O Blog do Pilingrin

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:41:00 +0000

Wise Guys...

Well the Spanish (mine too) PM managed to have his picture taken with the rest of the big boys.

But so did the Dutch PM.

Apparently the price paid by Spain for the picture was high according to the specialized press. The Dutch were invited. The meeting was with the lamest of the duck US presidents.

So after the Azores picture, Trafalgar, all the gold from the New World, Spain still willingly buys the Brooklyn Bridge.

Unbelievable...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:58:00 +0000

Recompile The Move...

Ok it's hard to move across the ocean again and fix bugs but we have managed to fix some areas that were choking while recompiling: abstract classes + interfaces.

Still no departure date.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:14:00 +0000

Moving to Denver this winter...

In an unusual turn of events, we are moving to the Rockies this Christmas.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:13:00 +0000

Uninvited Guest...

Spain's PM is about to shoot himself in the foot: after crying and whining for weeks that he was not invited to the Financial Crisis Summit, it appears that France's PM is thinking about giving up his chair as EU president so Spain's PM could go.

Other EU members with stronger economies: Sweden (ABB, Volvo, Ericsson, Ikea) Holland (ING, ABN, Phillips, Shell) are out meeting. This was suposedly a European UNION.

Beware of what you ask for: Spain is not part of the G8 or G20, this PM has a history of diplomatic tantrums with the USA, Spain still is recipient of EU help. He has even made fun of fellow European PMs: France and Italy.

The first question would be: if Spain economy is so big , it maybe it doesn't need those moneys.

And now France's PM is willing to let him in. I wonder what price tag that chair has.

Unbelievable...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 09:09:00 +0000

Open-Recession...

Recently, there was this thread on LinkedIn about an open-source project which lead me to think the following:

Everybody has benefited from OSS in one form or the other. Some others have contributed work.

But the interesting fact is that OSS was born during a period of abundance. How will it cope during global recession?

Do companies will have enough extra budget to continue support? Will individuals have the job security (in terms of income or available time) to contribute?

Hopefully, OSS will not suffer beyond repair for everyone's sake, but it will be an interesting development.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:44:00 +0000

In-Out of the money...

Apparently Porsche acquired a huge chunk of VW in a well engineered derivatives operation that caught off-guard hedge funds worldwide, raising the capitalization of VW well beyond the total market cap of Ibex-35 (the leading stock index in Spain, this was according the local press)

The hedge funds are crying foul: this transaction puts in disrepute German markets. That is odd.The stock market has almost real-time, free information about any major exchange in the world.

What is clear is that if the hedge fund managers had information about Porsche bets, they would not have shorted VW. The derivatives market seems to be too asymmetric. It preys even on the predators.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:27:00 +0000

Free Willy...

Has anyone heard about Canada lately? Not me. Apparently, they are happy, with a sound financial system, although a little bit cold. We have heard about everybody else.

So how come did Canada manage to avoid the storm and not Europe? After all Canada is a lot closer to USA than the EU is.

Some of its banks may be in trouble but given it is part of G8 and its economy is a lot larger than that of Iceland, there is barely any piece of news in all the financial and economics media about Canada.

Ahh, nothing can substitute good judgment.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:55:00 +0000

Somebody in the...

Ah that LinkedIn jargon! I am getting closer to the point of really needing to use it.

But the real reason for posting is the *hope* that some reputed papers have that China's growth would keep the recession away.

How could China do that if it is relying on exports to countries in trouble to grow?

Someday China will be the economic superpower, but how quickly can China raise its per-capita income and draw goods from *somewhere else or even increase its fdi*? Not soon enough to help western bankers save face.

An article on the obvious, indeed.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:26:00 +0000

The World According to Tarp...

It is amazing: to connect our Ipod to a brand new Imac we need to learn black magic (it is well documented on the net), to connect it to an XP laptop, it is a snap.

A well known open-source project just got kicked in the rear because of quality problems.

So, MS' QA/QC outspends everyone in the industry to follow XP with a stinker, it is easier to connect an Ipod to XP than to Imac, and the open-source project does not seem to fall too far behind these two.

And then some americans are wondering if USA lost the "financial" leadership of the world.

After two humongous bubbles in less than a decade apart, and over-leveraged consumers (whose spending accounts for 25% of global GDP) isn't that question superfluous?

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:39:00 +0000

Params, Threads, Generics This is another progress demo. It involves: dynamically allocating params, genereics, threads, and switching between classes. Everything is handled transparently and effortlessly to the user. With such a small learning curve, ease of use, and blasting speeds the testing "Total Costs of Ownership" should be extremely low while attaining effectiveness never seen before. Enjoy your Sunday morning...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:43:00 +0000

Deleveraging...

It is peculiar that in these times of crisis, the spam industry changes from blue pills to credit relief.

Fortunately, we deleveraged during 2003/2005.

Back then it seemed pretty clear that White House's "policy goal" was to keep the consumer spending lost with outsourcing and the bursting of tech bubble by providing cheap credit and using dubious lending practices (I used to work for PriceWaterhouse auditing Banks)

If on top of that setup free market supporters start to play "shock-and-awe" with financial derivatives, the downside became pretty nasty.

Markets can only function with free flow of information. Financial derivatives markets are like a backroom full of smoke. No clear information, if any, about financial instruments with limitless downside.

So no mortgage, no credit card debt, just trying to make an honest buck with hard work :-}

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 10:32:00 +0000

Smooth...

After cleaning up some bugs, a task that is still going, here is another sampler: a 500 thread session, with generics included, ran twice under 3 minutes from scratch.

That is generics type, tests + threads creation, and run. Everything completely synchronized.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:11:00 +0000

General Dynamic Fixtures

This is the first work-in-progress report in a while. It shows how DevRiot dynamically generates, stores, and retrieves tests between sessions.

The "fixtures" are handled dynamically. We can mix and match the generics parameter types on-the-fly, keeping the engineers effort easy, flexible, and quick. Extremely quick.

Very few tools on the market can offer such a low Cost of Ownership, in the short or long run :-}

Enjoy...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:11:00 +0000

Delayed Amsterdam's Pix...

Well, Here are some pictures from our recent trip to Amsterdam. This is close to my syster's home in Jordaan.

This second one I am not sure which canal/gracht was but not far from Lindengracht.

Close to the retail area near Dam Square.

And this last one on our way to the Cleft.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:38:00 +0000

Patently mine...

The question about the IP, there is only one owner of this puppy: me.

I hope this helps to clarify doubts.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:23:00 +0000

Total Quality Slow Down:

It is always comforting to see that pretty reputable companies of all sizes get to efeKctive via searches like: "total quality management in software industry".

It makes easier the solo/self-funding effort. The summer months will be slower than previous months. Too many hours sitting in front of the keyboard take a toll on anyone's back, wrists, etc.

Hopefully, my new surfboard will be here by our arrival.

So tomorrow, we are heading to Amsterdam to visit my sister. Pictures will be coming...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:26:00 +0000

Summer Blues Report...

I must admit that moving suites/tests from storage to binary form has been a challenge. It has become more difficult than DevRiot for Java because it has more features to take care of.

Generics Generation has posed its own set of binarization challenges.

But still snailing away...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:04:00 +0000

Still working out the bugs...

...inside the generics engine to recompile the tests from storage. Not being able to ask questions makes the work slow down a lot.

Will have another demo soon.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:52:00 +0000

The Referencer

Is still working on fixing bugs. The logic to implement new/old method matching is uncovering a lot of bugs. Not as close to beta as I thought or would like...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:14:00 +0000

Plugging the plug-in

We are paying the error of working while sick on a key piece of code regeneration. Bad code, or at least worse than usual, that needs rewriting.

But it also has given us the opportunity of thinking about deployment.

We are toying with the idea of adopting "perpetual delivery" mode. Since the engine is not larger than 150K, downloading it can part of the add-in setup.

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:53:00 +0000

Generating Generics...

Stuck here. Trying to combine serialization/de-serialization of suites with generics and not generics is proving to have several traps...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:15:00 +0000

Deploying the report,

Still making a lot of progress with suite recompilation and integrity.

Also some time has been spent on figuring out how to deploy the tool while minimizing the IP exposure.

There is VS Gallery and other channels. Obfuscation is a good deterrent but it needs help from other angles...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:27:00 +0000

From the lonely tree to the red sound (Progress report)

The recompilation process is moving slowly but solidly. As anyone might have guessed bugs have been uncovered and are about to disappear...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:57:00 +0000

Letter to My Sunday Readers:

I am still in the process of getting visual studio/sql server back in a workable condition. If I could find the misplaced XP cd I would rebuild the whole thing.

Watching a lot of movies though...

noreply@blogger.com (Jose) — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:02:00 +0000

Chasing hotfixes!!

It is one of those days: VS does not want to continue working, not even with the hot fix. Reinstall time. It had been a long while since VS coughed up like this.

What else to do if not watching a movie on the mac while xp works?

The mac's codecs need updating.

Wonderful!!!