For some reasons I started to play with Apache Hadoop (Core):

Hadoop is a software platform that lets one easily write and run applications that process vast amounts of data.

Here’s what makes Hadoop especially useful:

• Scalable: Hadoop can reliably store and process petabytes.
• Economical: It distributes the data and processing across clusters of commonly available computers. These clusters can number into the thousands of nodes.
• Efficient: By distributing the data, Hadoop can process it in parallel on the nodes where the data is located. This makes it extremely rapid.
• Reliable: Hadoop automatically maintains multiple copies of data and automatically redeploys computing tasks based on failures.

Hadoop implements MapReduce, using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). MapReduce divides applications into many small blocks of work. HDFS creates multiple replicas of data blocks for reliability, placing them on compute nodes around the cluster. MapReduce can then process the data where it is located.

Hadoop has been demonstrated on clusters with 2000 nodes. The current design target is 10,000 node clusters.

I followed the Quickstart guide and I can confirm that it works on Mac OS X too, but I managed only to make it run in “standalone” mode: usefull for first-stage development and debugging.
Continue…

2.05 miles ~= 3.3 kms

I shall say that South Bank river side is a very nice place: the buildings are practically on the River Thames, and it looks like a very romantic place. There are different nice coffee shops (and some are NOT Starbucks ) around there. Quite surprising that this is my 3rd month in this area and I didn’t yet taken a proper look at it. I will… (I’m just waiting for a proper Spring).

Yesterday, waiting for Morfeus (the God, not the Blue-Pill-Red-Pill Freak) to catch me and bring me to sleep. I had this movie in my beloved iPhone, “Lars and the Real Girl“.

It’s pure gold. A movie about a guy, Lars (Ryan Gosling), who has a very strange mental disease, that needs a Girlfriend but is unable to catch-and-kiss the classical Next-Door-Girl (Kelli Garner) that loves him… also if she is aware of his sickness.

More info and the full plot is on Wikipedia (for whom likes spoilering ).

What I strongly suggest to follow is the recitation of what is not said: eyes, movements, expressions, breaths too. Everything is done in a perfect harmony. The perception is of a classical American town that is completely disconnected from the outside world, and mainly because of this is able to “help” Lars.

Best character? Dr. Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson). Her recitation is pure gold, a perfect not-yet-so-old woman who lost her husband and… now is just… lonely.
During an “interview” with Lars she speaks about her self:

[…]
Sometimes I get so lonely I forget what day it is, and how to spell my name.
[…]

I strongly suggest to give a try to this movie. It’s slow and “delicate”: give it the time to catch your interest, and pay attention to every whispering (in there is the pure gold of this movie).

Title: Bill Gates: the last day at Microsoft.

I know that probably this is OLD, but… this is really funny! I have to say that Bill Gates surprised me for being so ironic about himself, his money and his power!
I still don’t like you Bill, but at least you are better than big-fat-idiot-Steve Ballmer.

I was looking for info about MapReduce and I thought that would have been a good idea to take a look at the Tech Talks published by Google. Here we go.

Title: 2007 Seattle Conference on Scalability: MapReduce Used on Large Geographic Data Sets
Location: Google Tech Talks June 23, 2007
Speaker: Barry Brumitt, Google Inc.
Abstract: MapReduce is a programming model and library designed to simplify distributed processing of huge datasets on large clusters of computers. This is achieved by providing a general mechanism which largely relieves the programmer from having to handle challenging distributed computing problems such as data distribution, process coordination, fault tolerance, and scaling. While working on Google maps, I’ve used MapReduce extensively to process and transform datasets which describe the earth’s geography. In this talk, I’ll introduce MapReduce, demonstrating its broad applicability through example problems ranging from basic data transformation to complex graph processing, all the in the context of geographic data.

Other than just the topic of MapReduce technique itself, this guy, Barry Brumitt, gives an hint of “how things work” in Google (developer wise). And it’s not boring at all: is actually quite funny.

Innovation is one of the major topics that all the Big companies speaks all the time about: how, what, when… Innovation?

When the reality is of a little/medium size company, Innovation is easy: you don’t need to convince, motivate, move people. Teams with “Innovation in mind” just pop out from the ground… and a good manager just need to feed and support them.
But when it comes to big companies, with budgets of millions, with Customers that are even bigger… it’s like trying to move an Elephant using one man and a cord. Mission Impossible.

But.
There are brave companies. Companies that plays the game smart. And those company lead Innovation. Apple? Yes, please!
This article is indirectly about Apple: it’s about Pixar. It’s an interview to the Director of a different great movies in Pixar that brought “Innovation where looked impossible”: Phillip Bradley Bird (aka Brad Bird).
Continue…