nik newark

Stuck in traffic

Seems like there are no good routes to Cambridge station today which don't invoke accidents and roadworks...

minaturisation....

50 years ago, computers were the size of rooms. 100 years ago, cameras were also pretty big (and in the days of the camera obscura, were also room sized).
Encyclopaedias took up entire w
alls of the drawing room, telephones were made of hulking great chunks of Bakelite (with rooms full of women armed with headsets and patch cords), maps were huge things that were invariably out of date, the Tv was a piece of enormous furniture with a tiny screen, and we made our own entertainment. That were fotty year ago, that were.
Anuway, the point is, is that all of these things can now be done on a tiny iPhone, smaller than my hand. So, I confidently predict that due to continuing minaturisation, phones in 50 years time will include a Large Hadron Collider. I mentioned this theory to the attendant in the gym, who looked at me blankly. "why would anyone want to do that?" he asked. Because we can, because we can. Besides, it'd be pretty cool to create black holes in your pocket...

Incidentally, I am using an iPhone to write this blog, courtesy of a piece of software called iBlog. Rubbish name, but seems to do the trick quite nicely.

And the photo illustrates what a great idea fish and chips in rolled up newspaper is for littleys. Ee! It were just like fotty year ago.

The SI unit for goodness

From an email discussion this week...

From: Nik Newark
Sent: 08 September 2008 13:55
To: #A bunch of engineers
Subject: FW: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio

FYI - if you currently are using ReSharper (with the central license server), you should be able to take advantage of the v4.1 release without any additional changes.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharma Hardeep
Sent: 09 September 2008 09:48
To: Nik Newark
Subject: RE: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio

Hi Nik,

Who uses this tool?
Do you know how good it is?

Cheers
Pop!

-----Original Message-----
From: Nik Newark
Sent: 09 September 2008 09:48
To: Sharma Hardeep
Subject: RE: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio

It is used by a collection of developers. Those who use it rate it highly.

It is 82% good.

-- Nik

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharma Hardeep
Sent: 09 September 2008 09:50
To: Nik Newark
Subject: RE: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio

Percent, you say?
Hmmm.

-----Original Message-----
From: Nik Newark
Sent: 09 September 2008 09:59
To: Sharma Hardeep
Subject: RE: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio

I was struggling to find a more accurate way of measuring how good it is. What is the SI unit for goodness.

Ah yes.

It is 2.2 Mother Theresas.

-- Nik

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharma Hardeep
Sent: 09 September 2008 14:33
To: Nik Newark
Subject: SI Units and goodness - WAS: RE: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio
Importance: Low

The SI unit for goodness is Yums (Y).

The national standards laboratories in Brussels are home to the Standard Yum, a digital recording of a small boy being offered a bowl of home-made ice-cream, with real chocolate sauce, without needing to finish his dinner first.

The practical measure of a Yum is equal to the goodness presumed to be in the aforementioned standard offer of desert as an expression of the outcome of acceptable behavior from the small boy.

One thousand Yums are known as Mmm (mm)
One million Yums are known as a Yum-Yum, not a mega-Yum as is commonly mistaken.
One millionth of a Yum is known as a Yuk (y), not a micro-Yum " " ".
One thousandth of a Yum is an Urrr (u)

A common measure that is used to express goodness for many items in the world is "Yummy" which translates to approximately

Y - Yum, Ooh yes that looks really, really good - Good enough to eat in fact
u - Urr, That's not what I expected it to be, this is going to take getting used to
mm - Mmm, it's not as good or as bad as I expected, but it'll probably do just fine
y - Yuk, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when you're done, but it got the job done

I hope this helps.

Cheers
Pop!

-----Original Message-----
From: Nik Newark
Sent: 09 September 2008 15:47
To: Sharma Hardeep
Subject: RE: SI Units and goodness - WAS: RE: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio

Thank you for that. I'll make sure it gets included in the Global Engineering Ops Handbook.

Is there an SI unit for "amount of free time in a day to involve in frivolity"?

-- Nik

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharma Hardeep
Sent: 10 September 2008 11:33
To: Nik Newark
Subject: SI Units and goodness - WAS: RE: ReSharper v4.1: Better performance and wider integration with Visual Studio
Importance: Low

You mean the TWaT. Total Wasted Time, measured as

Considerably Less Important Tasks /day -------------------------------------------
Completely Useful Needed Tasks / day

As you can see the ideal TWaT rate to aspire to is between 0 and 1.

Typically values for the software sector are in the range of 100 to 1K TWaTs.

Important to note is that it is impossible for system under measurement (person, team, organization) to have no purpose, as this would require the Completely Useful Needed Tasks to = 0, resulting in infinite TWaTs.

So in summary, within in any organizational grouping, though it is possible to have no Considerably Less Important Tasks, there will always be at some Completely Useful Needed Task, which inevitably means there will always be a possibility of there being TWaTs

HTH
Pop!