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Erik Gfesser

📍 Greater Chicago Area

Pyntail CEO Taps Erik for Consultation

This past week, I chatted with Kamran Qamar, founder and CEO of Los Angeles based Pyntail, which markets itself as the fastest growing mobile app and game development studio. Since its founding in 2010, Pyntail has delivered over 175 unique apps and produced 17 game titles. During our conversation, Kamran

Ubuntu on Windows: Part 1

A couple weeks ago, I moved to Windows 10 with the new laptop I received (Dell 5510 32GB RAM), configuring it for dual boot mode with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. I was just about to install Cygwin in Windows again, and then remembered a Microsoft announcement from about a year

Chicago Apache Flink Meetup (CHAF):Hands-on Apache Flink Workshop (February 21, 2017)

From the promotional materials: In this workshop, we will go over a hands on tutorial highlighting building a Flink stream processor. The workshop will show you how to 1. Set up a stream consisting of Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bus tracker data 2. Use different types of windowing techniques to

Truth Revisited

Back in November 2009, during my then annual visit to the RSNA trade show event at McCormick Place in downtown Chicago, I came across a slogan on display in the Cerner Corporation exhibit which read "Single Source of TruthTM". As a consultant, I was surprised that such a

Google Analytics: 50k Pageview Milestone

According to Google Analytics, pageviews for this blog hit the 50k milestone on February 2, 2017. Below is a geo location plot based on city locations of visitors. The following are the top-10 cities of origin: (1) New York, (2) Chicago, (3) London, (4) Bengaluru, (5) Sydney, (6) Toronto, (7)

Workshop Notes (February 1, 2017): IBM dashDB Local MPP Proof of Technology

Hyatt Center IBM Technical Exploration Center February 1, 2017 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM From the promotional materials: IBM dashDB Local MPP Proof of Technology IBM dashDB Local is a next-generation data warehousing and analytics technology for use in private clouds, virtual private clouds and other container-supported infrastructures. It

New Book Review: "Microservices AntiPatterns and Pitfalls"

New book review for Microservices AntiPatterns and Pitfalls, by Mark Richards, O'Reilly, 2016, reposted here: As explained in the preface, the intention of the author is to introduce several of the more common antipatterns and pitfalls that emerge when using microservices. The goal here is to help readers

New Book Review: "RESTful Web API Design with Node.js (Second Edition)"

New book review for RESTful Web API Design with Node.js (Second Edition), by Valentin Bojinov, Packt Publishing, 2016, reposted here: Practical starting point for designing and developing REST services using Node.js, supporting frameworks such as Express and Passport, and NoSQL databases such as MongoDB. Unlike many technical books

Personal Reading List: 1Q2017

My personal reading list for January, February, and March 2017. Color Key: Special Notes, Completed Reading. Updated throughout the Quarter. At Bat (Schnell) Microservices vs. Service-Oriented Architecture, by Mark Richards, O'Reilly, 2016. Copy provided by O'Reilly. The Path to Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning, by Conor

New Book Review: "Embedding Analytics in Modern Applications"

New book review for Embedding Analytics in Modern Applications: How to Provide Distraction-Free Insights to End Users, by Courtney Webster, O'Reilly, 2016, reposted here: In her introduction to this book, Webster comments that on any given day people use more than 20 different software applications, but while more