People Analytics and the Big Data Dystopia
futureMainstream predictive analytics, at least in the "big data" sense, was once the reserve of business intelligence, marketing and speculative trading on the stock market but things are rapidly changing. For a lot of us, big data is about to...
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Porting Face Analysis SDK to Windows
guideAn incomplete, rough and ready guide to building, initial port, and installation of Face Analysis SDK for Windows. The original source requires a few rather specific dependencies and uses a POSIX compliant fork/process model. The solution below is nothing other...
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OpenCV and IP camera streaming with Python
guideWith todays computing power (including embedded and hobby board computers), the commoditisation of web cameras, and the maturity of computer vision software and object detection algorithms, anyone can play around computer vision for negligible cost. In this guide I'll give...
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Thought Machines
peopleThis is a follow-up post to a previous article I wrote: “Should I become a Programmer?” I'd like to address a couple of the comments I received about that article and try to make my message a little clearer. Comment:...
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Should I become a Programmer?
peopleI don't know how many times I've read or heard this question over the years but if I had a dollar for every one of those times, I'd be a rich man. In the past I might've answered this question...
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The Hero Programmer and the Truth
businessMost of us have worked somewhere or know of a business that has a resident "hero programmer". The image of the hero programmer who regularly saves the day with his incredible intelligence and dedication when seemingly random unforeseen problems arise...
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Nobody Cares about You or Your Company
businessWhether you're selling information or software products, or tech consulting services, the only thing that matters to your customers is the fact that you can fix their problem. Your customers are selfish. They only care about themselves. Why is it...
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Vigilantism: Vandalism and Ethics in Engineering
craftOn the 26th of August, FTDI, manufacturer of the world's most widely used USB serial chip, released their latest Windows driver (v 2.12.0.0) and its distribution via a recent Windows automatic update has been, at best a monumental error in...
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The Forgotten User
craftWe've all heard stories of projects gone wrong because somehow everyone forgot about the users, haven't we? I want to draw your attention to another user who is almost always forgotten in every other bit of coding we all do...
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Your Financial History. Your Business.
peopleRecruitment, shady practices and unsavoury hiring advice has a habit of getting on my goat as is clear in my rant in a previous article about recruitment. Hiring employees for a given position with a salary that's fair. Of course...
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