Category Archives: Random

Miscellaneous posts, things that come to mind with little or no notices, etc.

Too abstract for my own good

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It’s clear from reading some of my recent posts why I get a lot of “you’re an abstract thinker” comments–I’m a bit all over the map. Frankly, it’s a struggle I’ve had for awhile, but especially since I started blogging almost two years ago.

How can I effectively capture something of value? How is value to be measured? What is the right balance between the protection abstraction can provide (e.g. no IP or otherwise competitive leaks) and the bewilderness (at best and dismissal at worst) that the same abstractions can generate?

In order to trend toward more measurable value in terms of concrete thinking, I am giving some thought to how to re-categorize my posts, what to focus my posts upon (e.g. series on various subjects of expertise and curiousity) and how to better engage my readers–assuming they all haven’t bailed of late.

While I may still blog primarily as a personal outlet, those that know me, especially professionally, know that I prefer a conversation–the more interactive the better. How can I change the current void of comments without incurring the disease of comment spam? What subjects do you want to hear me address?

These are all still very open questions for me personally. If you have some thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you.

Bill Gates’ keynote impressions

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In semi-chronological order, here are my notes from Bill’s keynote:

  • The “It’s what you bring to life” statement in the opening video before Mr. Gates took the stage made an impression on me for some reason.
  • I thought it a bit ironic that blogging is encouraged here and yet the public address person told us all to turn off our laptops.
  • Lifestyle … “workstyle”
  • Bill’s pun about software being as reliable as electricity was good-humored given yesterday’s blackout in downtown LA due to crossed wires.
  • According to Mr. Gates, software is the great enabler and it’s being underestimated in this capacity.
  • The college recruitment video was funny. “Cloberate” will now replace “collaborate” in business speak. :-)
  • 2005 marks the year where more broadband users exist than dial-up users.
  • Tools make platform advances reasonable (approachable, consumable, worth the investment).
  • Server-service symmetry is about providing a continuity of features and functions while allowing customer choice where hosting, admin, etc. is concerned (i.e. server – customer-run on premise, service – vendor-run off site).
  • Office is still promoted as Microsoft’s exemplar application (e.g. where smart clients are concerned).
  • The most compelling element didn’t involve Mr. Gates. It came when the reigns were turned over to Chris Capossela in order to demo Windows Vista and Office “12.”
  • Vista took the demo stage first. The “Clarity” emphasis was clearly demonstrated via the new “Flip Bar” (i.e. refactored Alt+Tab UE), the pervasive “Quick Search Bar” and “Virtual Folders.” Virtual Folders as simply XML documents is compelling to ISVs like mine who need to deploy specific views (and metadata painting portals) to their users. The Windows Sidebar reminds me of Google Desktop Search 2′s Sidebar, Apple’s (Tiger) Dashboard and Yahoo!’s Konfabulator acquisition. The fact that it’s a platform in its own right (along with Sideshow) is interesting (e.g. building “gadgets” for EMC | Documentum). BetaNews reports on gadgets, too. The way that IE7 takes tabbed browsing to the next level (i.e. “Quick Tabs”) reminds me of Apple’s (Tiger) Exposé. The fact that Vista has a built-in RSS store (i.e. yet another platform for development) is very compelling. It will be important to see whether or not annotations above feeds will be fully portable and open, too.
  • Office “12″ finished the demo (i.e. Excel then PowerPoint then Word then SharePoint and finally Outlook). With the new user experience (i.e. in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook (shell) and Access only), “every user becomes a power user”–because he can more easily discover the full potential the application provides. The “pick before you click” philosophy in the suite is compelling (i.e. new galleries and hover-based preview functionality). When the WSS3 Recycle Bin was demo’ed, it received applause. The “pitchbook” application demonstrating deep integration between PowerPoint and SharePoint was interesting, especially the ability to mark individual slides in the pitch book for automatic synchronization by SharePoint. The “To-Do Bar,” RSS integration and InfoPath integration in Outlook look nice and feel highly usable.
  • The same indexer, the same search engine will be shared across MSN Search, Desktop Search (Vista) and Outlook Search.
  • On Vista, the Office “12″ open dialog (and the other common dialogs?) is the Vista open dialog.

While waiting for David Folk et al to show up for coffee, I noticed that there are a low number of women again at PDC (although it does seem like the ratio is growing) and there are a large number of guys that lack basic fashion sense (e.g. the muted, monochromatic, washed-out look seems to be accidentally in style around the halls).

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Real architecture

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I’m really not a software architect. I just design train routes for my son.

 

Real architecture
 

But, as I’m reading in Emotional Design, laying tracks is making up for the sensory deprivation I suffer from interacting with most software. :-) (More on that read later…)

What is volatility?

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This question was raised within the 1996 annual report for American Funds‘ SMALLCAP World mutual fund and accompanied by the following Ibbotson Associates chart:

 

Volatility is in the eye of the beholder
 

The report goes on to state: “Most people instinctively know that volatility and risk are related. But they’re not synonymous. Volatility refers to the amount of fluctuation–both up and down–that an investment may experience. Risk is the perceived possibility of loss (or the perceived loss of purchasing power to inflation). … The charts above are an attempt to show that olatility, like risk, is in the eye of the beholder. Each uses the same data to illustrate what happened to small company stocks between the years of 1973 and 1982. The first chart (which we tend to think reflects how most people view their investments) traces the month-by-month percentage return. The second plots the cummulative effects of those monthly returns on the value of a $10,000 investment. The third shows the cummulative annual change in value of that same investment, illustrating how short-term fluctuations generally smooth out over time.”

I’ve always appreciated this chart’s visual reminder to perspective when investing, but lately, it’s caused me to think about its applicability to my profession of software development in a number of ways as follows:

  • What kind of environment is set by executives, line management and architects like me to those in the trenches? How are decisions perceived once conveyed?
  • In the context of mentoring and contributing to annual performance reviews of staff, how does the day-to-day translate into a curve of career development (or decline)?
  • What are the equivalents of volatility and risk in software development for my superiors, for me and for my subordinates?
  • Are context switches–the bane of most developers–about risk, volatility, or both?

How would you answer these questions? What connections, if any, can you draw here?