Category Archives: Uncategorized

Last Saturday our team had the monthly meetup that we usually organize at the end of each month, alternately in our office in Warsaw and in Lodz. This time Lodz was the location, and sadly not everyone could attend, but the vast majority of us were there.

In the past during these meetups, we sometimes did presentations on technical topics – so this time we thought, why not make this into something that we do on a regular basis.

The topic of May presentation, which was made by my humble self, was “RESTful Web Services” – something that many of our team members deal with every day, mostly by being consumers of various web APIs, but not necessarily know the ideas behind REST and how it couples with the HTTP protocol. The presentation is an overview of the design principles that RESTful web APIs should stick to with examples of how this is (or isn’t) achieved.

I’ve put the slides up on Speaker Deck, so now everyone can have a look. A basic knowledge of web APIs and HTTP should probably be considered a prerequisite.

Expect more presentations from our future meetups – I can’t promise we will deliver one every month, as some will probably be too specific to the projects that we’re working on, but we’ll try to cover general topics most of the time. Also, if you have some feedback that you would like to share, drop us a note.

For good measure, here are two poor quality photos of yours truly speaking to the team:

(And yes, that’s beer that some of us are holding – the meetup gradually turned into a drinkup and then an evening of bowling!)

It’s the 37th edition of our monthly donation initiative for open source projects, charity organizations and others in need. What is more, today is its third anniversary!

Choosing who will get financial aid this month was supposed to be Jakub’s job. However, since it’s the grand jubilee he decided to include other members of the team in the decision-making process. Together we have selected three recipients that we would like to support – organizations working on development of the programming languages we use most often: The Perl Foundation, who lays the groundwork for the development of Perl, the Python Software Foundation, dealing with Python, and the Mozilla Foundation, who steers work on JavaScript.

We’re also helping Weronika Kwakszys, a girl suffering from encephalopathy and who is under the care of the “Help on Time” Children’s Foundation. Jakub knows Weronika’s parents and he has decided that this month we should donate funds for her treatment. We send our best wishes to you, Weronika, and we wish you and your parents all the best.

The fourth year of our monthly donation initiative has begun. See you next time, in a month!

It’s mid-April, so it is high time we made our donation to our open source project and charity organisation of choice, as we do every month. This time, Krzysiek Skarbek did the selecting: he chose the Solr project and the “Unwanted and Forgotten” Foundation from Lodz.

Solr is a highly efficient universal information search platform, based on the Lucene library. Both projects are being developed together (as “Lucene/Solr”) by the Apache Software Foundation. We have been using Solr in our work as a search mechanism for a few web applications that we build for our customers. We would like to thank the creators and ASF for their efforts in developing the project.

The “Unwanted and Forgotten” Foundation was established in 2006 in Lodz; its purpose is to help homeless animals by finding new homes for them, as well as sterilization and interventions in cases of abused animals. This is the second time we have financially helped this foundation; we made a previous donation back in January 2013.

A big thanks goes to the foundation’s employees and volunteers. We wish them perseverance and the best of luck in the future!

Today, as part of the March activities of our initiative to help open source projects and charities, we are making a donation to the Perl Dancer project and the “Pazurek” Foundation for Animals.

Perl Dancer is a framework used to create web applications in Perl. Its first version, issued in 2009, was modelled on the Sinatra framework (for the Ruby language), and its creator was Alexis Sukrieh. Currently, the second version of the project is being developed – Dancer 2.

Our team has had a lot to do with the Dancer project for quite some time now, because some of us (including the author of these words) have been participating, since 2012, in the project which is based on a complex web application that uses the Dancer, among others. We would like to thank the creators of the framework and wish them good luck in the further development of the project!

The “Pazurek” Foundation for Animals (the name can be translated as “Little Claws”) operates in Warsaw and deals primarily with helping homeless cats – by feeding and providing treatment for them, finding them new homes, and organising sterilisation programmes. We previously supported “Pazurek” in April 2013 and we are glad for the opportunity to do it again. We appreciate the efforts of the Foundation and wish them all the best in their future activities.

As monthly tradition dictates, we’re here with the next edition of our financial support action for open source projects and charity organisations. This month the honourable and responsible task of selecting the project and organisation to receive our support was entrusted to Krzysiek Pisera.

For the second time in the history of our aid initiative, Krzysiek’s choice has been his adored text editor – Vim. As before, financial support will be donated to the ICCF Holland organisation (which aids needy children in Uganda), as that is what Bram Moolenaar, Vim’s author, asks.

We’re also helping the Animal Shelter in Łódź, which we have also supported in earlier years (more particularly, in November 2012 and October 2013). Cheers to all employees and volunteers at the shelter, and of course to the four-legged members in their care.

The new year has settled in for good – and since it is already past mid-January, then it is peak time for our customary monthly donations to open source projects and charity organisations. The pleasurable duty of choosing the beneficiaries fell to Dawid Jancen, who has been working as part of our team for three months now.

For the second time in our history, we are supporting the development of the well-known and popular revision control system – Git. We use it in our team for almost all the projects that we work on, so for us it is a basic tool, like a text editor or an email client. The donation to Git is transferred via Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit organisation which provides care for open source projects. We would like to say “thank you” to all who have contributed to the development of Git!

We are also providing financial support to the Destitute Animal Shelter in Tczew (Dawid’s hometown), contributing to treatment for a young puppy. This puppy, Astek, landed in the shelter in poor condition after being brutally hurt by people, in December. According to what we have learned, the vet’s efforts have brought good results as Astek has survived the most difficult time and is much better now. We send our greetings to Astek and all the employees and volunteers of the shelter in Tczew!

This is the last round of our monthly donations this year. As always, we’re supporting an open source project and a non-profit charity organization, and this time they have been selected by yet another newcomer to our Lodz team, Krzysztof Lipiec.

Krzysztof chose a project that already received our donation back in February last year, but we’re happily supporting it again, as it’s something that many of us continue to use on a daily basis – and that is JSLint, the code quality tool for JavaScript. Once again, big thanks to the creator of JSLint, Douglas Crockford.

The recipient of the second donation this month is the “Hobby Horse” Association, based in Lodz. The Association was founded in 2011 with the mission to support the children of the Little Children’s Home in Lodz. We send our best wishes to all the people of the Association, and of course to all the children under their care.

It’s already past mid-November, which means it’s high time for the next round of donations to open source projects and charity organizations. This month the team member responsible for selecting the recipients is Tomek Antosik, who joined us two months ago.

Per Tomek’s choice, we’re making a donation to OpenWrt, a Linux distribution for embedded devices, mostly network appliances. The original goal of the project was to develop an open source operating system for the popular Linksys WRT54G routers, and this was accomplished in 2004, when the first release of OpenWrt saw daylight. As the project progressed and gained popularity, support for more and more devices was added, and today there are hundreds of appliances that OpenWrt can run on.

The second recipient of this month’s donations is the “Tacy Sami” Association (the name can be roughly translated as “We’re All the Same”), founded in 1999 and based in Wieluń, Tomek’s home town. The Association provides help and care for people with disabilities and works towards their social integration.

The time has come for the next, October, edition of our initiative aimed at supporting open source projects and charity organizations. This month Marcin Tabaka, who has been cooperating with us for years, took care of selecting recipients.

Marcin selected a project that assists not only us in our work, but also helps some of our clients, namely the phpMyAdmin tool, which allows MySQL databases to be managed through a web browser. In many cases, this is the simplest manner of getting quick access to data stored on a server. It does not involve the need to use any other software, just a web browser.

PhpMyAdmin has a long history – in September, 16 years had passed since its first edition. We congratulate and thank the developers of the project.

We would also like to make a donation for the benefit of the “Na Paluchu” Homeless Animals’ Shelter – the oldest animal shelter in Warsaw, which has been functioning since 1953. We would like to thank the shelter’s employees and volunteers for their efforts aimed at helping animals.