Climate change. What is the debate about?

The whole debate on climate change seems strange.

You may find plenty of peer reviewed publications on everything ranging from bleaching of coral, tide measurements, reduction in the polar ice caps, changes in the behaviour of the North Atlantic pump and changes in migratory behaviour of birds and insects. There are plenty of exceptions to; this should help improve the model and hence prove or disprove the hypothesis that climate change is occuring.

I'd say the MAIN issue is whether it is man made or natural.

Irrespective of peoples beliefs regarding climate change, there was a realisation that uncontrolled consumption of the Earth's resources was 'a bad thing'.

We have started on the path of conserving energy, looking at the reduction of waste, and recycling. The perceived threat of climate change through human activity has been another catalyst for us to recognise the effect of humans on the planet, just as the issues of CFCs, overfishing etc.

I'm sure scientists might take liberties with the statistics to make their models fit, so lets hope peer reviews by those in the field, and not skewed, uneducated reviews by journalists, politicians and capitalists, prove or disprove the theory of climate change.

It is very likely that the majority of cynical folk will continue to love their 4.7l V8 Holden, refuse to swap from incandescents to Fluoro or LED, recycle, compost, insulate their homes, drink recycled water, buy biodegradable cleaning products, spend 4 minutes in the shower.

You get the picture. Are you going to join them?

Bing - white out christmas

Article on how Bing is fail. Classic. I don't ever remember ever having a problem with Google, and perhaps that is why I use it. In contrast I don't ever recall hearing anyone recommend Bing. Perhaps that is because the name alone is annoying and sounds like that M$ sound 'ding'. Check C:\WINDOWS\Media\ding.wav for a reminder.

Just because you have good marketing, doesn't mean the thing will fly.

I'm in ur modems steeling ur interwub packs.

Had such fun trying to get my home network sorted. Having just moved house and waiting far too long for Optus and of course Telstra to provide DSL service to my place, I've been disappointed.

Recent issues have included:

• FTP dropping out.
• Quick speeds when tested but web pages taking a long time to load.
• Slow downloads. As in stop watch slow.
• Failure to connect to work VPN
• random outages.
• Slow DNS

The first thing I have done is switch to OpenDNS. This has removed my dependency on crappy Optus DNS, which appears to be built on a single 8086 connected to the interwebs via IP over Morse. That has immediately sped up getting to a site.

Next problem was identified when I was trying transfer a zip file of training material to our downloads.kjross web server, to allow the printers access. Filezilla has always worked for me, the settings were unchanged but it was bombing out after 200k. I had another 8100k to go. After trying Ilisys mirror FTP areas and trying for 2 hours, I gave up and used wireless which worked. That showed me the only difference was the physical connection.

I reckoned it was the POS Sagem modem. I got it free from Optus when I signed up, and I had also found out it doesn't support VPN pass through which is a pain.

I still had a D-Link DSL502T vA kicking around, and so to make sure it worked properly I upgraded the firmware with the modem kicking and screaming for 3 hours, to V2.0oB12. The exe failed miserably numerous times, and the web update failed 9 out of 10 times, then it just worked.

Reconfigured the modem to sit in front of my DI624 wireless router to provide an onion firewall setup, and it all worked. Speed test showed me the speed was slightly slower at 12Mbps down from 14.5Mbps, but that doesn't mean squat as the D-Link is FASTER. I don't get it. Web pages load visibly faster, and I was able to FTP the 8MB file in seconds. No dropouts, no failures mid transfer.

If someone knows why Sagem produces a modem that allows you to perform FTP but only in 3k chunks I'd be all ears. Also seemingly preventing VPN passthrough without providing a config change just doesn't make sense.

While I thought the old 502T was past it, the new firmware and extra configurability has proven it was well worth keeping as a backup modem. Sagem = So gone.

Nicely done video of Shuttle Launch STS 129

nicely edited video taken from the on-board cameras of the Space Shuttle on launch.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.

Out with the old, in with the new

And so The Beast has been retired. With memories ranging from RACQ rescues in tropical storms, driving through golf ball hail without damage, sailing across dunes on Fraser, and escaping steam with burst coolant hoses in Gympie, Byron, Burleigh, Pottsville and other places, the end has come.

It has been replaced with Black Beauty; a 2.5 turbo Subaru Forester XT Luxury. Big enough to get my surf board in, enough cup holders to keep me in caffeine, a radio that works, moon roof, brakes, waterproof drivers compartment (compared to The Beast that is), and air conditioning.

Quite a contrast, and it's already putting a smile on my face.

Things I will be looking at is

• getting it rechipped.
• installing sat-nav
• updating or hacking a ipod input into the head unit.
• firming up the suspension
• seeing what bits I can recover from wrecked Subarus to put into this one.

Otherwise, it is an awesome and comfortable and quick car.

Testing in Agile

Interesting article on the place of dedicated testers in Agile. So far I haven't seen much demonstration of the benefits or problems of dedicated testers in Agile teams with the use of metrics etc, but at least this puts some discussion points together around the issue.

Too often I have heard developers say they test the code 'very well' and unless they are TDD guns, it's likely I could write another umpteen tests that assess more critical parts of the system/function/blancmange on top of their tests. This is mainly due to developers not being taught testing skills, just as few testers are taught development skills. With that in mind, and considering that the developer's strength is in their ability to write code, and to continue with the theme, a tester's strength is in their ability to skeptically analyse a specification and consider the most critical parts to test with well constructed and organised scenarios that expose predicted weaknesses.

Therefore a dedicated tester, or at least a part resource that can evaluate the story/requirement with such criticality that additional test cases (and hence defects discovered) are designed that otherwise would have been missed.

Perhaps this isn't even restricted to Agile but should encompass all IT projects; there seems to be a concept that testing is a tiresome necessity but we have forgotten why. The main reason it is there, is to provide a deep and skeptical appraisal of the system, on the behalf of the customer or end use. Who is the best person to do this? Do you read other independent reviews of a car that you are interested in buying? Do you buy a car without having a test drive first? Do you expect that the manufacturer does some internal testing? I started off on foody type analogies with cooks, chefs and waiters, but they all amount to the same thing; you expect a product to have a variety of levels of quality assessment (notice I didn't use quality assurance) before you even get close to it. I mean, would you buy an Operating System or some such thing that required the customers to perform their own defect detection activities?

Agile Research

Trying to get notes together to provide a bit more meat behind a course presentation. I always reckon a mix of real-world anecdotes, theoretical approach, and a whole bunch of tools and tricks, supported by plenty of hands on provides the right approach. Some people's learning style is about getting dirty with stuff, some like talking about it at breaks, some like listening, others like drawing diagrams to express themselves, while some like taking notes. There are some that require energetic debate for it to be taken on-board.

Anyways there is some great stuff out there for Agile these days, and being loving caring hoooomans there is plenty of sharing going on.

Great Agile cheat sheet.

Scrum Cheat Sheet

• Great blog with some nice links here on xprocess and their site here
• Another blog here with some good stuff on velocity.
• Version One have a good Agile 101 here
• Good site with definitions and graphs here.
• Another good but of course obvious place to start research is with the various relatives of Agile such as ScrumAlliance which has a good glossary of terms.
• Agile FAQ is here.
• Another good blog which describes the estimation process in Scrum is found here.

Ashes to Ashes

I don't think there is anything more to say.

Ethics in business

Consider a hypothetical situation.

Imagine you had been asked to provide a test manager type resource to an organisation. You provided one of your most experienced staff members, then looked to backfill (as that person performed other tasks). You found a suitably experienced resource and started bringing them in.

What if the real true blue Aussie company, say, oh I don't know a Christmas Catalogue company, decided that the resource you had presented wasn't appropriate. The company might suggest that your person didn't offer the right 'cultural fit', and that they had come to that decision in 2 or 3 hours of your person being there. What if the person you had put forward had genetics based around the asian region? What if you suspected this company of being racist? What would you do? Would you find someone else? Would you tell them to stick their tinned meat products and cheap festive garb up their comfortable white blinkered behind, or would you try and educate them? Or would you kowtow to them?

While this is of course a hypothetical situation I certainly want to strive for only working with ethical companies. The rational arguments against discriminative behaviour far outweigh any emotional argument for. After all, if we were truly racist, wouldn't we send the entire population of immigrants (even the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th generations) back to Europe and leave it for the indiginous population.

Anyway, like I said, this is all hypothetical, but inspired by a news article that surprised me regarding the number of death threats Obama gets per day.

iTunes images and xml files

ARGH. Been trying to organise my iTunes collection especially as I've had a few dramas with the storage of the music.

- had a harddisk crash on a PC with 3 drives. 2 set up RAID1 whilst OS (Ubuntu) running on 3rd. Fortunately it was the OS drive that crashed, but I had to rebuild that to get to the music.
- had a second disk crash. This time, one of the RAID drives. PC wouldn't boot either, random beeps on boot during POST, graphics card not working, seating of memory affecting it sometimes, plus OS had crashed again.
- Moved to NAS. Working ok, except by trying to clean up what I had, I somehow deleted some of the album covers.
- downloaded icoverart. This allowed me to list and identify the tracks with missing artwork.
- After sorting out 1000's of songs, iCoverArt complains about some tracks yet the image shows in iTunes.
- It looks like I have an Album art folder on the NAS and one locally. And I'm guessing they don't match. Some of the missing art from an iCoverArt perspective is visible in iTunes.
- Now trying to look at iTunes XML file and work out how the persistent ID is used to find an image file.
.
.
.
- Oh, its that simple. The persistent ID is the suffix to the library identifier. Just a search reveals which hex labelled folder has the ITC file. I was trying to work out if some AND op on the persistent ID and the library ID revealed the directories that the image file is in.

Anyway, iCoverArt is working pretty well to help identify and search for album artwork, along with http://www.coverhunt.com/ and http://www.discogs.com/

It's on, it's off

So perhaps I counted my chickens. The contract fell through, which is a shame after having 4 different parties interested. C'est la vie. Hopefully the open home on Saturday will keep the momentum going.

SOLD!

Well would you believe it; the house is under offer, and pending building and pest reports will be sorted in 35 days. It would be good to be able to move on and not have to worry about having to deal with someone I can't trust, and I'm not talking about the real estate agent.

If anything Dale deserves a medal for getting such a decent photographer round for the house, doing such a good write up, and acting as an independent voice of reason during discussions with Cathy.

There is still an open home this week, so I have to iron the doona and get the fire going for the morning, and hopefully it might continue the interest there has been in the house; it's nice to keep the momentum.

On other fronts, I've got a Bluetooth mouse that works very well thank you very much, and England have one the first test at Lords. Bit of a good day all round really. Just a pity I noticed a pair of my suit trousers seem a little bit tighter around the waist . . . .

Womble

We've been very honoured to look after Womble for the last week. With another 2 weeks to go I've fortunately seen past the puppy dog eyes and found his true character; a hungry, horny and occasionally disobedient creature of fun.

Just tonight, countless cries of "Womble, come here!", "stop!" and "HEEL!" went unheeded as he ran into the dark on Coolangatta beach, bounding up to a group of people in the dark and scaring the crap out of them.

Having never had a dog before, I'm a bit lost when it comes to knowing how to control a dog apart from what I have seen in that dominatrix dog trainer show and what I remember from Barbara Woodhouse days.

It's strange, as I do seem to managed to deal with picking up steaming dog do-do, washing the poor boy, and walking him daily. He is a pretty good guard dog to and a strangely good judge of character, barking incessantly at someone deemed not suitable for entry.

House for sale

Well, after 18 months of living here, it is time to wipe the slate clean, make a fresh start, throw the baby out with the bathwater, go back to square one and take things to the next level. Spent the last few days gardening, cleaning the pool, cleaning, tidying, painting and generally getting the place decent for viewing.

Definitely time to move on, but I will miss the place, especially my Kooka friends and the Koala.

It's on the web at RealEstate.com.au and the agents website First National Real Estate.

Getting plenty of interest but who knows in the current market. There's no rush at least but if it keeps the ex off my back with threats then that has to be a good thing.

CITCON Brisbane 2009

So I attended my first CITCON this year. As K. J. Ross & Associates were sponsors 1) I was obliged to go but there were other attractions such as 2) it was a free as in beer conference 3) it was nearby physically, being in Acacia Ridge, but not that close in terms of places I would visit out of choice 4) some serious drawcards with the attendees.

It was number 4 that was the clincher, with people coming from private enterprise and government, local and overseas, testers to developers, geeks to geekettes, and more than anything, people who wanted to share their experiences and be open to learn something new.

Twitter and flickr were kept busy with people updating the interweb tubes regularly.

http://bit.ly/BkRTV and check #citcon.

I'd probably go next year but that might be challenging as NZ is proposed as a venue.