Category archives: Knight Errant
Questing and jousting and other entrepreneurial details
Unexpected 'free' day (More of an "I want to do something else" day...)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant,
Snaking.
I got up this morning fully intending to work on billing/provisioning stuff for ACI all day... I only wound up doing 2 hours total work for them (well, so far), exhausted the stuff that can be done during the day (most of the changes need to be done after-close-of-business) and decided to brush up on ...
Formatting and Review for Tutorial Handout (Oh, and some paying work...)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant,
Vindaloo,
Young Coders.
Spent the bulk of yesterday on paying work, solid day of billables down at the Caffe. Nothing all that interesting, just some refactoring of a view, scripting a maintenance task, that kind of thing.
Then started working on the tutorial handout (due end of this week). Got about 1/3 through editing when Paul came in. ...
Last to Know, Apparently (End of an era...)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant.
Last month I was asked by someone (can't even remember who now) whether I thought Aurora Cable would be bought by Rogers... told him that as long as the CRTC was keeping the area's license exclusive to Aurora I couldn't see why they'd sell.
Apparently the CRTC decided to allow them in around the same ...
SNMP Engine for 250,000+ Device Networks (Scaling up...)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant.
Wanting to scale up Cinemon's SNMP performance. We're currently in the 10-20,000 device range, which is okay, but I'd like to increase that by a factor of 5 or 10 to address some performance issues. We've got plenty of memory for that scale (though we'll need to work on the long-term storage system a bit). ...
Giving up on GNUCash (Delegating accounting/bookkeeping)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant.
I've been tracking my corporate books using GNUCash for about 21 months now. At the start it was quite rough (a number of nasty glitches that have since been fixed), but it's served me reasonably well.
In the end the problem isn't the software, it's that the accountants charge the same to read/review the books ...
Need some time to work on work too (Inversion of ratio...)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant,
Young Coders.
Since the trip to Taiwan I've been working full-time-plus on OLPC stuff. Originally the plan was that I was to spend 1 day/week on it, with the other 4 days available for my other clients... but OLPC really needs someone working full-time on making things easier for developers. Getting OLPCGames whipped into shape, making sample ...
What to do for 24 hours (Rubbing hands in manic glee... free time (sort-of))
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant,
Young Coders.
Have half a dozen different projects that all need my time. Going to have 24 hours to work on them as I get over to Taipei. I'm thinking maybe spend the bulk of the time on a few spike tests for Productive. Control systems, that kind of thing, so we're not going into the Game ...
Long Hours (and Short)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant.
I really do need long, unbroken hours to work on coding. Little distractions break my concentration and flush me out into side trips, emails, ticket-tracking, that kind of thing. When I'm in the zone I'll churn away for a few solid hours and get all sorts of things finished. When I'm pulled out every once ...
Long Day (Schedules mean never having a minute's rest... but you feel really good at the end of the day...)
Written by
on
in
Knight Errant,
Young Coders.
From about 2pm through to just now I've been up and running. Meeting with a new client, picking up the B2 machine, meeting with a volunteer project manager for the OLPC, trying to re-recruit a sub-contractor for various projects, then off to see a friend play at Free Times (a cafe).
The B2's screen was ...
Messy Jobs are Never-Ending (Clean jobs a disappearing breed...)
Written by
on
in
Design Theory,
Knight Errant,
Vindaloo.
Sitting here working I find myself reflecting on the fact that messy jobs are never "finished." By messy I mean jobs that are complex and multi-faceted and have no particular "right solution". In contrast, the clean jobs, the ones where you just need to solve a problem and know that you have the correct answer, ...
Mike C. Fletcher, the VRPlumber, is a philosopher of design turned computer programmer based in Toronto, Canada. He works primarily in the Python programming language, and maintains a large number of Open Source software packages. You can reach him at: mcfletch@vrplumber.com.