June 2011
3 posts
The great disconnect (in software)....
There is a great deal of disconnect in software engineering reality and assumed expectations. In a recent discussion with a rather enthusiastic young mind this was brought home even more starkly.
The discussion centered around the following:
“Me and my friends have a great idea for a new game. It will involve a brand new take on game AI engine, a rather inspired physics engine, 3D...
So, how well did airlines and airports use...
A few days ago a volcano erupted in Chile. The ash cloud though visually spectacular caused quite a bit of damage in Chile and then travelled all the way to Australia via jet stream. The ash cloud sadly caused Qantas and a number of other airlines to cancel most scheduled flights in and out of Melbourne, Tasmania and New Zealand (where I live). Media reports suggested that 10,000+ people were...
May 2011
3 posts
March 2010
3 posts
Project planning - Problem framing approach →
One of the components of project management is planning a project. However, there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. Further, the tools that are widely used do not make it easy to plan…
Economic growth - what happens when it stops? →
I have been studying the ‘nature of growth’ mainly in software systems, but also in the general economy over the last 4-5 years. My interest in how economies grow has been more of a side-effect,…
Programming... →
I just spent some time reading two interesting articles on programming — both of them by Mike Taylor.
The first one essentially is an opinion on how programming has changed to become a task that…
February 2010
1 post
Is the web ruining everything? I do not think so. →
“When printed books first became popular, thanks to Gutenberg’s press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation.
All of which came out…
January 2010
1 post
Batter Blaster - Pancake mix in a can →
Well it is now 100% organic. Curious? Well it is pancake mix in a can. Yup — you can spray on a pancake — and eat it. Yum! Yum!
October 2009
10 posts
2 tags
“The Credit Derivative Swap market allowed large bets to be placed on certain...”
– http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5917#more
Evidence based software engineering.... →
This is my personal pet interests. Most software engineering today is based on ‘hear-say’, ‘guess work’, ‘poor mathematics’ and ‘statements from so called gurus’. But, how much of it is actually…
Google Wave ... used it and ..... →
Just played around with Google Wave. Currently, I don’t quite know what to do with it. It is a communication tool and at this point in time I do not know if anyone else will use it if I do.
Wave is…
Lambda Calculus (at Safalra's Website) →
A fairly comprehensive introduction to Lamda Calculus.
If you are new to this whole topic .. here is a short summary:
* Calculus: This word sounds scary but simply means “a system of calculation and reasoning”. Due to historical reasons, in mathematics we end up using greek symbols that have certain meaning. — Hence the ‘lambda’.
* Lambda Calclus provides a system...
Obama has won the Noble Peace prize. I have a nice ‘conspiracy theory’ explanation for this decision. They think that this way they can stop the US president from getting into anymore wars. I wonder if Bush would have attacked “iRack” if he was awarded the peace prize 9 months into his presidency.
Will the US dollar collapse?
US dollar is the world’s default reserve currency — most of the world trade uses US dollars. On the financial blogosphere there is an increasing discussion (conflict) that the US dollar is about to go off the cliff and collapse in value.
The reason that the dollar is expected to collapse is based on the following arguments:
US Federal reserve is printing US dollars at an exponential...
Flash Applications on iPhone
Adobe has announced that Flash developers can now target the iPhone.
This in effect just adds a lot more applications into the iPhone eco-system on top of what they already have. Expect a torrent of new applications to flood the iTunes store — we will start seeing a lot more free games soon.
Flash within a browser on the iPhone still does not seem to be a go. Personally, I think given...
Feeling guilty about testing ..... →
Software testing is one of those fuzzy things where the theory in the books completely differs from how testing is done in practice. Unfortunately, the poor practitioners all too often end up feeling…
Is Google the next Microsoft? →
How does an organisation evolve over time? From start-up to corporate giant. Is Google the next Microsoft? I want to start off with a broad illustration of the steps first on how a start-up slowly…
September 2009
14 posts
1 tag
Examples of Why Time Estimates are Always Wrong... →
A list of fairly accurate examples of why estimates are always wrong. I agree with almost all of the points except for ‘Technical Debt’ and Refactoring.
Refactoring in real projects is rare (I just completed studying 1000 different unique systems) in my research and have very minimal evidence that this is a consistent practice. Yet, systems seem to evolve fine. In fact, redundant...
House price madness (in Australia)
I was quite intrigued by the following statement in terms of how bad it was..
“It is looking increasingly clear that Australia has avoided the large falls in housing prices seen in some other countries over the past two years or so. This is a good thing, because of the macroeconomic difficulties that have accompanied those price falls in some countries. But, looking forward, the risk is...
Mindsilver - GUIDE →
Yet another Java GUI Building tool. The video is impressive, developers use a Mac (so they cannot be bad eh..). Swing is hopeless for building any sane or usable user interface. Do people still need to build fat-clients in Java? Surprisingly there is still quite a few small applications floating around that are developed (will be developed) in Java, this tool would fit this particular gap.
Microsoft Launch Party Video = Definition of... →
This is worse than watching Basil Faulty (of the Faulty Towers) in terms of cringe. Leave a comment if you survive past the first 30 seconds. If this how M$ will market Windows 7 — then it is…
1 tag
Google Collection Classes... →
Google has recently released the collection classes and associated utilities that they make use of internally. These are an extension (and improvement) on the Java Collections API.
I personally find that the Java collections API serves me well. I have slowly started to switch a few of my programs to make use of the Google libraries. I do like their programming model, which emphasises immutable...
97 Things that every programmer should know.... →
This is a book in the 97 things series by O’Reilly. The book has not been published, but a draft is up at this link for review. I have personally worked with 2 people on that list and can certainly attest to their skill and knowledge.
The mother of these guidelines and something that is very relevant is the ‘Design Philosophy of Unix’ (can get it via Google!)
Australian dollar is zooming back up — time to find a few more books via http://booko.com.au/
30 Minutes a day... →
A short article on learning and attention spans.
“Patterns do not exist in vacuum, they are evidence of the existence of a stable...”
– Rajesh Vasa
“The study of products is vastly more important than the study of production,...”
– Karl Popper
