Reference Posts | OpsanBlog

The Orion Nebula, really, really, really close up

January 13, 2006 Leave a comment

The Hubble Site posts a link to an Ajax site that lets you zoom in and out on the Orion Nebula.

The Seasons Explained

December 31, 2005 Leave a comment

MSNBC posts “What causes Earth’s seasons?”, an informational article you can send to your kids. This is a update to the article that was originally posted in 1999.

Filed under Reference Posts

10 SOA Articles

December 31, 2005 Leave a comment

From the mail bag, Fawcette Publications (aka FTPOnline) sent me 10 Articles about SOA today. I’m passing them along for your review (requires free registration with FTPOnline):

Ensuring Business Agility With SOA
Sonic Software’s Gordon Van Huizen examines two new pillars of software architecture, the enterprise service bus (ESB) and event stream processing (ESP), and how you can leverage them to build the next generation of IT infrastructure.

Get Acquainted With SOA and Indigo
Learn about the core principles behind Windows Communication Foundation’s service orientation (SO), so you can better understand and create service-oriented applications with Indigo.

ESB vs. BizTalk Debate Heats Up in Barcelona
At his Enterprise Architect Summit Barcelona session, conference speaker Dave Chappell got into a heated debate with a couple Microsoft guys over core architectural fundamentals.

How SOA Can Benefit From Active EA Models
Learn how ontology-based EA models enable SOA implementations by providing an active registry of business capabilities.

Stories From the Field: Adoptions of SOA and Web Services
Chris Haddad reviews the decisions made by your peers when prioritizing architecture components, adopting specification standards, and selling SOA to business managers.

Developing a Web Services Security Strategy
Develop an effective Web service security strategy. Chris Haddad provides practical information about security risks, product solutions, and implementation.

Integrate SOA Portals With WSE
Use the ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts framework and Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 to create a successful service-oriented architecture portal.

The Importance of Mediation in a Services Network
As an SOA matures and expands, incompatibilities inevitably emerge. They must be managed to achieve your goals.

5 Web Service Architecture Tenets
Use these guidelines to ensure you build successful Web service architectures.

12 Steps Toward SOA
Emerging patterns might help you understand how to implement SOA.

I’ve posted more articles in my Architecture topic.

Filed under Architecture, Reference Posts

Einstein was right (again)

December 24, 2005 1 Comment

EurekaAlert posts: “Einstein was right (again): NIST and MIT confirm that E= mc2”.

Filed under Fun and Games, Reference Posts

‘twas the Night Before: The Three Little Words

December 24, 2005 Leave a comment

Way back when, when I was young and slightly more foolish than I am today, the three little words that would strike terror into my (and any bachelor’s) heart were “I Love You”.

As I’ve gotten older, the words changed to “On the Web”, as in a place where I would not want to see pictures of last night’s escapades.

I’m older now, with kids (and grands and greats) of my own. While I’m still frisky enough to be (slightly) concerned about “on the web”, my latest most feared words have changed.

Tonight, they are “Some Assembly Required”

Imagine yourself awakened after the little angels have finally laid their heads to rest, visions of sugarplums, and all that. Now, it’s time to creep out into the living room and raid the closets for treasures you’ve spent the year accumulating. I start a big pot of coffee and hope the electric screwdriver is charged.

About an hour into the four-story Barbie Dream Mansion, you realize it’s not going to fit through the door of the room in which you assembled it. You try to convince yourself that this is okay. After all, your daughter LOVES to play in the kitchen. Muttering, you undo a bit here and there and wrestle it out by the tree.

Thirty more minutes pass and you discover the 3/4” screws are too long for a non-poking-through operation involving an outer surface. Damn them for packing the 1” and 3/4” screws in the same package, and you’re back in disassembly mode again. The coffee pot is half full, but it is looking half-empty. During the reconstruction, the cat decides the little wooden dowels are more fun than terrorizing Sushi and Sashimi (the goldfish) and manages to disappear one beneath the refrigerator. You make a note to get him in his next life.

An hour later, I start to think the little darlings have way too many toys, but I forge on.

The Barbie Whatcamacallit is complete, a terrifying blob of pastel pinks, purples and blues .. listing only slightly to port. Fortunately, they provided a “safety strap”, but I’m not sure if I should attach it to this contraption or to Cassie. Set that aside for the daylight hours. On to the Xbox 360.

In the realm of “I meant to run LAN cable”, I decide that setting up the box in offline mode is adequate. After all, there are a few games to get the oldest started: what more could he want?

In a word: Xbox Live. Two words, actually. I’ll be pulling cable tomorrow. That bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz is starting to look too full.

Well, let’s tackle the computers next. I’d like to install a few of the programs I picked up at the company store before the little delights arise, attention spans almost as long as gnats.

AOE III first, as Hunter is totally keen on this one. Connor is currently engaged in Dungeon Siege (and he’ll be busy with the Xbox 360, I’m sure), so I’ll leave his for tomorrow. Today; I mean later today.

My God, where did all these Half-Life 2 files come from? Don’t answer that: I know it’s the Internet. There’s Garry’s Mod, Ralphie’s Mod, Brainbread, Admin Op and a plethora of others that dare not speak their names. Toolbars? How many toolbars does a seven-year-old need? Umm, I guess the answer to that question is: “four”.

Some scraping, some rebooting, some scanning and we’re ready to go. I’m full of anticipation (and wine), and confident there is a feather pillow in my near future.

Gawd. AOE isn’t too happy with my processor speed and is browbeating me for being a cheapskate. There’s a helpful message box suggesting I call the manufacturer: damn it, I’m the manufacturer of this mutt box. Fueled by wine and the knowledge I’ve installed a large video card and big RAM in this system, I sally forth. If it runs slowly, that’s a good thing: he needs to calm down now and again. Let’s wrap a few presents while we wait for CDs to spin. The little monsters should have some things to unwrap, after all.

The cat enjoys Christmas wrap almost as much as the dowels. I think he’s resenting our moving a shoebox that he decided to call his home for a few weeks and is making this displeasure known. Or, it could be that he’s used to being alone at this hour and wants to make the most of my (obviously) pleasant company. It’s late, and if he’s not careful, he’ll find himself tucked into a Christmas present.

Xbox games are delightfully easy to wrap, and look just like books. I bet the boy opens them last.

:: cackle ::

Wireless Xbox controllers and portable whatsises are NOT easy to wrap. I can make them festive with pretty pink bows and call it done. So much for the surprise of the Xbox (I think he knows he’s getting one anyway .. he reads this blog, and I wrote about it a few months ago).

Where is that bottle of port?

With the software installed, I’m not going to bother to wrap the software boxes. Under the tree with pretty pink bows they go.

Ack. I just found the Barbie Nightmare Mansion Furniture Parental Torture Pack. We can’t very well have a doll estate without furniture, can we? The neighbors would surely talk. Maybe this is a Daddy-Cassie project for later today. I’m sensible, she’ll understand. Did you know they refer to port as “fortified wine”? I think I know why, now. Off to bed.

As if. Ten seconds after settling into bed I figure I should take a stab at a few furniture items. Much to my horror, I discover some of the furniture items require batteries. WHY WOULD DOLL MANSION FURNITURE REQUIRE BATTERIES? I’m not sure if the world will ever know. Snap some things together and call it a night. Morning, I mean.

I feel my most feared three little words are changing to “Batteries Not Included”.

Filed under Fun and Games, Reference Posts

Web 2.0 is Dead; Long Live the Web!

December 20, 2005 Leave a comment

While presenting in my world-wide tour last month, I entered into a discussion with some very savvy people with strong opinions of “Web 2.0”. To further the discussion (and raise the level of emotion in the room), I proclaimed Web 2.0 to be “dead”, as it’s now achieved the level of hype “enjoyed” by SOA as little as 18 months ago. I made this point with the following anecdote:

You remember SOA? I sure do. I still believe in the underlying principles and methodologies that comprise and define a successful services orientation in an extended enterprise. Read that line carefully. SOA is not a noun (although you could refer to your enterprise as a services-oriented architecture-oriented enterprise). Services Orientation is a set of processes and methodologies that describe and manage the transfer and sharing of data between disparate, loosely-coupled entities. I referred to this at length in “Services Orientation – The Architecture Formerly Known As SOA – Introduction”.

So it is with Web 2.0. The mass media is now coming to realize that the phrase “Web 2.0” is a catch-all term, loosely used to describe the proliferation of social networking, user-shared content, aggregation and such. But behind it all is the need for improvement in how the end user accesses their data; the data that matters the most to them.

We snack on our information every day. This “Information Snacking” is part of our routine:

We rise, shave and shower.
We check email.
We check the web for traffic, bus schedules, kid’s school lunch menus.
We check our stock quotes.
.. and so on.

As users, we want the data we care about when we want it, regardless of where we are. We want it when we want it, and will accept “lesser” experiences (say, a WAP-enabled cell phone) when we’re in a position where that’s the only (or most convenient) way to snack on our data.

Web 2.0 is dead? I’m kidding myself. Media., marketers, technical sales people and developers will use the term because it’s the easiest way to describe the over-arching idea of the web’s evolution.

The term will be around for a long time. What it actually “means” will mutate at the whim of the market and critical mass of the user community. Those who will benefit need to identify how their applications might meet the needs of these whims.

Filed under Leap Frogs, Reference Posts

My Sleep Apnea

November 30, 2005 Leave a comment

I have Sleep Apnea. For those without exposure to it, it’s the closing of the airways when the body is in a relaxation state (i.e., asleep). The symptoms include loud snoring and frequent (noisy) awakenings, called arousals. In the past, I would snore like a buzz saw; regardless of sleep position.

The closing airways cause me to fight my way back to a semi-awake state. This fight injects the heart with an unhealthy shot of adrenaline, shocking it to an elevated heart rate. These shocks are not a good thing if they happen too often. After a sleep study, the doctor advised me I was having arousals an average of 90 times per hour! More than once a minute, I was fighting for breath and stressing my heart. The study showed I was never getting into REM sleep (where the body recovers from fatigue and clears the mind of pent-up garbage) and never dreamed.

My father also snored like this. To this day, I attribute his early passing (of a heart attack under 60) to untreated sleep apnea that stressed his heart over the years.

When diagnosed (in 2002), my weight was an unhealthy 230 pounds. With this weight, my airways closed frequently, preventing me from getting any rest. After the diagnosis, I gained another 14 pounds in the year following, which would have made matters far worse, had I not been receiving treatment.

The most effective treatment for sleep apnea is the Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) machine with a mask that covers my nose. The machine applies a gentle positive air pressure into my nose, keeping the airways open. The headgear is a little wild to see, but easy to use: I forget I have it on. Once I started getting better sleep, I was able to awaken in the early morning to go to the gym on a regular basis. I didn’t feel like dozing off in the afternoons and was generally less crabby.

Losing weight also helps your airways from closing as well. I’ve dropped 44 pounds in the past three years, at a healthy rate through diet and exercise. I find that if I don’t use my CPAP I sleep and dream (evidence of REM sleep, which is good). However, I still use it nightly. At one point, my body weight will drop below my IQ (see my post on “IQ and Cholesterol Level”). At that time I might consider dropping it entirely, but it’s too soon to tell.

Mine is a happy story. If you snore or cannot sleep, talk to your health care provider and get a sleep study. Find out now.

Filed under Reference Posts

Top Ten dot-com Flops

November 30, 2005 Leave a comment

CNet publishes the “Power of 10” article series. I just read “Top 10 dot-com flops”. This clearly comes from the “what were they thinking?” department.

After you read the article, scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the other lists.