I'm Back

 Well, it's the end of 2024, and after a 5-year gap, I have managed to get back into my blog.

Let's quickly summarize what has happened:

1. My company was purchased by refinativ.com, so I became a senior technology director there.

2. 6 months later, Refinitiv was purchased by LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), so now I'm a tech director with them. 

3. I managed the introduction of an 8000-seat Gitlab system and got it working across both companies (LSEG and Refinitiv)

4. The world went AI crazy.

5. I became a Senior Director at LSEG, specializing in AI. 

6. I moved to Thailand (Bangkok)

7. I was diagnosed with cancer in my spine

8. I was declared clear of the spinal cancer

9. I introduced Generative AI Coding Assistants to 1500 developers in LSEG.

10. I'm working to get it in the hands of all 15,000 developers at LSEG.

11. I will focus more on my book (Wavefront) this year and start by publishing parts as a set of short stories. 

Well, that's the helicopter view. I will post more items to this blog, and it's my New Year's resolution to reach out more. 

Maverick, the metal cutting CNC is DONE!

My very first metal cutting CNC rig is done, it is based on a standard chinese 3018 build, but has had a lot of extra work done on it. It has been significantly stiffened,  upgraded to a new controller that I can easily program rather than tbe Woodpecker POS that was in it originaly. Its also had the 200W spindle from my defunct ZenToolworks machine added to it.

If i add up the cost of the parts, and my time, then it was not worth it, i have probaly spent as much on the upgrades as the originial rig cost, but i have had months of fun and fustration, (and driven my partner around the bend with the mess), worth every penny.

I have ordered a floating engraving tool from CNCAid,  which i hope will give me simular pcb cutting capabilities as the Wegstr machines, if it does not, i will just give up and buy a Wegstr.


Now i have to learn how to use it, i have mastered CamBam, Flatcam and UGS Platform, but now i have to learn kicad, and Freecad too, to round out the package skills i will need. I have been an avid OpenSCAD user for years and use it for everything.

Anyway, once i get back from the trip im heading off on to hongkong, I will get cracking on FreeCad.

I have two other new projects now,  Bertha, is a 600mm x 400mm metal cutter, built using 4040 profike and using many of the techniques used in the Openbuilds OX design. Flash is a large format 600mm x 600mm laser engraver with a unique automatic lazer focusing system that uses a camera to focus for minimum spot size. 

Swift 3.0.2 Language on Fedora 25

Previously i shared a link to the Fedora install script for the 2.2 version of the swift programming language.

I have now created a version of Swift 3.0.2 (the most current stable version)  for Fedora 25, and have confirmed it works with the jet-brains CLion EAP IDE with the excellent swift language plugin. All advanced features such as GCD, SwiftPM, GLibc binding and the debugger seem to work.

you can get the pre-built release and the install instructions below

https://github.com/FedoraSwift/fedora-swift2/releases/tag/v0.0.2

Installing apple swift language compiler on Fedora 22/Fedora 23/Centos 7/Redhat 7

Apple shook up the OSS world last week when it released the open source version of its swift language compiler stack for Mac OSX and Linux.

While they say "Linux" what they really mean is "Ubuntu Linux", as the binary builds provided are built against Ubuntu 14.10 or 15.02.

You can technically run these binaries on fedora but it requires a lot of hackery, symlinking missing library versions to others that are available in the f22 or 23 repos.

So I decided to see if it would be possible to build the swift compiler suite on fedora, and it turns out it is, with a few caveats.

I have put the script I used on github  ( https://github.com/thawkins/fedora-swift ) and encourage people to give it a try. Let me know about your experiences and if you create any fixes for any problems then please pass them back to me.

Right, I'm off to learn swift.... ohhh and get the swift mongodb driver I found up and working.

Switching primary languages

Im on a roll here, three posts in one day, I have decided its time I switched primary launguage. I spent the eighties writting assembler and "C", the ninties writting "C++", and most of the noughties writting "PHP", so im due for another switch.

I have been looking at "go" the new systems language from google, and it meets all my needs, the depth and breadth of "C", the capabilities of "C++" and the rapid workflow i associate with "PHP". Im definatly going to have a long learning curve getting up to speed on it, so I have decided to set myself a task that I can start working towards and a schedule of two years with a prototype and then implememtation phase. I fully expect to throw all my initial work away and reimplement it properly once i know what I am doing.

The Task I have set myself is to build a 3D printer slicer and firmware set suitable for executing in an embeddeable computer. I will have to learn a bunch of techniques, but I have the required background and skills, for the last two years I have been building and operating 3d printers, and in the late 90's I specialised in building Postscript raster image processors for custom printers. At a push I can even build hardaware, im planning to initialy use  a small ARM board like a beagleboard black or one of the new Raspberry Pi's with the enhanced GPIO. But thats a choice I dont have to make yet. I want to abstract the higher level layers into a set of libraries, and leave the low level driver stages until I have a target built.

Im using the community version of the Jetbrains IDEA editor as my dev env, with the golang plugin which works really well, and is extreemly easy for me to use as I use thier PHPStorm Editor for all my PHP work, and the two are very simular. Im just looking at other tools now like dependancy managers, package managers and unitesting frameworks.

It will be fun, I am so looking forward to this.

Posted via Blogaway

HHVM and MongoDB

Just latley I have been playing with HHVM (HipHop) and MongoDB. To set the scene, we have a largish application written in PHP/Zend/MongodB that we would like to make faster. It has two main parts to it, a bunch of backend scripts called from crons, and the web application itself.

I recently got involved in an effort to produce a pure PHP MongDB driver, for the purpose of allowing servers which dont allow extentions to be loaded to interact with hosted MongoDB services such as MongoHQ, and beable to use MongoDB with HHVM.

The resulting driver is very complete, and implements a large subset of the Official PHP drivers support, in an dropin compatable fashion. You can see the php driver at https://github.com/mongofill/mongofill . Great as it is, there is an even better vertsion at https://github.com/mongofill/mongofill-hhvm which compiles the php driver alongside a "C" implementation of a BSON reader/writer to produce a loadable extension module for HHVM. And the results are fantastic. Our backend scripts are by no means simple Mongo/PHP code. But I was able to get them all working well with minor changes to the code. A testiment to the diligence of the Mongofill authors.

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Blogging from my tablet

This is my first post from my android tablet, i took the dive and got myself a super Samsung Galaxy Note 12.2, with LTE. Its night and day compared to my old Note 10.1. So much so that I got the bluetooth case/keyboard that goes with it, because its close to being an ultrabook.

Anyway this is my first post direct from the tablet, on the move, from a "Mr Dougnuts" store in Greenhill mall in pasig.

More to follow