Random stuff written on my whiteboard

Often on my way to work I come up with some insight or thought that I want to preserve for posterity (or vanity) and so I write them on my whiteboard. The problem is, I need to use my whiteboard for work related things too, so where to put these random thoughts? On my blog, of course... So here they are.

• Empathy is a prerequisite for learning;
• We keuren niet goed; we keuren af, of we keuren niet af;
• When you try to measure quality it becomes a quantity, but the opposite does not apply;
• More time is wasted in misguided attempts to save it, than in the honest-to-goodness squandering thereof;
• To get to the top don't play the game, play the system.

At some point I may, or may not, elucidate further.

Adapt: why success always starts with failure - a review

This book, which has been described as groundbreaking, actually boils to down to a set of rules for dealing with complex problems defined by a Russian engineer at the turn of the 20th Century. His name was Peter Palchinsky and he was inspired by the failure of the burgeoning Communist rulers of the time to address severe industrial problems. He came up with three principles for successfully dealing with complex problems, specifically ones in which people are involved and which can change (or evolve) in response to circumstances:

1) Seek out new ideas and try out new things
2) When trying out new things, do so on a scale that makes failure survivable
3) Seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes on the way

The first and the third principle are relatively self explanatory, though the apparent simplicity can be deceptive. In general though, new ideas and feedback are things that allow themselves to be found if you look hard enough. So we turn to the the second of the principles; making failure survivable. The best way to safeguard this is to ensure that the failure is not catastrophic. The characteristics of a system that lead to catastrophic are: complex and tightly-coupled.

A complex system can be defined as any system where the link between input and output does not follow an obvious pattern of cause and effect. Drop a pen from the table and it falls to the floor. Use that same pen to write a scathing letter about (insert your favourite rant here) to the newspaper and you can't predict what will happen. Maybe the letter will get published, strike a chord and start off a chain reaction; it could just as likely end up in the editor's wastepaper basket.

The definition of a tightly-coupled system is one in which it is extremely difficult or impossible to stop the process once it has been started. Mix flour, yeast and water together and pretty soon it will begin to rise.

So how do you prevent complex, tightly coupled systems descending into catastrophe? Well, decoupling is one way. The best example given in the book is the domino rally where millions (the world record stands at almost 5million) of dominoes are lined up. The system is indeed complex and tightly coupled and in fact designed to fail: once the first domino falls, the intention is that all the dominoes fall. The problem is that you don't want them to fall over by accident, so they build in removable safety gates. That way if one section gets accidentally knocked over, the loss is contained to a few tens of thousands of dominoes, which while not being exactly painless, is still survivable.

So now we know about failure, or rather how to make failure survivable; what about success? Harford then shows us a curious anomaly about successful companies; they tend to fade away when new technologies supplant them. The reason is that they are so focused on developing and delivering existing technology to existing customers that they are not responsive to the itch caused by the small numbers of customers demanding new technologies. A telling example is Kodak who were a major producer of film photography consumables. When digital cameras came along they were at first largely ignored due to the image superiority achieved with film; my first digital camera bought in 1999 managed 1 megapixel. Now a little over ten years later almost no-one buys film anymore;, Kodak went out of business along with Polaroid. These companies had their eye on the ball, but the game changed. The ultimate irony is that film photography has now become a niche market.

This leads me on to a conclusion that wasn't really made in Harford's book. Peter Drucker concluded that a company has only two aims and no more than two:  to create and exploit markets in which to sell their products and to innovate. Adding this to Harford's story I would conclude that companies (in particular) need to expend energy in invention and refinement of existing products and markets, but also in innovation in seeking out new markets and new products and technologies. This satisfies both of Drucker's criteria; the Palchinsky principles give us the framework in which to carry out both invention and innovation.

Schoon genoeg van kern energie?

Zo ja, dan volg de link naar de website een laat je naam achter. Greenpeace is met een actie begonnen tegen uitbreiding van kernenergie in Nederland. Er is een landelijke manifestatie gepland op 16 april om te protesteren tegen nieuwe kerncentrales. We moeten ons goed beseffen dat we bezig zijn met het maken van radioactief afval dat nog schadelijk is tot in de lengte der jaren. Op dit moment is het zo dat kernafval nog 10,000 jaar schadelijk blijft voor de gezondheid, er van uit gaande van de minst strenge schattingen over schadelijkheid (US Environmental Protection Agency)¹. In Europa zijn de normen strenger, wat als gevolg heeft dat kernafval bijna 1 MILJOEN jaar schadelijk geacht wordt.

Dit feit, gekoppeld met het feit dat het ontwerpen en bouwen van een kerncentrale minimaal 10 jaar nodig heeft en bijna altijd door de overheid gefinancierd moet worden ivm het afbreukrisico, geeft mij niet echt een goed gevoel voor de houdbaarheid van het concept. Of liever, ik geef mijn geld eerder uit aan een innovatieve energieoplossing die mij binnen een aantal jaren weer rendement gaat opleveren en waarvan ik weet dat de kosten van de opruiming niet gaat uitsmeren over een periode die gelijk is aan de hele mensengeschiedenis tot nu toe.

Maar dat is niet de enige oplossing; wij als consumenten moeten ook verantwoordelijkheid nemen voor de energie die wij gebruiken. We moeten ook kritischer zijn in het kiezen voor schonere goederen, minder vliegvakanties nemen, vaker de trein of fiets ipv de auto nemen, minder vlees eten en minder etensresten weg gooien. Als iedereen 10% direct minder energie verbruikt dan zijn we heel goed onderweg naar CO2 reductie. Doe je televisie (of je computer) uit en ga appelmoes maken, of kippensoep met de resten van de geroosterde kip. Speel een bordspel met je kinderen of ga vrijen met je partner of een willekeurig iemand. Word je nog blij van ook!

¹ Vandenbosch, Robert, and Susanne E. Vandenbosch. 2007. Nuclear waste stalemate. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 248

Am I paranoid, or are they really out to get me...?-

I'm having a bad hair day today. It's one of those days when nothing seems to go right and I start to understand how Marvin felt: brain the size of a planet and all they want me to do is to go the docking bay to pick up the hitch-hikers..........

It started off with a flat tyre on the car. I changed the wheel, drove to the garage to blow it back up and put it back on. It doesn't appear to have gone back down yet, so that means some little b@#%trd let my tyre down. I don't know if that's worse than it being punctured....

Then I met my new boss and I felt a bit of a twat because it appears that I didn't go the right university. Aaaaarggghhhh, ever get the feeling that the decisions you made for an easy life when you were young come back to bite you when you're older? Well, today it happened to me and it wasn't the most pleasant experience I ever had I can tell you.

Finally, I drove by the Appie Heijn (supermarket) on my way home to buy some food and found out that it had been burned out. Bummer. Two kids in the garage playing with fire, gets out of hand and the whole place is smoked out. Probably the same little gits who let my tyre down.

Google: don't be evil

Google has shown its true colours and, like so many before, have abandoned the noble principles upon which they were founded in favour of market share and dividend. I am talking, of course about the search engine supplied by Google to China which supports the restriction of searches for information which is censored by the Chinese Government. I don't get wound up by many things, but hypocrisy is one of them. A company which purports itself to be based on noble precepts should stick to them. Google does not have the responsibility to ensure that information gets on to the web, but it does have the responsibility as a search engine to be able to find what is there. The whole idea of Google is that if the page is deemed important by other web users, then the page will get on top of the rankings. If one of these pages happens to be censored by the Chinese government, then the Chinese will be closed off from what everyone else apparently finds incredibly important.

So, follow the link, read about what Google are doing. Go ahead and cut and paste the letter to Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO) and send it. It will take you a few moments and cost you one sheet of A4 paper, a bit of ink and less than one euro postage (€0.81 to be exact). Ironically the link has a page rank of 6. I wonder if the Chinese will be getting it; probably not if Google has anything to do with it.

Furthermore, I realise that I am also being a hypocrite, using a Google based blog site and also Google ads, so I will shortly be migrating to another blog site; the ads, as you can see, have already been removed.

Revenge of the Sith

I know the secret of the Sith revenge - they want to disappoint us and bore us all to death. Yes, I went to see the new, and I sincerely hope last ever, Star Wars movie last night. Oh how I cried! Not because the scenes were so moving, but that they added this crap to the excellence of the first series. Actually, the rot was beginning to set in with Return of the Jedi, but I was too young and naive to see it then, but looking back on it, that was the first of the films that catered to 'the kids'.

That said, I liked the darkness of 'Revenge' but there just wasn't enough of it. I was already disenchanted with Episode 1 and the pointless killing of one of the best Star Wars characters ever: Darth Maul. Episode 2 almost completely passed me by and I eventually watched it on an overnight ferry crossing when I had really nothing else to do and insomnia set in. So, all in all I wasn't expecting much from Episode 3 and I was still disappointed.

You know that the acting is bad when a green puppet steals the show, but honestly, the fight scenes with Yoda were the best parts of both Episodes 2 and 3. The absolute highlight of the film was when Darth Vader put on his new mask. The heavy breathing and the smoky voice of James Earl Jones gave me goose pimples the size of oranges and sent such shivers down my spine that my neighbour nearly spilled his cola. In my opinion, the darkness of the Sith characters was never exploited to its full potential with Darth Maul being cruelly killed off in Episode 1. What a great confrontation that would have been to end the series with. Darth Maul was so hard, mean and just plain spine chillingly evil, that I would have loved to have seen how Darth Vader would have managed to do him over.

I guess the biggest complaint I have with this series are the mind-numbing dialogues and the sheer predictability of it all. That is what you get when you start filming prequels, but life is never as simple as all that. It was incredibly non-dimensional with platitudes flying left and right. A little bit of subtlety and an unexpected turn of events here and there might have left the public wanting more. Let's face it, you couldn't want less. That said, the great unwashed masses will probably flock to see to the inevitable Episodes 7,8 and 9 simply because they have nothing better to do. Cultural poverty is indeed on the increase.