Willem Stuursma

Internship at ABN AMRO, moving to Amsterdam

stuursma — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:21:50 +0000

After graduating in Psychology, I had only one more thing to do: finding an intern position for my study Human Machine Communications that would enable me to write my final master thesis.

The last few weeks I have been busy sending application letters to various internet related companies, following up on these letters by phone and via email and meeting people at these companies. Since all companies I applied at were in the Randstad, I had to travel almost 2,500 kilometers in order to be able to meet everybody.

It have been some extremely fun weeks: writing the perfect letter and then getting positive calls and emails in response. It was nice to see the differences between banks, online retailers and internet bureaus, and visiting all these companies and hearing how they work. I have met some great people.

This is "Dialogues House", which is part of the ABN AMRO office at the Foppingadreef.

All this hard labour has finally paid off: next week, I will start as an intern at the Interactive Banking department at ABN AMRO in Amsterdam. I will do research into the reasons why people do not like to wait for a web page to load (e.g. additional load on short-term memory, or interruption of cognitive processes), and what the best solution for this problem would be (lest making the page load faster). Hopefully, I will be able to test my solution on the public ABN AMRO web site.

Thus, for the next six months, I will be working fulltime at the ABN AMRO office at the Foppingadreef in Amsterdam. This means that I will be moving to Amsterdam. Fortunately, I had some luck in finding a temporary place to live in the centre of Amsterdam. Unfortunately, I will have to quit singing, dancing classes, cancel my Cleopatra A.S.G. membership and drop pretty much everything in Groningen. That is going to be hard…

I would love to have friends over in Amsterdam, so if you are in the vicinity, give me a call and drop by.

One down, one to go

stuursma — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:34:27 +0000

The last four months I have worked on my master thesis, titled Organized Skepticism: How Scientists Deal and not Deal with Critique. Writing my master thesis went pretty smoothly. Normally it takes about six months, but I completed the thesis in just four months. Did have to quit my job to pull that off though. I have to thank my supervisor, Maarten Derksen, too. He managed to keep me on track for four months.

In the week before Christmas I had handed in a draft version. I got a graded version back last week and with a pretty good grade: an 8.5. This week I have requested my final exam, which is just a formality. I am graduating in Theory and History of Psychology with the following subjects:

Philosophy of Neuroscience
Boundaries of Psychology
Causal Inference
Controversies in Social Psychology
Experimental skills, advanced
Cognitive Revalidation
Skill Acquisition & Training (additional course)

After six and a half years, I finally got my first master degree and can call myself Master of Science. Even though it may seem like a long time to complete a four-year study, I am pretty satisfied. It has only been three years since I finished my bachelor Psychology and since then I have almost completed Human Machine Communications (which is a two-year master program) and I have been in the board of my studentenvereniging, Cleopatra, for a year. On top of that, I managed to get a masters degree in psychology.

Only one thing left to do: finish Human Machine Communication by doing an internship. For that, I’ll move to the Randstad pretty soon. And in about half a year, if all goes well, I won’t be a student anymore, but will become an “arbeider”. Looking forward to it though, time for some new challenges!

Attending Usability Week 2009 in Berlin

stuursma — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:18:36 +0000

This week I attended the Usability Week conference by the Nielsen Norman Group in Berlin. It was really fun. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend two seminars and the evening plenary on Monday evening. For some reason it was renamed from User Experience to Usability Week.

Kara Pernice telling how websites are like dating

The conference was quite the similar to last year’s conference in Amsterdam. Each day you can attend one of four seminars. Each seminar starts at nine in the morning until around five. Actually, it is pretty intense, it feels like having a lecture for eight hours.

I attended Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability (by Hoa Loranger, Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice) and Interaction Design 2 (by Bruce Tognazzini). I was able to attend as a volunteer and thus avoid the registration fees in exchange for some light volunteering duties.

The evening plenary Website design is like dating was fun, although not as fun as last year’s Usability for Evil presentation by Chris Nodder. However, Kara Pernice was really hilarious in mixing her personal anecdotes with web design, I really liked it.

The other volunteers I met were really nice. On Monday evening after the networking session (which we were allowed to attend, yee for free drinks!) we went for dinner in a German pizzeria. I was really fun having diner with people from Denmark, Malta, Greece, Germany and the United States. So many people. Some small cultural clashes naturally occurred, but it was really fun.

Dinner with all volunteers in a German pizzeria

Berlin was fun, although I was unable to see much of the city due to being at the conference all day. I had already visited Berlin back in April as a tourist, so it was not really a problem. My German is really coming along well. During the conference, I spoke English, German and Dutch, it was no problem but I did have to get used to speaking Dutch again back in the Netherlands.

Next year the conference is supposed to be in London, however, I am afraid I won’t be able to volunteer then: volunteering is only allowed for students, and most likely I won’t be a student anymore then. Perhaps I’ll find an employer willing to send me to London in November 2010, I’d like to meet the other volunteers again. Thanks Julia, Lexi, Dimitris, Becky and Janne! I had a great time. See you next year.

The Future of MySQL

stuursma — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:55:34 +0000

In recent years many new features have been added to the MySQL codebase, mostly so called enterprise grade features such as support for triggers, stored procedures and views. As a result, MySQL has gained some new customers in applications other than web hosting. However, all these features have not been adopted in one of MySQL’s strongest fields: hosting databases for web sites. They do cause problems: the size of the code base has increased, leading to more bugs and less programmer time spend on increasing performance or MySQL’s core features.

Now that Sun Microsystems has taken over MySQL (and I have become a Sun certified MySQL professional), and Oracle is attempting to take over Sun, I am uncertain of the future of the MySQL database server software. If the takeover of MySQL by Oracle succeeds, it makes no sense for Oracle to have two competing database products. It would be logical if Oracle tried to kill the MySQL software in favor of its own database product suite. That would suit MySQL’s latest clients, but not so much its more traditional clients in the web business.

The Drizzle project is a fork of the MySQL source that is attempting to create an alternative to MySQL, specialized for web hosting and cloud applications. This will both make sure that an alternative remains when Oracle kills off the MySQL database server and that a web specialized database server will remain available for all us web developers. Another alternative to MySQL is the MariaDB SQL server, another fork of the MySQL source.

Finally, MySQL has announced the Falcon storage engine for at least several years now (I remember having heard a presentation about it at the PHPFreakz congres in 2007). The Falcon storage engine is supposed to be an ACID compliant, fast storage engine. However, there still has not been a release of the Falcon storage engine. Back when it was announced, there were some problems with the InnoDB storage engine, but these problems have been adressed by companies such as Percona and Google. They have created patches to improve locking performance on multi-core servers and created ways to back up tables without taking the server down.

So, what will be the future of MySQL? The Drizzle and MariaDB projects offer alternatives should the MySQL database server be killed by Oracle. Most flaws in InnoDB have been addressed by Google and Percona, so we do not need the Falcon storage engine. It looks as though most options have been covered, but in the future our relational database may not be MySQL but Maria.

Accenture Technology Masterclass

stuursma — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:38:29 +0000

Last week, I attented the Accenture Technology Masterclass in Amsterdam, the main Accenture office in the Netherlands. I met Accenture about a year ago at the Consultancy Game in Groningen. That event was more oriented towards management and strategy consulting. The two-day masterclass I attended was oriented towards technology consulting. There were about thirty participants, selected from a group of three hundred applicants. All had just graduated or were about to graduate. I had to send in a motivation, curriculum vitae and a list of my grades.

Ito Tower at the Amsterdam Zuidas, where Accenture is located

Accenture is located at the 13 – 17th floors of the Ito Tower at the Amsterdam Zuidas. Fortunately I was able to stay at a friend in Amsterdam North. Still an hour long trip by public transportation to the Zuidas, but much better than traveling by train from Groningen, which would have been over two and a half hours. Naturally, we got a tour of the offices and it all looks pretty neat.

I have met so many people in those two days. Of course there were some recruiters, but most Accenture people who attended the masterclass work as a consultant. Everybody was very kind and always willing to help out with our case or answer questions about Accenture. There were about thirty people in our group, all almost or just finished with their education. I have talked to almost all of them and they were a great group to hang out with and work on our business case.

Working as a technology consultant sounds like fun. Basically, you get to work for all these different and big companies and find new ways to apply and implement technologies. We worked on a business case for applying RFID technology in a supermarket supply chain. At the final day, we had to present our plans to the board of directors of the fiction company “Super Albert”. It all went pretty well, even though we did not win the giant bottle of champagne.

You can see the roof terrace through the window. 16th floor. Really nice view.

One especially nice thing about the masterclass was the “vrijdagmiddag borrel” on the second day, which mainly meant drinking cold Corona beers in the sun at a roof terrace on the 16th floor whilst a DJ played some relaxed music, talking with a lot of Accenture personnel (from analysts to senior managers) about working at Accenture and their daily jobs. It got me really interested.

Next week I will be visiting some Accenture consultants who are working at Gasunie here in Groningen to check out what their daily activities are.

User Experience 2009

stuursma — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:56:34 +0000

In November, the User Experience 2009 conference, organized by the Nielsen Norman Group, is coming to Berlin. Just like last year, they are asking for volunteers. Just like last year, I have volunteered, and I am on the list! Hopefully, I will be able to attend the Research Update for 2009, Ajax Design and Usability and Content Usability 1 seminars.

I really look forward to meeting the people behind NNGroup again. I have met some last year in Amsterdam, which was really nice. Getting to Berlin will require some more traveling, but it is a great city to stay for a few days. The hotel where the conference will be held looks pretty nice. Unfortunately, I will probably be staying at some cheap hostel.

Quit my job

stuursma — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:03:32 +0000

After four and a half years, I have quit my job as a developer at iWink B.V.. It has been real fun and challenging to work at iWink. I worked with some of the most talented people in Groningen. The atmosphere was one of both professionalism as well as lots of joking and fooling around. I really liked working on some high profile websites we developed, such as the Groninger Internet Courant or the KEI-week website. It will be hard to adjust to this new life without going to the office and seeing my colleagues two or three times a week.

However, I am also a student and the time has come for me to finish my studies. For the next four months, I will focus on my master thesis for Psychology. In January, I intent to do an internship for Human-Machine Communications. I am still looking for a position though. A large online retailer or usability consultancy firm would be great.

If everything goes as planned, I will have completed both my master studies in June.

Using BOSH to create a real-time, Javascript chat client

stuursma — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:56:19 +0000

For iWink I have written a short article about the development of a Javascript only chat-client.

Deze techniek werkt als volgt: zodra een webpagina is geladen, zorgt een stukje code op deze pagina ervoor dat in de achtergrond nog een extra verbinding gemaakt wordt met de webserver. De webserver laat deze verbinding open staan en geeft geen antwoord, totdat er een chatbericht voor deze bezoeker ontvangen wordt. De webserver stuurt dan het chatbericht over de al gereedstaande verbinding. Hiermee kan een chatbericht binnen enkele honderden milliseconden afgeleverd worden.

You can read the full article here: A Faster Chat (Dutch).

The chat module is written entirely in Javascript and is based on the Prototype framework. For effects and animations, Script.aculo.us is used. Some notes:

It is really hard to detect if a connection is still in use with PHP. Of course there is connection_aborted(), but this only works if a TCP RST packet has been received. This only happens when a user actually clickes the stop button in his or her browser, and with AJAX requests only when transport.abort() is invoked. The only solution is time-outs, but that’s not very responsive.
The chat uses long-living Apache processes. That’s okay when there are, say, less than fifty clients using the chat function at the same time, but when you would have more clients the server would quickly run out of memory. Fortunately, memory is cheap. If you need more clients, you could use an HTTP server implementation in Erlang, as Facebook has done.
It’s hard to create an event based system in PHP that does not tax the server too much. A MySQL table is continuously queried. Fortunately the MySQL Query Cache keeps the load acceptable. After each query, a short usleep() command is issued.
Keeping connections open really saves on traffic. Open connections do not use any bytes. An AJAX polling method would use several hundreds of bytes per request on headers alone, this would quickly add up. Open connections use only bytes when there is something to send.
The chat client requires quite an amount of Javascript. In order to speed up delivery to the browser, we use the JSMin++ Javascript minifier developed by Crisp.

Sun Certified MySQL 5.0 Database Administrator

stuursma — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:24:26 +0000

This week I passed my Sun Certified MySQL 5.0 Database Administrator exam (part one of two). That’s a bit weird: a year ago I did the MySQL 5.0 Developer certification program. So in a few weeks I’ll be a MySQL certified developer and a Sun certified Database Administrator. It’s a bit weird but logical if you think about it: MySQL has been taken over by Sun. Sun has been taken over by Oracle, but the title of “Oracle Certified MySQL Database Administrator” would probably create a computation error in the logic computer that the earth is and mean the end of existence, or something like that.

The exam went pretty much okay, a bit harder than expected. Some questions were not covered in the study guide for certified DBA but were covered in the part for developer certification. Not a big problem because I’ve done that too, but I can imagine that it would be quite hard if I had not. Many questions were three or two questions in one. One question definitely contained an error.

MySQL certification used to be handled through Pearson VUE and scheduling an exam was a breeze back then. Now MySQL certification has been integrated into the Sun certifications. It took me quite some time and some e-mails to figure out how to register for the exam: you have to purchase vouchers at the Sun Training Catalogue (310-810 and 310-811 are the ones you are looking for). Then, you can register at Prometic and use the voucher to pay for the exams. Scheduling the exam works the same way as with Pearson VUE. I took my exam in Assen, The Netherlands at IDée ICT (who makes up those names…). There is still no testing centre in Groningen.

Certification also has become quite more expensive with Sun: it’s now EUR 235,- excluding VAT per exam. With MySQL, it used to be EUR 150,- including taxes.

Importing contacts from Gmail and Windows live mail

stuursma — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:17:12 +0000

For iWink I have written a short article about importing contacts or email addresses from online address books, such as Gmail’s address book and Windows Live Contacts. Both offer similar functionality. The most important thing is that users are not required to hand over their login details to an untrusted web site. The article is not very technical, but explains how the process works:

De gebruiker hoeft zijn wachtwoorden niet op uw website in te vullen, maar wordt naar zijn eigen webmailaanbieder gestuurd en vult daar zijn wachtwoord pas in. Op deze manier weet de gebruiker dat zijn wachtwoord geheim blijft.

De gegevens worden op een veilige manier tussen de adresboeken en het iWink Webbeheer uitgewisseld.

You can read the full article here: Adresboeken van Hotmail en GMail importeren (Dutch and illustrated).