked a bit on the defensive, especially if they don't recognize the one approaching you either.

The second is a more subtle take on the same line, putting it all in a more gentle and positive light. It puts the person being asked at ease which starts off the ensuing conversation more smoothly. It takes a certain amount of poise and style to project that something special that nudges a person into thinking that they should be able to put a name to your face.

I hope I can one day project that type of warmth to those that approach me...

May you live in interesting times

As Terry Pratchet said in one (or more) of his books as the ultimate good wish you can put on someone you meet, "May you live in interesting times..."

We certainly do! I am living overseas from the US and have gotten up in the middle of the night to watch the results of the Presidential race this year. I am not much of a political animal, but I can't help but loving to watch historical moments live. This night there will be one no matter who wins, either a first black President or our first ever woman Vice-President.

What has been amazing me the most tonight is that CNN, the most informative news site you can find on the USA, has us completely plugged into this event. From the overviews on the site, the running numbers, and live feeds about everything you can imagine. I am most taken with the live McCain campaign headquarters video stream right now as they have live music from Hank Williams Jr and other country music artists. Over at Obama campaign headquarters (you can select from diverse steaming links) we are being shown the park in Chicago where the crowds are waving flags and awaiting their candidates arrival.

What amazing uses the technology tooling is being put to use for these days to keep us updated on all the latest news (as I switch over to the live stream at CNN election headquarters to view the latest numbers).  No matter what the outcome is tonight, currently Obama is up in the early popular vote count by 1%, we do live in interesting times...

CAiSE09 chapter proposal accepted: Empowering Full Scale STP with BPM

"We are pleased to inform you that your chapter proposal Empowering Full Scale Straight Through Processing with BPM has been selected to be worked out as a full chapter for Practice-driven Research on Enterprise Transformation."

Those magic words never get old!

My proposed paper accepted to CAiSE'09 conference (Computer Aided Information Systems Engineering) which will be held in Amsterdam. The CAiSE'09 conference will also host the PRET workshop (Practice-driven Research on Enterprise Transformation). This PRET workshop was my target and I am glad to have found a home for this long running project which was submitted to BPM 2008.

Next deadline is to submit a final copy of the paper for evaluation by January 1, 2009. I will post the draft version as soon as I get it sorted out.

Abstract

As one of the larger Dutch financial institutions, SNS Bank in the Netherlands has made a strategic decision to empower her customers on-line by fully automating her business processes. The ability to facilitate the customer is achieved by applying Business Process Modelling (BPM) techniques in her existing selling channels. Both the publicly available and internal processes are being revamped to provide the customer with an online full scale Straight Through Processing (STP) experience. This extreme use of online STP is the trigger in a shift that is of crucial importance to cost effective banking in an ever turbulent and changing financial world. The key elements used in implementing these goals continue to be (Free) Open Source Software (FOSS), Service-oriented architecture (SOA), and BPM. In this paper we will present an industr1y application describing the efforts of the SNS Bank to make the change from traditional banking services to a full scale STP and BPM driven Do It Yourself bank.

We will begin with a look at the the components used to implement the case study, a project entitled STP Purchasing. The basis has been laid in a FOSS environment with which the first SOA services were constructed and an initial selling channel was modelled for implementation within our chosen BPM framework. The issues encountered along the way to completion of this project will be discussed to provide some insights into our first experiences in this solution space.

We will then take a closer look at the positive impact made through the use of full scale STP and BPM. Not only will we present extensive empirical data resulting from the STP Purchasing project running in production over the last year, but we will also examine the effects this has had on customer contact and the development process as a whole.

As can be expected, there always will be challenges to be met when such an expansive shift in strategy is being implemented and we take a tour of the impact this has in both the business and technical realms.

Finally, we present our conclusions and detail some of the steps that are being taken (or are in the planning) as a result of our initial experiences with STP Purchasing.