Common Sense 4 Common People

Are you learning Chinese? You probably need this site!

If you are learning Chinese as a foreign language then you must absolutely put this web site in your arsenal of tools:

It is much much more than an online dictionary. It does both simplified and traditional (which is what I study by virtue of being in Taiwan). It also integrates with Google translate but then breaks down the Chinese word list in a very clever manner so that it is much easier to understand the Chinese phrase. Did I mention it can even play you animations on how to properly write each character?  

Can't live without it!
Enjoy!
Dimitrios Staikos

The problem with Greece

What is the problem with the Greek people? What is the 'curse' of the Greeks that got them into this situation? A lot of people ask me, because I live abroad and I happen to be Greek.

What do I think?

Greeks have historically been smart people, but there is no way to tell if today they are smarter than the people of other countries. The real problem is that about 90% of Greeks believe they are much smarter than the rest of the Greeks (and the rest of the world).

Believing that you are smarter has no value unless you can prove it, by doing something smarter than average. And the easiest way is to outsmart someone else or even better outsmart the "system"!

I will define "systemically unstable behavior" as something that if the majority performs within a system then the whole system gets screwed, including the actor. Trying to outsmart others or the system is systemically unstable behavior with regards to society.

In a nutshell, that's what happened to Greece. The 90% did 'smart' things and thought they would get away with it, that others would pay the so called negative externalities.

So many times I had heard the answer "But Everybody Does it, I would be stupid if I don't do it too" as an excuse for something inappropriate somebody did. This thinking is built into the Greek DNA.

Can this mentality change?

I don't think so, it might be temporarily put aside, but it is really the curse of the modern Greeks.

Cheers,
Dimitrios Staikos

If I had killed you...

I watched EX last "night" in the airplane... My goodness, this movie is so hilarious, I just hope my hysteric laughter was not a big annoyance to the other passengers.
Of all the lines in the movie, here is my absolutely favorite, from a scene where a middle aged Italian couple is fighting with great passion:

Husband: If I had killed you when I got the idea for the first time, I would be out of jail by now, a free man!!!
Wife: If *I* had killed you, then I wouldn't go to jail at all. The judge would find me insane for marrying you and let me free!!!

Totally Unpektable!!! (greeklish slang for the Greek "apekto" which means something like "amazingly amazing").

Have fun!

Hail to Redundancy

Today I was literally saved by the bell... or rather saved by my RAID10.

When I bought my latest workstation I decided it would pay off to spare no expense, while trying to stay out of the "Game Machine" zone. One of the things that I decided I should have was hard disk redundancy. Backups and source control are must of course, but if my workstation crashes my problem is not losing the data. My problem is making an identically optimized workstation. I need about a week to do that.

  Just think about it: Reinstall Windows with Service Packs and a gazillion updates, Office with its own updates, Visual Studios and service packs, SDKs, WDKs, .NET frameworks of several versions and SPs, tools, etc, the endless list makes me shiver only to think of it. I have better things to do than looking at progress bars that pretend to be progressing thanks to some nice visuals.

So when time came I did what I thought best. I got an Intel WX58P workstation motherboard with hardware RAID and installed 4 identical 1TB hard disks in RAID10 configuration. In fact I got some "Enterprise Class" hard disk from Western Digital, just to be on the safe side.  

Today was pay-back day. Just 8 months after purchase and one of the disks in the RAID crashed. Here is how it looks like from the Intel Matrix Storage Console (click for details):

It took my hardware provider BARTEK (hail to them too) about 6 hours to come to my office with a replacement disk but it was the horroriest time (if there is such a word) that I've had in months!!! What if the currently not mirrored disk also crashed??? Oh my... I lose everything...

I tried to do some reasoning but it wouldn't be of much help. What is the possibility of two enterprise class hard disks crashing withing a 7 hour window? And especially the right two disks! But the one had already crashed, so it's history! Now I had 3 disks... What was the possibility of one crashing, especially the right one crashing? Especially given that another one of the same class and lot had already crashed! It's history of course but it can be indicative of problems in the whole lot... Probabilities were always confusing me...

And poor me, I had strong reasons not to shutdown the machine for 7 hours... Now that I think of it, it was not that wise, I should have shutdown to reduce the probability of an additional crash, but now it's history too...

Anyway the disk was replaced in time, the RAID was restored and now I am a happy blogger telling you how great it feels to have RAID save your ass(ets).

Enjoy!

Dimitrios Staikos

The Law of Late Projects

Very recently a good friend of mine, Prof.Vasilis Vassalos, made a comment on Facebook about Parkinson's law by referring to this article.

Parkinson's law says that all work expands to fill all time available for its completion.

This has be proven statistically to be very true, so nobody can doubt it. However some of the consequences of this law often go unnoticed as the law's wording and meaning gets twisted and turned over to suit one's needs.

Irrational By Design

Compared to the average person I would probably rank as a pretty experienced computer user. This unfortunately means (and that’s not Windows specific) that I am often expected to take irrational actions in order to produce the desired outcome. Lately, more often than not, the desired outcome falls under the label "Troubleshoot a Digital Misfortune".

There is a small problem with semantics here, as the concept of Expected Irrational Behavior that Leads to a Desired Outcome is a self-destructing concept. Have many people repeat any behavior often enough for long enough and in the end it will be considered rational... Or maybe not? I don’t know. I am confused here...

To make matters even worse, obviously any of these irrational behaviors is really only seemingly irrational. Somewhere under the hood there is a good reason why it works, but as far as I am concerned as long as we don’t know that reason the behavior remains irrational. And even when we know the reasons, all too often we get the "this behavior is by design" disclaimer. It should really say that "this behavior is by irrational design".

the BOOK OF est

This is a superb book that I picked up for a second reading. I own a used copy but with some effort you might find it somewhere:

The Book of est on wikipedia

The Book of est on Amazon

Here is a small excerpt, which as soon as I read some minutes ago, just knew I had to post it. Apologies for the use of offensive language (to those that requiring such apologies):

Let me remind you before I go on that I don't want you to believe a word I say over this weekend, just listen. Because the reason your lives don't work is that you're all living mechanically in your belief systems instead of freshly in the world of actual experience. You don't look at reality and then construct conclusions, no. No, you did that decades ago. You asswholes are roboting through life with your conclusions, and with your conclusions developed decades ago you are constructing reality! No wonder you've lost all aliveness. No wonder your lives don't work.

Have fun!

Dimitris Staikos

The code is THE documentation

Yeah sure... Sleep tight and noone is gonna rock your boat, at least while you are sleeping in it.

This is a very luring statement. The reason it is so luring is that it is so obviously true. Or is it not? Doesn't the program do exactly what the code tells it too? So the code is THE one and only always up-to-date documentation of any program. Right?

It is so convincing that you just can't resist falling for it, especially when faced with an aficionado that passionately claims that she doesn't need to write comments as "extra" documentation, because the code is THE documentation, and since she obviously writes top quality code, comments are simply redundant. A waste of screen estate more or less. Useless clutter around the actual documentation.

Sorry to break the news boys and girls... The reality is somehow different.

The code is the imperfect translation into a programming language of the programmer’s imperfect understanding about what the program should do.

You can figure out the rest. The code is THE documentation of the programmer's imperfect language translation of an imperfect understanding. It documents how the programmer failed to code properly what he failed to understand properly.

Anyone still battling on the issue of whether the code is THE documentation and whether comments (in any form) are needed or not, most likely hasn’t worked on a big project (300+KLOC) long enough (5+ years) to figure things out for him/herself.

Life is so sweet when 90% of the time you fool around your own code. Everything is so simple, because everything is in your head. However once you start spending 50% of your time on pieces of code that other people wrote, pieces of code you have NEVER seen before, or pieces of your own code that you wrote 4 years ago and haven't glanced at since, then life is not as sweet.

When you read code you are not familiar with, then you are doing the reverse translation, from imperfect programming language to imperfect understanding about the program's intentions. This is tough. Some may be better at it than others, but trust me... without good comments it can be much more painful and error prone than it has to.

So please, make others' lives easier. Let them cherish your memory after you are gone and enjoy fixing the bugs in your code. Because you WILL be gone some day and your code WILL still have bugs that need fixing.

Enjoy,
Dimitris Staikos

Psychology is a science, NOT just Common Sense

This is an excerpt from an excellent book that I am currently reading:

It's no surprise that people who are faced with choices about how to influence others will often base their decisions on thinking that's grounded in fields such as economics, political science and public policy. What's puzzling, however, is how frequently decision-makers fail to consider established theories and practices in psychology.

One explanation is that, in contrast to how they regard the fields of economics, political science and public policy, which requires learning from outsiders to achieve even a minimal level of competence, people believe they already possess an intuitive understanding of psychological principles simply by virtue of living life and interacting with others. This overconfidence leads people to miss golden opportunities.

It is really sad to see otherwise smart people feverously deny any chance to improve their soft-skills, to attend seminars about human behaviour, influence, negotiations, etc. Their thinking appears to be something of the sort "Hey dude, can't you see what great a manager I am? How did I get here? Because I am smart and because I am good, really good. I need no silly seminars to tell me how to do my job!".

As the book says, they believe they already have ALL the skills they need, plus they believe (in their hearts) that they do a damned good job, almost perfect. They think that psychology is common sense; if you are smart enough you can figure it out by yourself. But it's not that way. Psychology is a real science and you definitely cannot figure it out. Just read a couple of good texts and after your jaw drops to the floor for a couple dozens of times you will know that you could never have figured it out.

Needless to say, the competition will sooner or later do their part of the studying and inevitably they will outrun these managers and their companies. It's as certain as death and taxes.

Have fun,

Dimitris Staikos

Common Sense Quiz: Traffic patterns on my blog

Now this is a really tough one...

I was checking my blog statistics as usual and all of a sudden noticed that there was a pattern that I just couldn't explain... No way...

Why is it that my stats skyrocket (double the average value) every Monday and Friday?

Really mindblogging :-D

Have fun,

Dimitris Staikos