DevOps and culture

I am currently learning on the Udacity platform - Introduction to DevOps.

DevOps is a software engineering culture and practice that aims at unifying software development (Dev) and software operation (Ops). As a summary of what DevOps consists of - in the course they used the CAMS acronym - which stands for culture, automation, measurement and sharing.

The first letter is C for culture and it reminded me how important culture is for change and how an organisation operates.

A quote that has been attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker is

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" - Peter F. Drucker

Culture may be the hardest one factor to get right if you carry out a change project to introduce DevOps practices in your organisation.

Looking to the classic management magazine HBR for how to work on changing company culture - this recent article mentions the importance to connect with the mission of the company - the raison d'être - reason to exist.

Tying back to this - what are the reasons that a company has an IT department?

• IT is needed to execute well on the daily business processes
• IT is needed for information discovery and keeping track of important KPIs for the company - like sales, company assets or keeping track of client interactions

• Ultimately - if the company depends on their IT department to such a large extent - which is more the rule than the exception today in 2018 - it will greatly influence how the company is perceived by outside stakeholders like its clients.

How can the topic of culture within IT be addressed by an individual contributor? I think a great place to start is by having conversations about the mission and values of the organization - both with peers and managers. These conversations will provide you with outright statements as well as subtle cues to what is important and valued within the organisation that you work for. 

How to fix problem with Lexmark X543 network scanner and Java manifest security

How to fix problem with Lexmark X543 network scanner

As of January 2014, there has been a new version of Java that prohibits the Java applet for scanning with the Lexmark X543 network scanner.

Here below, you can see a quick description of how to fix the issue on Windows 8.

First, open the Control Panel and select Java.

 in the Control Panel, go to the Security tab and click the edit site list button.

In the menu, add the HTTP address of your Lexmark printer. In the example below I have used the address of my printer 192.168.1.7,  you need to choose the address of yours from your web browser.

Once this has been done, restart your browser and navigate to the printer page, and check that it is working. When you activate the Java on the page, make sure that you change the setting as follows.

This will make it so that you don't need to accept any pop-ups when using your network scanner.

I hope that this helps you in case you run into this problem.

List of campervan rental operators in New Zealand Feb 2012

When we finished our trip I stumbled on a useful list of the main campervan rental operators in New Zealand
(as of February 2012)

Alpha
Apollo
Backpacker
Britz
Maui
Explore More
Cheapa
Escape
Hippie
Jucy
Kea
Pacific Horizon
RoadRunner
Spaceships
Tui
United
Wendekreisen
Wicked
Wilderness

I was looking for a list like this before we went on our holidays, and I was unable to find one, so I thought it useful to post on the blog.

We went with Britz, which is one of the biggest operators. We were happy with both the campervan itself and the service we got. We had one issue with the campervan on the road (we discovered that one gas hob didn't work). We called up and got it fixed in the next town at a local garage, which was quickly turned around we thought. We were also able to add things at the Wellington office (we traveled from Auckland to Christchurch and wanted some warmer blankets). So all in all, it worked out well for us with Britz.
Britz, Maui and Backpackers belong to the same group (the age of the campervans is different)

Back to Auckland and onwards

The next day we flew out of Christchurch airport back to Auckland, and it was time to visit A&I and fill them in our holiday adventures. We met up for lunch at a wood fired pizza place. First pizza of our holidays, yum. After that we went to have a look around newmarket, where we found a very good tech book store, techbooks, where Henrik picked up Programming Reactive Extension and LINQ. Very nice surprise, not the type of book that you expect to be able to get anywhere except Amazon these days. Great bookstore that deserved to be supported. We also bought some gifts to bring home. In the end we went to the park near the Auckland museum, and napped while waiting to meet A&I again after they had finished work.

In the evening we went to watch A's brother, who competed in the summer open water swimming circuit race in the evening. Impressive and inspiring to see him and all the other athletes swimming in the sea with fairly big swells and far from shore. It made Henrik think about that it would be nice to learn to freestyle swim properly.

After that we went out for a nice meal at the Masala restaurant at Mission bay. We had had some home cooked Indian food on the trip (from jars that turned out a lot better than we had expected), but this curry meal was a proper restaurant cooked one, yum. We had cake as dessert at A&I's and then went to sleep, morning flight to catch back to HK, holidays are coming to an end....

Timaru, Peel Forest and Christchurch

We left Omauru and stopped pretty soon again in Timaru, a short
distance north. Timaru is a big port town, and you could notice that
the main focus was not tourism here. We cooked lunch in our van
(proven pasta recipe :-) and decided to head further north. Next stop
came up somewhat by chance. Selina was reading up in our DOC site book
for the south island and found a nice spot; Peel Forest. We got
excited because it looked like a good base for some hiking. The
weather was not playing ball this day for a change, we had a lot of
rain, which was more the exception on our trip luckily.


Getting to Peel Forest and setting up the van, we decided to not let
this stop us and went about finding some hiking tracks around the camp
site. We had some issues getting our bearings on the hiking map, but
once we found the walking path it turned out to be a really nice
forest walk with lots of native trees. We learned that there had been
a lot of woodcutting going on in the area, and we found some leftovers
from that, abandoned saw pits. We have now learned what a saw pit is,
amazing how hard people had to labor before the woodcutting got
mechanized.


The DOC site was situated on a big meadow, not too busy at all, and
still had great amenities. One of our best stopovers on the south
island, although the rain was tipping down for most of our time there.
We fell asleep to the sound of rain smattering on the roof of the
campervan, very relaxing and reminded Henrik of the camping holidays
of his youth.



The next day we defied the rain and decided to go for another hike in
the Peel Forest. We went to see the Acland Falls. Since it was both wet
and also fairly steep, the hike proved to be a little challenging.
Nothing too serious, but we were glad that we had brought our hiking
poles. The hike did not take very long. When we had finished we
decided to move on to Christchurch.


In Christchurch we decided to return to our proven concept, and found
a top 10 site that delivered as we had gotten used to expect by now.
We went in to have a look at Christchurch, and already more than a
year after the first big earhquake, it was a sombering view. The
central part was stil closed down, and we saw a lot of work being done
to demolish highrise buildings that had stood the earthquake but been
deemed dangerous and irreparable afterwards. In the evening, we
finished some leftovers in the van and decided to go out to catch a
movie. We watched the american version of The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo. It was a good movie, althoug Henrik is not sure that it tops
the Swedish version that was produced for TV. The challenging part in
producing the movie is that the story line is so rich, that all
details cannot be included in the movie version, which makes some
parts of the film feel like unneccessary appendixes.


Our next day in Christchurch marked the end of a great section of our
holiday. We returned our camper van at the Christchurch Britz station,
and it was time to get the rucksacks on and start traveling on foot
instead. We were really lucky to find an empty cottage at our top 10
site, as Christchurch accomodation was booked out flat, by visiting
tourists, builders, and local people who had their homes rebuilt.





the RE:Start shopping mall in Christchurch, entirely built up by shipping containers.






Pirate mini golf in Christchurch

Queenstown, Cromwell, Clyde and Oamaru

We came to Queenstown after a long day of driving. A highlight on the
way was the Puzzle World in Wanaka. We had a lot of fun there with the
maze, and also with the rooms with visual trickery.
We were lucky to have booked the campsite in advance, as it was a very
busy weekend in Queenstown with a concert by the Doobie Brothers.


As we came to Queenstown, it was already pretty late, but we wanted to
make the most of being in a city, so we decided to go out for a meal
in the evening. We did our research and found a restaurant to our
liking, Fishbone. It specialized in fish, and it had lots of Asian
patrons. We had a great chowder and good fish and lamb, definitely one
of the best meals out that we had in New Zealand.


The day after we had booked a Jucy Cruize trip for Milford Sound. It
is a quite long way from Queenstown to Milford, but we felt that we
were starting to run out of time, and we still really wanted to see
the fiord landscapes. The bus journey started at 0830 in the morning.
It was really nice to not have to drive on our own. We got to Milford
at around two o'clock and cruised on the sound for about two hours.
The nature on the bus ride, as well as the cruise was stunning. The
scenery is very dramatic with very steep mountains and waterfalls. It
really felt like we had come to the end of the world, quite a similar
feeling as you get when you go far up the valleys in Switzerland, like
Vals. After the nice cruise trip a long bus journey back awaited us.
We were really happy when we came back to Queenstown late that
evening. In retrospect it was not ideal to travel all the way from
Queenstown to the fiordlands, but since we were lucky with the weather
we definitely couldn't complain, and felt that the trip was worth it
all in all.


Our next day in Queenstown, we decided to spend time in Queenstown
itself. We started by going down to the arts and crafts markets, which
had lots of interesting items on offer, and provided a good
opportunity for people watching. After that we caught the skyline up
to the mountain top above Queenstown. Think Uetliberg and a little bit
higher, plus lots and lots of mountain bikers, and a luge, and you
have a fairly good picture on how it was. Up at the top we went for a
small walk, where we saw many paragliders. Some were taking it easy
and doing scenic viewing in tandems, while others where driving with
full adrenaline just above the treetops and then bomb dived down to
the landing zone in the town. Coming down from the mountain, we went
for a fergburger lunch. That was probably the most busy burger place
we ever have seen, and we had to wait for 20 minutes before the burger
was served. However, the food proved to be worth the wait. We shared a
really big tasty burger (we had the tropical swine). We did some more
viewing of the city and the shops, and then continued to our next
destination, Cromwell.


Cromwell was a big contrast to Queenstown. It is not very far away,
only xx kms inland, but a lot less busy from tourism. We checked in to
our campsite and went for a very windy run and had a look at
Cromwell's historical quarters. The campsite was a nice contrast to
the Queenstown one. In Queenstown the camper vans where parked almost
next to each other, whereas in Cromwell each wagon had a lot more
space to itself.


For the morning after, we had an activity booked that Henrik was
looking forward to a lot. We had rented bikes to go along the Otago
rail trail. The trail is an old railway, from which the tracks have
been removed. It makes for some great cycling conditions away from all
traffic and with "Wild West" landscape all around it. We got to Clyde
and picked up our bikes from the rental shop and got on our way. Soon
enough we arrived in Alexandra and decided to continue further. Before
reaching the next town we decided to turn back and head for Clyde
again. The heat and the sun were really strong on the trail, but we
were happy to be well prepared with big water bottles and lots of
sunscreen to slab on. In total we biked about 43 kms, and it was a
very enjoyable experience. Although we had done a considerable amount
of driving in similar landscapes, we felt that we were able to take it
in better on the bikes, and stop wherever we saw something that caught
our interest. Definitely worth recommending and something we would
like to do more of. It is possible to go for multi-day trips and get
the baggage forwarded between the lodgings on the way.

In the afternoon/evening, we decided to make a push and get to Oamaru
to watch the penguins come in for their nightly resting period. We
managed to get there, found our campsite and headed down to the beach
for the penguin viewing. Photography was strictly prohibited, so we
can't put any pictures on the blog, but it was really great to
experience the penguins and see them make their way ashore. The were
little blue penguins, just about 30 cms tall and weighing about one
kg. They were really cute, getting splashed ashore and waddling up the
beach to find the hatchings. As the official viewing had finished, we
were lucky to find two stragglers, that almost walked on top of our
shoes to their nests (they were not shy at all for humans as long as
everyone kept quiet and still).


Another quick, but really nice stop on the south island east coast was
Moeraki boulders. It is an interesting geological phenomenon, where
big round rock marbles are released onto the beach. Checking the
boulders out, we saw something even more interesting. In the bay, some
Hector's dolphins were playing. They were jumping and making flips,
and also, what was most fun to watch; they were surfing the waves to
get into shore. It was a really amazing experience seeing the dolphins
play. They seem to have so much in common with us humans.

Meeting P&E in Hokitika

After two really good days it was time to move on from Abel Tasman.

A really nice coincidence for us was that our good friends P&E and Peter who just left Zurich are also traveling New Zealand at the same time as us. We had worked out that the paths of our campervans could cross now, and that the meeting point would be Hokitika.

Outside of Hokitika we found a really nice DOC camping site. These sites are provided by the NZ government and simpler than holiday parks, but often situated at really beautiful places in the wilderness. The place we went to is called Lake Mahinapua and was right by a really nice lake.

Meeting up with P&E was great, they have been away for about four months now and we got a really nice chance to catch up over barbecue and beers.

The day after we started with a run and a quick dip in the lake, great way to begin the day. After that we went for some sightseeing to a waterfall that was far out (in the literal sense), Dorothy falls.

After checking out the waterfalls and the lake, we headed in to town for some fish and chips. We tried Hoki (a New Zealand white fish) and also Whitebait at Porky's Takeaway. It was our first Fish and Chips meal in New Zealand and it was tasty and good value (good tip if you are looking for a cheap fast food that is not the regular grub from the big chains). After the Fish & Chips it was time to say goodbye to P&E and Peter as they needed to head across Arthur's Pass and we needed to keep going south.
All in all, a very nice 24 hours together in New Zealand.

Before leaving Hokitika we stocked up on food and set the sights on our chosen Franz Josef camp site. When we got to Franz Josef it was still pretty early, and we managed to walk up to the Glacier and have a look. Really impressive ice mass, and incredible how much it moves, melts and freezes.