Tom Printy’s Blog

WOW!  Netflix serves nearly a billion movie predictions a day. That is really amazing!  They also collect 2 millions ratings per day.  That is a lot of data.  I would love to see the back end systems that they use to crunch the ratings. I had heard that it takes them 3 days to generate their forecast model now I know why.  You can read more about their technique on forbes.com  I wonder how these numbers relate to what the other recommender systems gather.  I know what we gather at Sourcelight is not nearly as large as this.  I would have thought with all this data they would have released a larger chunk of it for the Netflix prize contest.

I was trolling technorati to see if anyone was talking about Sourclight Technologies one person stated in thier blog that “This is my favorite movie recommendation site. It has been the most accurate so far in my opinion.” I am glad that she has found it useful and hope that she will continue to use it.

It has been proposed the your blog is you new resume. Maybe it is not resume,  but perhaps more of an elevator pitch. That is whole reason that I started this blog last month. I hope to keep my online “profile” manged through this blog so that potential employers can find out about me. That doesn’t mean that I am actively looking for something at this time though. However I am always looking for side gigs or projects that would help me build multiple streams of income.

The resume isn’t totally dead because it is still a valuable tool. I think that when interview time comes that the resume will still be asked for. When I interview a new candidate I kinda use the resume as a test. I see what skills they listed on thier resume and start drilling into those to see what they know about the topic. I also like to ask questions about projects they worked on to see what they did during the project and what role the took. I don’t know anyones blog that would provide me with the information that a resume does that would allow me to conduct an interview like that.

So I think that in the short term is will be important to both maintain your on paper resume and perhaps an electronic version of that stored someplace as well as maintaining some type of professional blog. This will help you round out who you are and where your skills are. The real hiring is done during the interview process.

Starnum is an interesting widget creator. Basically you find products that you would like to recommend to others then create a widget to add to your site. What you get is a litle flash app (see below) that users can interact with. When they buy you get a piece of the action. The product selection is kinda weak right now but I am sure that will change.

Seems pretty neat so far.

Here is an interesting post describing how one person got an RMSE of 0.8937 with the Netflix contest data. Since he didn’t think this  procedure would go any lower he published his method.  What I find really interesting is that his method took a couple of weeks on at 3GHz computer. Clearly this method would not work real time. He also has 256 point in his sytem that is used. I my methods I was only have to have about 130 before I ran into some memory issues.

This is a test post after I installed the GeoPress plugin.

Today is Free ice cream day at your local Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop. This event is interesting to be because the company that I work for does the store locator for the Ben & Jerry’s web site. So far things are going really well. I noticed that the B&j web site was a bit slow but other that that things are going really well. So go get your free scoop and have a lovely day.

I will be attending the Where2.0 conference this year.  I am really looking forward to it as this will be my first time ever to visit California. Right now I am trying to figure out where I will stay while I am out there. So I put together a Google MyMap  to try and figure out where to stay.  The obvious choice is in the Fairmont Hotel since that is where the convention is but the room rates are a bit steep. I hope that this map helps somebody else besides me.

Since when did looking like Lt. Uhura from the Original Star Trek series become chic. It seems that everywhere I go these days I see people walking around with thier little bluetooth headset on. Now I do own a headset but it stays in my car, and I only use it when I am actually talking on the phone. Everytime I see a person just walking around not talking and wearing one of these headsets I giggle to myself and think of Star Trek. So thank you Gene Roddenberry for giving me something to laugh at on an almost daily basis.

I am going to take one of the spare servers that I have and setup a Asterisk based system to play with. I am trying to figure out wich version of Asterisk to install.

Asterisk http://www.asterisk.org/ This is the grand daddy of all the version. This version requires you to install everything and most likely is the hardest to deal with.

Tribox http://www.trixbox.org/ This version was formery known as Asterisk@Home and has evolved into a fully capable PBX system. This system comes can be downloaded as an ISO an when burned to a CD and booted on a system will setup CentOS and the Asterisk software. Configuration is easy with the supplied gui tools. Other features and software include trixbox dashboard, Asterisk(tm) Open Source PBX, FreePBX web management tool, SugarCRM, Munin (via package manager), HUDLite server/admin (via package manager), IVRGraph (via package manager), phpMyAdmin (via package manager) and Webmin (via package manager). Lastly they offer a pre-installed system theat you can buy and rack up.

Easy Vox Box http://easyvoxbox.org This is also an ISO version. It seems to be an exact copy of Tribox. Its features include;  Asterisk, Asterisk Developer Docs, freePBX, Access Control, Asterisk Recording Interface, Flash Operator Panel, MeetMe Control Center, System Status, System Info, Asterisk Info, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Config Editor, Centos, Telephone Reminders, Easy Web Call.

Right now I am inclinded to go with Tribox just beause it seems more mature. My next steps are to find a VOIP termination service and perhaps a hardware phone to use.