More hercules performance enhancements !

February 8th, 2009

A little self pat-in-the-back…

I made a couple enhancement tweaks to hercules today.

One of the instructions – MVCLE -a memory copy instruction – was taking an inordinate amount of time to perform what it is intended to do.

After a quick study of the code, it came out that not only wasn’t the code ‘optimal’, but it was also somewhat wrong.

A quick fix later, and that particular instruction is now up to 250x faster than it was before.

Nifty !

Air traffic tapes released.. Praise the ATCs !

February 5th, 2009

Everybody lauded the calm & heroism of the pilot who landed the A320 into the Hudson river on January the 15th.

Hear it here

But listening to the tape also shows how calm & professional the Air Traffic Controllers where !

The only small glitch from Tracon at that point was that he said to Laguardia something like “bird strike he lost all engines uhh.. and lost thrust too” (I’d say that’s about the only moment where Tracon seems to be trying to collect himself) – apparently Laguardia Control wasn’t sure he meant whether he lost thrust on both or on #2 only ! Now.. Hear how calm Laguardia and suddenly focused trying to get all the elements – asking confirmation about whether he had lost thrust on 1 or both engines (a very critical information) ! Tracon reconfirms – and at that point, they get about as efficient as they can get !

Within a 30 second time frame, they managed to free up and ensure accessibility for 4 runways at 3 different airports (Laguardia was available probably less than 10 secs after the original call, Teterboro & Newark), offering all the different possibilities that might assist the crippled aircraft – Then gives headings & ETAs.

They obviously knew what they were doing all along.

When Tracon hailed Teterboro (something that didn’t take but a couple of seconds – you can clearly hear him dialing out & getting an answer in a blink of an eye) it only took just less than 5 seconds (including a ‘Hey Guys !’ – clearly indicating most communications are probably pure routine) for that controller to understand the emergency of the situation and to act upon it – offering available runways he had.

No one got excited. Everyone knew they had a job to do – and did it superbly. Ok, in the end, the ATCs couldn’t do much in that particular case, but think of ALL the incidents we never hear about where some ATC saved the day by calmly, systematically, offering the possibilities for an aircraft in a difficult situation so that they can get out of whatever mess they are in – and finally land the aircraft safely – without anyone ever hearing about it !

Then you also get the Pilot from 2718 offering clarification indicating Cactus 1529 was saying he was going on the Hudson river (Understandable he did so. The indicated destination was unusual enough that everyone had to make sure they understood that correctly !)

I don’t know at that point. But making sure that everyone was apraised of the final destination of the flight might have saved the day by shaving a couple minutes off of recue operations !

And of course, everyone made it safe thanks to a superb water landing and the quick response from everyone on site at that time. But the ATCs really did a magnificent job !

And now, for something completely different – Video in Sports – Rules dynamics

August 6th, 2008

Peut-être êtes vous êtes vous posé la question une fois..

Faut-il de la vidéo dans le foot ?

Et vous vous dites, maintenant que Mr Michel est la tête pensante de l’UEFA, et qui est, semblerait-il, viscéralement contre la vidéo dans le foot, que le problème est – a priori – purement franco-français..

*ERREUR* !

Je suis (je suis faible) fan de Baseball.. et comme j’ai Canal Sat, je passe mon temps sur NASN.. je suis les exploits de Manny Ramirez, A-Rod & autres Derek Jeter avec en engouement certain.. La MLB me passionne, les différences entre l’AL et la NL n’ont plus de secret pour moi.. les ‘K, ERA, RBI, et autres stats (parfois fantaisistes) me sont maintenant famillières..

Et je constate que.. a ma plus grande surprise, que un des grands sujet de discussions des commentateurs est : *faut-il de la video dans la baseball* ?

Car comme dans le foot, le baseball est régit part des arbitres.. Et dans le baseball, TOUT est décidé par les arbitres.. En gros, la balle est bonne ou pas ? le batteur a-t-il ou non essayé de frapper la balle ? y-a-t’il “home run” alors que la balle a tapé le mur ?.. le défendeur a-t-il attrapé la balle et touchait-il le coussin avant que le batteur ait touché ledit coussin ?.. bref *TOUT* repose sur l’arbitre – enfin *LES* arbitres – ils sont 4 !..

Chose amusante, au baseball, toute décision est discutable SAUF si une balle est, lors du lancé, bonne ou hors champs (et ils se trompent souvent).. il est parfaitement acceptable pour un coach d’aller voir l’arbitre (a condition qu’il ne le touche pas – une des règles fondamentales)  pour contester une decision.. Et les arbitres ont le droit de se dédire – chose qui n’existe pas dans le foot.

Comme dans le foot.. le baseball est plein de traditions.. seulement.. contrairement au foot, ils adaptent leur règlement au situations..

Un exemple qui m’a frappé : le mois dernier, un gars est arrivé pour lancer la balle.. ce gars était capable de lancer de la main gauche comme de la main droite.. cependant, le batteur était EGALEMENT capable de frapper de la gauche comme de la droite.. comme il est avantageux pour le lanceur de lancer du côté opposé, ils ont passé 10 minutes à changer de côter (sans jouer).. L’arbitre à arrêté le cirque.. le lendemain, les instances organisatrices avaient DéJà émis un nouveau règlement pour éviter que cela se reproduise..

Bref, juste pour vous dire que les problèmes de règlement (genre : Y a t-il ‘hors jeu’ sur la ligne) ou les problèmes de vidéo (tout le monde pense que les U.S. mettent de la vidéo dans tt les sports) n’est pas limité à nottre domaine national.. c’est semblerait-il universel..

–Ivan

Social Software, Enterprise 2.0 and the VAD perspective

February 14th, 2008

I attended Lotusphere 2008 this january, and it’s obvious that there is an overall trend towards promoting (and ultimately selling) social software solutions.

I’m not going to review the ins and outs and advantages of the 2.0 model (or whatever they’ll call it next year) – this has been covered by people way more capable than me on the subject.

But I am faced with 3 different problems. First, I am a VAD (read : Value Added Distributor – I sell stuff that I get from the vendor to resellers that themselves sell to the end users).. Meaning I have very little interaction with the final solution users.

Second, it seems more and more obvious that the problem with selling Social Software solutions is that.. well.. you can’t ! Not directly. There are preliminary steps involved which include promoting a shift in the enterprise’s paradigms, and that’s not easy.. We’re talking about going from an all formal process to a partly non formal methodology – and rely on the social software infrastructure to provide that formalization.

Third, most of my partners customers are SMBs (SMall Businesses) – and not in the IBM sense of the term – But really small <100 employees businesses which makes it even harder. After all, those Fortune 500 companies may have an “Enterprise 2.0″ commission or task force, but that’s not going to happen for those very small businesses.

So here I am, having to convince a 2nd tier entity of the opportunity of laying the ground for Social Software *WITHOUT* even trying to sell the tools (at first) to small legacy companies.

The solutions I believe is to take a multi step approach. My first baby step involves convincing my own management of the advantages of going 2.0. The advantage here is that it’s a whole lot easier to promote something that you are doing internally.

I asked about that to one of the 2.0 evangelists at Lotusphere and he advised me to start by taking even more small steps. He told me the best possible approach was to start by implementing a small subset of the Social Software spectrum of tools. Maybe start with some profiles and activities tools. If everything is done right, before long, they’ll ask for more.

Now, assuming this works as planned (and that’s a big if), the next step is obviously to start pulling my partners into the loop and get THEM to take the same approach – I’m always going for the assumption that it’s easier to sell something you use everyday – and teach them from what I’ve learned. Mind it, at that point, I still haven’t made a penny yet !

There is also some nice incentives for the partners. Besides the obvious licensing sales, huge up sell opportunities exist – consulting, service, possibly recurring SAAS revenues – and if everything is done right, some good word of mouth to help enroll more customers.

I am at a starting point here, and I am the middle man – or rather – my company is – but there are some opportunities, I just want to make sure I can make something out of it.

Configuring wordpress

February 13th, 2008

Ok.. So now I have a blog. I just can’t figure out what layout looks the best.

I’ve tried several of the wordpress themes offered here and there, but none that satisfies me. So maybe I should write my own.

Well well well

February 13th, 2008

Ok.. This is going to be my first blog entry..

Trying out wordpress.. doesn’t look bad !