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CASCON 2012
On November 6, 2012, I’m teaching a hands-on lab at CASCON together with Bradley Steinfeld and Marius Butuc. The lab is called Crunching Big Data with Hadoop and BigInsights in the Cloud. The lab is based on the Hadoop Fundamentals course at Big Data University. Morning 1.0 Welcome 1.1 What is Big Data? 1.2 Lab…
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ODBC and 32-bit Excel on Windows 7 x64
I do some reporting in Excel. The reporting involves loading data via ODBC from a DB2 database. Excel is pretty zippy with its pivot tables once the data is loaded, but setting up the initial connection can be tricky. Windows 7 is the first Microsoft operating system where the expectation is that the consumers would…
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TypeScript’s doomed embrace of JavaScript
Microsoft recently announced TypeScript. From what I can tell, it’s Javascript with optional types. The type annotation syntax is the same as in Adobe’s ActionScript and in the sadly defunct ECMAScript 4. TypeScript also includes a new class syntax based on the one proposed in ECMAScript 6. I’m dubious about the addition of class-based features…
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Dehacking this blog
The first rule of security is to, of course, assume everything is compromised. If some code is compromised, everything is compromised. The correct response to a hacked WordPress is to nuke all the code. My WordPress installation was recently compromised. There’s a limit to how far I can apply the principle because this particular WordPress…
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New Features in Hadoop 2.0 summary
I live-tweeted yesterday’s New Features in Hadoop 2.0 session at the Toronto Hadoop User Group. I think it’s a pretty good summary. If nothing else, it helped me absorb the information. Spoiler: The iPad raffle was won by yours truly. Hadoop 2.0 At the Hadoop 2.0 session ‪#TorontoHUG Got here just before they figured out…
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New Features in Hadoop 2.0 session at ToHUG tonight
I’ll be attending the New Features in Hadoop 2.0 – HA, FNN, HBase Coprocessors info session tonight. The session is being organized by the Toronto Hadoop User Group. It’s at 7pm near King East and Parliament in Toronto. Feel free to say hello if you see me there. Cheers, Leons
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How to access web console from Greasemonkey userscripts
Userscripts are helper Javascript programs that you can add to your browser to automate and optimize the web pages you visit. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension to run userscripts. The web console is a tool built into Firefox and other browsers that can be helpful during userscript development. How can you access the web console…
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Userscript for faster deletion of MediaWiki spam
A couple weeks ago I posted a userscript that makes banning MediaWiki spammers easier by setting good defaults for the user ban form. Since then, I’ve had to ban a lot of spammers, so I thought I should remove another point of friction. For some reason, MediaWiki chooses to not provide direct deletion links on…
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Userscript to make banning MediaWiki spammers easier
Somehow, I’ve come to be responsible for administering two MediaWiki-powered wikis. The main burden is having to ban spammers, which sometimes sign up in batches of 20 at a time. To help with process, I’ve put together the following browser userscript. On Firefox, you can easily set it up using the Greasemonkey extension. Opera and…
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Setting up a fresh Windows system
I’m setting up a new primary system and I thought I’d jot down some notes. Ninite is probably the quickest way to install all the necessary software (Chrome, 7-zip, Dropbox, iTunes, Picasa, etc). You click the checkboxes and it rolls you a custom, hands-off installer. They upsell to an auto-update service, but there are free…