(c) Amana stock photos

Why Real Software People Don’t Fit In Your Corporation

Forrest ChristianComputers/IT Leave a Comment

“He’s a real software developer,” I told her. “It’s not just that he’s ‘in a different league’”, I said. “He’s playing an entirely different game.” I was sitting with a business lead who oversaw a large IT project. She and I were talking about the best people on the team. I mentioned that Ivan was clearly the best we had. …

The iPhone in Doctor Who (c. 1984)

Forrest ChristianComputers/IT Leave a Comment

Ever wonder whether Apple has a case against other “tablet” makers? The Atlantic today has a blog post about how the patent office rejected a “scrotal support” by referencing the movie Borat, showing that he had already invented it. Madrigal went on to point out that using pop culture in movies was not just a feature of frivolous filings: “Part …

Looking down at Château-d'Oex from our chateau on after a snowfall. © E. Forrest Christian.

Software Architecture: There Is No One Right Way

Forrest ChristianComputers/IT, Decision-making Leave a Comment

I spent some time perusing the programming stacks at Seattle’s main library today, and skimmed through some texts on software architecture. Perhaps the most interesting was 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts (ed. Richard Monson-Haefel). It’s a collection of various two-page thoughts from people who do software architecture from across the globe. Think Chicken …

Yardmaster in railroad yards working, Amarillo, TX, 1943. By Jack Delano via Library of Congress Collection (LOC)

Why Managers Should Not Write Technical Job Postings

Forrest ChristianComputers/IT, Managing Leave a Comment

A friend of mine encouraged me to tell this story which I watched unfold first hand while a software development manager for a mid-sized consulting firm. One of my best developers — a software architect, really — started laughing in the middle of the day. We all needed something to release the strain of our bi-weekly drop work, so all …

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Using Timespans to Solve Communication Problems

Forrest ChristianComputers/IT, Theory 1 Comment

Ever wonder if timespans has any practical usefulness? Here is how I used timespans to clear up a communication problem in a global IT architecture group for an international bank. Awhile back I worked with a group of enterprise architects (EA) at an international bank with major operations in all the inhabited continents. The group, although “headquartered” in the US, …

Different Worlds: My Experiences with AT&T/RIM vs. Apple

Forrest ChristianComputers/IT Leave a Comment

Recently, I had two problems come up. Neither of them are really horrifying but the experiences that I had show why Apple dominates the markets for consumer-oriented electronics, and why RIM’s Blackberry, Obamania aside, is declining. I should start out with a confession: I’ve been a systems administrator at a variety of levels on several network OSes, including Solaris, HP-UX, …

Analog Computing Machine in Fuel Systems Building Lewis Flight Propulsion Lab-NASA

Retraining Mainframers to Object Oriented Programming (OOP)

Forrest ChristianComputers/IT, Theory Leave a Comment

I’m going through my old email archives, and discovered a note from a project I ran to help a very large US property & casualty insurer to better retool their mainframe-oriented programmers (procedural using COBOL) to client-server paradigms (mostly Object-Oriented Programming using Java). It was an interesting project because the dirty secret was that some people were better than others. …

New MacUpdate Promo Bundle

Forrest ChristianAdmin, Computers/IT Leave a Comment

Since I got so much grief from some of y’all for failing to mention the last one, here’s the news: a brand new MacUpdate Promo bundle is available. You get some great apps, plus the chance that they will unlock SoundStudio (probable), BannerZest (likely), and Parallels Desktop (possible but don’t hold your breath), all for US$64.99. In my opinion, the …

Greybox Really Is a Popup Window That Doesn’t Suck

Forrest ChristianAdmin, Computers/IT 4 Comments

I’ve been evaluating several technologies for a small web project I’m working. One of the things that I’ve seen lately are these popup windows that display on top of the original page, graying out the original and “floating” on top of it. There are several neat implementations of this for images but I needed to popup little informational windows, something …