Job Requisition Keyword Parser

Job Requisition Keyword Parser

I've been working on a keyword parser specifically, but not too specifically purposed toward pulling the important words from job requisitions so that people, my wife, can paste them into their resumes. In this age of aggressive bots searching out the perfect resume having a solid keyword section is very important. Especially if it is reinforced within the body of your resume. The little application I developed is useful not only for this, but is also useful for generating keywords for the meta keywords tag on websites. I have found that having a keywords section of my resume called skills helps big-time when posting my resume.

Still, there are other important words to note when building the appropriate resume to submit to a potential employer or headhunter. Words like “responsibility”, “commitment”, and “hard-working,” are important to include in your job descriptions and awards section if applicable. Obviously if you lie on your resume, you won't succeed in the job, so you don't want to optimize your resume for jobs that you can't do, however all too frequently the bots will miss a good candidate for a job because they have not done a good job of optimizing their resume for that job. Using the keyword parser will also help you create optimized resumes for particular jobs. Sometimes it will help if you were to change a word like “closed” in a sales resume to “managed,” if you are talking about an account depending on how the job requisition is worded.

Having an optimized resume is great especially if you are in a highly competitive field like web development for example. By optimizing your resume as you would a website, you have a higher chance of being hit on a service like Hotjobs or Dice. It won't be long however before having a resume that is too optmized will get you a penalty, but hopefully we'll all figure that one out as soon as it happens, currently however it appears that resume optimization is in it's infancy so optimize away!

Requisition Cruncher

Live Feeds From New Orleans

Live Feeds From New Orleans

The power and reach of the internet is absolutely incredible. I can not believe that right now I can read a blog and view live feeds out of New Orleans via the colocation and hosting company directNIC. While I'm sure the people staying there keeping the servers running and the information flowing out of New Orleans know how important what they are doing is, I hope everyone else realizes too. It is only during something like this that we can all realize how powerful new media is. Too frequently we only get news from one channel, only hearing from one opinion. But here we can hear from people actually there, watching the devastation wreaked not only by Katrina, but by some of the citizens themselves who out of fear, anger, or malice are destroying their own city even as others are trying to save it. Having the blogosphere respond directly to the livejournal and video feeds coming from New Orleans right now is vital, and historians and sociologists will be able to study what has happened from many different viewpoints.

The people staying on at directNIC keeping the generators and servers going are examples of some of the bravest and best that America has to offer. I hope they get some fuel soon so that they can keep their connection to the web. Hopefully the deep coverage of this disaster will shame the government into getting better weather information and planning accordingly in advance of disasters, not in hindsight.

Blog Out of New Orleans With Feeds and Pictures From directNIC

Owens Performance Is Now Available on Wireless Devices

Owens Performance Is Now Available on Wireless Devices

I have written a version of the Owens Performance site for wml compliant devices. In searching for my own site using Yahoo, I noticed that it will process the site for consumption on wireless phones. I think the reason that it can do this with my site is because it complies to XHTML 1.0 strict. I am not sure that a site that doesn't conform to it's doctype will be able to be converted. Still, even if WML is limited, it's usefulness is limited only by it's penetration on mobile devices which is significant. Almost any modern cell phone will have a WML 2.0 compatible browser built in. So it is a must for most major sites to develop WML versions to ensure compatability and to be able to reach the widest audience possible. It is easy using any scripting language to create dynamic WML pages. The only thing that has to be done is to have the XML header with the WML doctype. Then it is necessary to set the content-type to text/wml. That way even if the extention is .cfm, .php, .asp, or .pl it will render properly in the WML browser, even without the WML extension.

Another item that is a must is that you have to use some type of regular expression routine to remove tags, especially the images since WAP images are bitmaps. Here are the statements that I used for the wireless Owens Performance site. I pulled them from another site, but here they are again:

If you want to check out my wireless site, you can click the link below, or head over to http://www.owensperformance.com/wap/ from your mobile phone.

Wireless WAP 2.0 Version – Owens Performance

Managing Innovation

Managing Innovation

Most people don't think of innovation as a process. It is frequently considered to be something that is spontaneous, that happens when you get the right people together at the right time. I was listening to the show IT conversations on NPR last night driving back from Sacramento when they began talking about managing innovation as a process.

In a book called Managing Innovation as a Process, a book I am going to pick up, Robert Shelton talks about how to put together and manage a team of innovators. One of the more interesting things that he talks about is how incremental innovators are different than big, global innovators. In the interview, Shelton says that incremental innovators, people who make something faster, cheaper, or lighter, can be motivated with really specific drivers, so that a manager could say something to the effect of “If you can produce 300 of those widgets, you will get another $100.” This can motivate someone to a near goal, but it will fail to motivate your other type of innovator. Someone who is a big thinker, but who will frequently come up with ideas that just won't pan out. One of the traits Shelton says identifies the global innovators is that they crave recognition more than money. So that the managment process for these individuals would be different. I began to think about myself, and how I love recognition from my peers and superiors, I love when they let me run with my ideas. Granted, this doesn't happen every time, but when it does, I'm often at my happiest. I guess that is why whenever I have an idea I start developing on my own, I figure that one of my ideas will really pop eventually.

Getting back to the interview, it would probably be prudent then for companies to have research groups consisting of these global thinkers. Then, give them a project manager, so that they can get their ideas out and into a business model that can be produced. Then they can be free to lead their development team through the building process, and hopefully can change the world with their ideas. This really caught my attention, not only because of my personal background, but because I can see how this setup could really work.

Another point he made was that often the most innovative companies have a driving force that gives their innovation direction. For example, if I were leading a group, the most important thing for me to have would be a clear vision of what needed to be built. Once the leader has a clear vision, and can communicate that vision to the engineers, they are halfway there. Apparently the other half of the equation is to keep to that path until the goal is reached. Often innovators will get sidetracked, so it is critical to have a leader who knows exactly what they want to see.

This book sounds very interesting, and explains some of how the bay area, specifically silicon valley got to be the way it is. Also, to a degree why the west coast style of business management, and corporate culture seems to lead to more innovation than the east coast corporate culture. It was an interesting inteview that you can listen to here.

August 23, 2005 – Robert Shelton

The Webalizer

The Webalizer

I moved Owens Performance off of my existing hosting company the other day onto a dedicated server. My hosting company wasn't terrible, but the database performance couldn't have been worse. I think they outsourced their DB, but whoever was doing it should just get out of the business. Their front end servers were OK, but when it came to SSL, they just fell apart. They didn't even offer SSL encrypted access to email, that should be basic at this point. I'm not going to say their name because I don't like to bad-mouth companies that are trying, but I had to do something. The first thing I noticed after moving was how much faster everything happened on the server. Granted, it is a dual-G5 2.3 GHz, so I wouldn't expect it to be slow.

One, and perhaps the only thing that I missed from my other server is the webalizer. It is a very light linux based log analyzer for clf logs generated by Apache, and some other well known web servers. I was originally intimidated by the thought of installing it, thinking it would be really difficult to set up, nothing could be farther from the truth. The most challenging thing to getting it to work was figuring out which log file belonged to which virtual server. Once I got that, it was just a matter of configuring the log file and telling it to run. I then had really nice graphs of all my traffic. The best part is that it keeps it's own twelve month history of your traffic, so you don't have to worry about how you are rotating your logs. For freeware this is excellent. I'm going to tell everyone about it that I can, although I can imagine that everyone probably already knows about it.

Get the Webalizer

Will the Megahertz Race be Back on Again with Intel’s 955 Extreme Edition?

Will the Megahertz Race be Back on Again with Intel's 955 Extreme Edition?

As I had mentioned many, many blogs ago, the Megahertz race wasn't over, merely postponed. It was pretty clear that when Intel could get down to the 65nm process, it would give them the ability to push even higher clock speeds at similar power envelopes. The Pentium Extreme edition 955 is no exception. According to Tom's Hardware it should debut at 3.4 GHz, be dual-core and sport hyper-threading. This chip should stomp out whatever AMD is currently working on as I belive that Intel will continue to have the better fabrication process and continue to outproduce and under-cut AMD's pricing structure. AMD can't hold out forever against Intel, and it is my prediction that AMD will regain the lead in the CPU race.

Intel's 955 Extreme Edition

Second Life

Second Life

Probably the only reason that I haven't tried Linden Labs' Second Life is because I know that if I tried it, I would be completely and hopelessly addicted to it. This is the game that will become Neil Stephenson's Metaverse. What is so cool about it is that the possibilities are pretty endless. Commerce can happen in the virtual world, with artists selling their 3D clothes, paintings for your virtual home, it is really up to the imagination. I saw a CNET article a while back with a video that showed the player with wings. Property values are increasing almost as fast as they are in California.

My only question is when employers will let us work in the virtual world. Or attend classes. At some point, we know that virtual reality will be if not as good as true reality. I think we are getting pretty close to that. For example, it requires a very small leap of imagination to envision handing someone a token object that would contain a file of a sort, and that person then having that object in their email inbox. With the possibilities for virtual conferencing this is obviously a great solution for business. Whether we are headed for the Metaverse and the world depected in Stephenson's Snow Crash, or the Matrix is anyone's guess. But we are definately headed there in a hurry. Perhaps I should get in now, buy some property, and find some contractors and architects to create a skyscraper for Owens Performance.

Linden Labs Creators of Second Life

Iterative Application Development

Iterative Application Development

I understand the Agile methodologies for rapid application development, and I also can appreciate how customers get better results when companies apply this approach, however there is one thing missing from many companies' implementation of Agile processes. That thing is to reform the business side of the equation so that developers have the ability to build appropriate systems to support the current as well as future business needs.

Since the rational development methodologies have come onto the scene, many companies have rushed to adopt many if not all of them. Rational in and of itself can save companies lots of money in wasted overhead and overcomplication of projects and project specifications. This is a good thing. The issues arise when the specifications are not properly drawn up, and the project is not given an appropriate timeline. Most of the time developers are as much to blame as the business people in that they are giving timelines that are way below what they should be. Another problem is that business people are so used to over-inflated estimates by engineers, they attempt to squeeze the engineer to give them the “real” time estimate. The engineer, fearing for their job gives the project manager an unrealistic estimate based on how long it will take for them to physically type up the code. The project manager goes away happy that theye can deliver the project early to the customer, while the engineer goes away feeling bitter and looking at extremely long nights. If the engineer is working on several projects, it is easy to see how that engineer can quickly become swamped. Once that happens, they will be writing spaghetti code, and cowboy coding to catch up. They will not consider possible enhancements, portablilty, and they may not consider incompatabilities that will arise when they attempt to connect the project to another project.

Those issues often lead to overstaffing of programmers and an ever-increasing mountain of inefficiencies. Inefficiencies that agile development is supposed to abolish. There are a few ways to help prevent this, while still using agile development.

Project managers should think about the future. If they were to consider synergies with other project managers' projects, or the company's priorities, they would be able to discuss this with their engineers, and build in time to ensure portability, compatibility, and scalability.

Directors, VP level executives, and the sales staff could stand to learn a little about the actual programming. Most developers would flame me for this, but if the “C” level staff were to attend some conventions concerning the technologies they are using, they could listen to what the project managers were saying and make more informed decisions about deliverables to their customers.

Project managers, architects, and developers should stay abreast of new frameworks, methodologies, and tools for their technologies of choice. These may help them meet aggressive deadlines that would have been impossible before. Training and education need to be budgeted for and required.

Most companies say that they want to innovate and break new ground in their industries, but most of this innovation will come from the engineers. If they are inundated with trying to read spaghetti, or refactor awful code that was written during 24 hour coding marathons, there will be no time for innovation or learning. These problems can cause a software house to crash under its own weight if left unchecked. Also, a little planning up front for the engineers can be well worth its weight in gold. Of course over analysis and trying to stick to every standard will cause more problems than it will solve. It is up to the project managers to keep this planning grounded and come up with solutions to the business needs that are forward thinking and will enable growth.

Nintendo Revolution

Nintendo Revolution

I had a very strange dream the other night. I was in a store looking for the Sony PSP, but the shopkeeper had run out of them. It was a small shop in a mall, not a large best buy style store, or even like an EB games, it was more of a botique shop. I'm not sure where I was, as far as what city, but I remember thinking how impressed I was with the Nintendo DS. Still in my dream, I remember thinking to myself, “you know, what I really want to play is Metroid, and RC Pro AM on my old black-and-white original GameBoy.”

If you are still reading this, you are probably thinking man, this guy is a geek! Well, I am a geek, but it brings up an interesting point that led me to visit Nintendo's website for the first time since I had been playing StarFox on the original SNES. I saw something that is conspicuously missing from the major game manufacturer's sites. I saw that Nintendo was truly focusing on producing great games. Not trying to slip a trojan entertainment hub into your living room or into your pocket like Sony with the PSP and the PS3, or like Microsoft with their XBOX 360.

After reading about the systems from Sony and Microsoft, you notice that they are extremely heavy on graphics processing technology, while they are light on voice recognition dedicated hardware, or experimenting with innovative controller technology. In short, they are not really interested in furthering the gaming experience, they are really only interested in giving you a better way to watch movies (the current crop of video games included), watch TV, and listen to music. I say that the current crop of video games are like watching movies because most of the problem solving has been distilled out of the majority of blockbuster games, and has been replaced with extreme polygon counts and loud explosions. This is great, and I'll go to the theater, or pop in Independance Day to experience these kinds of things, but when I pop in a role playing game, I want to be immersed in a quality game experience. Even looking at older action games like Ninja Gaiden for the NES, there was a quality there that current games are missing.

Upon reviewing some of the features of the DS, it does a lot as far as PIM technology goes, but it looks like a really cool, unique gaming platform. So what if it doesn't play movies? I think that I'll be giving the Nintendo revolution a look even if it does fall short of the other systems. At least I'll have a system with quality games from a company that only does games. Isn't that the reason to have a gaming console anyway?

Sony Hacking Computers for DRM

Sony Hacking Computers for DRM

My purchasing a CD on a Sony label does not give them the right to install malware on my computer. Sony has resorted to hacking computers using rootkits to hide processes and files left behind when a user plays a Sony CD on their PC. This type of chicanery is completely unacceptable. I can understand that Sony wants to protect their intellectual property, but the tactics that they are using to do this are beneath comtempt. Some people claim that trying to remove the files left behind by Sony's DRM scheme can prevent access to the computer system's CD drive. I don't think that this would happen in most cases, at least I would hope, but by adding files like this on someone's system, it would be much easier for a virus writer to piggyback their very malicious code onto Sony's malicious code. It is essentially like leaving a door open for hackers to get into your PC. No matter how carefully Sony considered security they can't be certain that their software won't be used in this manner.

There are interesting legal implications to this issue. If someone were to hack into the rootkit used by Sony to harm a user's PC. Would Sony be held liable for damages? Does the user agree to a EULA by simply playing a CD on their computer?

Personally I see two solutions to this issue. First of all, use iTunes or Napster to purchase music. I don't buy CDs anymore because they are just flat out inconvenient. The iTunes music store does a much better job of delivering music at a reasonable price, and as long as you archive your purchased songs on CD or DVD as data files, you won't lose them.

The second solution is to stop using Windows and use either a Macintosh, or just run Ubuntu Linux on your machine. The problem then is that the Sony CDs just won't play, but at least you won't have to worry about them installing malware on your computer.