As I noted in other articles in this "Continuous Integration Best Practices" Series (click here for Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3", there are 10 best practice principles associated with Continuous Integration and in this previous articles, we covered the first eight. In...
Engineering Operations
Creating “Custom” Facts in Puppet
The servers that I’m managing can be divided into two groups, colo and local servers. While most of the configuration has been similar between these two, there have been a growing number of things which I’ve had to configure differently through Puppet. The latest...
How Engineers Used Twitter During SolidWorks World 2018
Last week, SolidWorks held its annual conference, SolidWorks World 2018, in Los Angeles where over 5,000 engineers, manufacturers, educators and enthusiasts attended. Many who could not attend streamed the conference sessions online and scanned the 5000+ tweets that...
Declutter your multi-computer desktop with ‘Mouse without Borders’
For the everyday user with a laptop or desktop, this article may not apply. And for those of you who have no need to have more than one PC on your desk -- kudos! But from time to time, its necessary to have several PC's on your desk at the same time -- especially...
Keep Track of Passwords with Pleasant Solutions
When involved in IT strategy consulting services, you need a way to keep track of passwords in a safe and accessible manner. There are a number of different options out there ranging from single machine managers to cloud-based services. The one I found to be a great...
What’s New in Git 1.8.5.1
Call me weird, but for whatever reason I find version control really interesting and a crucial part of your build and release model. Maybe it's because it's saved my bacon a few times so I appreciate what it does, or maybe it's because it lets me see how my code has...
Ultrabooks Place in the Workplace
Ultraportable laptops and Ultrabooks have become the new machines to have. They are smaller, thinner, and lighter making them the preferred choice for most engineering and IT professionals over the older clunkier notebook workstations. Even before the push by Intel...
Executives, Can you Afford to Stay on a Windows PC?
As the CEO of a technology services company, my personal computing necessities are actually quite simple. I've got to have easy, reliable access to the Internet, the basic Microsoft suite of tools, and I need synchronized email with Gmail, my computer and my mobile...
Mobile CAD Applications – Ready for Primetime?
One of the main reasons people purchase a smartphone is to have information at their fingertips. Does that apply to the world of CAD applications? The answer is very dependent on what you want to actually do with this data. Do you want to design a complex...
My Arsenal of Product Development Tools
There are so many tools that are available to help make the process of coding more efficient, less time consuming, and overall a better experience. There are a number of tools / configuration settings I utilize in my environment to help make my overall coding /...
How Engineering Pros Can Work From Home For the Holidays
Because the benefits are endless, I couldn't even hope to list them all, but here are a few great reasons for engineering pros (or anyone else) to work from home during the holidays: 1. It's the universal excuse to escape from household chores and awkwardly boring...
Engineering and IT Professionals: Take a Break!
It's easy to get caught up the task at hand -- more so if its something you find interesting. But over the years, more and more papers are being published on the hazards of non-stop work, from eye strain to carpal tunnel, there are countless pitfalls to sitting in...