Thanks to Richard for pointing this out. Being a long time Jakob Neilsen fan, I am happy to see him share his thoughts on blog usability.
I found it interesting that the #1 and #2 on the list is about the identity of the blog/blogger. I have ranted about anonymous blogging before, see this and this, so I am really glad that someone this issue get attention from someone who is an authority on usability.
Anyway, looks like I personally am guilty of #8 (”Mixing Topics”). But, I am not sure I can keep my blog focussed on one topic alone. I don’t really feel like having multiple blogs and I do really want to write on several topics. That is why I named this blog “Whatever…” because I could not decide (still cannot) what the singular focus of this blog should be. So the question is if a blog is about personality or an idea/profession. If it is about the latter, then it is easier to keep the blog focussed to a single or related topics. Professionally speaking, I am passionate about software architecture, design, analysis, patterns, refactorings, programming and related stuff. So I have created these categories on my blog, which I hope will provide the necessary focus for the only 3 people across the world reading this blog anyway. 
Blogging
October 17th, 2005
Sorry could not resist capturing this experience by DHN …
Based on true stories and personal experiences…
Real identities not revealed to protect the guilty!
October 17: Dick@Work is moved to its own site: http://www.dickatwork.com
…
October 17th, 2005
Based on true stories and personal experiences…
Real identities not revealed to protect the guilty!
October 17: Dick@Work is moved to its own site: http://www.dickatwork.com
Cartoon Comic
October 13th, 2005
Look
what we found in a parking lot all alone, hungry and tired….it was a kitten.
My daughter looked at us for a moment, and before I could say anything, my wife
and daughter had already picked that little kitty up in their arms. So, what
was I going to say. But, I had one big worry and she was a 60 pound boxer called
Ally, already at home. We had rescued Ally over two years ago and she
has adjusted well to the family. But, one thing I have learnt about Ally is,
she…um…well…is not fond of cats. Not, not, not! I have seen her chase
the neighborhood cats around. But, too late to think about it.! Because turns
out we are already on our way home because the little fella is hungry and meowing
all the way. The girls even started brainstorming about a name for the kitten
and had one by the time we arrived home. We get inside and immediately Ally
is all agitated to see what we brought home. What the!!! Who the!!! But, Why!
Oh, No!!!!!!
So for the last two days, we have been telling my daughter that the kitty is
going to the shelter. But, everytime the topic comes up, her tears start flowing
instantly and incessantly. She claims that the kitty was God’s gift for her
birthday this week. How can I argue? So, I don’t know how, but we are keeping
the little critter. His new name is Smokey.
He eats, sleeps, plays…much to the annoyance of Ally. He
loves my daughter’s
room, especially the cushion on her chair. But, worst of all,
he makes a cute
little mean scowl whenever he sees Ally and Ally just goes b-e-s-e-r-k. Well,
now we have to work on getting them to be friends!
What are the odds of that
happening? Who knows.
I never thought I would have a cat living with us. Never, never, never. Well,
that’s life.
Life Pets Dogs
Kitten
October 4th, 2005
Dilbert Blogging
October 3rd, 2005
Looks like analysts can’t help but keep coining terms to one up each other. Now Burton Group analysts are talking about Superplatform, which I quote from this article :
"The Burton Group defines the superplatform, an outgrowth of the middleware market, as a tightly integrated suite of products that provides a platform for enterprise computing."
I find this illuminating statement in that article:
"While scalability is still an issue for some organizations when choosing a superplatform, "less than 5%" will find Windows is not scalable enough."
Less than 5% ? What 5%? Don’t you want to know how analysts come up with these numbers? Well, if you do, you might have to pay $ to get that information. Anyway, is it 5% of all enterprises? Or 5% of Fortune 500?
Want some more words of wisdom? Here goes:
"If you’re Visa, and you process 8,000 transactions per second, you might have trouble. But if you’re an insurance company, no problem."
Hmmm….
And finally the comment about Java portability not being important is somewhat twisted as one reader points out here.
"For several organizations, vendor lock-in is an important issue, but the portability benefits of choosing a Java platform become less as enterprise environments get more sophisticated and complex."
So, are you ready for your superplatform?
SOA Software Architecture Analysts
September 16th, 2005
I confess I did not plan it this way, but this is how it ended up. I had asked a question a while ago whether I should buy a new bike or fix my old one?
Anyway, I decided to remodel my bicycle instead of buying a new one even though
I was pretty tempted to get a new one. But, I had a lot of fun making over my bike during
the 2 weekends. Basically, I had to fix my old bike’s brakes (cost me nothing to
do it with the tools and parts I already had) and add a new saddle cover that
cost me $15. To get rid of the old look, I spray painted the old bike with a
bright yellow color (cost me $10 for the paints) for the frame and metallic
black for the wheel rims. I then designed and ordered a new set of decals (vinyl
strickers - cost me around $30!) to re-brand my old bike into my very own custom
bike. So here is introducing my own brand - Coorg Mountain Bikes!
Instead of fixing my old bike, if I had gone out and bought a new bike, I am sure I would have spent atleast $250 if not more.
So what did I do with the money I saved? After my earlier posting, Hurricane Katrina has struck the country hard. We all have to do our little parts.
So, I put the money not spent buying a new bike and then some more into good
use to help the victims of Katrina. A lot more is needed,
so please consider giving,
if you haven’t already. Please, Please, Please! I did it with a bike, you can
do it with your bike or something else. Fix. Save. Donate.
[For the curious: Mercara
is the capital of Coorg
& what can I say about Caffeine
other than I love coffee and we grow it well in Coorg.]
Life Bike
Hurricane Katrina
September 7th, 2005
Architecture and design quality is of utmost importance in any mission critical system. Yet how many times have you seen quality take a back seat to time to market and other factors that are deemed more important to the business. In current development scenarios, how many times have implemented solutions quickly and deployed them production without adequately ensuring scalability, performance, security and other qualities of service (QoS). And all this because it is more important to release on time than to release with quality. The business forces justify going live sooner than later at the cost of overall systemic quality.
Even though over the years, many approaches (Patterns, Idioms, Processes, Methodologies, etc.) have evolved to focus and improve system quality, we seldom find enough time or effort to adopt and implement these best practices. We find little or no time to research, educate and adopt them within our teams. As a result, for most development teams, quality becomes an afterthought in the development process. In some cases we rely on a few key individuals in the team to ensure the quality of implementations. This works well in small and highly skilled teams, but when the teams get large with members of varying skill levels, the technical leadership is burdened beyond their ability to ensure adherence and conformance to best practices. The quality of the system under development takes a spiral dive. Sometimes, we comfort ourselves thinking that we can refactor our system as and when we discover the deficiencies. I think we even kid ourselves that we can do so even after going live. And so, in our quest to meet fast evolving business needs, we wrongly rely on future refactoring to justify such quick and non-ideal implementations. Even if we know we will not have time to refactor, we go ahead any way and implement whatever solution we come up with that works at the moment. Because, that is what the project demands, right?
So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that we pay a price! Sometimes a hefty one. When we find a defect in an implementation, we can find and fix it relatively easily if the defect is truly related to implementation and not architecture/design. But fixing a design problem, like you chose the wrong design or something central to the system, we can’t really fix it that easily without ripping out the guts of the system.
So in theory, identifying and fixing defects early on is the least expensive approach. It might even be possible to contain the impact of such fixes if detected in this early stage. But, despite having known this fact over the years, little has been done in the industry to provide tools and solutions to help identify design and architectural defects early on in the development lifecycle. Thus, in practice, it becomes a difficult task. In any case, even if we successfully identify a design or architecture defect, but do it late in the development cycle, it becomes next to impossible to fix it. So most systems in this stage will go live despite the looming problems ahead, hoping to try to patch it up as they go on. And most likely, the patches are going to be cosmetic and external such as allocating more resources (hardware/personnel) instead of eliminating the core defect in the system.
So, don’t phunk with architecture and design when you can pay a little more attention from the beginning and get it right.
[With sincere apologies to Black Eyed Peas for borrowing the term Phunk, which they make it sound so cool.]
Some references:
August 26th, 2005
Since my return from India, my six-year old has been asking me to go bike riding with her. She just got a new bike last week and is really excited to ride with me around our neighborhood. But, I have this really old mountain bike (approx 10 years old) that is…
August 24th, 2005
I was on a month long trip to India. Hence the silence on my blog. Just got back during the weekend and still kind of jetlagged.
While in India, I spent most of my time in my most favorite place in the world called Coorg. I doubt if people outside India know about it, but it is somewhat well known in India, well at least in the southern states. Coorg is for me the most beautiful place in the world, words can’t describe it. I grew up as a little kid in Coorg and have lots of memories and experiences that I will carry with me always. Coorg is also known as Kodagu and is a small but precious district in the state of Karnataka, India. Coorg is well known for many things, but prominently for its brave soldiers, bold and beautiful women, wild life, mountains, honey, cardamom, black pepper and most of all Coffee! Yes, we grow great Coffee in India! I don’t care what anyone thinks, Coorg coffee is way better than Columbian!
PS: I have lots of pictures, but don’t have time to sort them out right now. Here are three random pictures from my trip to give you an idea of the greenery and scenery. If I get time, I will share in the future. No promises.
August 2nd, 2005
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