A Person, Artist, Software Engineer, Geologist.

Unless you have led a sheltered life and have not heard about the Volkswagen software scandal, the gist of it is, they used software in their cars to bypass emissions tests. The worse part is 1) they where warned by Bosch in 2007 not to use this feature and 2) they where warned again (by internal personal) in 2011. Software development is not a free for all against moral repercussions.  It may seam like it is, but it's not. There are ethical issues for how you code, what you code and what you ship.  Open source licenses does not mean anything goes.  Including source code that was pulled from the internet may have concerns. Then there are issues for just coding.  It's possible (I've seen it) where a person codes logic that is just wrong, and the programmer knows it's wrong.  Somethings this is done with guidance from above and others, it's just a shortcut to getting something done.  It's even possible that you have written some code, knowing that s...

A Book I picked up Austin Kleon's latest book "Show Your Work" .  It's such a great book for those that are creative, would like to be creative and those looking to expand their options.  Wrapped in a wonderful compact and easy to read format, "Show Your Work" outlines and explains the steps to be more open and how to grow. These lessons are how to grow your self and what to avoid (vampires, you know who they are).   It's cheap and well worth the read. Failure? We (aka I) try to minimize failure, but this got me thinking.  Maybe it's not failure or success that, I kind of, track in the back of my mind.  It's all learning that I want and the heck with with works or fails (at least the first 50 rounds).  I was watching a show on the "Code Camps" and a reporting learning some basic JS code.  The teacher prepped the reported that they might try an operation 50 times before understanding the correct usage of a function.  Yeah, that...

I was sitting in a meeting last week on a WebEx call where the person on the call was describing some UI functionality in an application.  Video and all.   The behavior was a surprise to me (not in a good way) so restated my understanding of the operation to make sure I understood.  A very common practice of mine, but it can make me sound dumb at times.   On my statement, others around the table gasped and stated that I was wrong and the behavior was something else.  I had heard wrong! Others around the table saw the same screens, video, heard the same words and had come to very different conclusion.  This only became apparent when I restated what I had understood.  To the shock around the room, my understanding was correct.  Their faces spoke surprise that what they thought was true was false. This was a simple version. When you apply statements made by developers to managers or QA to developers, the repercussions grow larger.  As w...

I work with Big data, I do not work with ITER .  But both appear to suffer from the same condition, they both promise great benefits in the future. Age does provide some benefits, with perspective being one of them.   For the last (well as long as it's been thought about), un-teen years, the promise of harnessing fusion reaction as an energy source has always been 20 years out.   If we just put our minds to it, we can have it done in about 20 years.  Well, we have been putting our minds to it and it's still 20+ years in the future.  By putting our minds "to it" means, a great number of countries have pledged people and resources to the ITER project that is currently being built in France (starting in 2007).  It's budget is now grown 3x times (16b) and the end is not in sight. The hope, the promise, the future is always just out there, but not yet in our grasp.   It appears that harnessing fusion is way way harder than just creating un-controlled f...

I've realized that I've lost my fear of failing.  It's not that I don't fail, it's just that I don't get all stressed out when I do fail. Maybe my tool chest contains enough tools for what I need.  Maybe I'm surrounded with others that also understand that failure is part of what we do.  Maybe I find there is so much to learn from failures.  It could also be the job market and the others that I see trying to create and implement UX/UI design heavy project. Whatever the reason (and I'm sure it's a mix), fear is just not in the mix. Without fear, progress can always be made.   It's an exciting time when there is a new project, new team, new tools and new designs all at the same time.  It's my job to pace, schedule, assign, review and plan for all of this to come together, and, in the end, be a success. Funny, no fear here either.  I've been doing this for so long that it's been easy for me to clear the chaff and focus on what...

Yes, It's Been a Year.  Time just flies by. So is it just me or is everybody getting hit by head hunters these days?  With the Utah unemployment rate of ~3% and the rate for UI/Web engineers approaching zero, no wonder they are all calling.  It feels like a fishing hole where the whole of the lake is ringed with fisherman, all after the same few fish. I place this onto my luck of picking the right fields (or them picking me) and right directions. Gotta stay with the times.  The tech keeps moving and the Web tech is really moving.  It's hard to know what to skip and when to jump on the train.  There where many times I've felt that I had already missed the boat, only to see many of those boats sink with failed adoption or direction.  The server side page creation has peaked.  RoR was to be a saviour, only to be the last of the great steamers in the age of planes.  Moving on.... You could see the beginning of the transition whe...

I've been playing with Node.js and MongoDB and have been having fun.  I can see right away the attraction of this pair (and other related) of technologies.  The low bar of entry, the common JSON thread, the perfect fit for specific types of problems.  Very nice. It's this technology that I'll be using (unless something better comes along) for my son's business site and mobile app (native w/REST services).  The document aspect of much of the data where CRUD transactions are not required, the natural flow of JSON through the stack, just makes this nice. MongoDB is not a solution for all problems, but for my needs it will work very nicely.  Then comes building the REST services for the apps.  Node.js is just the right fit.  An issue that some may have with Node.JS is finding a free or low cost hosting service for it.  Because of the way Node.js binds to the port, it appears virtual servers do not work well with it.  Not an issue if yo...