Erik on Software

Sign in Subscribe

Erik Gfesser

📍 Greater Chicago Area

Centric Consulting CampIO 2015: Use Your Skills to Benefit a Non-Profit

My first attempt at assembling my thoughts around the topic of pro bono consulting, based on my past experiences working with 5 different non-profit organizations. These slides were presented at CampIO 2015, an annual conference organized for internal employees at Centric Consulting. From the promotional materials: Use Your Skills to

Google Analytics: 40k pageviews

According to the Google Analytics account I set up for this blog roughly 5.5 years ago, a threshold has just recently been crossed: 40,000 page views. About 1.5 years ago, I reported that the 30,000 page view threshold had been passed by visitors from 145 countries

New Book Review: "Spring REST"

New book review for Spring REST, by Balaji Varanasi and Sudha Belida, Apress, 2015, reposted here: Phenomenally practical guide for designing and developing REST services using the Spring Framework, Spring Boot, Spring Web MVC, and Spring Data. Unlike many technical books in the marketplace, this guide truly walks the reader

Personal Reading List: 3Q2015

My personal reading list for July, August, and September 2015. Color Key: Special Notes, Completed Reading. Updated throughout the Quarter. At Bat (Schnell) D3.js in Action, by Elijah Meeks, Manning Publications, 2015. Data Visualization with D3 and AngularJS, by Christoph Körner, Packt Publishing, 2015. PostgreSQL 9 Administration Cookbook (Second

Product Reviews: Part 8

This past week (June 8, 2015), my Amazon reviews hit the milestone of 2500 total cast votes. Approximately 9 months ago, my Amazon reviews hit the milestone of 2000 helpful votes. While my reviewer ranking has continued to decrease, due to less review writing, existing reviews appear to be holding

New Book Review: "RESTful Java Patterns and Best Practices"

New book review for RESTful Java Patterns and Best Practices, by Bhakti Mehta, Packt Publishing, 2014, reposted here: Concise 125-page, 6-chapter presentation on how to efficiently build scalable, reliable, and maintainable high performance REST services that is among the very few available newer texts on the subject in the 2015

Past Book Review (May 26, 2007): "The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to 100 Tools for Improving Quality and Speed, by Michael L. George, John Maxey, David Rowlands, and Mark Price, McGraw-Hill Education, 2004, reposted here: This text is simply

Past Book Review (December 22, 2007): "Agile Estimating and Planning"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for Agile Estimating and Planning, by Mike Cohn, Prentice Hall, 2005, reposted here: This Robert C. Martin Series text by Mike Cohn has been unfairly criticized by previous reviewers. The content in general is very well written, and the

Scrum: What's in a Name?

Scrumpdillyishus or Scrumdidilyumptious? While pondering potential titles for this blog post about my work experiences with software development methodologies over the years and my eventual usage of the Scrum process framework, I eventually recalled the Dairy Queen slogan, "Scrumpdillyishus", and thought that perhaps I might use it as

New Book Review: "Version Control with Git (Second Edition)"

New book review for Version Control with Git (Second Edition), by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough, O'Reilly, 2012, reposted here: Solid discussion of Git for someone like me who has primarily been using CVS and SVN (Subversion) throughout their career, and has since started using Git. While I