Tech tips and thoughts

Welcome to “Tech Tips and Thoughts,” your hands-on guide to navigating the evolving world of technology. Here at Dr. Buhlmeier Consulting, we provide practical IT consulting insights, empowering you with the latest in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Apache Airflow.

Dive into our expertly curated articles that cover advanced topics, including Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology, which is revolutionizing how data is processed and utilized. Whether you are seeking to enhance your operational efficiencies, bolster your cybersecurity measures, or leverage cloud solutions, our seasoned consultants provide authoritative advice and practical tips.

Stay ahead of the curve with regular updates exploring the implications of emerging technologies on software development and IT infrastructure. Our posts are crafted to assist both professionals and tech enthusiasts in mastering complex IT challenges and making informed decisions.

Join us at Dr. Buhlmeier Consulting’s “Tech Tips and Thoughts” as we navigate the future of information technology. Engage with our content to empower your business and personal tech projects with the latest innovations and essential industry knowledge.

If you’ve ever wanted to explore big data processing with Apache Spark but felt intimidated by the setup, you’re not alone! Spark is a powerful tool, but getting it running smoothly on Windows requires some careful version matching and configuration. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through my journey of setting up Spark on Windows 11 and running successful experiments with it.

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Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an exciting advancement in AI that combines traditional language models with an external knowledge retrieval system. Rather than relying solely on pre-trained data, RAG dynamically pulls relevant information to improve response accuracy, making it a powerful tool for various applications.

I recently put RAG to the test, evaluating its performance on different hardware setups to get a sense of how computing power affects processing time. While I won’t dive too deeply into the mechanics, I’ll share my experience and key findings from these tests. Spoiler alert: newer hardware makes a big difference!

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Apache Airflow is a powerful open-source tool for orchestrating workflows, but getting it up and running—especially on Windows—can be a challenge. During my recent deep dive into Airflow, I explored various installation methods and discovered the best approach that worked for me. In this post, I’ll share my findings and guide you through setting up Airflow on a Windows machine in a way that actually works.

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Changing the domain of a WordPress website involves more than just purchasing a new domain name; it requires migrating the entire website—including files and the database—while ensuring that all links and configurations point to the new domain. Without proper migration, broken links, database mismatches, and login issues can occur, leading to a non-functional site. This guide walks through the step-by-step process of backing up and reinstating WordPress, correctly uploading the files to the new domain, updating database references, and fixing any warnings or errors to ensure a smooth transition. (more…)

Kick-start Deep Learning with TensorFlow and Keras

This is a kick-start demo on how to run Deep Learning the ‘fast and lean way’. In other words, here I will show how to quickly have a Keras example up and running. My point was not to optimize anything, rather to get an example quickly up using information from different sources. It worked for me. (more…)

Machine Learning with Python and Scikit

It is fascinating how fast one can build a text analyzer with Python and Scikit. Tutorials and examples on this abound. A common approach is to first build numerical representations of the text and then apply standard statistical (or machine learning) techniques. Basically, one inputs text examples to train the system; and then one uses previously unused data to apply the model and check the results. But I also wanted to know also how the intermediate data looks like. To this effect, (more…)

Having worked with Websphere ESB, one can not help considering whether one ought to switch to IBM’s new strategic integration platform, the IBM Integration Bus (IIB). I had a look at the latest version of the Integration Toolkit for the Integration Bus and would like to share my insights. The two issues that I will address are, (1) the main differences when building mediation and service integration, and (2) how to migrate from Websphere ESB to Integration Bus.

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XSD to XLSX Conversion (XSD2XLSX): for documentation and better readability

Exchanging messages between systems is mostly implemented using XML files, which are specified with xml schema definitions, i.e. XSD files. In order to have the parties involved to agree on what data is transmitted, there are often Excel sheets (XLSX) used for documentation. Both the XSD and the Excel file can become quite large, and changes need to be done for both files, which is often overlooked. In order to support the documentation of the XSD, I used (more…)