JSLINT

JSLint is a JavaScript program that looks for problems in JavaScript programs. It is a code quality tool.  It is modeled after the "C" language lint tool and may be found @ http://www.jslint.com/lint.html

MapReduce Book

The book "MapReduce Design Patterns" by Donald Miner and Adam Shook is a good intermediate resource on MapRedue.

Each pattern is explained in context, with pitfalls and caveats clearly identified to help avoid common design mistakes when modeling large data architecture. It also provides a complete overview of MapReduce that explains its origins and implementations, and why design patterns are so important. All code examples are written for Hadoop.  They are:

• Summarization patterns: get a top-level view by summarizing and grouping data
• Filtering patterns: view data subsets such as records generated from one user
• Data organization patterns: reorganize data to work with other systems, or to make MapReduce analysis easier
• Join patterns: analyze different datasets together to discover interesting relationships
• Metapatterns: piece together several patterns to solve multi-stage problems, or to perform several analytics in the same job
• Input and output patterns: customize the way you use Hadoop to load or store data

This book does not have the step-by-step instructions of a "recipe" book, thus avoiding line-by-line breakdowns and delivering a lot of content in its 436 pages. (There is also a usable summary in 30 or so pages.)

Combinatorial and Pairwise Testing

The (US) National Institute of Standards and Technolgy is developing tools to support combinatorial testing. No license is required and there are no restrictions on distribution or use. If you would like a copy, just send them an email request to kuhn@nist.gov.  The site is @ http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/acts/index.html

Eerie Robots

One is Jules -- built by Hanson Robotics -- can be seen at http://bcove.me/3v0d3oop. In the video clip our humanoid friend asks whether he will dream when he is shut down.

Another developed at Osaka University has been designed to replicate the facial expressions of a model. "I felt like I had a twin sister," the model was quoted as saying after the demonstration (http://bit.ly/dfXY3j).

Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge

The Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) version 1.0 is available @ http://www.sebokwiki.org/1.0.1/index.php?title=Main_Page.  Check it out!

Free Simulation Tools

GFRD (Green's Function Reaction Dynamics) decomposes the many-body reaction-diffusion problem into one- and two-body problems that can be solved analytically using Green’s Function, and uses these functions to set up an event-driven algorithm.  Find it @ http://gfrd.org

MesoRD (Mesoscopic Reaction Diffusion Simulator) is a tool for stochastic simulation of reactions and diffusion. In particular, it is an implementation of the Next Subvolume Method, which is an exact method to simulate the Markov process corresponding to the reaction-diffusion master equation.  Find it @ http://mesord.sourceforge.net/

Smoldyn is a computer program for cell-scale biochemical simulations. It simulates each molecule of interest individually to capture natural stochasticity and to yield nanometer-scale spatial resolution.  Find it @ http://www.smoldyn.org/

3-D Printing Revolution in Military Logistics

http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/3-d-printing-revolution-military-logistics

Amazon RedShift Price Structure

http://aws.amazon.com/redshift/ 

Six free databases

From the Network World:

http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2012/120312-databases-test-263922.html

Do engineers need an MBA?

From the EE Times:

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/academic-antics/4396336/Do-engineers-need-an-MBA-

Old Tires Art

ARART

Computation meets Art:

http://arart.info/

Free Database Visualization Tool

A good free tool:

http://www.dbvis.com/

TinyDuino and Parallella

If you are interested in embedded development and do-it-yourself projects, take a look at this recent column by Mark Gibbs (Gear-head column in Network World) @

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2012/100812-gearhead.html

The Tomorrow Project

Check out the Tomorrow Project and he anthology of Science-Fiction stories there- available as a free download:

http://uk.tomorrow-projects.com/2012/09/the-tomorrow-project-anthology-imagining-the-future-and-building-it/

BigHouse Simulator

BigHouse is a simulation infrastructure for data center systems to help understand issues such as performance, power management, and fault tolerance.   Freely available @ http://www.eecs.umich.edu/BigHouse/ 

The paper is @ http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~twenisch/papers/ispass12.pdf 

Screw Art

Once Again: Creativity is Everything!

2012 Redmond Channel Partner Salary Survey

From the Redmond Channel Partner magazine:

"By all accounts, the market for technical employees is tight. Even as national unemployment remains high, partners across the country report low tech unemployment and intense competition for talent."

Simulating Cells

This is a computer model of a bacterium which accounts for gene function and predicts unexpected emergent properties.  The paper may be found @ http://covertlab.stanford.edu/publicationpdfs/mgenitalium_whole_cell_2012_07_20.pdf