Curiosity is Fuel

Utter Disregard of Liberty: 2011 National Defence Authorization Act

2011-12-08T00:22:00.001-05:00

Have you seen the latest assault on the civil liberties of US citizens that the Senat voted on recently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act

Before any of us little people heard much about it, the US senate overwhelmingly passed this piece of injustice. Personnaly, I am very disappointed in the Democratic party as a whole. My own Senator Kerry voted yea, as did all the other New England senators, Reed, Blumenthal, Leahy, Shaheen...even my favorite democrat Senator Franken (MN). Shame on you, senators, especially as Democrats, for betraying your country's people and founding ideology for what I'm sure boils down to either direct promises of defence contracts or peer pressure thereabouts.

President Obama has said he will veto, but there's no guarantee as complexities arise and party pressure rises.

Section 1031 b2 contains "A person...including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities...", which due to the use of the word 'belligerent' and without explicit exemption of US citizens circumvents the right to free speech as declared in the Bill of Rights. In essence, I could post something on Facebook that slams the US invasion of Iraq in favor of Islamic fundamentalist ideaology, and that exercise in free speech could be interpreted at wartime as an act to beleaguer (in 'belligerence' of) the US government or Armed Forces. They could immediately knock down my front door, detain me without formal charges or legal representation, until the arrange for me to be transferred to a US military installation in Iraq, where they could torture and/or murder me with complete impunity. Oh, they could also do this to my wife and children if the do anything construable as 'belligerent' too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrXyLrTRXso

Section 1031 b4 also states that detainees can be transferred "...to the custody or control of the person's country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity", which fully enables the US to release a detainee without trial to the control of any individual or group that is not bound by the US Constitution or US Justice system.

In such cases, a simple coordination between the US and these other parties would allow operatives of the US with the intent to see that acts of coersion, torture, brutality, and even murder are performed against the detainee, to do so with complete impunity. Allowing US citizens to be transferred to the control of any 3rd party that does not abide by the laws of the detainees' country of origin in its treatment of US citizen detainees is equivalent to suspension of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Both these sections of the bill are wholely unacceptible as is and must be rephrased to explicitly exclude US citizens, unless they have already been proven guilty of a crime applicable to the "covered persons" subsection in the bill through due process by the established US justice system.

http://usawatchdog.com/national-defense-authorization-act-indefinite-detention-bill-senate-bill-1867/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrXyLrTRXso

Vid-a-thon: Robin Williams

2010-10-31T10:22:00.000-04:00

The World According to Garp
Good Morning Vietnam
Dead Poets Society
Hook
Toys
Birdcage
Good Will Hunting
Patch Adams
Bicentennial Man
One Hour Photo

When Lack of Wisdom Is a Virtue

2010-10-06T16:46:00.000-04:00

Today was the day. I got my bottom left wisdom tooth extracted this morning, under general anesthesia, and it only took about 45 minutes. The specialist, Dr. Dawn Ansello D.M.D. and her staff were phenominally professional, kind, and just what was necessary in an otherwise uncomfortable situation.

Here are the gruesom photos:

OEM direct from my gumline

Cleaned up, you can see the degradation hole from pressing on my molar

Just how I want people to remember me, hah. You can see the two root holes, pooled blood and all.

We Are Aliens Amongst All Our Searching

2010-10-01T23:32:00.002-04:00

Someone send me an email today. Says she had a "falling out" with her sister and brother-in-law over the topic of the mosque at ground zero. Of all things, none of them are actually involved, no money being made or friends being relocated to the projects because of it. But this person is so fundamentally religious, it's almost impossible to imagine her without that part of her character.

I think religion started as a way for people to not feel so alone. At some point it morphed into the need to control people, and now in the modern age is a way for people to feel different from other people. Its enough to justify anything I feel one way or another.

For people who are conviced they know what "the" truth is, as if there was any such thing, the world looks different. It looks like swiss cheese in every way...holes just waiting to be filled. And not with just anything, but very specific, important things. Things that the rest of the world either need to know badly, or are too ignorant to learn or accept. In essence, everyone looks like you need to help change them.

Change is natural. Our earth changes is so many beautiful ways, from sunrise and sunset to tectonic plates over millenia. This is not because we make it so. It occurs for reasons that do not follow of our individual wishes or beliefs.

Such is also the case with humans, it is our nature to evolve and change over time. This is what most contemporary western religions fail to admit or appreciate. Religion placates the natural desire to resist this change by promising false absolutes. The feeling that something is unchangeable is so foreign to our actual reality, that it often deleriously appears as hope against a backdrop of instablility.

This is where I break with the story. I don't mind seeing the world for what it is. If there is a need to feel safe, I will seek higher ground. If I need to resist an external influence, I will adopt a defence. If I want to risk something, I will go on an adventure. These are things we can choose to visit, and do not have to reside in.

I was born human. I was born into a world where change is intrinsic. Not a constant, but a theme.

I will be disappointed in American culture if we turn to fear of change for answers to the question of whether we should allow for equality of religious freedoms [insert your mosque or church or meeting here], instead of looking at how much we've gained in human liberties by releasing our grip on feelings of personal rightness and false hope, liberties gained only through clarity and perseverance [insert your bill of rights here].

More than likely though, the way our culture plays out their religious beliefs like baseball fanatics locked in to a yelling match about which team is better, yet can't see that good sportsmanship increases the value of the sport overall, Muslims and Christians are in for quite a fight.

A real shame, since there's so much in common.

A read through the Holy Quaran and the Holy Bible over the last month has really proven edifying. So many core principals alike, and so many outcomes equal in virtue. But it's those that are so pursuaded by religion that can't let go of the few differences when it matters the most.

Comcast Just Plain Sucks

2010-09-29T23:17:00.001-04:00

I've been a Comcast customer since 2002. Considering it is entertainment I've been paying for, I have to take anything I encounter with a grain of salt...however, I apparently am not the only person who things Comcast is a teamster-like ologopoly monster of a horiffic business.

Earlier this year, I called to upgrade my internet to something more than 256k upstream (because that's just intolerable), and found out that the $50 I pay per month is the same price that new customers pay for 2mb upstream. WTF! After 4 hours on the phone (no kidding), they told me they had to 'fix the billing code in their billing system' to reflect their current pricing structure.

Let me get this straight, Comcast will use any opportinity to charge their existing customers more for lesser quality service than they do new customers? To me, while I see the greed-benefit, this is the same as saying "the longer you're our customer and the more you prove your loyalty, the more we're going to take advantage of you."

Tonight I ran across a page on the Consumer Affairs website devoted to people's troubles with Comcast. After leasurely browsing the comments there, I realized it was page 1 of...117!!! OMG, 117 pages of hate mail to this company...big surprise there.

This comes from my recent interest in watching Dexter on Showtime, for which I had to completely re-arrange my Windows Media Center configuration just for the idiot box (not TV, the set top). I ended up paying 10 dollars more just for 3 showtime channels. Fortunately, other shows like Weeds and The Big C are also provided by showtime, so while I still feel majorly price gouged for the service I do partake in, I don't feel as sore about it on the nights where there's something mildly engaging on.

On a side note, I now have a nice 41 inch flat screen. I didn't buy it intending to make all standard-definition TV look like complete crap, or my old DVD collection either for that matter, but nonetheless, such is life. Therefore, I started looking in on what HD offerings Comcast had available in Massachusetts. This regional bullcrap needs to either submit to national business guidelines, or local offices need to not call themselves Comcast because "prices and participation" vary so greatly.

What a frigging racket, the slavenly bastards who run the cable companies need to be put on trial.

And it's not just the CEOs. Everyone from the marketing people to the truck techs that come into your house and treat you like a child represent how degenerate the whole model is. I afront every person collecting a paycheck with "Comcast" on it, I don't even care if you're a 'decent person'. Working for the company is tant amount to street walking. Hoars. You can keep your ill-conceived CableCards, your rediculous set-top boxes, your fallatious 'special promotions'. Oh, and leave room for some other internet service providers, you four flushing facists. As equal of a devil as FIOS is, the only reason they don't service my area is because you people run my local government, #&@$%.

To think, I was this close to dropping $399 on a Ceton Quad Digital TV Tuner yesterday.

Very soon, I'm going to cancel my Comcast service completely. TV and Internet. We'll live off of Hulu, Netflix, and some other form of high-speed internet. Then I won't be a complete hypocrite for posing this entry.

Altered States: Needs More Cheese

2010-09-24T03:04:00.000-04:00

Wow, just watched one of the backlog of movies on my Netflix queue last night. Lots of J. Walker plus horrible 80's psycho-drama makes for very interesting dreams thereafter.

I had queued this one up because I'm a big fan of William Hurt. It could have been a very interesting view into the early life of the same actor that starred in such screen oddities as Door in the Floor, Children of a Lesser God, Dark City, and Artificial Intelligence: AI.

But boy, I was expecting something like American Grafiti; what I got was home-made Doctor Who.

The special effects in Altered States is remenicent of a bad Doors video, lizards morphing into naked women, a room where primortial soup spirals to a center drain, and then there's the ape-man sequence.

This movie hit every branch on the way down.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080360/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnie_Walker

Monopoly: Lonely at the Top

2009-11-27T17:27:00.001-05:00

Is it just me or is winning at Monopoly a bittersweet situation.

When you loose, you have to wait for all the other people for hours and hours on end. When you win, no one else ever wants to play again.

Besides, it's too easy. The name of the game is 'equity'. Buy everything you land on, build as soon as you can, and always retain enough cash to pay the average rent of all properties on the board multiplied by five.

And if you're trying to buy your way into a monopoly, don't overpay all in cash; that always messes with people's heads in the wrong way. They get suspicious of dollar figures. Instead, always offer two properties in exchange for one, offer a little bit of cash, and allow the buyer to have a few 'freebie' rent escapes (if they hit any of your properties, they don't have to pay, a few times only). This slight-of-hand often appeals more to people than a plain cash buyout.

Oh, and bankrupting people immediately forces all their money and property over to you. Don't forget that you can build, buy/sell, and collecto rent while in jail.

Is Facebook Pushy or Wise?

2009-11-16T22:18:00.001-05:00

This evening when I logged into Facebook under a computer running Internet Explorer 7, I got this message:

"You may want to upgrade your browser."

All I can hear is "for the good of the many, do us a favor and fix your junk!"

The real question here is:

Is this pushy, since IE7 is a perfectly reasonable thing to be running even if IE8 is out
Is this really for the common good, since upgrading theoretically decreases your risk of security

Also, elevating Google Chrome and Safari (on the PC)...while perfectly democratic...is a serious encouragement not only for users to "try something else" (fine by me), but to potentially expose themselves to browsers that have much smaller support and security assessment teams behind them. I know Firefox and IE have serious resource behind them, I've seen the interviews, and we all see how frequently "zero-day" responses to security vulnerability come from Microsoft and Mozilla.

I know there are many aspects of this kind of argument that I have not addressed and that may be largely unpopular, but I thought I'd put it out there for anyone who wants to add to the discussion.

WtvWatcher 1.0.0.32 (Update)

2009-11-15T11:38:00.000-05:00

New version of WtvWatcher is out with support for 'Exit Time' and 'Processing Rules'.

http://wtvwatcher.codeplex.com/documentation

Thanks to the community for all the feedback!

Paul

First Week Stats for New WtvWatcher

2009-11-13T16:55:00.000-05:00

Looks like people are really taking to the new software. For free software that I wrote in my spare time, it's still surprising to me that sprinkling a few links here and there adds up to the following PR stats:

73 Codeplex downloads
150 click-once installs from indesolutions.com
1500+ program launches

Hopefully I'll be able to carve out some time this upcoming weekend to integrate some of the features/feedback that I've been getting in the forums. There are smart people out there, and alot of them are also the same people that like my software!

WtvWatcher Article on Hack7mc.com

2009-11-13T16:45:00.002-05:00

A new article on hack7mc.com about WtvWatcher writes:

"For those looking for a simple solution to automatically convert WTV files to DVR-MS, it doesn’t get much simpler than WTVWatcher."

- and -

"...WTVWatcher performed flawlessly as expected."

- and -

"...WTVWatcher does what it was designed to do well and without any fuss or muss."

Nice to see I can write software that a) works, b) people like, and c) people share with others.

http://wtvwatcher.codeplex.com/

Donations for Free Software Are a Beautiful Thing

2009-11-09T18:44:00.001-05:00

Just received my first set of donations for WtvWatcher. Goes a long way to prove that people looking for free software are absolutely worth my time.

WtvWatcher Review on The Digital Lifestyle

2009-11-08T17:04:00.000-05:00

Looks like Simon May at TheDigitalLifestyle.com really gets my new WtvWatcher software. Aside from an earlier praise of the first version (console app), this newest post continues the happy sound of software satisfaction.

This open software thing is proving to be just the kind of response that Line of Business software never receives without a price. Free testing and feedback is definately something I'm going to take into my consulting and FT job moving forward. It's teaching me things you just don't get from a day job.

http://wtvwatcher.codeplex.com/

Automatically Convert WTV to DVR-MS

2009-10-04T02:37:00.008-04:00

I know there are already a handful of solutions to this problem out there already, but none quite as elegant as mine.

A simple .exe file to drop in your Recorded TV folder and launch on startup. Converts WTV files using the built-in 'WtvConverter.exe' utility from Microsoft, just automates the scanning of folder contents so you can sit back and enjoy.

http://wtvwatcher.codeplex.com/

Direct download link: http://wtvwatcher.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=33922#DownloadId=86184

Migrating from Wordpress to Blogger

2009-08-07T14:18:00.002-04:00

Today I had to hunker down and move wifey's blog content (sunshinewalks.com) from WordPress to a Blogger account. Our old hosting provider got hacked a while ago with server-side injection attacks such that, on a work laptop with Avast not working properly, the computer was completely compromised.

Anyway, after much research, I found that after an upgrade to the current version of WordPress, the content is most easily migrated to Blogger via this nifty conversion tool: http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

Netflix for Media Center Download

2009-07-08T16:14:00.002-04:00

This link was not easy to find. It comes through Windows Update in Vista, but not for the Windows 7 RC. Finally, I found it.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=147175&clcid=0x409

The Loudest Opinion vs. Hard Data

2009-03-27T00:20:00.004-04:00

I'm listening to a MIX08 screencast about the origins of the Office 2007 Ribbon, one of the most dramatic changes in mainstream PC user experience in almost 20 years.

The screenshot that gave me pause was this:

If only every software company had the capability of automatic feedback. They simplified the juice out of automated software deployment with ClickOnce in Visual Studio. Why not product feedback? Heatmaps, feature clicks, even function call statistics would jumpstart the current small-to-mid-sized dev shop culture, change their "well i think this is more important" approach to feature prioritization to a more "lets see what the data says" default mentality.

Maybe I should write a framework. Aspect-oriented you know. "Add this to your app.config" model.

Yeah, great, another side-project to feel guilty about.

Audio: "It Was Trivial"

2009-03-16T18:16:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090316_01.mp3]

Audio: "Directions to Your House"

2009-03-15T11:14:00.001-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090312_01.mp3]

Audio: "To My Optimist Friend"

2009-03-05T20:27:00.001-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090305_01.mp3]

Audio: "Great, Well..."

2009-02-25T19:59:00.001-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090225_01.mp3]

Audio: "A Concern, A Falsehood"

2009-02-22T20:15:00.001-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090222_01.mp3]

Audio: "Make Me Pretty"

2009-02-10T11:02:00.001-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090210_01.mp3]

Audio: "Tesla Machina"

2009-02-07T11:26:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090207_01.mp3]

Hyundai, Shove It...

2009-02-06T11:08:00.003-05:00

Is it just me, or has America lost all sense of when someone is outright insulting us?

Hyundai, a South Korean car company, now wants us to willingly call ourselves liars and bums, by entering what used to be legally binding agreements, now with an "assurance" that if we loose our jobs, we can opt out of the financial obligation we would otherwise have with them to finish paying these leases.

I for one find this to be an insult wrapped in the guise of salesmanship.

First and most insultingly, Hyundai predicates their short-term financial benefit on American job loss. I'm not against outsourcing or sharing what wealth we have, but I am against erroding consumer confidence and certainty in the ethics of a promise.

To be honest, I can't decide which party this brash assumption could damage more, Hyundai or the consumer. Assuming the majority of consumers that opt in to this program do loose their jobs, Hyundai's continuing revenue on these contracts would dissapear into thin air. I can just hear people saing, "that sounds fair", under their breath as they watch the commercial during superbowl breaks. There is nothing fair about Hyundai taking on potential risk when people randomly loose their jobs for otherwise unrelated reasons. A person's responsibility to maintain their employment status and pay their bills should not be supervised by a car company, which is what this contract infers. What, are they going to send a nice South Korean employment officer to follow you for a few days to confirm that you've lost your pride and financial culpability?

Also, loosing your job is horrible. Job loss is in no way an incentive to buy in to a financial committment such as a leasing agreement. The shame and fear that most family providers experience because of unexpected layoff is a serious matter. It is not to be used as the plot of a shameless superbowl commercial.

Secondly (and more insipidly), the idea that people can just opt out of a financial responsibility because [big fat lip sticking out] "oh bother, i lost my job, i can't possibly go out and get another one", makes me want to vomit. Things used to go, "don't make promises you can't keep"; but now after years of American overspending, other countries have caught on to our disease and blithely egg us on to be tant amount to liars. Next, we'll see people lining up to banks to demand more money because the money they had previously withdrew didn't satisfy them they way they hoped it would. How about we stop checking credit scores before handing out loans...o...o.oo...right, we're already in trouble for that, ignoring bad credit.

I rattle on like this because I am of a generation that has no real concept of ownership or true financial pride, and it frustrates me every time I see it. You have to work for what you want. Not everything is available for download for free. Hyundai, take your non-committal feckless ideaology and shove it. America need opportunities to learn our hard financial lessons, not another way to continue ignoring what it means to be responsible to our commitments.

Check Digits

2009-02-03T12:59:00.003-05:00

You learn something new every day.

I just learned about 'check digits', a geeky way to verify the validity of identification sequences and to identify data entry errors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_digit

At first I thought that the system I'm working with was at fault for including an 'increment by' value in its algorithm, in that maybe they were trying to leave space between assigned identifiers because they weren't reserving or locking the identifier source list; a crutch you know. But then someone suggested that it may be for a different reason, a reason from the banking industry: incrementing ensures a check digit.

Now, I have to give myself compensational credit in that the identifiers in the system I'm working with are used not to identify bank accounts, but rather people. It seems to me that the majority of errors in data entry are at a point of lookup and not data-changing commits. If it was the other way around, I may have thought twice about the volatile nature of activity around the identifiers.

Anyhow, the Wikipedia article is a good read. Mentions how many places check digits are used. UPCs, ISBNs, EANs, even VINs.

Eek! We're surrounded by them and I didn't even know they existed until today.

Audio: "The Lowly Porter"

2009-02-01T21:28:00.001-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090201_02.mp3]

Audio: "Let Things Come Between"

2009-02-01T12:06:00.001-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090201_01.mp3]

Audio: "For the Last Time"

2009-01-30T13:53:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090130_01.mp3]

Audio: "Recovery"

2009-01-25T13:17:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090125_01.mp3]

Audio: "A Clean Path"

2009-01-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090121_01.mp3]

How's Your Computer's Cholesterol?

2009-01-19T09:08:00.000-05:00

After the install of the new hard drives, and Vista installed, there was still something visibly wrong with my water cooling setup. The coolant was just not flowing like it used to.

I had disassembled the Vantec Stingray mounting apparatus a while ago in order to fit it in my now almost 50% custom fabricated chassis. I've had the Stingray since 2006, in two separate computers, dissassembled at least a dozen times, and to my detriment had substituted some plain H2O in a pinch.

These were all bad ideas.

First, after taking it apart and running some offline tests, it was clear that the approximate distance between the pump and the reservoir mattered greatly. The average water cooling pump mechanism isn't very powerful, and only functions optimally when all components in the apparatus are primed with coolant. So I put the pump and the reservoir close together again, and voila! Apparently, Vantec knows what they're doing.

Secondly, no matter how well the pump seemed to perform, the rest of the system just never flowed the way it used to. I had a hunch that there may be build-up in the copper blocks themselves, and to my deep chagrin, I was right. There was lots! My computer had plaque-filled arteries! Coolant snot was everywhere!

After all was said and done, using everything from turpentine to rubbing alchohol, toothpicks, q-tips, string, paper clips and lots of tissues, it had taken me almost four hours to clean out the blocks.

Finally, the system cleaned out and put back to working order:

Even Though I Don't Like Chicken

2009-01-16T19:35:00.000-05:00

Even though, as a rule, i don't eat chicken, I saw this little cornish hen in a store the other day and thought it was so cute I just had to eat it.

Stuffed with onion and clementine, basted with a concoction of olive oil, clementine juice, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, molasses, fennel seed, red pepper flake and oregano, and slow roasted at 325 under foil for 90 min then 15 min without the foil under the broiler, it turned out beautifully sticky and sweet. Rather nice flavor from the fennel seed too.

As you can see, the legs were frenched before cooking it. I also used skewers stuck horizontally through the bird so that when hung over a medium loaf pan, the drippings and sauce fell to the bottom of the pan. With the bird not touching the bottom of the pan, all sides cooked evenly through.

The bird was just under 1 pound, making this a bit larger than I like my roast-fowl-on-a-plate, but all in all it satisfied my weekend fancy tooth. Yay for my tummy.

The View From On Top

2009-01-16T00:40:00.010-05:00

After a complete re-install of Vista tonight, an import of my Outlook PST mailstore, and re-installation of the following applications, things are well on their way to being back to normal.

Oh, and, the 10,000rpm drives...totally worth it! Just flipping between Vista (10k RAID array) and Windows 7 Beta (7200 single drive) is like night and day. Funny thing is, Windows 7 technically boots faster than Vista, however there's a lot that goes on right after you log in that shows the naughties of the drive speed you're running on.

I opted to keep the Windows 7 Beta on the tertiary failover drive I was using during data recovery (and shameless impatience to try the beta out), and maintain Vista as my primary system. I've not been burnt by beta builds as others I've read about have, but it's enough to keep me on the OEM/RTM side of the fence, as the majority of the support/improvement/reliability efforts go towards the RTM, not beta products, as a general rule.

So, if I'm to be put through a full re-install, Ill definately have my gratuitous 'list-o-apps' that everyone else in the blogsphere is so keen on posting:

Intel Accelerator for SATA monitoring
ATI eHome Wonder drivers (TV Tuner)
Canon MX700 Printer Software
Daemon Tools
Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate
RealVNC (user-mode due to Vista UAC)
Avast Antivirus FREE
Live Mesh
Audacity 1.3 Beta
TweakVI
Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
LeechFTP (+data)
Adobe Photoshop CS2
WinRAR
SyncToy 2.0
Delicious Add-in for Internet Explorer
DivX Codec
DVD Shrink 3.2
DVD Decrypter
EditPlus 3 (+data)
Juice (+data)
mceWeather
Microsoft Image Composite Editor
Worldwide Telescope
Firefox
Visual Studio 2005 (+data)
Visual Studio 2008 (+data)
OpenOffice
Trillian (+data)
VLC
Windows NT Backup / Restore Utility
ISO Recorder
My Movies for Media Center (+data)
Life Extender for Media Center

[more to come...]

Five Thousand Dollars of Punishment...

2009-01-15T12:52:00.008-05:00

...for as five dollar size a crime as not keeping my RAID1 array at 100% health to begin with.

I was overjoyed last night to come home to two (2) new 10,000rpm drives, and the spring in my step exemplified my mood. It however was eventually pounded into a bitter submission pancake after Vista Complete PC Restore failed to bring my old system back to life.

With a few new tricks in hand, I plunged into the restore process. The first thing I did was setup the new drives into a RAID1 array, which for some reason juggled the boot priority around, but whatever. Then, through the 'Repair your PC' option on the installation disk, I confirmed that the computer setup was right (new array = disk 0) via the command prompt and 'diskpart'.

Finally, after waiting more than 45 minutes for 61GB to be restored from the VHD backup file to the new 150GB array (without any size or 'not enough disks' complaints), the restore process said it was complete. Yay me!

So I boot into Vista...and things were good! It installed a few new drivers for the new disk array, then wanted to reboot. Great! So i did.

However, after POST, Windows startup came screeching to a halt, displaying the following screen:

Subsequent attempts to restart failed, so I turned back to my Windows install disk to run through 'Startup Repair'. That failed miserably. So did my attempts to wipe the BCD and start with a fresh one. Foiled at every turn.

The apex of humiliation was that, after one more restart, Windows automatically ran a CHKDSK that obliterated the restored drive contents. Now it says: "Corrupt or unrecognizable drive contents". Sucks to be me right now. Reminds me of "Alderon chunks everywhere!" too.

Fortunately, I have a four day weekend, during which I will reinstall Vista, Office, and all my other applications. People complain about this kind of stuff, but fresh starts are opportunities. :) These are often the same people that somehow auspiciously end up with a thousand crappy applications in their programs list and simeltaneously complain about how their computer is uber-slow. It's because technology needs love, just like everything else.

VHD Stands for Very Horribly Depressing

2009-01-10T18:25:00.006-05:00

Tonight I'm researching VHD file format, use, and alternate recovery strategies thanks to the most recent hardware failure I experienced on Monday.

This article is sort of disheartening, in that it sounds a lot like what I'm experiencing.

But this article, even though not exactly the same as my issues, presents an unexplored venue in that RAID changes things a bit, but copying files out of a mounted VHD can still work well.

I've noticed that alot of people give up on the built-in Complete PC Backup feature, and cite better results using Acronis True Image or WinImage. Personally, I'd like to see this work, partly because I've learned to trust Microsoft products to be great when their used correctly, but also because one of my favorite principals, Occam's Razor, tells us not to multiply the problem by jumping to conclusions. I'd rather exhaust my resources before looking to a higher power.

In this critical hour, I find myself a friend of Ben Armstrong (a.k.a. the Virtual PC Guy). He has a crap load of content on the subject of virtualization on his blog, and some helpful hints for VHD junkies like me such as:

I also stumbled across this article on resizing partitions and VHD file sizes.

More to come...

Drive On, Alfred

2009-01-10T17:46:00.005-05:00

Not much surprise, but today I found the optimal replacement drives on (drumroll)...Newegg.

Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS

The CNET review is an added encouragement, as the two comments on the Newegg product page particularly pop out at me:

"Wish I had gotten two", which I am, so sweet!
"Boots Vista Ultimate in under 10 seconds", which again, I am, so super-sweet!

The other thing I tried last night is booting from the MicroXP ISO into a Virtual PC session with my backup VHD file attached as a second virtual disk drive. Some people have mentioned that you can do this, and that you'll see the backup contents, but all I see is files like a default install of Vista (i.e. Windows, Program Files, Documents and Settings). None of my files show. This might be because the VHD contains multiple snapshot layers from what I can tell, and maybe I'm only looking at the first layer or something.

Anyhow, I have to wait until the next paycheck to buy the drives. The good thing is that I can write them off in next year's taxes as a 1099 business expense. And I was feeling a little guilt about having to unexpectedly drop $360 (-$40 in rebates) on computer stuff, but yesterday my wife absolved me of that verbally. I like her.

Vista Complete PC Backup / Restore

2009-01-09T10:37:00.010-05:00

The woes of disaster recovery. I has them.

Usually, I'm smart enough to keep the RAID 1 array on my primary PC for its system C: drive in pristine health. But times are tough, and after the 7,200rpm pair drive failed about 6 months ago, I started to drool over 10,000rpm drives as they dramatically increase system startup and overall performance. So I didn't splurge then, and I've been running on one drive since.

This final pair drive failed on Monday. I now have no computer (not completely true, as I have 6 other computers around my house). Email, Facebook, audio recording, all other aspects of my digital life: poof, or at least not so easy to keep up.

Fortunately, I've been using Vista's "Complete PC Backup" feature, although not so fortunate when restoring as I would hope from a Microsoft product. I have an extra drive, different manufacturer, but same LBA. For the past week, I've been hitting this error:

"Windows Complete PC Restore operation failed. Error details: There are too few disks on this computer or one or more of the disks is too small. Add or change disks so they match the disks in the backup and try the restore again. (0x80042401)"

After quite a bit of googling and failure, I've decided to provide as concise list of my findings as possible.

Concepts to Note:

Look at what you're doing in the restore screens; this is not a quick and dirty process
New drive is truely not large enough to support old backup
The new drive has partition information on it that restore process isn't compatible with. Wipe partition information on new drive, and re-create old partition structure exactly as it was on bad drive.
The old drive had partition information that you either couldn't see or didn't know about. This complicates the process of restoring from VHD, but it is possible to exactly re-create the old partition structure on a new drive.
USB Keys, SATA drives, or other restore devices may not be automatically recognized by Windows Install, requiring device drivers to be specified. Or maybe wait to plug the USB drive in only after launching the repair console from the DVD.
BIOS boot drive priority changed. After swapping physical hardware around to replace failed drive, confirm that new drive is positioned as first non-CD/DVD drive in the boot priority screen. If restoring from an external USB drive, restore may be failing because the USB drive is prioritized over the new fixed drive.
Complete PC Backup absolutely needs the new target drive to be HDD0 (zero). Some motherboards never treat their first SATA drive interface as HHD0 even if you don't have a drive plugged into IDE0! Look at your BIOS boot screen and see how it labels the physical disks plugged into your target SATA interface. Also check the BIOS for any SATA operation mode of "legacy" or "SATA->IDE swap". This may allow your motherboard to forcibly treat your first SATA drive as IDE0.

REF: Google, MSDN, forums.

REF: Moving Vista to a New Drive via Complete PC Backup thread

REF: BIOS Boot Drive Priority

Notes on Drive Specifications

Not all [N]gb drives equal other [N]gb drives. Just because a drive says it's 80gb doesn't mean that it matches another type of drive labeled 80gb.
LBA stands for "Logical Block Addressing". It represents the number of addressable blocks (not bits/bytes) across the drive specifications. While drives with equal LBA values are *logically* the same size, they may have different physical characteristics such as heads, cylinders, and bytes per sector.
Microsoft has stated that Complete PC Backup should work with drives that are from different manufacturers. Likewise, the VHD backup file format is a logical backup, and therefore can be restored to drives of different sizes. Obviously larger backups cannot fit on smaller drives that the backup, but this allows Windows to be moved to larger drives without having to purchase OS proprietary, 3rd-party software to do the move.

I'll continue to update this post as I discover more fun details about the Complete PC Restore process.

Audio: "From Now Until You Forget Yourself"

2009-01-03T13:13:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090103_01.mp3]

Audio: "One More Vicious Cycle"

2009-01-01T13:12:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20090101_01.mp3]

Audio: "Glass House"

2008-12-30T13:12:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081230_02.mp3]

Audio: "To Ships They Pass"

2008-12-29T13:11:00.000-05:00

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Audio: "Sharper Tooth"

2008-12-28T13:10:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081228_01.mp3]

Audio: "Counting Habits (Refrain)"

2008-12-14T13:10:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081214_02.mp3]

Audio: "Counting Habits"

2008-12-14T13:09:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081214_01.mp3]

Audio: "The End of Us All"

2008-11-20T13:09:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081120_02.mp3]

Audio: "An Early Out"

2008-11-20T13:08:00.000-05:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081120_01.mp3]

Audio: "Middle Ground"

2008-11-14T13:07:00.000-05:00

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Audio: "Red All Around"

2008-11-12T13:07:00.000-05:00

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Audio: "Interchange"

2008-11-10T13:06:00.000-05:00

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Audio: "Frara Jaqua"

2008-11-06T13:05:00.000-05:00

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Audio: "Home Without a Home"

2008-11-02T13:05:00.002-05:00

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Audio: "Gold Stars"

2008-11-01T13:00:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081101_01.mp3]

Audio: "Wait Two Days"

2008-10-31T12:59:00.000-04:00

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Audio: "Will Never Get Off the Ground"

2008-10-31T12:58:00.001-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081031_03.mp3]

Audio: "Thursday Night"

2008-10-30T12:57:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081030_01.mp3]

Audio: "Mouths and Feet"

2008-10-26T12:57:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081026_01.mp3]

Audio: "Through the City"

2008-10-24T12:56:00.001-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081024_04.mp3]

Audio: "A Crow's Nest"

2008-10-23T12:55:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081023_01.mp3]

Audio: "Yawn, Stretch, Repeat"

2008-10-19T12:54:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081019_01.mp3]

Audio: "Stars We Can't See"

2008-10-17T12:53:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081017_03.mp3]

Audio: "Pfaff Machines at Work"

2008-10-17T12:52:00.001-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081017_02.mp3]

Audio: "It's Not Like It Was at Eight"

2008-10-17T12:48:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20081017.mp3]

The Key Ingredient

2008-09-20T11:14:00.011-04:00

So in my attempts to be as weird as possible and think outside the proverbial "box", I'm trying this new thing. No keys on my keyboard.

I loved the look of the docking control room in the Matrix Reloaded. Clean, spacey, very nice. There's something really sexy about a technologically IKEA-like future, don't you think?

Of course you do, it's why everyone bends over for a Mac.

Not because of what they can do, but because cleanliness in product design appeals to our human search for both simplicity and, simultaneously, our insipid desire to classify everything into terms we can easily feel comfortable with.

Back to reality though, I digress.

I've had a washable keyboard for a while now, and besides requiring a little more finger effort, it's great. But after looking online for ways to reuse all the old laptop keyboards for desktop interface, and to no avail finding that laptop keyboards are as subject to proprietary controller chip sets and interfaces as laptop LCD components are, I got pissed.

And not the good kind of pissed (meaning after a few drinks either) but rather as in the "...off" kind. As in "pissed off". Late, as in the late Arthur Dent. It's a sort of a...a threat, you see.

Again with the digressing.

I'm tired of running into brick walls when looking for smart ways to reuse old laptop hardware. Laptop hardware is to freaking proprietary! I know that it's form factor and shelf life dictate its reusability, but I don't care anymore. I say it now. Laptops are not our future. Mobility yes, ubiquitous computing oh sure, but most of the time laptops just suck.

Ah! The point, finally.

It then occurred to me: I could get the technophilic gratification from another source. I veraciously grabbed for the nearest PS/2 keyboard, stripped it of its plastic shackles, and viola!

Shut up. I think it's cute.

Never Forgotten, Never Lost

2008-09-12T16:28:00.002-04:00

Yay!

My friend Kirsten just sent me a gift! A real gift, like, in the mail and stuff.

It's a wash, I don't know which was better. The gift or the note that came with the gift. There's something to be said when friendship without strings (not unlike purely functional programming with no IO) proves enjoyable even across long distances or over time.

Now I'm not sure what the gift(s) are: soy sauce dishes, soap holders, or really really small soup bowls. But maybe that's the best type of gift...something with lots of potential.

Cheers, Kirsten.

Bathroom Touchscreen Media PC (Beta)

2008-09-12T11:49:00.010-04:00

This morning, I had some time to install the machine under the bathroom sink, tweak the noise level, and play around with it.

I also updated a number of features in the software since the alpha video, namely smoother scrolling and informational components on the queue screen.

The fruits of my labor: all our music and podcasts at our finger tips during showers, etc.

I'm suck a geek.

"Describe What You Do..."

2008-09-11T17:08:00.003-04:00

That's hard for people like me. Besides the obvious lack of communication skills I seem to muddle my way through life with (a concession), the question is not an easy one.

How do you wrap up discovery, innovation, instigation, vision, and intuition into one tea-time query?

"How do you hold a moon beam...in your...haaaaaaand?"

All jokes aside, the college is on the prowl for a new employee performance review framework. A task force has been assembled (you bet I'm in it), secret decoder rings have been handed out, and I now go by the name "4 of 18, secondary adjunct of technological bubble 01".

Ok, jokes are never "aside" with me. I can't help it. The situation I work in is, how do I put this...unfortunate. I have to keep humor about the situation. Just yesterday I was made to feel superfluous by a man who still thinks in terms of what he can fit in a CSV file. Move over, dude, your fear of BizTalk makes you obsolete. Without a certain sarcastic levity, I would be completely miserable.

*Note to self: am I already, and just don't want to admit it?

Anyway, this performance review task force has got me thinking about the nature of my own job. I've wanted a job title change (not to mention a freaking raise!) for a while now, ever since I realized that my skills would always be a tight fit for the place I work. It's not just that I do alot of different things, or that I carve out solutions to problems with teeth and bone shards.

Maybe the modern technologist (who currently aspires to be architect some day...soon), is required to be a jack-of-all-trades when placed in an NPO (non-profit organization). In a huge company like Cisco or Microsoft, sure, you're either a DBA or a programmer. But I've never experienced that clean, clear differentiation. That's why I gravitate towards the term "technologist".

Coupled with the right adjective or pro-noun, it could be just the job title I'm looking to put on my next resume.

Any other suggestions from the void? Anyone?

Error in the Brain or the System?

2008-09-09T17:16:00.011-04:00

Software abides in the space between the mind and the data.

This is a very unfortunate place to call home. There is such a thing as bad software, but when the ware is good, it too has to abide constant misunderstanding and imposed problems of over-simplification that we humans always find our way to.

Now I understand that not all of life can be represented or distilled into mathematical statements, but that never stops me from trying. :)

My most recent work has got me thinking about the nature of error in systems of technology. Aside from the natural world and its bias for chaos, as highlighted by the concept of entropy, people's need to summarize the monsoon of modern information itself seems to complicate things. People see error where there is only intricacy.

Intricacy is not complexity. They are two different things. Complexity is a measure of how much incoherence arises from imposing a given perceptual model on a given system of information. Intricacy is a measure of compositionality that the perceptual model provides to a given system.

Compositionality is a good thing. It is critical to good architecture. Some people mistake 'reusability' with compositionality. A reusable piece of code is not necessarily well composed.

The system I've recently created for the College has a high degree of compositionality, specifically so that I can impose levels of flattening *as necessary*. This person needs to see the data one way, this other person needs it this other way. They're just different mashups of the same things.

Bathroom Touchscreen Media PC (Alpha)

2008-09-08T22:39:00.009-04:00

After much surfing and trial installs/uninstalls, I've decided to just write the thing myself.

What thing?

The bathroom touch screen PC for playing podcasts and music, of course.

Granted, I don't spend *a whole lot* of time in the bathroom. When I do though, it's the perfect opportunity to catch up on podcasts and recently imported music. And since I don't want to scam my wife's iPod or run wires every time I want to do so, it makes sense to just put a PC in there for good.

The only thing is, I want it to be the easiest technology in the house. So I hook up my old Xenarc touch screen. It's mounted on a left over monitor stand which is sturdy enough. And if you've ever looked for free touchscreen-friendly media player and/or library management software out there, you'll know: there is no such thing, not for free anyway. And no amount of skins or font sizing makes for a better touch technology.

So I'll just write it. At least to the extent I need it for, music and podcasts, it's not complicated. I have a crypt of defunct car projects behind me to give me a leg up on experience in the scenario. And I already have a working WPF prototype, complete with smooth touch scrolling and folder recursion.

Computer, Refrigerator, or Both?

2008-08-30T10:54:00.023-04:00

I have alot of hardware at home. 3 vista media centers, a data server, one mini-ATX research pc, a PuppyLinux computer, and a mac (my wife's). 7 active computer total. It never stops.

Aside from being an IT administrator at home as well as at work, I'm a technology enthusiast. To date, I've put computers in: two cars, a backpack, a desk, a few picture frames, and now a fridge. What can I say. I like to fuss with my hardware.

PC IN A FRIDGE

After 5 years, I got sick components in my Dell Dimension 8400 dying. Two hard drives, two video cards, and a TV tuner card have all become the victims of under-ventilation in this PC. And not because of Dell's case, just my own ignorance on good ventilation.

But after a complete disassembly of the chassis and proper placement, the hard drives still ran at an average of 50C normal operating temperature. So after googling the heck out of various workarounds (e.g. fans, coolers, water blocks, etc.), I had the bright idea of using refrigeration to cool down the drives.

I searched for all relavent data on the matter, finding few posts about it, and a number of conceptual warnings about condensation. But as an enthusiast, a little heresay would be no deterent to my technological wanton desires.

So I bought a used Magic Chef fridge from a local craigslist posting for $50 bucks, and started in on some tests. To my surprise, it was more difficult to repurpose the thing than I had hoped.

The cooling element, which uses freon, is fed the gas through a central pipe. This pipe is often soldered or molded into place after the element is mounted. Numerous experiments to get this out failed miserably. I was not willing to expose my wife and our cats to stray freon gas, because a dead wife and kitties are, not surprisingly, hard to explain to local law enforcement. But seriously, I just wasn't interested in any kind of mess or toxic situation, in any amount or quantity.

The most common stated drawback to closed fridge cooling is obviously the problem of condensation. Condensation occurs when differences in temperature between one apparatus and another draw moisture from open air. Therefore, the hotter the component is, the more likely in a cold environment it is to attract moisture. The CPU, hard drive, and north/south bridges on the motherboard therefore are the targets of this drawback.

For the CPU, I stuck a high velocity fan on it, blowing downwards rather than upwards. Since the average operating tempurature of the air inside the fridge was cooler than anything near the CPU heat sink, this kept the CPU the coolest.

For the hard drive, I tested a number of different approaches. Copper condensation shielding around the drive, and direct copper-to-element contact. Drives mounted in a makeshift air tunnel, and cold air from the element piped through the tunnel. Loose placement of the drive on an aluminum skid, placed on the element shelf. The list goes on and on.

About a dozen configurations later, I settled for placing the hard drives on a raised surface, which would all be placed directly on the cooling element. Optimal heat absorption, conduction, and dispensation aside, this worked better than any other configuration I tried.

Finally, for the motherboard itself, to optimize the other components heat distribution. I found that well placed fans kept the condensation at nominal levels.

To test temperatures, I use SpeedFan. It is actively in development, adding features frequently, and I haven't had a bad experience with it yet. Brilliant piece of software.

VIDEO

Don't we all love to just sit back and watch the hard work of others, instead of doing it ourselves?

GRATUITOUS PHOTOS

The outside of the fridge.

The display is a Xenarc 700IDT touchscreen, left over from the days I spent moonlighting as a CarPC addict. Fortunately for both me and the 700IDT, I never got into an accident while driving and computing at the same time.

(Seriously though, if you hit some small child because your distracted while driving, you'll be sent to federal prison. And for what, cool maps? The only map you'll need there is a bunch of toilet paper everywhere you go. Not cool.)

Anyway, back to the display, it works well when mounted with spare parts from other cases and components. Do not simply duct tape your display on the front of the fridge! The outside of fridges get hot in some places, and you'll find your precious display all broken-like on the floor the next day.

Inside the Refrigerator

I put basically everything, the drives, the motherboard, and the power supply, inside the fridge. Until I find some reason other than accessibility not to do this, it works just fine.

So...right...the only drawback, is that I can't see inside, as my schitzo-paranoid personality compels me to.

I had put in a query to another craigslist post in the local area for a classic Coke fridge, which has a see-through glass front door. But my frugal-recycle personality overrides other said personality.

A Closer Look Inside

From top down:

Seagate Barricuta st320011a 20GB IDE Drive

Standard DVD/CDRW Laptop Drive

VIA EPIA SP MINI-ATX Mainbord P1.3ghz 1GB RAM

Audio: "The Deck or the Party"

2008-07-03T12:47:00.000-04:00

[audio:http://www.indesolutions.com/audio/20080705_01.mp3]

Audio: "More Whiskey"

2008-07-03T12:46:00.000-04:00

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Audio: "Under Moon"

2008-06-23T12:44:00.000-04:00

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Audio: "Get What You Want"

2008-06-23T12:42:00.002-04:00

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Audio: "Foray"

2008-06-23T12:41:00.001-04:00

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Agility in Business via R & D

2007-07-13T12:53:00.000-04:00

Up until I watched this channel9 post about MSR, I had, probably just like many others, thought of research and development as overhead.

In my last few jobs, I eventually found myself being the foremost representative of R & D tasks. Projects that were too "fuzzy" for everyone else were just what my brain was good for. But inevitably, this would lead to a certain level of isolation from the "real problems" in shipping software. Bug fixes, demos, etc. Everyone in this industry knows what it feels like to become overhead. It doesn't feel good.

I'm over that now.

Rick Rashid says, when asked what the value of Microsoft having a research team, says this:

"...I think the main reason why a company like Microsoft would have a basic research organization is, really, for agility. It's to allow the company to change rapidly when something happens, whether that's something good or something bad. [...], if there's a new technology, or the business climate changes, or the economy changes: each of those things puts stress on a company. [...] Whenever there's stress, you need to be able to rapidly evolve [...] One way to do that is, already, within yourself, the seeds of change."

So I guess I really don't have to feel guilty for always being pigeon-holed into R & D. I'm the seeds of change. I'm agility.

An Architect Starts in the Right Place

2007-07-09T15:27:00.000-04:00

Consider this sketch, depicting the relationship between a priors document and an ESB project implmentation. The actual business process, as a conceptial item, is the basis for both the priors document and the ESP project implementation. That being the case, your priors document should be a good start on designing your ESB project.

Of course, you'll need more than just concepts. You'll need technical specifics such as schemas and message patterns to flesh out the ESB project to its entirety. However, the priors document can often help you to see if you even need an ESB project in the first place. Some problems do not require technical solutions. Those that do often need different levels of solution analysis.

A Model for Documentation in the Enterprise

2007-07-09T13:36:00.000-04:00

After working with models of business process management, it becomes clear that enterprise architecture cannot exist without a certein few key elements in documentation governing the steps of architecture. For the context of this post, working in an enterprise environment means two things to developers.

One is that developers should always be thinking about how their small-picture solutions fits into the big-picture. To quote Michele Leroux Bustamante, "Without a blueprint, what can you build?" (ARCast.TV "Training - Architect as Designer").

The big-picture is an architect's blueprint. It shows where one thing is in relation to other things. If you don't have a blueprint, you can't know where a piece fits in relation to everything else. Likewise, a solution isn't a good solution unless it can be placed in the right place.

Two is that developers should expect business process and the environment to change constantly, and use documentation as a type of guide to navigating the engineering process and that ever-present requirement of change.

Developers building 100% perfect solutions today will without question find themselves redesigning that solution tomorrow. Why? Because change is a pervasive concept that is present in any labor humans put their hands to. So in this modern world of technology, the idea of a black-box programmer is no longer natural. Developers have to be a little bit of everything in order to keep up with the quality of software solutions these days. If there is one thing that seems natural, it's that the role of developers is to change with their own experience, and with the needs of their audiences.

With all this change, no one person can keep all this information in their head, needless to say that developers often work in teams. Communication of intent and implementation is critical between factions of IT. Documentation is a tangible approach to priming these communication lines.

So, documentation. What would a model look like?

Well, lets first thing about the typical stages of software development. We don't want to waist time with documentation, so how can we efficiently author only what is neccessary throughout the development process? Don Box suggests at least the following three types of documents for each solution:

"Priors" document, which encompasses history of business process, current limitations, and intentions of a good solution
"Concept" document, where architects and developers can explore how to realize the priors into requirements, what's needed in a solution, and possible architecture integrations.
"Technical" document, where the developer can detail how the decided solution is implemented, how to maintain, and how to troubleshoot the solution.

Finally, speaking as a user of great software made useless by a lack of descriptive resources, a final type of document "Manual / Help", would be critical for architects to expect their solution to be useful to their audience. At first, this is a no-brainer for developers. But I've seen to many programmers forget to be developers, and too many developers forget to be "dummy" users of their own software.

In theory, a skeleton user manual (minus screenshots and gritty detail) should be something that the architect could flesh out throughout the priors and concept authoring. Some people call this "test driven development" or "example driven development". However you term it, the idea is that developers should be able to see the finish-line before they start coding.

To credit the person that sparked this line of thought, from now on I'll refer to this model of documentation as "box docs" (thank you Don Box, halla Chris Sells).

The Box Docs model allows architects to flesh out problems and solutions one step at a time, without waisting time on unneccessary levels of detail. Since each stage is dependent on the previous stage (e.g. priors before concept, concept before technical), this model ensures a level of efficiency in the efforts to provide solutions to problems. Often, the priors can identify which solutions can stay physical or require technology, just as the concept document often helps to weigh software "buy or build" decisions. If the priors document rules out technology changes, that's all folks. If not, the concepts document may result in a purchase decision, which results in much less development than a build decision.

[more to come]

Agile Software Development

2007-07-08T10:51:00.000-04:00

"When you cannot reduce the level of complexity, find methods to better manage it."

A useful point in this channel9 post, the focus of agile patterns: activities of development, not the outcome.

Most recently, I've been exploring agile patterns in development because I'm sick of waisting time by mucking about in informality of practice. Pre-documentation is a must. On an episode of .NET Rocks (show 249), Don Box and Cris Sells go back and forth about how important pre-documentation is.

"Is There an Enterprise Architect in the House!?"

2007-07-07T11:54:00.000-04:00

In this post, Jeff Levinson talks about what it means to transition traditional businesses to an enterprise architecture model.

He also suggests that people interested in taking the leap from "developer" to "architect" should find a mentor. This puts me at odds, since I don't think that one exists at my job. I might have to go hunting for uber-nerds.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=315461