Buffini's Blog

This is a plug for an old friend of mine, one Mr. Daithí Droney…

Daithí is currently one of the 5 finalists for Galway in the All-Ireland Talent Show, playing his own compositions on the electric violin. He’s an enormously talented lad, and definitely deserves as many votes as humanly possible, particularly from the Dublin region… He’s been playing for as far back as I can remember, and has a long, long family history of musical greatness.

Please send him a vote, and remember the old saying – vote early, vote often!

Links (to be updated as I get more):

• Daithí and his music on MySpace

Got fluffied by Mr Mulley this morning, at some insane hour like 5.48 am. Thats just crazy talk. Muchas gracis Mr. M.

On the plus side it means my site does actually work for people other than me, and if I can get the inimitable Mr. M to admit that the tofu “almost sounds nice” then I’ll just have to get to work  on more tasty stuff to convert ye all…

One thing I should note – the stuff I’m posting can’t quite be classed as recipes, more as templates or guidelines, in that it gives a very rough idea of how to make the dish but leaves the fine details entirely up to you. There is absolutely no point whatsoever in me telling someone how to make something the way I like it. The fajita is in your hands…

Handy links:

• Vegetarian Society of Ireland – for those wishing to become enlightened…
• The Vegetarian Society – the big one
• Allrecipes.com – good site for all recipes, as well as veg/tofu stuff…

1 block tofu – I find the Cauldron organic one best, can be gotten from the Health shop for about €2/3 something a block.
1 can pre-soaked chickpeas – Health shop or any decent supermarket really… pre-soaked means you don’t have to spend anytime monkeying around with it. Drain the chickpeas well.
1 jar of sauce – This can be whatever the hell you want. I generally go with some of Indian curry/balti sauce, Mexican spicyness, whatever, its really whatever you fancy. You can make your own sauce but I’m lazy, it takes a little longer, and the sauces are generally cheap and tasty. Aldi have a good few.

The important bit: take the tofu out of the pack and wrap it in kitchen tissue, place on a saucer and place another on top of it – the reason for this is that Tofu is packed in brine and soaks it all up. If its not properly drained before hand you basically get a load of water bleeding out into the pan and it makes it very hard for the tofu to pick up any flavour from your sauce… Its the both the curse and the blessing of the tofu. The saucer on top helps squish the water out. Do that for maybe an hour…

Pour olive oil (I’ve heard avocado oil is supposed to be better) in wok/pan and heat till smoky hot. Lump the tofu in the pan after cutting it into sufficiently small chunks so that it doesn’t take days to cook. (I always add chopped onions at this point but its to preference…)
At this point I usually add spices, salt, pepper, chillies, etc.. cos I likes it that way
Cook tofu until getting crispy good – Bit of an experience thing with cooking tofu, you’ll get the hang of when its done. Firm on the outside and fairly soft on the inside is usually the way.

If your adding veg this is a good point, add in, maybe some more spices and stuff, give a good stir fry until just about ready.

Add the sauce and chickpeas and leave to simmer for a while so everything picks up the tasty flavours.

Any and all measurements given are relative to how much you like the ingredients, how saucy/spicy you like it, its all entirely up to you

Enjoy!

Working on a business site for my dad’s building contractor company. Its pretty cool actually, because I can see all the other sites that are out there, I can see how its done and think to myself “Yep, thats how I would have done it”, and even realise a couple of things I have in mind don’t seem to be out there yet.

The trick here is really to work out a way to drive the traffic to where you want it to be. It doesn’t have to have to biggest shiniest flashiest site there ever was, but it does have to be easy to access, it has hit the key points, and it has to have that certain extra bit (No I will not use the phrase “X-factor”. Ever).

Where he has the advantage here is that he has someone reasonably tech savvy with a decent comprehension for whats required on his side, I either know how to get traffic/business to the site or can find out how to do it, and most importantly I’m free…

Working on it touches on an area thats bugged me for a few years. Some people, older people in particular, have a terrible fear. And its not so much a fear of technology, its a fear of the unknown, a fear of new things. I think that what should happen is, with the wealth of information now available to everyone, no one should be left out in the cold. No one should have to pay thousands of € to someone to create a simple 3 page website for them, if they can be encouraged to learn to do it themselves. Once they have a reasonable understanding it becomes so much easier. I’m not saying any silver surfer should be able to produce their own work along the lines of what the boys at Contrast, but the basics should be available to everyone!

Think of it this way – you probably wouldn’t go completely replumbing your house, thats what expertise is for, but you sure as hell wouldn’t call a plumber for a blocked sink if Mr. Muscle only costs €4…

The writing page will hold any sample writing, or posts on same, that I put up.

Right now what I propose to do is have my NaNoWriMo 2008 entry hosted here and possibly released under a Creative Commons attribution license, which would be kinda cool..  I don’t hold out much real hope of it actually getting read, but if any by chance anyone did then I’d love any feedback on it that you might have.

Disclaimer: The story is crap. I know its crap. But go easy, I was on a deadline and had an assignment due at the same time

How do people get their information? It occured to me recently that, while the internet is great and the ultimate resource for Life, The Universe and Everything, in general I prefer to get my information directly from other people.

Thinking about it, it seems to me that there could be a couple of possible reasons for this.

1. Laziness – When the situation calls for it I will go and search the BeJaysus out of something until I’m satisifed with the answers, so that doesn’t seem to be it..
2. Ease of access – there’s normally a better chance of getting information quickly from someone close by, particularly in a work context, but I will happily take my time and get specific items from specific people, and sometimes that can take a little time, so thats not it…
3. Contextual/Added information – whereby the information gleaned from a particular person will have added relevance due to situational experience, etc.. Closer to a winner here…
4. The personal touch – here we seem to have a winner. I like interacting with people. I’m a social beast, like most of the human race. I occasionally work from home and find the boredom to be stunning in the extreme, so I only do it when absolutely have to.

So it would seem that I like people. Todays instantly accessible information has given me direct access such as this, because in the past there wasn’t anywhere near as much generalised knowledge swirling around in both the aether and people’s head, so carefully lookup was needed to find information, meaning not as many did it.

The synopsis I draw from this (something other, much more clever people have figured out already ) is that the modern age with fingertip availability, social knowledge transfer, and the great swarm of data living in us all, is in fact yet another social enabler. People can interact even more now than ever before, and in new and interesting ways due to the magic of the tech and the evolution of society and societal memes.

Makes you happy to be knowledge foraging…

Interesting reading

1. Legacy software is essential software that cannot be changed at the speed which the user organisation requires

From a management perspective this is true. From a developer perspective this is largely false. The developer will know that there are often times when you can develop system updates, new architectures, etc.. at a speed that will largely satisfy most people. The problem arises with the users/market. The market will not be ready for the latest and greatest a company has to offer in the beginning, and frequently this will continue until a certain software maturity has been reached. The cost and risk factors also play large roles here. Spending, when weighed up, contrasted with all of the relevant factors and so on, will usually fall back to “If it ain’t broke….”. It frequently just isn’t cost/risk effective to update to the cutting edge, when the investment for the dull hammer has already been made and still works just fine.

2. Unless work is applied to counteract the appearance of legacy symptoms, any business-critical software is likely to become a legacy system sooner or later

Basically this statement boils down to two items: it can be maintained, or it can be evolved. Maintenance will involve fixing little bits and pieces, keeping things ticking over. Evolution will take the existing processes, tacit or otherwise, and create a newer, leaner, meaner and keener beast out of it. Its the football equivalent of keeping a team chugging along with the same players because they get along ok, and nothings reeeeeeally broken… whereas evolving the tem with new players, new trining methods, new coach, etc… will make it a world class competitor.Wrapping legacy systems, acquiring FOSS, modular development; all of these things are good and will, but its down to corporate mentality as well.. willingness to change and evolve will be core here..

3. Wrapping legacy software and it’s integration with newer software should be considered when replacement is too risky or too expensive

I’d agree and disagree here. Yes, wrapping should be considered if absolutely necessary, but NOT at the risk of compromising the system – from my point of view this would mean not wrapping if there is a reasonable justification for re-engineering the system/process/whatever, extracting all of the lessons learned from the current implementation. There should be some sort of bias in the judging system towards a new implementation, obviously backward compatible with the old junk, but this should nearly always be the best option. Preserving the old stuff for the sake of it or for penny pinching, etc, is just wrong.

4. In COTS-based projects the requirements are limited, shaped and conditioned to what the COTS vendors can offer

5. Component-based development provides value through cost efficiencies and trhough the emergent properties of the integrated applications

6. There are still limitations to the wide use of components, including issues of reliability, risk, trust and lack of support for the future evolution of the component

7. Successful open source acquisition and deployment requires tapping into other diverse sources for support and this requires a more diverse approach than when depending on a single supplier

8. Acquisition of open source software can be primarily motivated by a cost reduction strategy and not by the availability of the source code

9. Outsourcing beefits from a number of economic and technical efficiencies. However, this option may lead to a client’s loss of control over the software

10. Advances in methods and process capability of software organisations expand the types of software activities that can offshored

11. Instead of owning or licensing the software to run on your machines, you can rent time using it at some service provider

12. Software acquisition as a service (e.g. web services) requires adequate resolution of issues of responsibility, trust, risk and security

13. Software provision does not end with the selection of a source and the acquisition of the software and its documentation

14. Software acqusition consequences go beyond the immediate decision: they may have far-reaching impact

A very brief note to post on my incredulity at the prices of certain items on www.komplett.ie at the moment. I’ve been thinking about buying a small NAS for a while now, mainly to keep a hold of the large amount of content thats accumulating around me, and spotted a few very cheap items such as a 1TB USB drive (Western Digital Elements) drive going for €95… Though I’m convinced I saw the self same item posted for €78 about 20 minutes beforehand..

Either way, its a hell of a lot cheaper than previously. I’d say I could now get a decent home 4-bay NAS with two initial 1TB drives, for approx 400-450 inc. delivery. Nice.

Summary Points – The itemised summary of Section 1 given in the course material. What I will do is list the summary points here and give a brief analysis, interpretation and example of same. I plan to do this for each section in the course, so a reasonable overview of the material will be produced.

1. Software may not have brought about the economic benefits nationally that we could have anticipated

One of the understatements of the century, no matter what perspective you look at it from. Software is generally touted as the all-singing all-dancing answer to all of life’s prayers, but frequently falls short of user/stakeholder expectations.  Coming from a developer’s point of view I can easily understand this. I know how my software works, the limitations and capabilities, technical caveats and so on, but a non technical person could have real trouble. “Why doesn’t it do this?”. “Because of XXXXXX”. “… Thats a bit rubbish isn’t it..?”.

An example given is of productivity vs investment in IT over time. Studies by Landauer and others show that there was a marked drop in productivity as more and more investment in IT rolled out, but doesn’t really give much more on it than that. One thing we can infer here is that if we can make the graph go the other way, i.e. productivity rising, then we can safely assume that correct methods of software design, production, and equally as importantly use, have set in.

2. Software can fail in service often with disastrous results

Also very true. In service here meaning any production environment. If software is not correctly designed, requirements not properly and systematically elicited, if production is sloppy, testing non-existant, and without input from all relevant stakeholders, then failure is assured.This is a no-brainer. It will happen, no ifs buts or maybes.

The example given is of the Therac Radiation machines, but I prefer this one: The great Zune fiasco of 2008. Whereby someone in Microsoft had coded a specialised calendar check into the Zune software, and basically forgot about the existence of such things as leap years. In this case I’m not (solely) blaming the coder, that snippet should have been reviewed ten ways form Sunday, especially considering there’s already a trolley load of date and time functions out there.

3. Software is important in the automation of clerical functions, justified by the saving of labour costs and the increased accuracy and reliability of results

No, really? Software is not important, its critical. Not just for the automation of tasks, but for the error checking that comes with this. One tired and bored clerical officer can do the same process for the same set of files 4/5 times and come out with different answers each time. Machines don’t have this problem. If the software is told how to do it right the first time, then it will do it right the first time, and the second, and the third…

Its not so much that the cost of is justified, more that is essential..

4. Software offers new opportunities for enterprises to deliver their services and products more effectively and more efficiently, and even create new products and services

This is true – in the modern world the average business or even home cottage industry type person can get themselves online and trading away with world wide exposure for about €100. And that includes the costs of the web hosting. Without the services built on software, they wouldn’t be of particular use, but them they are invaluable.

5. Stability cannot be relied upon – change is always with us, but has become more intense the advance of technology and the globalisation that accompanies it

This is a good thing rather than anything else – the more the market/industry/scene/whatever changes, the more we will see new and innovative ways of creating and using software, often in ways never dreamed of before. Software, automation, call it what you will, it has busted its way on to the scene and has now taken complete control. It is at the core of every business (or should be), and the world economy would collapse without it.

6. Rational and scientific approaches to developing software have their limits, limits that are matched in other areas of human activity and marked as postmodern

I consider this a bit of a contentious one – there is always a lot to be said for the human approach, etc, but at the end of the day it should still all boild down to a rational approach to your process. If your methods or results can’t be analysed in some way (and I’m including as yet uncovered methods of analysis here..) then I would think that it probably isn’t all that effective. I’m not a big believer in the “limited” idea.