A book I recently read and can recommend is "Are Your Lights On?" from Gerald M. Weinberg.
It is divided into six parts which are:
1.What is the problem?
2.What is the problem?
3.What is the problem, really?
4.Whose problem is it?
5.Where does it come from?
6.Do we really want to solve it?
It´s easy to read, contains some interesting (but not necessarily new) concepts and can maybe be part of your consultant tool box when trying to get things accomplished.
Weinberg has published various books which emphasizes, that problem solving is not a technical issue but has to do with how you think and which point of view you take into consideration.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Are Your Lights On?
Monday, September 11, 2006
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Monday, September 04, 2006
Club Location Award
DSC00529
Originally uploaded by aquarius72.
We here in Dietzenbach do not have many places to have a drink. One of those places is the "Club 33".
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
„Who dares wins“ and „Ghostbusters“
„Who dares wins“ is the name of a jump and run computer game which was released in the 80s.One of the reasons I remember the game is because it´s one of those I finished, I played it through, every level of the game without a cheat and without modifiying a lousy savegame.It think it took me two weeks to do this and the day I accomplished the last level was in the morning of a regular school day.
In those days school did not have the priority it maybe should have had.
My mother went to her half-day job and I was expected to go to school with the other kids when they were ringing at the door to take me with them.What happened is that since I already was sitting in front of the computer I told them just to wait a few minutes until I showed up. Pretty soon they realised that if they would wait until that moment we all would arrive too late at school and they decided to go without me.So I was playing that game every day in the morning before going to school and soon I mastered one level after the other.
As far as I remember the last two levels were pretty hard. From todays point of view it was a simple shooting game where a soldier had to fight his way through a playingfield upwards by shooting other soldiers or throwing granates near where they were standing or hiding.So finally one day I mastered to reach the last level and you can imagine my nervousness after having played it again and again to finally reach that last stage. I knew it was the last because they were numbered and somehow it was obvious how many levels the game would have.The only problem was, that the last level did not display the playingfield right. There were ugly pixel everywhere and the „sprites“ (the technical term for those user defined graphical objects which in this case were supposed to be soldiers) were displayed as boxes and everything was awkward and barely identifiable. I suppose it was an error that happened when cracking the game or just an error in the copy.
So there I was sitting and playing that last level that took me so much time to reach. And to make a long story short; I did it.It was overhelming; there I was alone in my room having played through the whole game; smiling and happy.
That day I also arrived late at school and I think I can remember saying to the others that „I did it!“ when entering the class room.
I sure can´t remember what we learned at school that weeks or even that year, but I can remember the game and that it was an successful effort.
I learned more by playing that game through than I learned in some school class.
„Ghostbusters“ is the name of the game of the computer game corresponding to the movie.It was also a game I used to play but I never finished it. The aim of the game was to hunt ghosts. The game was not organised in levels but the speed in which the ghosts appeared on the screen was becoming faster and when the player could not hunt them down one by one fast enough the remaining ones would accumulate in a house in the center of the city were finally they would sum up to a really big ghost.
So that last task consisted in somehow trick that last big ghost, or to be fast enough to run by its side and to not be caught, I can´t really remember it to well. One day I stopped playing it. I did not look for cheats or how-to´s on how to make it. I just stopped playing it. It was not longer important for me to play that game for whatever reason.
Currently I am reading „Weinberg on Writing“ and since he states that writing about something one cares about is a preliminary for writing itself I write about those two games.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Ergonomics
Mobile devices empower their users to adapt their global working style to nearly every circumstance. Nevertheless those technical tools still could be improved to take into consideration "user posture" and "limited bandwith after thunderstorms".
Monday, August 14, 2006
Arrival
Originally uploaded by aquarius72.
As you can see on the upper left the passengers for the next flight are already waiting to enter the plane. We call it here "ir con el pito al culo" :-)
Ok, the flight was already 40 minutes late..
Sunday, August 06, 2006
"luisfolchspeaking"
Looks like a new toy for the blog. Voice recording is indeed nothing new; the nice feature of Evoca is that it provides also a german telephone number which you can call to record your postings(030 Berlin). It recognizes the user by the registered phone number you call from (caller id) so that no further pin is required and you can start recording imediately after the tone.
Perfect to call from a mobile phone. Posting requires an additional publishing step on their site.
The free account offers a 60 minute hosting service.
Try it for yourself at Evoca.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
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