Jorgensen.org.uk

... trying to make sense of reality. And discovering absurdity.

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Jorgensen.org.uk

Implied Knowledge

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Often, the English language relies on implied knowledge. References to something unspoken, or words/phrases that are left out because it is assumed that the listeners know the reference. Often, this assumption is correct. But when it is not, the consequences can be at best baffling, and at worst aggravating and infuriating.

For some phrases the listener stands no chance of deriving the correct meaning:

Last Updated ( Saturday, 04 October 2008 19:43 ) Read more...
 

Hot and Cold Water Taps

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I grew up with mixer taps. You know: the sort where the tap will mix hot and cold water, so water comes out at a humane temperature?

This does not appear to be common in the UK. They seem to prefer separate hot and cold taps. Why? Don't ask me.

I never figured out how I'm meant to wash my hands without either freezing or boiling my hands, and yet not waste lots of water. Don't forget that we do suffer from the occasional water shortage, despite the large amount of rain....

Perhaps this can explain why it is not common to wash you hands after visiting the toilets? Or perhaps the pubs/restaurants are trying to save water by cunningly discouraging us from washing hands? Or perhaps mixer taps are that much more expensive? Does it matter how much more expensive they are, since the two-tap system is clearly unworkable?

I'm Danish. And I still wash my hands after visiting the toilet. If I have cold hands, think of it as a good sign.

 

Why Incremental Releases are Bad

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There are two basic approaches to deploying application releases:

  • Full Releases: A release contains the whole application
  • Incremental Release : The release contains only changes since the previous release.

If implemented correctly, both can work in any organisation. And since very few organisations actually bother tracking releases, most choose incremental releases, because they are easier to implement. And this is where things start going wrong.

The most basic ethos in configuration management is to keep track what is installed.This is extremely important for several reasons. Basically, if you do not know what is installed, then:

  • how can the test environment be relied upon? This needs to be as close as technically possible to the live environment to have the same bugs/features as the live environment.
  • how can you predict how the application will behave? You need to. If not, then your documentation is unlikely match the application...
  • how do you know what has changed in a release?
Last Updated ( Friday, 19 September 2008 11:42 ) Read more...
 

The Importance of Release Tagging

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Many IT departments are sensible enough to use Version Control tools (e.g. CVS or Subversion) to manage their software. For example each application is declared to be its own "project", and releases are done from there.

This tends to work well. At least for organisations where:

  • there is no separate testing environment
  • and each project has a small number (e.g. 3) of developers

Once the number of developers increase, or the demand for a separate testing environment raises its head, releases tend to go wrong.

Last Updated ( Monday, 29 September 2008 08:53 ) Read more...
 

Diagnosing MySQL InnoDB Locks

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As a MySQL Administrator, you will from time to time be called on to diagnose locking problems. Unfortuantely, MySQL does not provide many tools to help with this - you need to be able to find your own way around.

If this wasn't bad enough, there are usually other factors that make things even worse:

Last Updated ( Sunday, 14 September 2008 21:26 ) Read more...
 

Call for creationism in science!?

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I came across this one in my daily news feed: Cry

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/education/7612152.stm

I find this incredible. This is straight from the Royal Society's Director of Education!? Somebody whom I would expect to know better.

Last Updated ( Monday, 15 September 2008 13:00 ) Read more...
 

CVS

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I don't have a problem with CVS as such. My problem is with the way CVS is often used.

Specifically, my problem is with the way that branching is sometimes done: by branching individual files, rather than the whole repository.

Why?

Because it causes more problems that it solves.

Last Updated ( Friday, 12 September 2008 21:58 ) Read more...
 
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