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Systematic Query Building with Common Table Expressions

By Josh Tolley
June 12, 2018

The first time I got paid for doing PostgreSQL work on the side, I spent most of the proceeds on the mortgage (boring, I know), but I did get myself one little treat: a boxed set of DVDs from a favorite old television show. They became part of my evening ritual, watching an episode while cleaning the kitchen before bed. The show features three military draftees, one of whom, Frank, is universally disliked. In one episode, we learn that Frank has been unexpectedly transferred away, leaving his two roommates the unenviable responsibility of collecting Frank’s belongings and sending them to his new assignment. After some grumbling, they settle into the job, and one of them picks a pair of shorts off the clothesline, saying, “One pair of shorts, perfect condition: mine,” and he throws the shorts onto his own bed. Picking up another pair, he says, “One pair of shorts. Holes, buttons missing: Frank’s.”

The other starts on the socks: “One pair of socks, perfect condition: mine. One pair socks, holes: Frank’s. You know, this is going to be a lot easier than I thought.”

“A matter of having a system,” responds the first.

I find most things go better when I have a system, as a recent query …

Liquid Galaxy Supporting the Community During Natural Disaster

By Ben Witten
June 7, 2018

Earthquakes and explosive eruptions are currently rocking Kīlauea’s summit crater, creating concerns for the local community. Fortunately, NOAA’s Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo is stepping up to educate the greater community with the help of their Liquid Galaxy system, which was created and is supported by End Point.

While there is active volcanic activity and explosive eruptions continue at the Kīlauea summit, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is mostly closed to its nearly two million annual visitors. NOAA’s Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo is helping to support the community affected by the lava flows and eruption at Kīlauea summit and along its Lower East Rift Zone by hosting Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park Service rangers and interpretive staff.

To lessen the impact on park visitors and to provide a venue to learn about the current eruption, NOAA’s Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo is hosting a pop-up park center, with daily ranger talks at 10 am and 2 pm, on-site rangers throughout the day, and support of park programming. NOAA National Weather Service meteorologists from the Hilo Data Collection Office are also participating in the daily 10 am briefing to provide …

GDPR is alive!

By Jon Jensen
May 24, 2018

Photo by Julio Albarrán, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that became law a little over two years ago, is now implemented as of 25 May 2018.

Another GDPR article?

Over the past few weeks most of us have been receiving lots of GDPR-related email from companies sending us new privacy policies, so most people have heard at least something about GDPR. But we are finding that some still do not know the impact on their business, and they wonder if it has anything to do with them if they are outside the EU. This article is our attempt to help set those people on the path to finding answers.

I think the first thing to recognize is that the GDPR is a general business matter, not primarily a technical matter. The regulation focuses on business processes and information management (whether computerized or not), and law; it is not actually about software or legal verbiage on websites.

The GDPR is not the kind of law that can be complied with simply by adding a few features to software, changing a few configuration options, or updating a legal notice and moving on with no changes to actual practice.

Some people outside the EU wonder how it is …

Sentiment Analysis with Python

By Muhammad Najmi bin Ahmad Zabidi
May 18, 2018

Photograph by Helena Lopes, CC0

I recently had the chance to spend my weekend enhancing my knowledge by joining a local community meetup in Malaysia which is sponsored by Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC). The trainer was Mr Lee Boon Kong.

Anaconda and Jupyter Notebook

We started by preparing our Jupyter Notebook setup which is running on the Anaconda Python distribution. The installer is 500 MB in size but pretty handy when we started using it.

Anaconda comes with a graphical installer called “Navigator” so the user can install some packages for work. However it did not always work for me on some OSes, so I had to use its command-line based tool “conda”. Conda works like Linux-based package management tools such as apt, dnf, yum, and pacman, so to install a package I would just run conda install <package name>.

Jupyter uses a web browser to allow us to write the code directly in its cell. It is quite helpful for us to debug the code or if we just want to execute it segment by segment independently.

Creating Twitter’s API key

First we need to head to apps.twitter.com.

The following items are needed:

• Consumer Key (API key)
• Consumer Secret (API …

Work philosophy canon

By Jon Jensen
May 7, 2018

Shared culture

Having some shared culture is important for working together well, and we can build that culture on familiar terminology, understanding, experiences, stories, and ideas.

To help give all of us at End Point some common reference points, we have collected a set of valuable articles and books that we encourage everyone to read.

Some of these have been standard reading at End Point for more than a decade, while others have been added over the years since we began doing this. Some are short and simple, others more in-depth. Our list is intentionally general, mostly avoiding specific technologies that only a subset of us use.

No one article or book can be entirely authoritative for all situations, but each gives us more of the wisdom out there to consider and judiciously apply where it fits.

Slow and steady

When new employees start at End Point, we ask them to read the articles during their first week or two, and the relevant books within roughly their first year.

Reading only a little at each sitting and spreading the reading out over time allows the ideas to sink in gradually and be incorporated into our work, rather than overwhelming with new information that cannot …

Liquid Galaxy at EarthX Conference

By Dave Jenkins
May 2, 2018

We had the unique opportunity to participate in the EarthX conference held this week in Dallas, Texas. EarthX brings over 100,000 visitors together to hear about environmentalism, recycling, ocean preservation, sustainability tech advances, and how to be good custodians of our Earth.

We set up 3 systems at the conference to give the widest coverage for the wonderful content developed by our partners:

• NOAA showcased new 360 photos from Palmyra Atoll, a tiny dot of land 1000 miles due south of Hawaii in the middle of a National Marine Reserve, along with an incredible 360° video from Christophe Baillache and Sophie Ansel.
• Blue Abyss showcased their new 50-meter deep diving tank soon to be installed in the UK, where they will support training for space travel or run oceanic simulations under very controlled conditions.
• We also showed “Diving with Sylvia”, a VR game built by Cascade Game Foundry for the Oculus Rift. This was tricky, as it involved simultaneous visualizations to both the VR goggles wearer as well as the 7 screens of the Liquid Galaxy.

While at the conference, we attended a wonderful gala with Sylvia Earle, one of the premiere environmental scientists who focuses …

Expert Help with Your SaaS System

By Elizabeth Garrett Christensen
April 23, 2018

Are you thinking about starting a new website and using BigCommerce, Shopify, or WooCommerce? The software-as-a-service offerings on the market today can help you get a great-looking, low-cost ecommerce website up and running quickly, but you may need more help than you first expect.

In order to get the most out of your site, ecommerce consultants like us at End Point can guide you through setup, customize your site to fit your brand, manage all of your technical requirements, and help drive traffic to your site. This post is an overview of services we offer to clients looking for a SaaS solution.

Select the Right Vendor

Working with an expert consultant can help you make the right choices from the start. Sometimes knowing the level of customization that your project requires can be a real challenge. End Point has experience with everything from out-of-the-box SaaS platforms to large-scale, custom software developments—​we take time to understand your requirements and guide you to the perfect solution for your business.

Custom Design

Most SaaS offerings include ready-to-use, beautiful design templates, but you’ll often find that they require some tweaking. We can customize your …

RailsConf 2018 Summary: The Train is Still Moving

By Steph Skardal
April 20, 2018

Hi! Here’s my wrap-up summary of RailsConf 2018, my 8th time attending. And I say that only to provide some context for my perspective.

All.The.Analogies.

Code is a theatrical performance and devs are the actors. Code is a craft and senior devs are the artisans who create and innovate on a framework. Code is a house that you live in—​you need to leave it better than how you found it, value improvement over consistency, and communicate more as you get to live in this house. Code infrastructure is a Jenga tower waiting to topple. The Rails router is a mail carrier sorting system. A new codebase is a map that you start to navigate once you begin working on it. There have been so many analogies here at RailsConf, I can’t keep track of them anymore.

Here’s my analogy: Rails is a train. It’s a train made out of Lego blocks disguised as Duplos with mostly white bearded guys wearing graphic tees. This train is still getting businesses from point A to B. Some of those businesses care about that train that’s getting them where they need to be, some don’t. But certainly, most businesses that come to …