April 2006 Newsletter
If you don't know where you are
going, any road will take you there.
–Lewis Carroll,
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous. –Henry Ford
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. –Helen Keller
Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. –Carrie Fisher
The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence. –Lyman Bryson
Live out of your imagination, not your history. –Stephen Covey
You can give in to the failure messages and be a bitter deadbeat of excuses. Or you can choose to be happy and positive and excited about life. –A.L. Williams
It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. It is those who have achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up. –Charles Sorenson
The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life—mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical. –Julius Erving
Many IT managers do not have a software development background, which can
hinder their effectiveness. This article
presents a few principles that can help IT managers succeed including
documentation standards, version control, and issue tracking.
http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/24/1552213
Enterprises are realizing the importance and value of consistent data
across systems and making efforts to accomplish this. Experts indicate that the success of web
services enablement depends greatly on good data.
http://www.infoworld.com/reports/06SRmdm.html
The Pragmatic Programmers
offer some excellent tips on the soft skills of development, such as how to get
started on a project, how to know when you are finished, and how to be
successful.
http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/art_computer_programming.html
RFPs (requests for proposal) are a common tool to get vendor
information. Being specific enough
without letting out any important secrets is the key to a good RFP.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1937439,00.asp
This article discusses how to be on the lookout for the "magic
bullet" and other panaceas for software development problems.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=456822
This satirical look at project management raises some good points about
the often foolish approaches that managers take in the name of project success.
http://www.q-success.com/articles/guerilla_tactics.php
Even though IT budgets are a little bit bigger in 2006 than in the past
few years, technology executives are concerned that they won't be large enough
to keep up with business demand as the overall economy improves and businesses
expand.
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1930263,00.asp
Estimation of resources and effort is still one of the most challenge
parts of any development effort. This
excerpt from a new book on
project management gives some thoughtful ideas and techniques to assist in
estimation.
http://www.stellman-greene.com/aspm/images/ch03.pdf
Randy Rice discusses how to apply the scientific method (observations, hypotheses, prediction, and experimentation) to software testing. The technique allows you to apply logic and rigor to your testing approach.
http://www.riceconsulting.com/articles/science_of_testing.htm
This is quite interesting, since this is one of the most prestigious awards bestowed by the ACM and it was awarded for research in the area of software testing and defect detection. The recipient focused on how large groups of users can effectively test an application with minimal intrusion on the use of the system. Check here for more information on on-going efforts in this field.
http://campus.acm.org/public/pressroom/press_releases/3_2006/liblit.cfm
This article provides a basic introduction to the concepts and techniques of software testing. It's not a be-all, end-all document, but helps new testers (or non-testers) understand the landscape. The author has a very practical approach to testing.
http://www.testengineering.info/testprimer.html
The SoftwareTestingWiki is a comprehensive resource for many topics about conventional and automated software testing. It has a very active community of participants and, since it's a wiki, invites anyone interested to participate.
http://www.softwaretestingwiki.com/
This article looks at the unintended consequence of improved testing in one area of the process (e.g., unit testing) causing testing results to worsen in other areas of the process and vice versa. Very interesting observations and concepts and it supports the idea that unit testing does not eliminate the need for comprehensive integration and system testing.
http://www.qualitytree.com/ruminate/032006.htm
This nice chart shows the history and relationships between major
programming languages over the past 50 years.
http://www.oreilly.com/news/graphics/prog_lang_poster.pdf
If you do any sort of Unix/Linux shell scripting, at one time or another
you will probably need to use the facilities of the awk
language to do some text processing or manipulation. This article gives a good overview of the awk basics.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8913
Web browsers are great for typical web browsing activities. But sometimes you need something a little
more powerful to get the job done. Enter
wget,
which is available for most modern operating systems.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/lifehacker/20060317/tc_lifehacker/geektolivemasteringwget
To fully exploit the power of Unix/Linux, it is nearly imperative to use
the power of the command line. This
introduction to the command line gives some practical examples of how the shell
can be used to efficiently accomplish a variety of useful tasks.
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/eserver/library/es-unix-commandline/
This book chapter provides some excellent and practical advice for
advanced SQL techniques, such as paging query results, selecting top n results,
selecting rows with minimum and maximum values of a column, etc. The book has good examples and explains the
logic of each. The examples included are
specific to DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server or MySQL and PostgreSQL for each topic.
http://techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/downloads/home/oreilly_sql_cookbook_c11.pdf
In a recent conference, a former Microsoft and Apple executive reported that many organizations are requiring that people turn off cell phones and put away PDAs and laptops during meetings, so that people will pay attention to the meeting itself. This seems like a good trend to follow.
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/03/hey_there_pay_a.html
Many people in the workplace focus on the appearance of busyness. This author rejects the notion that we need to constantly be "doing something" in order to a valuable asset to our organization. This is a completely refreshing view of work life.
http://botulus.net/blog/insights/looking-busy/
Math is one of my passions. Math is not only useful, but it helps in your critical thinking skills and helps us to the understand the beauty and order of the universe. This article provides some simple, sound reasons that you can give to your kids when they ask why they should take more math in school.
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i11_math.html
Despite the title, this article has very little to do with sex. The reference to sex is essentially to make a point about how easily we are distracted and lose focus. This wonderful article talks about how we as a society are trading speed and quantity of information for meaning and quality.
http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay51.htm
Many technology professionals are concerned about losing their jobs due to outsourcing/offshoring. This list includes jobs in three basic categories that are not likely to be outsourced because they support outsourcing efforts: customer facing, enablers, and infrastructure jobs.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177104711
From age 20 on, Benjamin Franklin
established 13 goals/characteristics that he wanted to live by. With few exceptions he graded himself on a
daily basis about whether or not he'd lived up to these. All of these seem like traits of
http://www.flamebright.com/PTPages/Benjamin.asp
This author suggests that the single most important factor to career success is responsiveness.
http://www.michaelhyatt.com/workingsmart/2006/02/whats_the_secre.html
A recent survey indicates that technology and the concomitant increase in the pace of life and work is making work harder and not easier. From the study, workers completed about 2/3 of their work on a given day compared to 3/4 in 1994.
http://news.com.com/Tech+makes+working+harder%2C+not+easier/2100-1022_3-6042719.html
Contrary to the report above, 3/4 of telecommuters believe they are more productive and 2/5 think that their bosses agree. Curiously, the survey also finds that 10% of home workers do so au naturel.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181500420
There is still much debate about whether private offices or cubicles are better for knowledge workers. Offices allow a person to block out distractions, but sometimes the isolation reduces communication. In addition, the "inventor" of the cubicle is having second thoughts himself.
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,107570,00.html
Faces is a cross-platform, graphical project management tool that aims to be more functional than using spreadsheets, but simpler than commercial tools. Faces even provides simulation tools that allow you to do "what if" scenarios. It is as very well-designed and comprehensive tool and a great alternative of MS Project.
vnc2swf is a free cross-platform (versions available for Unix, Linux, Windows and Mac OS) tool that will record a VNC session as a Flash SWF file. This allows you to create a screencast, including audio, which can then be shared with anyone who has a Flash player.
http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/index.html
SQL Developer is an Oracle-provided tool for interacting with Oracle databases (versions 9.2 and above, including Oracle XE "personal" database) that provides a much richer environment than the standard SQL*Plus tool. This tool provides tabular views of query results and allows interaction via a tree view with all of the database objects (tables, views, indexes, procedures, etc.).
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/index.html
XLogoff is similar to the Unix logoff functionality, which allows you to preserve your current session and have the same applications restarted automatically at the next logon. Supports all standard logout-related actions such as shut down, restart, and logoff and the user can specify keeping the previous session, the current session, or clearing the session for the next logon.
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/xlogoff.asp
Xming is a port of the free X11 server for Windows systems that does not depend on Cygwin. It simply provides the X11 framework for running X/Windows applications, which must be obtained separately.
http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/
This small, multi-function utility is intended to be put on your USB "thumb drive", but can be used standalone. It combines many applications, including e-mail client with address book, FTP client, calendar, calculator, small spreadsheet, and even a few games, into a single small application.
http://www.koma-code.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=87
HSQLDB is a unique, pure-Java, embeddable database engine that uses standard SQL syntax. It is small, lightweight and can run completely in memory in most applications, with standard data persistence/serialization. Some well-known applications that use HSQLDB include JBoss application server and OpenOffice 2.0.
Most users are familiar with the Windows Task Manager and the ability to terminate applications or processes from it. But Windows XP also has a very flexible command line utility called taskkill that comes in very handy.
In software development and testing, it is almost inevitable that you'll have an application that locks up and you need to shut it down. If this happens frequently with a particular application, you can easily set up a batch file (and even assign a keyboard shortcut to it) to simplify the job.
The most common options for taskkill are the /F and /IM options, which forcefully terminate the application and allow you specify the executable name, respectively. For example, I often run into problems with an application that uses two executables: CiExplor.exe and DataLayer.exe. The following line in a batch file would take care of terminating this application quickly and easily:
taskkill /F /IM CiExplor.exe /IM DataLayer.exe /T
The /T option does a "tree kill", which terminates any other applications launched by those specified on the command line in the /IM option. The taskkill utility also includes the filter (/FI) option which allows you to use wildcards ('*') for application names. For more information about taskkill, see this article.
Most people reference mapped/network drives by their familiar drive letter name. However, by default Windows Explorer shows the volume name first and the drive letter in parentheses. A quick registry change will display the drive letter first to make locating the appropriate drive in the Windows Explorer tree view more efficient. Here's how: Open the Registry Editor (Start | Run à regedit). Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer key. Add a new DWORD value in this key called ShowDriveLettersFirst and set its value to 4 (0x00000004). Close the Registry Editor and log out of Windows and back in again. (Other values for this entry have other effects. Setting it to 1 shows drive letters before the volume name for local drives, but not network drives, and setting it to 2 suppresses all drive letter names.)
typoGenerator is an online tool that creates background images for web site design. You provide it with some text and does a search via Google using those keywords and layers those images with various effects and than places the text you supplied on the image in random patterns. The results are unique and fascinating.
http://www.typogenerator.net/index.php
Science-fiction writers have always wondered what it would be like to travel into a black hole. Now astrophysicist Andrew Hamilton has produced a 23-minute film that provides a realistic view of such a journey.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2006/02/black-hole-flight-simulator.html
This site will help you let out your inner John Cleese. Create your own animated silly walk and share it with your friends.
http://www.sillywalksgenerator.com/
Here are some funny snippets from actual court transcripts.
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~diatchki/jokes/court.html
American Book Review's list of the 100 best opening lines from novels.
http://www.litline.org/ABR/100bestfirstlines.html
Sometimes the world just seems completely random and out of whack. For those times when you desire pure determinism and predictability, visit NoEntropy.net. J
http://www.noentropy.net/index.php