Type 2 Diabetes

Approximately 10% (£10 billion per year) of the UK NHS budget goes towards treating type 2 diabetes and related illnesses. This percentage is expected to rise over the coming years. More info can be found here https://www.nhs.uk/news/diabetes/diabetes-cases-and-costs-predicted-to-rise/

Type 2 diabetes is an entirely preventable disease. It is also largely reversable.

People who have made an effort to look after themselves should not have to pay for those that have not.

The £10 billion spent on treating type 2 diabetes and related illnesses could be better spent on education, infrastructure (electrical vehicle charging network, roads, tunnels, bridges, railways, trams, airports, flood prevention, etc.), other areas of healthcare, research, etc.

In addition to the direct money spent on treating there is the indirect money lost, e.g. lost productivity, lost tax revenue, etc.

The UK government should put the following policy in place.

In 5 years, the NHS will charge patients for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and related illnesses.
This gives people plenty of time to change their lifestyle and reverse any type 2 diabetes related illnesses.

If people chose not to change their lifestyle then they can pay for their treatment or take out insurance to cover the cost of their treatment.

Some may view this as tough medicine, but the current situation is not sustainable.

Tesla Mobile Connector and Telsa Wall Connector

Tesla Mobile Connector

Tesla provide a Tesla Mobile Connector with their vehicles which has a standard household plug on one end. The plug is not shown in their photo.

Deep in the support section of their website Tesla claim that the Tesla Mobile Connector has a maximum charge rate of 8 miles per hour.

My house is less than 6 years old, so it has modern electrics. The Tesla Mobile Connector charges my Tesla Model X (April 2020 delivery) at between 5-7 miles per hour although
5-6 miles per hour is more typical.

How fast the Tesla Mobile Connector charges depends on many factors including battery temperature, how charged the battery is, etc.

If you leave for work at 7am and return home at 7pm then you have a 12 hour window to charge your car overnight. In this 12 hour window using the Tesla Mobile Connector you should be able to add 60-72 miles of range. Unless you are doing more than 60-72 miles a day your car should be fully charged each morning. Getting into a fully charged car each time is one advantage over an ICE vehicle.

Tesla Wall Connector

A Tesla Wall Connector is a device that can be installed at a home or office that supports faster charging speeds.

On their website Tesla claim the Tesla Wall Connector charges at between 40-48 miles per hour depending on whether you have a Model S, X or 3. In the majority of cases you will not achieve anywhere near this (see below).

Do I need a Tesla Wall Connector?

Most people should not require a Tesla Wall Connector unless they are doing very high mileage and their travels do not take them near a Tesla Super Charger.

I wasn’t planning on buying a Tesla Wall Connector because I didn’t think my usage would require the faster charging (see above) however my Tesla Model X was delayed and arrived damaged, so Tesla gave me a free Tesla Wall Connector (7.5 metre) as compensation. I still had to pay approx. £650 inc VAT for the Tesla Wall Connector to be installed. I reasoned I would likely replace one of my other cars with another Tesla in the future so it would be good to charge two cars at once.

My Tesla Wall Connector is installed in my garage. The installer assures me I am receiving the maximum the electrical supply to my house will support. My Tesla Wall Connector charges my Tesla Model X at around 20-21 miles per hour. This is nowhere near the claimed maximum but a significant improvement (4 times) over the Tesla Mobile Connector.

Prior to the Tesla Wall Connector being installed I left my Tesla Mobile Connector plugged into the wall of my garage and poking out under the garage door to avoid the hassle of coiling it up and putting it in the car. Now I have the Tesla Wall Connector installed I carry the Tesla Mobile Connector in the trunk of the car.

Other

When I received my Tesla Model X all the charging cables, etc., were in the frunk. I have moved them to the trunk as allegedly the frunk is not secure.

Tesla Electric Vehicle Range Anxiety

When you first consider switching from an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle to an electrical vehicle your first concern is range. Also known as Range Anxiety.

Tesla does not do a particularly good job of explaining or alleviating this.

You often see kW mentioned which is totally meaningless to the vast majority of people!

The subsequent posts relate to the UK but they are likely relevant to other European countries.

How to install Drupal 8 on Amazon EC2 Linux AMI

Drupal 8 is the leading open source enterprise Content Management System (CMS).

The following post outlines the steps necessary to install Drupal 8 on an Amazon Web Services EC2 instance.

Open console.aws.amazon.com using your favourite web browser

Launch an EC2 instance. I chose the following AMI

Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03.0 (PV) - ami-f40c388d

It is probably best to create a Security Group for Drupal so you can assign more ports later if necessary.

I experienced issues installing on a t1.micro instance type. The installation kept stalling and would not finish. I had to install on a m1.small and then change the instance type after installation.

SSH to your instance.

Updates may have been released since the AMI was created. To install the latest patches run the following command.

yum update

Install Apache 2.4

yum install httpd24

Now configure Apache so it starts when the instance boots.

/sbin/chkconfig httpd on

Apache is not started as part of the installation process. To start it enter the following:

service httpd start

Install MySQL 5.7

yum install mysql57-server

Now configure MySQL so its starts when the instance boots.

/sbin/chkconfig mysqld on

MySQL is not started as part of the installation process. To start it enter the following:

service mysqld start

Now that MySQL is installed and running it needs to be secured.

mysql_secure_installation

Follow the prompts.

Install PHP

yum install php71

Install PHP extensions

The PHP build comes with most of the necessary extensions, i.e. XML, JSON, Curl, etc.

To install the remaining necessary extensions

yum install php71-mysqlnd
yum install php71-gd
yum install php71-mbstring


Download Drupal 8.5.4

curl https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-8.5.4.tar.gz > drupal-8.5.4.tar.gz

Uncompress and untar

tar -zxvf drupal-8.5.4.tar

Install Drupal files

sudo rsync -avz . /var/www/html

In order for the installation to work some permissions need to be changed.

cd /var/www/html
chmod a+w sites/default
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html

Configure web server

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/drupal.conf

Insert the following into the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www/html

<Directory "/var/www/html">
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>


Restart Apache to ensure setting changes picked up

service httpd restart

Install Drupal, setup database and configure

Open your favourite web browser and go to the site

Ignore opcode caching and continue

Database name = drupal
user = root
pass = password-you-set


Configure Drupal

Follow the prompts.

The installation is now complete! Open your favourite web browser and check the installation works.

Shopware Community Day 2017

We have just come back from Shopware Community Day 2017.

Shopware is an open source Ecommerce platform developed in PHP much like Magento. Like Magento paid versions are available, i.e. Professional and Enterprise.

Shopware has been around quite some time and has gained a lot of traction in German speaking companies with over 54,000 installs. They are now working hard to enter the UK market and take on Magento

Over 1600 people attended the Shopware Community Day in Germany on Thu/Fri.

TechHuddle is a partner of Shopware so if are looking for Shopware expertise / developers please contact us.

Shopware Offices

Wondering why we received drumsticks on registering

Shopware Key Note

Shopware 5.3 announced

How to apply for a job

We have been busy posting useful articles on the TechHuddle blog covering how to apply for a job.

If you are looking for a new job please check out these articles

• How to write the perfect CV
• How to prepare for an interview
• How to handle an interview

CTO Meetup – JavaScript: One language to rule them all

On the 3rd of November TechHuddle hosted a CTO meetup on JavaScript: One language to rule them all.

Simon Wood the Associate Director of Architecture and Engineering at Holiday Extras gave an excellent presentation on the following:

• JavaScript Language
  • History
  • Popularity
  • Standards
• Single Page Web Apps
  • Backbone
  • Angular
  • Ember
  • React JS
  • Redux
  • JSX
  • Module Including/Bundling
    • RequireJS
    • Browserify
    • Webpack
  • Error Reporting
    • Sentry
    • Bugsnag
    • Airbrake
  • Analytics SEO
  • Security
• Server Side JavaScript
  • NodeJS
  • Callback Hell
  • Promises
  • NPM
  • Challenges
• Future of JavaScript

CTO meetup – Beyond IaaS / PaaS with Kubernetes

Last night TechHuddle hosted a CTO meetup on Beyond IaaS and PaaS with Kubernetes.

Mark White from Codec gave the presentation.

Mark gave a detailed overview of Kubernetes, a project from Google that provides a way to host your applications and services on any hosting provider that combines the best of both worlds of IaaS and PaaS. He talked about the features it brings and the ecosystem that’s building up around it – but with no such thing as a free lunch, he also highlighted the downsides and areas where it’s still immature.

• Introduction to Mark White
• Kubernetes flash demo – creating and deploying an app
• Summary of IaaS vs PaaS
• How Kubernetes/Container engine fit in and provides the best of both worlds
• Brief introduction to Docker/containers
• Google Borg and Kubernetes history
• Introduction to Kubernetes architecture
• Kubernetes features
• Internal load balancing (services)
• Logging
• External load balancing (ingress)
• Persistent storage
• CPU/RAM limits
• Autoscaling
• Kubernetes package management with helm
• Monitoring (inc. a brief mention of Prometheus and Sysdig Cloud)
• Kubernetes compared to:
• Amazon Elastic Container Service
• Apache Mesos / Marathon
• Alternative hosting options to Google Container Engine
• Issues with Kubernetes
• Q&A

TechHuddle Tour de Bulgaria from Sofia to Thasos

Last week we completed our annual cycle challenge by cycling from Sofia, Bulgaria to Thasos, Greece.

You can find more photos here

CTO meetup – APIs are eating the world

Last night TechHuddle hosted a CTO meetup on APIs are eating the world.

Simon Wood from Holiday Extras gave an amazing presentation.

• Introduction to Simon Wood
• Consuming APIs
  • The world before APIs
  • How Mobile, Social and Cloud caused a landslide move to APIs
  • The power of APIs for rapid development and deferring complex problems
  • Lean software development powered by APIs
  • APIs as a data highway between businesses
• Offering out APIs
  • The world before APIs
  • Why you should offer an API
  • Case studies of increased revenue on the back of APIs
  • Private APIs Vs Public APIs and why Private does not work
  • The right and wrong way to build APIs
  • Security
  • Rate shaping & throttling
  • Reporting
  • Versioning
  • How to evangelise your API
• The future is APIs
• Q&A

A big thank you to Simon for giving such a comprehensive and informative presentation on APIs.