Software, research, and leadership
COAG met on Saturday and decided to invest to implement a national approach to conveyancing – the National Electronic Conveyancing System (NECS). Currently each of Australia’s eight states and territories has its own different system for dealing with the transfer of real estate. You might not think that’s a big deal – after all, wherever …
My University education is in Computer Science, but by professional life and renewed research career is in Software Engineering. A lot of people (and perhaps some University departments!) probably think these are just the same thing, with different names. But in my transition to Software Engineering I’ve discovered they’re very different, and I think their …
Last weekend was bottling day for the full malt chilli lager. Normally when bottling, you add some “priming sugar” to each bottle. This is a small amount of extra food that the residual yeast will consume. Yeast produces two important by-products in fermentation – alcohol and carbon dioxide. The former is the goal during primary …
The NICTA lab where I work finally moved offices into a newly constructed building in September. The new building’s great – it’s such a nice change to have some natural light, and they’ve also installed a world-class coffee machine in the lunch room. The “designer rust” panels on the side of the building tend to …
Now I’ve settled in a little to my new place, I’ve had time to put on a new brew. On the train every day I pass a homebrew shop at Thornleigh, and recently I managed to visit. A homebrew shop is a different experience to buying homebrew kits at the supermarket. There’s all sorts of …
It’s been a cool summer in Sydney this year, and recently we’ve had a few particularly cool days , which I’ve taken to be the first stirrings of Autumn. This prompted me to get a batch of beer ready for Winter – a Cooper’s Dark Ale, with their Brew Enhancer Type 2. I’ve used this …
I’ve written an article for the latest edition of the CM Journal at CM Crossroads, on Four Lessons about Company Standards and Procedures from Build Management. Writing in a practitioner’s forum is very different to writing academic papers! I’m not sure I’ve completely got the hang of it yet… but it’s fun trying.
A lime cordial last night – back to basics. It was based on the generic cordial recipe – 2kg sugar, 1.7L water, 18g citric acid, and 0.3L of juice and pared rinds from 8 limes. This batch had the most intense lime flavour. My working hypothesis is that this is due to the quality of …
A colleague forwarded to me a pointer to the current issue of the ITMPI journal, on Best Practices in Configuration Management. They make an interesting contrast with the best CM practices in the November issue of the CM Journal on “What Best Practice Is Best?”, and specifically the article CM: The Next Generation of Top …
Another cordial this weekend, this time using bulk white nectarines from the grocer. They were too hard to be eaten, but made good cordial. I used a nectarine instantiation of my father’s generic cordial recipe. He created this recipe based on Matt’s recipe for orange cordial, but tweaked it after various trials, and made it …