Xavier Morera

Easy VOIP Calling for a Small Business

24 Apr 2020 by Xavier in General 0 comments

Did your company had to transition immediately to WFH? Are you now in a disadvantage because you had your small business phone system all set up but now it does not work when everyone is at home or it gets quite expensive? Here is the solution that has worked the best for me over the years, using Skype Manager—which does not involve any setup and has a reduced cost. You just need to install Skype, which runs in a computer in pretty much any OS, tablet, iOS, Android… you name it. Here’s my business case. I own a support center that provides support to a tech company. We are in Costa Rica, their customers are in the US and Canada. When I was asked to implement the phone system I had several options which included setting up an Asterisk central or looking for other solutions. I had tried Asterisk before but it had several drawbacks. So what I did is use Skype Manager to invite the collaborators, assigned them a subscription so that they can make calls and, assigned them a land line to receive calls. You can allocate credit in case they are calling an area not covered by […]

Tip of the Day: The Best Screen Capture Tool

10 Apr 2020 by Xavier in General 0 comments

One of the things about working from home is that you can’t just pick up your laptop, turn it around, and tell your coworker: “look here, this is what I need”. If you are remote or distributed, the story is different. You have to share in a particular way. You could start a screen sharing session, but that may be overkill. Here is where screen capture comes to the rescue. The “standard” way is to press the print screen key (PrtScr), open mspaint, paste, save, and then send via email or chat. Well, that did not sound that convenient. Let me tell you about a lovely tool called Jing that I have been using for many years—although it is now known as Techsmith Capture: https://www.techsmith.com/jing-tool.html The lovely thing about this tool is that it is pretty easy to use. One nice feature of Jing is that it puts a small sun in the corner of your screen, so you can hover over it and it expands showing the available options. You then select which part of the screen you want to capture, and then it gives you the option to add text, arrows, and more. Then you can save locally, […]

Working from Home 101

09 Apr 2020 by Xavier in General 0 comments

Work from Home 101 – Costa Rica EditionI live in Costa Rica, which may come in handy if you need any travel tips. However, because of “life”, I’ve spent my entire career working for project in either USA or in the UK, hence I’ve done this remote-thing (or distributed, use your choice of words) for a while. I began as an employee, but I eventually transitioned into entrepreneurship where I have a few things going on, including my Pluralsight courses, a tech support center, and supporting from time to time Cloudera. But let’s cut to the chase. I am not going to bother you with details or anecdotes—I’ll do a few posts some other day on those. Today, I am going to tell you what has worked for me over the years. Hopefully, this will help you too. First of all, work from home (WFH) is still work. The fact that you are at home does not mean that it is not serious business. It is. How others perceive you is going to be a reflection of your actions, including the quality of your work and how responsive you are. So, one of the things that I suggest is to […]

Sharing Screen for Remote Work 101 (Mother’s Edition)

19 Mar 2020 by Xavier in General 0 comments

Coronavirus explosion is in full force right now. We are currently going through very tough times, unprecedented times for most of us—perhaps not comparable to a war, however still challenging and full of fear because of economic repercusions. Quarantine and remote work is new for many. Today, my mother asked me a simple question—for me—yet a hard one for her. How do I share screen with my workers? Here is a really simple guide for her (and you) to follow, using Google Meet. Prerequisite You need to be logged in with an account that can start meetings. She sent me this. It means that she needs to log in. Step #1 Open Google Meet Navigate to https://meet.google.com/ and you will be greeted by a screen like this one: Step #2 Start the Meeting Click on Join or start a meeting Step #3 Name the Meeting Give the meeting a representative name. If it is an impromptu meeting, then the name is not that important. When you start using Meet often, use representative names so that you and your attendees remember what each meeting is for.Click on Continue Step #4 Start the meeting Congratulations! You have a meeting now. But you […]

Autographs – Who to Ask For One?

12 Jan 2020 by Xavier in General 0 comments

Many years ago, Pele (Edson Arantes do Nascimento) visited Costa Rica. I was a kid and someone recommended I should get an autograph. And so I did. To be honest, it is the only autograph I’ve ever asked for. Here is the reason. He may have been the greatest soccer (or futbol) player on Earth, but hearing about how K. Scott Allen (Ode To Code) passed away today got me thinking that people like Scott are the ones who people should ask for autographs. Why? Because people like him are the ones uplifting others, helping them, teaching – great deal of it with Pluralsight. Nothing against Pele, he was great but the impact in the world that a teacher like Scott had can change the lives of those who he helped. Anyway, this may be a not too popular opinion, especially for soccer fans, but I do believe in the power of teaching.

Upgrading a .NET Application with Solr and SolrNet

09 Jan 2020 by Xavier in General 0 comments tags: solr, solrnet

Today I took the task of updating a .NET application that I’ve had since sometime around 2013. I created this application with a few people at the time of .NET 4.0 and Solr 4.10, with its corresponding SolrNet. Today I moved it to Solr 8.4 and with .NET 4.7. There are a few interesting changes that you need to take into account, which I may expand at some point. But just in case, if you are in the same scenario, here are some upgrade tips for you to consider: #1 When you move from Solr 4.10 (and older versions) to 8.4, there are some changes to take into account The default field is now _text_ and not text Some types may have changed Default now is managed-schema, not schema.xml Some changes are required in solrconfig.xml So, what I did is downloaded, installed and started a Solr 8.4. Then I created a core bin\solr.cmd create -c <name> Next, I configured Solr so that I do not use schemaless mode. Use this link for more info: Switching from Managed Schema to Manually Edited schema.xml Don’t forget that besides changing the ClassicIndexSchemaFactory, you also need to disable schema guessing, which allows unknown fields […]

Welcome to Big Data TV – Or The One That Started It All

09 Dec 2018 by Xavier in Big Data, Big Data Series, Development, Enterprise Search, Hadoop, Pluralsight 0 comments

Hello and welcome, I am Xavier Morera and I am very passionate about helping developers understand enterprise search and Big Data. And today, I welcome you to the first post of the Big Data Inc Series (which will soon be joined with Big Data TV). So, you might be wondering… what is the Big Data Inc Series? Easy. It is a series of bite size posts that explain enterprise search and Big Data. What is my objective? At a high level, each post will take between 5 to 7 minutes, and will provide an overview of one particular topic – and only one – to give you enough information to understand what is the purpose of a particular platform, language, project or anything else that touches enterprise search and Big Data Why am I doing this? First of all, I am really passionate about search and Big Data… like a kid on Christmas day. I do have to agree that I have my preferred platforms, languages, and projects. However, it does not hurt to have an idea of what each one is about. Also, why are the posts so short? Well, I could go on and on for hours – […]