The Sherpa Project

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been pulling together a simple Information Radiator for CruiseControl.net. The idea behind the project is to use the power of visualizations to provide simple, visible, and informative displays that expose the current-state of your automated continuous integration builds.

I threw this app together very quickly a week or so ago and I’ve been amazed at how addictive it’s become. In our team room, we have a dedicated monitor that is always running the application. The result is that you know exactly where the builds stand as soon as you enter the room.

I initially wanted to put this together as a temporary solution to picking out what items we will use to show our build status. We always bounce back and forth about Nabaztag, orbs, lava lamps, and other physical things to show our build status. It’s usually easier to find an extra monitor than it is to get a purchase request approved for a wireless-enabled rabbit. Big Visible Cruise is the same idea, it’s just a visualization instead of a physical device. Judging by how much we all enjoy seeing it, it will probably stick around in addition to any physical device we pick up.

You can find out more about the project at http://code.google.com/p/bigvisiblecruise/. After the holiday I’ll post some pictures and explain how we are utilizing the big display in our team room.

In the meantime, you can likely get an idea from looking at the display while it’s monitoring three different projects in the following screen shot…

This shows that I have three projects (Foo, Bar, and Some Project) being run on my CCNet server. In this example Foo and Bar are successful and Some Project is broken.

The other state that isn’t represented in the pic above is the “building” state. When a project is building, the row representing the project will turn yellow.

By default, BVC will poll every 15 seconds. I recommend using BVC with CCTray so that you have a big visual display along with auditory clues about your build process.

Big Visible Cruise is being released under the MIT license.

If you’re interested in WPF and/or information visualization, I’d love any contributions
I plan on providing some interesting visualizations over the next couple of months. Let me know what you’d like to see on the RoadMap page.

I’m wrapping up my trip and thinking about the things that I didn’t bring with me that I won’t forget next time. Here is my quick list of items that I won’t leave at home next time…

• A mask (or something similar) to block the dust
• Sinus medicine
• Extra batteries
• Advil
• A pre-compiled list of medicine to get when I start having sinus issues.

Some things that I didn’t know before that I know now…

• Pepsi products are cheaper than Coke products.
• The prices on grocery items are printed by the expiration date, there aren’t any tags in the store.
• When you give money to beggars, be prepared to be swamped by more beggars.
• Prescription medicine is easy to get in India w/o a prescription (look for a Chemist store).
• Your driver is your lifeline.
• Be prepared to deal with the effects of the pollution and dust. There’s no way around it.
• Most showers have a switch that you turn on to get hot water.
• Someone needs to write a book from the standpoint of a westerner staying in India for a long time. This would be invaluable.

It was another good day.

We went to the peths, browsed through the fruit and meat market, went to the mall, grabbed a few mojitos at Le Meridian, and stocked up on some more orange cream biscuits. I saw a camel, an elephant, and a few bulls.

My pictures from today are posted up on flickr.

Today was my most eventful day yet in India. I woke up pretty early and my driver took me from Thane to Pune. The drive was cool and I was able to see some pretty incredible sites along the way.

When I arrived in Pune I got settled in to the apartment and took off walking. It felt great to actually get out and walk around the city with some others that I met in Pune. We ended up ducking into a bar to get a few drinks and lose the beggars.

While we were in the bar we had an interesting conversation with a guy from Chile that lives in Bengal. Juan was a little strange, but we were able to listen for about 30 minutes as he told us his life story. Throughout the time that Juan sat at the table we listened as he laughed, joked, cried, and discussed his soul. Juan talked about growing up in Chile, his wife’s renunciation of money, his girlfriend in British Columbia, his children in the US, and his travels playing music. He talked for almost 30 minutes straight, pounded a full beer in a few gulps, and disappeared.

After the beers, we decided to go check out MG Road. I have to say that I really liked the area and it was interesting experimenting with various beggar-diversion tactics (none worked). After MG Road we went to Pune Central to pick up some odds and ends and then went and ate at a good Pizzeria.

In between everything else I saw a few monkeys, a few elephants, a few fellow westerners, picked up some camera supplies, ate some orange biscuits, had a child beggar pinch my stomach, and attempted to have a full-on conversation with a beggar (who had no idea what I was saying) about transportation methods in Pune.

Overall — I’d count that as a good day.

Alright, I’m successfully back in business. I was able to find an SD card reader (for $4) and get some batteries for the camera. I’ve uploaded my pictures that I’ve taken so far on my flickr account and I can finally take some more pictures now that I have some fresh batteries.

I’ve been somewhat bummed out that I didn’t bring an SD card reader with me. I was looking forward to posting some images from the city.

It never gets old looking out the window of the car on my way to and from work everyday. There’s always something new and interesting to see. Everyday I see things that blow my mind.

Right now, my camera is dead and I haven’t been able to find any batteries that work for longer than a couple of minutes. So, while I’m waiting to get home and post some video, you can check out this video from YouTube.

This video is very similar to what I see every day on my drive to work.

I’m in India.

I can honestly say that I never thought I would say that.

The flight wasn’t bad (although I wouldn’t recommend Delta/Air France for your flights) and I adjusted to the time change within a few days.

Although there were a few riots when I departed the US, everything has settled down and I never noticed anything out of the ordinary.

To say the least, Mumbai is an amazing city. I have been taking pictures all over the place, but I don’t have an SD card reader to upload everything to the flickr site yet. I’ll be posting pictures when I return or if I happen to make it to an electronics store while I’m here.

I’m staying at the Renaissance (map) and the hotel is amazing.

More to come

I guess now that I’ve left Colorado, I can share my Backpack page that I lived by while I was in Evergreen.

If you follow this link, you’ll be taken to my page that I used for a couple of seasons to figure out where to snowboard and how to get there. The page shows a handful of webcams from various resorts (A-Basin, Breck, Keystone, Beaver Creek, and Vail), the forecast (and links to extended forecasts), and the interstate 70 cams between Evergreen and Vail.

Hopefully someone will find this useful.

Well, it’s been a year and a half since I’ve been on my extended vacation in Colorado and it’s been amazing. I’ve had a wonderful time and seen some beautiful things here. I was able to snowboard almost every weekend for what seemed like an eternity and I was able to do some great hiking. I’ve been taking pictures along the way (over 1,000 photos since I’ve been here), and I thought that I’d post some links to some of the things I’ve seen and places that I’ve been over the past 18 months:

Snowboarding…

I had a pass to Breckenridge, Keystone, ABasin, Beaver Creek, and Vail. All of these mountains are great and they all have their own personalities. I spent most of time at Breck, but most of the locals seem to migrate more towards ABasin. My favorite scene would have to be Beaver Creek because the village is incredibly nice. Keystone is similar to a big version of Snowshoe Mtn. in West Virginia (where I’m from) with some great tree-skiing. ABasin is a great locals mountain with some historic parties in the parking lots (especially at the beginning and end of the season). Vail is exactly what you’d picture. I didn’t really like Vail unless there was powder in the back bowls (Feb/March).

Hiking…

I lived extremely close to hundreds of miles of hiking trails and a short drive from some incredible summits. Some of the local hiking included Three Sisters Park, Chicago Lakes (in the Mt. Evans Wilderness Area), Elk Meadow (across the street from my place), Matthews Winters Park, Maxwell Falls, Mt. Falcon, Rocky Mountain National Park, Lair O’ the Bear, and Chautauqua Park.

The summits that I enjoyed included Square Top, South Boulder Peak, Mount Sniktau, Mount Sanitas, Mount Evans (we only drove to the top), Mount Democrat, Mount Bierstadt, Green Mountain (the one in Boulder), Chief Mountain, Bergen Peak, and Bear Peak. The 14ers (Evans, Bierstadt, and Democrat) are always busy because they are all close to Denver, but the experience of hiking to the summit is still exciting with all of the people around. The 13ers (Square Top and Sniktau) are always less crowded and tend to have views that are just as beautiful. The summits in Boulder are at much lower elevations but the vibe on the Boulder hikes is always good and I love being able to let Kaya (my dog) off the leash in Boulder county.

Locations…

Evergreen (where I lived) was a great town during the day, but there’s not much going on after the sun goes down. We’d have to drive at least 15 minutes to get a coffee after 8:00pm. There is great hiking and mountain biking in Evergreen. To be fair, there are some good saloons, but the saloon-scene really isn’t my thing.

Denver is a pretty nice city. Good nightlife, decent food (it’s either hit or miss), and tons of various activities throughout the week and weekends. The airport is nice, but the flights are expensive and it takes a lot of time to get to your gate from the parking areas. If you’re in town, try and catch a show at Red Rocks, it’s the best venue I’ve ever seen.

Boulder is incredible. I can’t say enought about the area and the people. Location-wise, I will miss Boulder the most. The outdoor activities in Boulder are the best I’ve ever seen and the people are very friendly. The cost-of-living in Boulder is high, but that is about the only downside.

As far as the mountain towns go, most are exactly what you’d expect. My favorite town is Aspen (by a long-shot). As far as the other towns go, Idaho Springs (be sure to visit Tommy Knockers for the best beer on the planet) and Georgetown are both pretty cool towns to kick back after a long day of playing in the mountains.