[Coté Memo #11] The Swedish cloud, coding spreadsheets, new Netflix to watch
Meta-data
Hello again, welcome to #11. Today we have 22 subscribers, so we're +1 (leveling back after yesterday's -1). I'll have a drink to celebrate! I'd love to hear what you like, dislike, your feedback, etc.: memo@cote.io.
See past newsletters in the archives, and, as always, see things as they come at Cote.io and @cote.
Sponsor
451 Research, is having it's big cloud conferences this Fall, Oct. 6th to 8th. I'll have a session or two on developer relations and marketing, and other analysts will be talking about their area. Anyhow, if you're interested, I have a discount code you can use: go to the registration page, and enter the code MC200 to get $200 off the registration price.
Follow-up
It was pointed out to me that the numbering was messed up. Thank you! This is actually #11. I'll leave as an exercise to the reader re-numbering old editions.
I received some other encouraging feedback from the same reader which I appreciate greatly!
Tech & Work World
Ericsson's cloud plans sound fun
This afternoon I caught up with Jason Hoffman who's now at Ericsson. It was fun hearing about how they're planning on bringing cloud to their massive customers. Makes sense so far. I'm eager to see how cloud takes hold for normal, non-technology companies. Things tend to go different (Microsoft takes over! Apple revolutionizes mobile! etc.) when market saturation is achieved. We have a 451 report on Ericcson's cloud plans up as more background.
VMworld
Speaking of the cloud and tech companies: I'll be at VMworld later this month (August) for the first three days. You around? We should go get a beer.
Type
The Roboto and Robot Slab typefaces (fonts? yeah, whatever) are nice looking, esp. the second. I'll try to start using them more.
Some recent reports in case you've missed them
I usually put a reference to 451 reports I write up on Cote.io, but I'd fallen behind. You can see all of them up there. Also of interest, we recently updated and detailed the "research agendas" (what we cover in each practice) and you can check out (for free if you don't mind PDFs) the two areas I over-see.
When in doubt, program it out
I feel as if I've spent almost all week in spreadsheets, mostly getting the data ordered how I want, cleaning it. I keep thinking: "if only I had a little script, or loaded this into a database..." After years of resisting that nagging thought, I had the luxury of time to start re-learning how to programmatically muck with spreadsheets.
Witness the code!
require 'spreadsheet'
book = Spreadsheet.open('summaries2.xls')
sheet = book.worksheets[0]
puts sheet.row(3)[1,sheet.row(3).size()]
# extract the rows and rebuild them into a favorable format for charting
# this shit might just work!I even had to install a gem. Things are getting crazy here!
Getting up and running with programming is so much work at first. Like, how do I install gems? How do I do the dependency management so I don't have to manually run gem install? I need to setup some version control. Where do I find the docs for reading rows for Excel spreadsheets?
One forgets how much lore, cant, and contextual knowledge is involved in doing simple things like auto-compete. You see what I'm talking about?!
Fun & IRL
Zombies vs. Vampires - who would win?
To summarize some scenario thinking, vampires probably come out on top. @petrillic raises a good counter-argument, however.
Cache vs. Cachet
Make sure you know the difference. It will effect how you're perceived. (See what I did there?)
The Killing
I got notified (on my phone!) that there's a new season of The Killing in Netflix. Is it true? Looks like it!