Rackspace

For the final tech talk of 2011, Dave King talks about Building Killer Web Apps. Enjoy! For the slides, click here. »

Our final tech talk for 2011 is quickly approaching. Dave King, a software engineer at Rackspace, will be speaking on Building Killer WebApps. He has been working most recently on building Rackspace’s next generation control panel as well as improving the existing cloud control panel. In this talk, he will be sharing some of his experiences as well as best practices in the industry. Why is this an important topic? Web applications are omnipresent in how we interact with the world. »

Finally finished editing the Informed Design tech talk video from back in October. »

I just posted the Udi Dahan tech talk video from this week. Enjoy! Rackspace Tech Talk - Udi Dahan from Brian Hartsock on Vimeo. »

I am really excited about this fall. Rackspace Tech Talks are back with some awesome speakers and topics. Come out and join us for some great presentations and geeky conversation. Here are all the talks slated for this fall: October 4th, 6pm - Informed Design with Rackspace Experience Design Team November 15th, 6pm - Large Scale Distributed Systems with Udi Dahan December 6th, 6pm - Building Killer Web Apps with Dave King, Sr. »

I received an email a couple days ago from one of my summer interns that recently returned to school. Hey everyone had first day of classes today thought you guys would find the syllabus to one of my classes hilarious. Goals: Learn HTML Learn JSPs Learn CSS Learn Struts Learn Ajax Learn Javascript and JMeter (don't actually know Anything about this one) Objective: To be able to work on and maintain a web-app running on Apache Tomcat First Project: Take a webapp that has only in-line styles and set up a CSS page that will make the site look the exact same. »

Dave King, a coworker at Rackspace, recently started Yet Another Programming Blog. He has a couple great posts already. I highly encourage you to check it out. »

I recently couldn’t get wireless to find any networks on my work laptop. I contacted our IT Fly Guys and they promptly showed me the wireless switch on the side of the laptop, which I have had for over a year. Needless to say, most of the company promptly received the following email… Hey team, Your neighborhood RTS department would like to make a Public Service Announcement. There seems to be a Wireless Switch Fairy floating around the office, turning off everyone's wireless switch on their laptop. »

At least one person playing the air-guitar or drums at any given time Free coffee and soda Little bit chatter from pairing, conversation, and collaboration Lots of headphones to drown out the chatter At least one book on everyone’s desk The majority of the desks are filled, aka everyone isn’t always in meetings You can play bingo with the words test, unit, mock, loosely coupled, automate, build, pairing, code review, and powershell (Okay, maybe I threw that last one in there) Employees ask to come in and work 12 hours on a Saturday for a Hackathon Next Hackathon, May 9th. »

Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking, and talking, about Cloud Computing. Describing it to technical and non-technical people alike can be hard. One great resource I have used is Graham Weston’s post on Cloud Confusion, which gives a great analogy to help clarify the definition of cloud computing. Today, few of us generate our own power. Instead, we buy it from power companies. These companies generate and distribute electricity from massive centralized power plants that can cost over $1bl to build. »