Crimson Reason

Monday, March 26, 2018

The Mythical Man-month

Full Text of The Mythical Man-month (downloadable from the University of Michigan):

https://umich.instructure.com/files/884126/download?download_frd=1

Friday, March 23, 2018

On Uber’s Autonomous Vehicle Fatality

From the Brookings Institution:

What Uber’s autonomous vehicle fatality tells us about the future of place:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/20/what-ubers-autonomous-vehicle-fatality-tells-us-about-the-future-of-place/

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Web Development Books

From Software Development Times:

"10 books every web developer should read to increase their software IQ"

https://sdtimes.com/webdev/10-books-every-web-developer-read-increase-software-iq/

I would have included "Don't make me think" @

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp/0321965515/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521640036&sr=8-1&keywords=don%27t+make+me+think

Learning Angular 4/5

If you wish to start teaching yourself Angular 4/5, you may wish to start at "Angular Tour of Heroes" @

https://angular.io/tutorial

Ted Neward has been writing a series of articles on Angular in the MSDN magazine; those might prove to be useful as well.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/magazine/mt829391?MC=CloudDev&MC=MachLearn&MC=WebDev&MC=MSAzure&MC=Windows

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

News of Self-Driving Car

From Grauniad of the UK

"I had an urge to do it, Your Honour," explained the car . "I couldn't help it. It's because of algorithm ADP666X999ZYTQX."

Self-driving cars are so good at mimicking human behaviour that they can be reckless and run over pedestrians in broad daylight!

I may be wrong but I am not aware of any such trials on open roads taking place in European cities when the technology is clearly not up to scratch.

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/uber-self-driving-car-kills-woman-arizona-tempe

Thursday, March 15, 2018

3-D Printed House

BBC -- Better than a garden shed

If it is an HP printer, you're going to need a lot of liquid-concrete cartridges, and they won't be cheap.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43411581

3D-printed home takes 48 hours to build

www.bbc.co.uk

It is hoped the technology can create better, cheaper homes for those who desperately need them.

Friday, March 9, 2018

GIZMAG

It could be yours for US$600,000.

Not sure it ticks all the boxes in terms of aesthetics 😝, but then again...

"I am going to give a car like that to the Dictator, sorry, President, of North Korea," tweeted Donald Trump. "Great gift for a great man. We are best friends now. I'm not going to nuke him now, not now anyway. Donald has changed his mind, as he often does: only stupid idiots never change their mind, people! (Melania, listen to me when I tweet: you might learn something, girl.) We're going to do great things together. The car will have to be made 100% of top-end US steel and aluminium, if we have enough of it to produce a flying car, as it is. If we don't, we'll use Canadian steel, not Chinese, because China is bad and I don't like China. All American for my new South Korean buddy, I mean, North Korean friend. The President of South Korea can have a 4X4 Chevrolet people carrier or something. Got to go and do some golf, my fellow Americans! Enjoy! PS. And remember: Donald is looking after you. Bye. PPS. And stay safe: Donald loves you. Bye. Bye."

https://newatlas.com/production-version-pal-v-liberty-flying-car/53724/?

Production-ready $600,000 Pal-V Pioneer Flying Car shown in Geneva

newatlas.com

The quest to become the world's first commercially available flying car grew hotter this week when the first production-ready flying car was shown at the Geneva Motor Show. The 90-only, limited-edition PAL-V Pioneer will cost $600,000 and the Liberty Sport edition comes in at $400,000 .

Thursday, March 1, 2018

In the news: Company Mission Statement:

In the news

Company Mission Statement: If waiters and waitresses can, You can!

I think those researchers have got it all wrong: chairs are a thing of the past -- we should all stand throughout our working day. But desks are a thing of the past too. They are so 20th century.

People should be made to walk around, balancing their laptop on one arm, and their bottle of mineral water and/or frappuccino coffee and/or anything else they may need on the other arm, thus moving around seamlessly and creatively around a futuristic, environmentally functional, Feng-Shui-designed open-plan office that is also a play area for adults and children alike, therefore addressing the dynamic and organic needs of The Space-Time.

PJ.

PS The Space-Time is a new concept currently trending on Twitter and Instagram that encompasses space, time, and everything in between. In other words, it gives meaning to Everything and is so, so super-meaningful, mega-cool, and like, useful. If you don't believe me, just Google it.

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Standing desks. Media and fans raved about them, even though little solid scientific evidence supports their alleged ergonomic and health benefits. In fact, many scientific studies show that they cause lower back pain and have other negative effects, like putting pressure on your skeletal and circulatory systems and increasing the risk of deep thrombosis and varicose veins. Now, a new research paper suggests standing desks have a negative effect on our cognitive abilities, too. [PS: It also gives you piles.]

A research team from Curtin University, in Perth, Western Australia, observed 20 subjects working for two hours on standing desks. The results–published in the journal Ergonomics–show negative impacts on both their bodies and their minds.

Defying Gravity

Monday, February 26, 2018

Venn Diagrams for IT

I have found it efficient to utilize Venn Diagrams in my IT work.

I thought you might like to know that both Visio 2016 and MS Word enable one to create Venn Diagrams.

In Visio 2016, File menu, click New -> Business, and then click Marketing Charts and Diagrams.

[You might need to search for Marketing Charts and Diagrams through the Search Box.]

If you scroll all the way down, you can see Venn Diagram.

In Word 2016, try the following:

Insert -> SmarArt -> Relationship and select the type of Venn Diagram that you prefer.

But these only create static diagrams that are not tied to data.

Our friends in the Bioinformatics community, needing to look at gene expression overlaps, have created many tools in this space.

Many have liked Venny (http://bioinfogp.cnb.csic.es/tools/venny/ ) which supports up to 4 data sets.

I have used VennDIS (please see: http://kislingerlab.uhnres.utoronto.ca/projects/) produced by the University of Toronto. It is a client application written in Java and supports up to 5 data sets.

I used it to discover overlaps among the attributes from 5 different schema.

I think Venn diagrams that are tied to data could help us better visualize and understand the Taxonomy and Data Dictionary of our systems.

[There are many more tools, it seems - many of them completely Web-based.]

Monday, February 19, 2018

Xianos Compiler

From UK - Xinaos - a parallel compiler for MSIL & C#

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/teaching/distinguished-projects/2009/m.tait.pdf

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Robot opening a door

From City AM of the UK

Opening a door is actually a complicated operation, as the laborious manoeuvre performed by the ugly quadruped of a robot shows. They could have given it some sort of head to 'humanize' it: a grinning clown, for instance...

Imagine arriving at a company's operations centre and having a thing like that opening the door for you -- unexpectedly? They'll have to call the Nurse Robot and the Doctor Robot and the Ambulance Robot in the wake of your heart attack...

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http://www.cityam.com/280516/watch-boston-dynamics-headless-robot-opens-doors-you?