Bunk and Rambling

From scrumalliance.com…

Often, questions starting with “why” can be construed as being confrontational, but asked with a genuine interest in learning the reason behind something it is possible that we can stop “wasting a lot of good meat:”

The grandmother stared at her daughter in amazement.
Every time you cook a pot roast you cut a 1/4 inch off the ends?
Every single time?
Yes!
She answered her mother.
Every - single - time, just like you showed me.
Honey, all I can say is you been wasting a lot of good meat over the years. The only time I ever cut the ends off the roast is if it’s too big for the pan!

Recently I have been thinking about approaches to learning. This stems from the constant demand my role as a consultant places on me to convert requirements expressed in the language of the business domain into working software. How we learn differs from person to person, and in many cases we are not even aware of the devices that we use to process new information. Tonight, while thinking about the way in which I learn most effectively, I recalled a poem by Rudyard Kipling that starts:

The Elephant’s Child

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

So if in future you are struggling with a new concept, try and recall these six questions to help you out.

Just happened across a cool article on instructables about using cheap USB components to monitor the status of a build.

From the article:

I chose to solve this problem with a salvaged USB keyboard, since they are relativelycheap, and contain everything that is needed for three simple on/off outputs, in the formof the number, caps, and scroll lock LEDs.

see USB controlled mini lava lamps

You would not be alone in thinking that a blog entry on Bruce Schneier’s blog talking about a book with the title A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates published by the Rand Corporation in 1955 would be likely to put you to sleep. In this instance however, Bruce’s recommendation to check out the comments for this book on Amazon will surely prove you wrong.

I would consider it a rarity for a business system not to make use of dates for some reason or another. Using the standard date libraries with the JDK is just a pain, one that I would prefer not to deal with. Fortunately, my current project team selected the Joda Time library as a replacement for java.util.Calendar, java.util.Date and theassociated parsers, formatters, etc available in the JDK. Beyond the ease of use of this library has compared to the standard API, our choice was further justified recently when we were asked to introduce a function to set the system time for testing purposes. Simply put, Joda Time allowed us to add this functionality without having to change any of our existing code.

To illustrate the ease of adding this functionality to our system, the following code is what is normally required to get the current system date:

\tYearMonthDay today = new YearMonthDay();

Adding the ability to change the date of our application (without actually changing the system clock) does not require a change to the above code. Instead a simple utility class has been provided in the Joda Time library, DateTimeUtils. By calling either setCurrentMillisFixed or setCurrentMillisOffset it is possible to change the date/time that the default YearMonthDay constructor uses for its internal state. DateTimeUtils.setCurrentMillisSystem can be used to restore the default bahaviour of using system clock to determine the value for the YearMonthDay default constructor.

Just came across the Carnival of Agilists blog. The blog is a fortnightly summary of “Agile happenings in the blogosphere.”

Just came across a couple of good references on storing browser state using windows.location.hash in Javascript. This allows Ajax applications to be Refresh and Back compatable.

• Ajax: Tackle the Refresh Button
• Developing Ajax Applications That Preserve Standard Browser Functionality