a person engaged or qualified in a profession : professionals such as lawyers and surveyors.

• a person engaged in a specified activity, esp. a sport or branch of the performing arts, as a main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
• a person competent or skilled in a particular activity.

I noticed that the emphasis is on two factors: competence and money. Whilst I’d agree that they’re both part of the equation, they’re hardly unique to professional employment, if you don’t have the skills, you’ll eventually lose the job, and then you won’t get paid.

Personally I think this definition is incomplete, in fact it neglects the most important aspects of true professionalism.

Professionalism is a state of mind, or a way of thinking that’s an intrinsic part of certain personalities and can be enhanced by training to affect your whole outlook and approach to life.

Importantly my view frees professionalism from dependency on job titles, qualifications and even money, after all, voluntary or open source work can be approached in a professional manner.

But I’m not flogging the traditional dead horse, you know… the one about being a graduate of the school of life / hard knocks / been doing that since before you were born / <insert your own excuse here>. Qualifications represent knowledge and training that is absolutely necessary to achieve worthwhile objectives. Knowing when they’ll help and picking the right ones is the professional thing to do: continuing professional development is the phrase and higher quality service should be the goal.

But what does professionalism mean in practice? It means treating clients, suppliers and anyone else equitably; delivering on your commitments rather than walking away when you realise you’re going to make a loss; and always striving to produce the best work that the situation permits, why would you do less?

In short, I guess I feel it’s about integrity.

Housing has seen a correction from the exuberant borrowing on mortgages in the UK and USA, but an over leveraged sector still exists: government and consumer debt.

The fact is that UK and American consumers have borrowed heavily from their futures to spend on the high life of the past ten years, and the time is approaching for the debt to be repaid.

National economies will start to grow again, possibly as soon as next year, and the extra money that has been injected via quantative easing, to stimulate this recovery, will need to be removed.

Unfortunately I doubt our fiscally weakened Government can buy back all the issued debt quickly enough, and interest rates will have to rise sharply to control increasing inflation as growth accelerates.

It’s at this moment that the general public will realise how broke they really are, as loans start to be harder to maintain. As a consequence the housing market will take another downturn as people try to realise some badly needed capital.

Our currency will devalue relative to newly emerging economies, and we’re going to have to learn to live in a poorer nation than we’d like to believe, but then maybe it’ll be a fairer world.

The Git work environment.

Working with Git is quite different to using Subversion. The actual contents of the project directory change to reflect the currently active branch: the directory contains a whole repository, not a checked out copy. Don’t get alarmed when files start disappearing only to reappear again when you switch branch.

I also noticed that I interacted with the version control less frequently when editing, delete, and create files. The interaction is saved until you’re ready to commit, making the process feel more seamless. I occasionally used to get into trouble by deleting files via the OS, rather that using the Subversion command.

For the majority of the time, I’ll use the Git commands, as I’m working in a Git repository. The git svn functionality is only needed as a Git interface with Subversion.

Getting ready to work.

I like the master branch to always reflects the current trunk until I choose to update it, so all my commits are made from other working branches.

I start by checking out a branch based on master to use as a base from which to work. I’ve imaginatively called it basework in this example, and as a branch of master it is linked to the same remote branch: trunk.

git branch -a

should display all your branches in the repository.

jkw@mac> git branch -a
* basework
master
svn/trunk
jkw@mac>

I work in increments based on stories, that’s another post, so I actually create a story branch from basework, that can be merge back into this parent upon completing the story. This helps cope with changes in the remote codebase.

Creating my working branches.

It’s a good idea to check that basework is up to date with the remote Subversion trunk before branching:

git svn rebase

This will either update the local repository with the remote changes, or tell you that the current branch is already up to date.

I’m now in a position to create my story branch:

git checkout -b inwork

The -b option is used to create a new branch and then switch to it. Without this option the same command is used to move between branches.

This same process was used to create basework.

I have my working repository structure, and I’m currently working on my story branch, see the asterisk.

jkw@mac> git branch -a
basework
* inwork
master
svn/trunk
jkw@mac>

The local commit.

You can see details of the changes to the local working branch using the git status command:

jkw@mac> git status
# On branch inwork
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
james@cybermac1> git st
# On branch inwork
# Changed but not updated:
# (use “git add/rm …” to update what will be committed)
# (use “git checkout — …” to discard changes in working directory)
#
# modified: footer.php
# deleted: images/feed-icon-64.png
# modified: style.css
#
# Untracked files:
# (use “git add …” to include in what will be committed)
#
# includes/category-1.inc.php
no changes added to commit (use “git add” and/or “git commit -a”)
jkw@mac>

To add the new file show in the example to those being tracked:

git add includes/category-1.inc.php

If I wanted to add all of the untracked files, I could use the -A option instead of individually naming them.

Now all the files are staged, the time comes to commit them to the local Git repository:

git commit -a -m "A message to describe the changes."

Leaving the -m option off will cause Git to request comments using whichever editor is defined in your configuration files.

I now the story is complete, and all the changes committed to the inwork branch, it’s time to commit them to Subversion.

The remote commit.

I start the remote commit process by switching to the basework branch:

git checkout basework

Next I check that the remote codebase hasn’t changed, or update the changes:

git svn rebase

I’ll merge inwork into basework:

git merge inwork

I use my text editor to manually fix conflicts that arise. Git tells you where to find them by marking up the code. This is followed by another local commit, at which point the merge is complete.

Now I can try a dry run of the remote commit:

git svn dcommit -n

It’s the -n option that makes this a dry run: nothing has been committed yet. It shows you the local versions to be bulk committed if you choose to go ahead. To actually perform the commit, remove the -n, and re-run the command, it may take a while if you’ve been busy.

Verifying the remote commit.

This is where leaving the master branch untouched pays off. basework has been committed to the remote trunk, whilst master still reflects the pre-commit trunk.

I switch to master, which should contain none of my new work, and update it from the remote trunk:

git svn rebase

It should have changed to match basework, and if so the previous commit worked.

Cleaning up.

I’ve verified the commit: I have master and basework branches that are identical, so inwork is no longer needed, I’ll delete it:

git branch -d inwork

Deleting a child branch of a different parent is a little dangerous, so if you’re not in basework you’ll get a warning. Either switch to basework and try again, or re-running the command with the -D option.

If I’ve finished work on this project, I’d delete the basework branch too, but if I’m going to continue, I’d use it to create another working branch, and I’ve gone full circle.

mkdir myproject
cd myproject


The initialisation itself is pretty simple, just remember to point Git at the correct url for your Subversion repository, and watch the communication protocols.

git svn init -s --prefix=svn/ svn+ssh://svn.repository.com/svn/myproject

The -s option tells the repository to expect the typical trunk, branches and tags structure of a Subversion project. You can specify the location of your trunk, branches and tags using the -T, -b, and -t respectively.

Using the --prefix option is handy, ensuring that the remote directories will be prefixed with svn/. This makes it clear which are Subversion and which git branches later.

All that remains is to checkout all of the information relating to your project from the Subversion repository.

git svn fetch

Depending on the size of the project, this could take a while, it’s downloading the entire project history from the remote repository.

I word of warning you about the strangeness that can ensue if the remote repository contains any tags. They will be imported as git branches, and you may find the local master branch pointing to something other that the remote trunk.

These git svn commands, and all the others, are pretty well documented. Now I’ve got a Git repository, in the next post I’ll to describe my normal workflow.

Branching and merging is quick and simple, and as a result I find I do this far more often than when using Subversion alone. I also commit changes more frequently: it’s far quicker than using a remote repository, even when not off-line.

This sort of functionality is vital to successful version control, and I think it promotes better practice, as long as you’re only committing working software. All the local Git commits will later be bulk committed to the remote repository. However they all retain their identity as separate versions, so discipline is important, we wouldn’t want anyone finding broken code.

I could get all this from Git alone, but the combination retains Subversion vendor branching and the deployment advantages of my existing Subversion / Capistrano set up. I’m going to try GitHub, or my own remote Git repository, and exploiting the Capistrano support for Git, but at the moment why reinvent the wheel?

I prefer to work on the command line, and that’s the approach this series will take, but GUIs are available for Git, try typing git gui to check out the one bundled.

I use this approach for anything I need version controlled, including my Curriculum vitae/Resume, but before try this out for yourself you’re going to need to check out a local copy of that remote Subversion repository… I’ll cover that next time.

These small businesses are staffed by the knowledgeable, enthusiastic types that originally gave birth to the Company. These are very high value individuals that will create that feeling of quality that niche customers prize so highly, and justifies your higher price.

Eventually, the time comes to make the decision whether to stay small forever, or start to scale up; and this is where disaster can strike.

Growing turnover is dependent on appealing to a larger market that rarely shares the values of your current clientele. Frequently prices must be reduced, but doing this on a large scale means cutting costs, especially wage bills. Poor staff leads to poor service, and to make matters worse, the decline causes those old hands to look for something better elsewhere… a downward spiral which can destroy reputations.

I’ve experienced this decline through several suppliers I’ve used over the years as they’ve attempted to grow. The message is clear: know your market, and when think carefully before making a decision you may regret.

There’s a Google Group for this enterprise, so if you’d like to take part, and help us get it off the ground, please sign-up and join the discussion.

I want to continue blogging on personal topics: particularly investment, but anything else continues to be fair game. They’re going to have their own section of the site, but I need to bear in mind that today’s interest may become the business of tomorrow.

The work I’m targeting must determine content that’s pertinent to the business blog. I’ve focused on web development and administration to date, and I think this will continue. However, I could leverage my experience in project management and engineering teams better.

I’d like to improve the RSS provision and integrate other social media on the site, but that’s for another post.

Although I’m going to radically change the category structure on the site, I’m keen to avoid breaking the Web. This is where the permalinks should come into their own… I hope.

During the last bull market, some geographical regions, such as emerging Europe and Russia, accelerated well ahead of the rest, I failed to diligently rebalance and paid the price. I’d have more money to reinvest now if I’d thought about it.

Whilst rebalancing these runaway sectors, I’ll give closer consideration to reducing my whole portfolio, maintaining the target allocation of course. Liberating cash in this way is something large fund managers can rarely do, so I intend to use this advantage next time round.

Clearly, not all corrections are going to be as drastic as the Credit Crisis, but for those lesser moves I’d aim to stay fully invested. None the less, rebalancing out performing investments and holding back new cash may be appropriate.

I hope that reducing holdings, along with the stockpiling of new cash, will enable me to capitalise on future bear markets.

Personally, I’ve long been a fan of a hybrid system comprising a paper notebook; currently an A5 Red and Black, and a selection of applications on my MacBook.

My notebook goes most places with me, I could buy a smart-phone, but they are neither as rugged nor flexible as a paper notebook. Paper doesn’t impose a working structure upon me; I can sketch, write, draw up tables or whatever the occasion requires.

Combined with the camera on my phone; to rapidly capture complex information, I have everything I need to collect data for later processing. This usually takes place on my laptop where I can tag, search, and sync lists and calendars back to my phone.

A number of tips on how to customise your Moleskine notebook, remind me of features found in applications like Firefox.

• Divide sections with tabs could be interpreted as the now ubiquitous tabbed browsing feature.
• Number the pages reminds me of the practice of bookmarking.
• Mount photos – or a business card on the moleskine is one tip for customisation suggesting to me that maybe ‘bCard&trade’ is the new paper version of the common vCard format.

Lifehack is a great advocate of the Moleskine, and I too aspire to one for no obvious reason, but features like these tell me we’re on the verge of a revolution in paper technology… Paper2.0.

My experiences got me thinking about what I needed to code confidently. As a minimum, I need to know that everything works before committing code to version control, but security comes with regular testing, and this is no use unless everything is covered.

Based on web development frameworks using the nearly ubiquitous MVC design pattern, the logic and side effects at each application tier must be tested, and I came up with this list.

1. The Database tier schema, whether RDBMS, XML or anything else.
2. Data Access logic is usually implemented in models, but often uses built-in features of the framework, such as ActiveRecord.
3. Business logic is encapsulated in the models, libraries, and sometimes controllers.
4. Presentation logic at the server comprising controllers and their respective views.
5. Presentation and business logic at the client tier implemented by DOM scripting, mostly in JavaScript.
6. The actual data presentation at the client tier based on XHTML and CSS.

I’ve tried to order it from inside the application, working out from the data tier to the client, and it’s quite a list; I’d be interested to hear what I’ve missed.

Since this is a huge topic, I hope to write a series of posts isolating specific areas as I encounter them, and comparing tools and approaches. The first will look at how a few development frameworks in popular languages appear to measure up.

I recently heard the founder of CMC Markets commenting, and I paraphrase, that traders call a bad trade an investment. At the heights of the last bull market, when M&A action was all that was sustaining prices, I have to admit that I nearly fell into this trap.

Whilst I feel that I’m confessing a sin: admitting to buying on market rumours, I avoided compounding the error by convincing myself that the stock would still be good value for the long term. It wouldn’t, the price was inflated, the fundamentals I ignored made that clear, and it was very unlikely to ever be worth what I paid for it.

Trading and investing are not the same thing, and require different strategies. Timing is important for a trade, as is close observation and the use of stop losses. An investment must represent reasonable fundamental value to be worth buying, so the precise dynamic of the current market doesn’t matter as much.

In future I’ll decide, in advance, whether I’m trading or investing.

Unfortunately, testing anything other than libraries and models is difficult because there’s no way to access the another important type of object: controllers. CodeIgniter positively encourages using controllers to implement business logic, consequently not being able to test them is a serious anomaly.

Integrating a front-end testing framework, such as Selenium, might be the solution, but does that properly test the controller code? I don’t think it does; the target there is the presentation tier at the browser.

The lack of good code coverage bothers me a lot, but I continue to struggle on with CodeIgniter because I’ve found other PHP frameworks to be just as lacking. Is this a general problem with frameworks? I’m tempted to try Ruby on Rails next to find out.

This combination sounds a little contradictory, since asset allocation is the response to the perceived impossibility of deciding on price in a random walk down Wall Street: you can’t consistently outperform the market.

Whilst I don’t entirely subscribe to this sentiment, I believe it has good applications at the core of a portfolio comprised of these asset classes.

• Equity based mutual funds, diversified both by size and geographic region.
• Commodities based on ETCs.
• Geographically diverse corporate and government debt.
• Mutual funds directly invested in commercial property. If asset diversity is the goal, investing in property stocks doesn’t really cut it, they’re still equities.

This core represents about 80% of my portfolio, and I use fundamental analysis, alongside the actual asset distribution, as a method of timing my rebalancing and adding cash into the portfolio.

Fundamentals are key to actively managing the remaining 20% of my portfolio, which is mostly invested in UK equities, in the form of individual company stock, and both long and short index tracking ETFs.

This strategy remains unaffected by the Credit Crisis, but my execution has changed in two main respects; being honest with myself about objectives, and active use of cash within the portfolio. These will be the subjects for a couple of future posts.

How much of the project to attempt to tackle? Sticking to the Agile principles of releasing little and often, I decided that jumping in with a full blogging or CMS would be a mistake. Limiting things to HTML and CSS, with the portfolio displays enhanced with Lightbox, provides more control over the design.

This is especially important when starting out, and I’m not expecting the design to remain static. Once established, adding more functionality, or moving to a WordPress theme will be a much easier task. I feel that the website is the simplest thing that could work.

Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is “the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware.” IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information.

This covers an ever increasing amount of ground: smartphones, MP3 players, games consoles, software for any platform, ATMs, and even the checkout at the supermarket are examples of the breadth of IT.

In my experience, IT means PCs, and mainly Windows, to most people. When these go wrong, it’s a work department called “IT” they expect to help… or not: hence the association.

The strange thing is that they don’t associate it with the mobile phone in their pocket, or any of the devices that have become ubiquitous at home. How long is it going to be before everything uses “electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information”?

Catching up with a few people was interesting for a few days, but beyond that I don’t crave knowledge of some of the more pointless social activities, the desire for a virtual hug, or the excitement of a virtual snowball fight.

It could be that I’m a sour old git, but I don’t see what Facebook adds to the Web that’s new or lasting. For the most part, it’s an environment where people vie to have the longest friends list, and play silly games… much like the real world. May be it’ll be around for a while.

Conversely, the software behind blogs, forums and wikis on the Web have been around for a long time, establishing a reputation for solid performance under very heavy loads. Whilst they lack the complexity of enterprise solutions, they’re built on enterprise quality database management systems, rendering all that corporate intelligence easily searchable and secure.

The Internet is based on reliable, but inexpensive foundations; much of the software is free to use, even for commercial purposes; and where it isn’t the license fees are tiny compared with many proprietary packages.

I have an Intranet at home based on Apache web server, PHP and a MySQL database: all free to use and easy to install. It’s supported by a mixture of wired and wireless data connections that are common around many British homes and businesses. On this framework I’ve installed several copies of MediaWiki, the same software used by Wikipedia, both shared on the Intranet and privately on individual laptops.

Clare and I use these wikis to capture notes and the solutions to everyday issues. It provides a way for us to work jointly on these documents whilst maintaining a record of revisions. Everything is stored in a MySQL database rather than scattered around files on different drives. This can be quickly backed up and, best of all, it’s fully searchable from my browser; finding anything is really quick.

The bottom line is that bringing a little of the Internet inside the corporate firewall will make your intellectual property more agile, relevant, accessible and traceable: much more valuable!

For example, the ubiquitous Microsoft Office offers great productivity features; such as macros, pivot tables and database connectivity. However once trained few office workers will ever use them. They can’t conceive of the situations in which these tools can be helpful: these problems are too hard.

By comparison a flint flake, or a modern steel knife, is readily understood: it’s sharp so you can cut things with it. What’s more, simple experimentation will show just about anyone how.

That’s the key: complex tools are designed for complex problems. So what if I’m only expecting the user to, well… use the tool, not solve the problem? Someone else will have to make the software, or the stone tool. There are two approaches to using technology to decouple humanity from the problem.

Simple interface.

Technology can be encapsulated to present the user with a simple interface.

In this case the user has little or no idea how the problem is solved, but is better aware of what can be done and how to instruct the device to do it. The field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is focused on pursuing this approach.

The underlying technology may be capable of far more than the relatively simple interface is capable of communicating. Again, the human user is the limiting factor, but at least the design case problem has been solved by someone else.

Substitute the user.

The technology could be freed of dependence on human intervention.

Most examples of automation seek to do this, relying on relatively capable human minds to provide the programming framework.

This can be combined with weak artificial intelligence, so that the machine is capable of making minor decisions to overcome difficulties: for example the chess playing computer or robots capable of avoiding obstacles.

Dividing humanity.

Use of these approaches has been accelerating since the advent of industrialisation. Technological problem solving is really applied by an ever shrinking proportion of the humanity. The remainder are present as sentient regulators to check the machine does as the manual says it should.

Does this mean that the average skill level of the human race is actually falling, or just being placed into fewer hands and heads?

In the UK, this title appears to be most frequently used in the public sector, for which the data presented on ITJobsWatch indicates there’s a small, but growing demand. Whilst these vacancies cite SQL and information security as desirable skills, I feel that it’s too tightly focused on specific platforms and established techniques.

Making full use of all the information out there, not just specific corporate databases, requires developments in the application of query languages. A distributed nature places emphasis on capturing and maintaining data source references, and version control to provide traceability.

Corporate data must move away from the monumental central store, with a schema unchanged since the dawn of time, to a series of smaller repositories that can be easily maintained, extended and indexed as the business need arises.

The key message is that if business moves quickly, as does information upon which it’s based, so must the approach to interpreting that information. As for the Information Analyst, this job is too big for any individual professional. It’s an exciting multi-disciplinary field that will grow in importance as key step in the future of information.