Perfect Day

Rain is gone. Sunshine through the now scattered clouds.
Autumns' green and yellow on a high blue sky.
Feeling warm. Feeling a little proud.
Listening to Lou Reed on a tube amp.
Everything is warmer.
A perfect day.
I'm gonna spend it with you.

Series

I binged this year (yes, I sinned and bought Netflix).

Stranger Things

Expanse

Ascension

Designated Survivor - fucking cheesy...

Movies

What I have seen lately:

Book of Kells - beautiful hand drawn animations and a vivid story.

And because of it I continued with:

Song of the sea - again beautiful graphics and quite a metaphoric story

Gifted - sometimes it's hard being a parent for a normal kid. (Thanks Bogdan for the tip)

Searching for Bobby Fischer - chess is as hard as mathematics:

Arrival - yeap, they still do from time to time interesting sci-fi movies.  The new Star [Wars|Treks] should burn in hell.

Java 9 surprise

I was quite shocked that JDK 9 is 64bits only.
It seems that older 32 bit runtimes are gone as most of nowadays computers are fully 64 bit.
Even Ubuntu seems to drop 32 bit support as announced in their mailing lists.

Throwing nuts

Created on 2017-09-28 11:45

Published on 2017-09-29 12:03

In Andrey Tarkovsky's movie Stalker (but also in S.T.A.L.K.E.R game and Strugatsky's book), the way of detecting gravitational anomalies in the Zone is by throwing nuts and watching how they fall down. This is how they were able to create a safe path in an area full of unknown.

Starting a new project, especially when there is not enough experience and expertise in the team or organisation, or in a new field should always start by throwing some nuts and charting a safe path. People should prepare for some failures but also for some success and use the experience gained through direct experience.

How the nuts are thrown in software projects? I reckon that prototypes that explore some of the project's goals is the answer. Small teams do the probing and draw conclusions about the results of their investigation. They would be able to rule out bad choices in technology, scope and effort. I have done this kind of nut throwing in fields like choosing a UI technology/framework, architectural styles, version control system choice and cloud infrastructure. Not all the actions were successful but at least we took some informed decisions and we avoided worse choices.

Throwing nuts also reveals what are the weak spots of the project, what possible problems might arise, and create some safety boundaries. The defined path is a better estimator of the difficulty and price of the project than any of the forecasts done when there is no concrete data on some action. It is much like "scientific method" - create hypotheses, make experiments, draw conclusions and validate the initial hypotheses.

The "nut throwing" creates proofs that can be used in steering projects. Nothing is more eloquent and informative than a proof, it is the argument that creates the "aha! moment". Quite recently I was in a situation where several architects were debating over architectural styles but the proofs made us conclude on one direction. Proofs also are an extremely important point to build upon and give to the stakeholders some insights (As a matter of fact the printing industry has a culture of proofing, soft proofing and hard proofing, that ensures that the product is inline with the customer's expectations).

Probing should be done also from time to time in order to keep the project fit and check if the surroundings changed in a way that would influence it in some way. Periodic probing of the environment also enables "plan-b" scenarios and fast recovery from uninspired choices.

Although this kind of activities seem to be an overkill and increase the cost this is not true as they make people learn by discovery and provides a way of keeping overall costs under control by avoiding the "gravity traps" that would cause extreme consequences in the project.

One year with a German car

I bought last year a Golf Mk7 SW (Variant) as the old Kalos was going out of shape and it lacked basic safety features nowadays as ABS.
Before buying the car I drove some Ford Focus, Kia C'eed, Renault Megane, Peugeot 308 and Opel Astra K on test drives. I was also considering Citroen C5 and Volvo V60 but they were kind of too expensive for me. Finally I decided to go with Golf as it had the most features for the money (it had even more features than Kia). However it was not the most pleasant car to drive Focus and 308 were far better rides (more precise steering and suspension). The engine was better than Kia's but Renault's and Peugeot's felt better.

After one year and more than 12000 km of driving the car both on city and on the countryside I can say:

1. It is not a city car - too long, hard to park, fuel consumption quite high (~9 l/100 km) due to the fact that I drive short distances.
2. Interior feels cheaper than previous versions and is prone to scratches. The interior fabric gets dirty easily and the black colour makes it visible immediately
3. Not the most comfortable chairs.
4. Trunk is big enough.
5. Lacking independent suspension on the rear wheels reduces the comfort for passengers.
6. The clutch smells burnt on moderate effort (parking manoeuvres, steeper hill roads) although it works (until now)
7. Infotainment has some bugs especially with Android Auto.
8. I expected more storage space (eg. under driver's seat)
9. Upgrades are quite expensive (eg. ACC, cameras)
10. Fuel economy on long countryside rides.
11. Good looking but not stunning.

What I am missing is the quality that makes this car unique. It's above average in every aspect but...

Latest

As I haven't written for a while:

1. Got annoyed about the stupidity of our parliament and parties. IQ test should be  mandatory for all candidates. IQ less than 90 should be forbidden. They acted as if their average IQ is well below 80.

2. Building an acrylic bending table.

3. Code Kata on http://open.kattis.com - it helps me brush some algorithmic skills.