May 2008 - Posts

posted Wednesday, May 28, 2008 5:38 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Rant about "Quiet Carriages"

Moving away from my normal topic of software development, I just wanted to vent some annoyance about "Quiet Carriages".  On the rail service I use, the operator designates 2 of the 8 carriages in the train as "quiet".  They request that you Read More
posted Thursday, May 15, 2008 12:21 AM by martin :: 1 Comments

Consulting Nightmares: The Right Tool for the Job

If I was a builder, and there was a tool in my toolbox that I didn't understand, couldn't tell you what it was for, then I think that tool would stay in the box.  I wouldn't decide one day to get that tool out and start trying it out for jobs that Read More
posted Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:21 AM by martin :: 1 Comments

BOPS ?

Earlier, I was looking at this page about quad-core processors from Intel.  I know, I must have been bored :-) Anyway, I spotted something interesting.  Towards the bottom of the page, they publish numbers of "Billions of Operations Per Second", Read More
posted Tuesday, May 13, 2008 12:09 AM by martin :: (Comments Off)

Consulting Nightmares: XML

In my consulting days, I had quite a few engagements where you might call me a performance troubleshooter.  That is, the client had already built an app, in some cases it was even in the hands of users, but performance was unacceptably bad.  Read More