Archive for October, 2012

GBTC TechNite “Geek Prom” no more

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

At a recent event, I asked a young entrepreneur whether he was going to TechNite this year (as I had talked with him at TN, last year), and he responded that he heard it was being held in a “sketchy” neighborhood. At first I thought he was kidding, but he actually was planning to miss the event because of this presumption.

At first this really torqued me, because as a person who has spent my whole life here, I’m proud of my city and take umbrage at the premise that an iconic venue like Lexington Market would be unsafe for such an affair.

Then I got thinking, what if this keeps people away, discourages the timid, roots out the uncommitted? What if the only people who show are the hard core, passionate zealots who are unconcerned with the location of the venue, because they are on a “mission from God” to succeed. Yeah, that’s actual a good thing, because those are the types of people who built this city in the first place – and I’d rather ta
lk to the zealots anyway. They’re more interesting – and they are going places.
GB.TC TechNite

I really don’t know what the GB.TC has in store, but don’t think TechNite is “Geek Prom” anymore. I figure it’s worth $40 to find out.

If you can’t write it down in English, you can’t code it.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Flowcharting...

I first saw this quote in the wonderful book “Programming Pearls” and I thought it was a bit obvious, but apparently not to everyone.

As a consultant, I never cease to be amazed at clients that expect programmers to create software based on a loosely defined concept or abstract description. They have no problem understanding that if they let their house builder make all the decisions on how their new kitchen would be constructed, that there might be some difference between the builders concept of dream kitchen and the house owners. However, customers do not understand why when their software project descriptions such as “program to track orders” or “help employees collaborate” might not be enough to guarantee a mutually agreeable outcome to the software development project.

So here’s a few simple steps for getting to a better project outcome using simple flow charting. No need to get too complicated.
Simple Programming Process

3D Printing Will Change the World

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

Yes, I think the future is going to be changed by 3D printing in a way that is hard for us to imagine today much like it is hard for someone from the “Carbon Paper” period to imagine printing a color document off of a $40 device in their own office. This technology will make things possible that were until recently only the purview of shows like the “Jetsons”.

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/how-makerbots-replicator2-will-launch-era-of-desktop-manufacturing/

Recently, attendees of Betascape in Baltimore were scanned and printed while they were at the event using devices that cost less than $4,000 for a complete solution.

http://www.thingiverse.com/tag:betascape