Design Aiming

Know your weaknesses. If Engineer A has less knowledge and experience about a particular area than Engineer B, he will make bad design with much greater probability.

Let's call the ability to make good design "design accuracy". Here are shooting results of two engineers:

Surely, Engineer A will spend more bullets, but with each new bullet he narrows down his hit area and can in the end produce a result comparable to that of Engineer B. Given that he is able to learn on his mistakes.

He just shouldn't stop.

If you've done something ugly, tear it down and try again.

There, fixed it

I think Alexander Macdonald's FlasCC logo is simply brilliant.

But it's missing a 23-kiloton explosion in the middle:

Windows 8 Task Manager Rocks!

One of the very few things that have really been improved in Windows 8 (from my subjective point of view) is the Task Manager.

It is a perfect example of how things should be done: a feature-packed core wrapped in a beautifully laconic user interface. I'm sure this improvement hasn't gone without Mark Russinovich involvement: the new Task Manager Performance tab reminds a lot of Process Explorer.

And two very useful features have also been integrated into this tool: services and application startup management. You can clearly see that besides man hours, a lot of thought has been invested into this upgrade. Whoever has done this, receives my appreciation!

Business structure of code

Why your typical game code is always full of managers? I wouldn't trust my important stuff to some lowly "manager". Maybe that's the key to having a successful project: having entities that *care*? How about a director? That sounds like a responsible guy.

I gonna tell you, and that's 100% true: after hiring a director, the code business of my home project got back on the track!

Who knows what benefits your code can get from owners, producers, shareholders, leads and architects? Maybe we've all been missing tax and police officers? Hell, next time I'll try working with some army people. I'm sure captains and colonels will put all these silly classes in order.

Vacation Lessons: Critical Microbiomass

In Soviet Russia, vacation has you.

I have to admit: I haven't learned this lesson. I've been in the class, listened to the lecture, done some homework, but the understanding didn't follow. So let's just see some facts, maybe you will find them handy or entertaining.

Initial conditions: 4 people; 2 of them on different stages of immaturity; everyone is full of hopes for the days to come.

The result - this:

Read: "an infinite loop of recycling biohazard". I don't know why. Weak immune systems, strong microorganisms or harsh Montreal winter, but these tiny fellows were the ones partying all this time. They didn't stick to the same club, but preferred changing places now and then. Let's try to illustrate this:

In other words, very entertaining.
This produced a particularly exciting mix with a typical timetable of an adult's day in our household:

Which explains the look on my vacation face:

There must be some important message in the whole story, but it's been hiding from me. Seems like it's just "this is what you get when you mess with us". Or "told ya".

Carry on then!

Vacation Lessons: Naive People Pay Twice

It was New Year's eve, and our boots, dirty from holiday snow, were resting in the corridor. We have kind of forgotten to bring them inside. And lo and behold! The next morning they were missing. Not all of them though. Only so-horrible-that-even-i-am-ashamed-of-them boots of mine were still waiting to be invited inside. The rest were gone.

Where did they go? Why didn't they leave a note to us? The walls were silent. Our neighbors have shed a quantum of light on the issue: someone had a big party on our floor. Someone had an argument in front of our door. Sigh.

The superintendent of our building couldn't help us with our search, and besides, how dare we leave personal belongings in the common area? Didn't we know that it's prohibited by condo rules?

Yes, we did. But as usual, a series of mistakes leads to a sad finale. I shouldn't have believed in the good of people and shouldn't have suggested to leave the boots outside. Someone should have brought them home once the snow has melted. So there we go. Bye-bye boots, we loved you.

The worst thing is that our kid needs something on his feet to walk through the snow. So we just had to order the same boots for him. But Ecco customer service sucks is performing poorly and the boots still haven't been delivered.

Lesson learned!

Vacation Lessons: SMD, c'est fun!

On the same electronics note, I had a chance to try some SMD soldering. I've taken my kid on the trip to an electronics store, which meant I'd inevitably have to buy something for him. But his choice was surprisingly good! An Xmas tree with blinking LEDs, SMD-style. It was a rare case of mutual agreement.

Soldering these tiny elements was fun. Lesson learned: I need a desoldering wick and a smaller soldering iron tip. So here's the end result, look at the quality and enjoy a good laugh!