20100727

International Contest of Seamanship @ Midland, ON, Canada


Why the photos are so few? Heck, I cannot shoot.
Videos coming soon?

20100720

lvalue tip

while — very unfortunately — this

irb(main):042:0> x,y=0,0
=> [0, 0]
irb(main):044:0> if nil then x else y end = 1
SyntaxError: compile error
(irb):44: syntax error, unexpected '=', expecting $end
if nil then x else y end = 1
                          ^
    from (irb):44
    from :0
does not work, this
irb(main):048:0> x,y=[],[]
=> [[], []]
irb(main):049:0> if nil then x else y end << 1
=> [1]
irb(main):050:0> x
=> []
irb(main):051:0> y
=> [1]
performs nicely.

i know the difference, but it's still controversial to me.

20100411

dead code is nothing compared to zombie code!

20100117

priority-posteriority

As I'm conceiving the next generation ass-kicking artefact-based task management system, I have to make a statement on so-called task priority.

One can argue about the variety of psychological models on the subject, but to me, there's no such thing as task priority in the real world.
A task – sooner or later – is being done or discarded, or better, it starts consuming resources right from its definition, and those resources are real, the time spent is real.
That's why, the only questions how (= when + how much) those resources are spent.
Thus, the most natural thing to do is to define a period of time this task can "wait" – until the next action.

So I propose always to use time-to-action as the basic measure of task precedence.

Of course, deadlines, dependencies, schedule and resource constraints might be additional parameters to the planning equation, but even that basic attribute on each of your tasks is good enough to answer the core question "What in the bloody hell should I be doing right now?"