DIY tripod for the iPhone

Do you need to make a short video explaining how to do something with your hands? A drawing, assembling some lego, playing with your Nintendo DS? Well, I needed, and since the only video camera I have is my iPhone, I needed a tripod for it. So here it is, my homemade iPhone tripod!

Converting a list of IP addresses to countries

If you have an Excel file with a column filled with IP addresses that need to be converted to countries, here's a way to do it. These instructions were tested on a Mac, but it should work fine in any environment with Python.

Start by downloading the GeoIP City database from MaxMind. They have a free version that you can download here. Download the one in binary format, and uncompress it.

Next, you need the library to access this database format. There's a pure Python library called pygeoip that you can download from google code. To install it, just uncompress it and run the installer: sudo python setup.py install

Next, you need to build a small script to convert the IP addresses to countries. Here's the script I used (note that the countries database should be in the same directory as the script).

#!/usr/bin/env python

import pygeoip, sys
gi = pygeoip.GeoIP('GeoLiteCity.dat')

for line in sys.stdin:
	rec = gi.record_by_addr(line)
	print rec['country_name']

I used this script (geo.py) by copying the IP list from excel to a plain text file (ips.txt), where you get one address per line. Then just run it with something like python geo.py < ips.text and you get a list of countries on your terminal window. Copy/paste to excel and you're done!

If you want more than just the country, just play a bit with the print line. Here's a variation I did to get the state and the city. The output is tab separated so that you can copy it easily to excel:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import pygeoip, sys
gi = pygeoip.GeoIP('GeoLiteCity.dat')

for line in sys.stdin:
	rec = gi.record_by_addr(line)
	print rec['country_name'] + '\t',
	if rec['country_code'] == 'US' and 'region_name' in rec:
		print rec['region_name'] + '\t' + rec['city']
	else:
		print '-' + '\t' + rec['city']

As a side note, I tried another database from hostip.info, but it was only able to convert about half of the IPs I threw at it, so I recommend going with the one from MaxMind...

Mobile Trends and Numbers - Infographic

Here's an infographic that I designed for OutSystems. It shows some of the impressive numbers around mobile adoption and mobile in the enterprise:

Via: OutSystems

What's wrong with ScrumBut?

When I talk to other Agilists about SCRUM, I usually get two very extreme reactions to this methodology:

On one side, I get people that say you've got to follow all the rules. That's what SCRUM is! There is no but!

On the other side, I get people saying that there's no such thing as a one size fits all methodology, so you always need to adapt SCRUM for your particular scenario.

Now, I don't agree that you need to blindly follow all the rules of SCRUM. That's not Agile at all... remember the 1st rule in the Agile Manifesto?  "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". Seems clear to me that, if your team agrees that some part of SCRUM can be improved, the Agile Manifesto is there to back you up.

But...

Just because it is ok to change SCRUM, doesn't mean you should. Failing to properly implement SCRUM is not a valid excuse to change the process "to fit your organization". That's the the type of attitude that gives ScrumBut a bad name!

Before adapting SCRUM to your organization, you need to implement and use original SCRUM for a while. It's only when you finally get SCRUM running smoothly on your organization (and that will take some time!) that you and your team can move to phase 2: Analyze the process, do retrospectives, and improve the process to better suite your needs.

And that's when the real fun of Agile and SCRUM begins!