Position

Position

Originally uploaded by Lakshmi Vyas

Interesting position I reached when playing against OSX chess. It's amazingly bad when it comes to closed positions and opposite side castles.

Pangeaday

My weekly TED update email today brought in this gem.

I am a great believer of a unified world - a world without borders. Though from a technological and communication standpoint we have almost achieved that, politically we are aeon's away from that goal. Being an Alien in America & a non-resident Indian, I have been subject to obscene amount of bureaucracy and paperwork by both countries.

Is the cost and human resources involved(not to mention my time and also the physical and mental agony caused due to my extreme allergy towards paperwork and unnecessary authority) in keeping this system justified? In a economy that thrives and dies on co-dependency, do borders really enhance anything at all?There are several factors that group people and draw less controlled - permeable by willingness borders like religion & language. These intrinsically allow people to come together to share these interests. These are times where "coming-together" has a completely different meaning than it ever had.

This notion of having national borders seems similar to building walls between the Troposphere and Stratosphere so that we know what is what.

Find more X sings for X here: YouTube - pangeaday's Channel

Tags: borders, panageaday

Death marching gracefully - Commando behind army technique

A software developer's career doesn't mature until (s)he becomes a part of a death march. Unfortunately, I have been in quite a few of those over the years. The endings of those projects to me have been very similar to end of wars(based on my Hollywood experience). Few dead souls, some shell shocked, few mutilated. A mixed feeling of pain and relief.

While the agile methodologies do mitigate a lot of these risks, there are situations where aggressive or even unreasonable deadlines are unavoidable. Here is an attempt to minimize casualties:

The Technique

The army (the primary development team) marches towards maximum functionality complete by taking on new stories - never turning back. One or two commandos start behind the team perfecting what the army finishes - essentially cleaning up after the army.

Keyword

Momentum. Speed and perfection do not co-exist. This technique tries to maximize speed while getting closer to perfection.

Gains

When addressing lot of new development, it is important that the team is not bogged down by fringe issues that dramatically slow the progress. This allows quick turnaround of new functionality for demo's and feedback with the knowledge that the fringe items and bugs will be addressed by the commandos.

Tags: dev, pm

Apple TV Wishlist

{{{This would make my current love for Apple TV much more justifiable. Some of the features in this WishList is already possible with "hacks":http://tutorialninjas.net/2007/03/26/hacking-the-apple-tv that involve taking the hard disk out.

# *Integration:* I own an iPhone, Apple TV and a Macbook Pro. I watch a video on YouTube on my Mac, add it to my favorites, On the iPhone I add it to my bookmarks, on the Apple TV I add it to my favorites. _Wish:_ What I would really like is for all of them to be added to You Tube as favorites. So my favorite videos are accessible every where. Thats kind of the whole point about services.
# *Sharing:* Unlike iPods, iPhones and Macs, AppleTV is a family property. Its shared. My wife watches a video it gets marked as seen - and if it is old enough gets removed. _Wish:_ Ability to * it for others to look at. Better yet - added it to a global favorite list which is accessible from anywhere.
# *Sourcing:* Right now Apple TV is the sync station. Its the sink for diverse content managed by more intelligent machines with better user input devices. _Wish:_ Apple TV should behave like a media source - may be a shared iTunes library.
# *Serendipity:* With traditional television, channel surfing will eventually lead to some content thats absolutely great to watch. Right now my Apple TV experience discounting You Tube is deterministic. I know what I am going to watch. This takes away a lots of Live TV fun. _Wish:_ Integration with services similar to Joost for serendipitous content.
# *Expandability:* 160 GB does not cut it. _Wish:_ Out of the box support for external hard drives. Additionally the device should be extensible so that another accessory market can flourish. This also includes software extensibility. For example, ABC can provide a service similar to You Tube so that their streaming content can be watched on Apple TV.

Hopefully, I wouldn't have to buy another one to get these features. A paid firmware / software upgrade wouldn't be bad though.

}}}