2020-03-31 Tuesday - Sharpening The Saw

Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash
source: https://unsplash.com/photos/BtHjHxh-D7I

An Architect's Meditation for Today: Sharpening The Saw

Continual improvement is about moving the needle, incrementally. 

Organizations are organisms (or systems of organisms) - and, in my experience, will usually resist any attempts at sudden/dramatic changes - just as biological organisms will strive to fight off an infection by attacking the invading agent. 

For many architecture teams - the one simple practice that I see missing most often - but, yet - I think might provide the most benefit - for the least effort: Retrospectives. 

Five Retrospective Questions: 

1) What went right? - celebrate the successes. 

2) What went wrong? - perform root-cause analysis (seek insight, not blame). 

3) What should we add? - what's missing from the process? 

4) What should we subtract? - what's superfluous? 

5) How can we do it better/faster/cheaper next time?

2020-03-28 Saturday - LocoMocoSec 2019: Kauai

Some interesting security talks from the videos posted on YouTube from last year's LocoMocoSec: Hawaii Product Security Conference (LocoMocoSec 2019: Kauai)

See full list of videos here

2020-03-13 Friday - Task Bar - Most Frequently Used Tools

A recent posting on LinkedIn asked "What's in your task bar?"- which is an interesting question.

At the root - it is a question of what tools do you use most frequently - that you find most useful - that help increase your productivity.


Here's mine:

From left to right:

1. Start
2. Task View
3. Thunderbird (email client)
4. LibreOffice Calc
5. File Explorer
6. Snagit
7. Snipping Tool (Microsoft Windows utility)
8. Calculator (Microsoft Windows utility)
9. Command Prompt
10. Windows Powershell
11. Git Bash
12. Alarms & Clocks (Microsoft Windows utility)
1. The Timer feature is used as an aid to adopting the time management Pomodoro Technique
2. "The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for 'tomato', after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student"
13. Notepad++ (text editor)
14. Eclipse (Latest: 2021-03)
15. Visual Studio Code
16. Visual Studio 2019
17. Sparx Enterprise Architect
18. TrueCrypt
1. "Though development of TrueCrypt has ceased, an independent audit of TrueCrypt (published in March 2015) has concluded that no significant flaws are present"
19. Mozilla Firefox (browser)
20. Google Chrome (browser)
21. Microsoft Edge (browser)
22. Word (Microsoft Office)
23. Excel (Microsoft Office)
24.  PowerPoint (Microsoft Office)
25.  Kindle for PC
26. All  Control Panel Items (Microsoft Windows "Classic" Control Pane view)
27. Event Viewer (Microsoft Windows)
28. iTunes
29. MSI Dragon Gaming Center (used for the System Monitor and Shift Mode features)

2020-03-07 Saturday - Suggested Book: Knowledge Graph, 1st Edition

A suggested book, coming out in September 2020, to put a reminder on your calendar:  

Knowledge Graph 1st ed. 2020 Edition, 
by Guilin Qi (Author), Huajun Chen (Author), Kang Liu (Author), Haofen Wang (Author), Qiu Ji (Author), Tianxing Wu (Author) 

"This book provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of knowledge graph, covering all aspects including the theoretical foundations, key techniques and methodologies, and various typical applications. Special focus is given to the practical methods for knowledge graph construction and management, especially methods for constructing knowledge graphs from texts and from Encyclopedia, and methods for knowledge fusion and reasoning. It can serve as reference book for researchers and students new to knowledge graph."

"From this book, the readers will learn how to construct large-scale knowledge graphs from different sources, how to manage multiple knowledge graphs and do reasoning with a knowledge graph. Some basic knowledge on discrete mathematics, probability and statistics, data structure, and databases is required to understand the book content well."