Adventures in Tech

One of the areas often overlooked when writing software systems is thoroughly understanding what needs to be developed. Specifically who are the users that are going to interact with the system, what are they trying to accomplish with the software, and how is the system expected to behave under normal and error conditions. In short, developing software requirements and specifications before the software is written. " Software Requirements 3 " addresses these questions, with clear answers and advice in a rather longish format of roughly 673 pages. The book starts with a story about the importance of software requirements: a case of an employee who changed her last name without getting married, and the accounting software's inability to handle the change, with the repercussions that the employee will not get paid until the the "bug" is fixed. The book mentions that this is not an atypical situation, and that  ... errors introdu...

One of the frustrating things for new parents is that their baby's communication is usually 1-bit: the baby is either crying (on), or not crying (off). When the baby is crying it is for different reasons. They could be: Hungry Sleepy In need of change Hot Cold Over-stimulated Bored It is hard to decode these competing and sometimes conflicting needs, although some people claim they can from the tone of the cry, and its duration. Lucky them. Most parents look forward to their babies' talking so that they can communicate their needs. What they don't realize is that when the talking stage arrives, so does the arguing stage. I am looking forward to that. It turns out we don't have to wait that long. We can teach babies sign language early on, and it will help them communicate their needs through signing as early as 6 months, which sounds like a blessing. There are a ton of videos on youtube that teach baby sign language but nothing beats attending a cla...

At work I always enjoy chatting with our lead designer, who is also a strongman, and competes in strongman competitions. In addition to talking about design, I love to pick his brain about how to become more healthy and fit, and he is very generous with his advice and the lessons learned during his training. One day I noticed that he is filling a huge one gallon bottle of water, and I could not resist to ask why. He explained that he needs to drink more than a gallon of water everyday, and that without measuring how much water he consumed, at the end of the day he's not sure if he hit his goal or not. I was intrigued, and decided to see how much water I drank everyday, even though I had no intention of matching his consumption. I bought a 1 liter bottle of water, and set to drink 3 liters of water a day, as the  Mayo Clinic recommends . To my surprise I discovered that I am no where near the recommended quantity, even after factoring in the incidental drinks I consume everyday...