My newest article on project management is now up on the ProjectsAtWork.com website. It's called "Old Ware Stories," which is a bit of a pun on both the fact that it's something of a "war story" and the idea that in addition to software and hardware, this project involved a component of "old-ware"--people, systems and processes that had been around so long that they viewed change as "change everything except how we do our jobs." In other words, change everything--without changing anything. It's a story of late-blooming requirements, organizational and personal rigidity, and the effect of geometry and geography on a project's success.
While P@W is publishing this yarn as a "case study," I'll caution that it's not rigorous or objective in the manner of a good university-course case study. It's more a "view from the trenches," or even a view from the one particular trench I found myself in. Other people, in other trenches, might have seen things differently.
Click Here to read the article. ProjectsAtWork.com requires a (free) registration. It's worth it; there's a lot of good project management stuff on this site.
A second installment is coming, and I'll announce it here when it comes out.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Tastes Great/Less Filling?
Dr. Bob Rich begins his review of The Last Protector by saying:
But let me propose this simple test, based on the idea that in fantasy the supernatural intrudes into the natural world (gods, demons, spirits, magic and such are part of the story), while science fiction takes place entirely in the natural world:
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*Tastes great vs. less filling: Of course, if we're talking about "light" beers, the answer is "neither"--most "light" beers are pretty devoid of flavor, and so over-carbonated that you inflate like a balloon after a couple.
This is the best fantasy book I have ever edited. Or is it science fiction?OK, debating fantasy vs. science fiction is kind of like debating tastes great vs. less filling*
But let me propose this simple test, based on the idea that in fantasy the supernatural intrudes into the natural world (gods, demons, spirits, magic and such are part of the story), while science fiction takes place entirely in the natural world:
If something gets destroyed by a lightning bolt from heaven, it's fantasy.
If the same thing gets destroyed by high explosives, it's science fiction.Case closed. For now, at least...
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*Tastes great vs. less filling: Of course, if we're talking about "light" beers, the answer is "neither"--most "light" beers are pretty devoid of flavor, and so over-carbonated that you inflate like a balloon after a couple.
Monday, September 8, 2008
More Stuff Moved, and Another Deleted Scene
I moved a bunch more stuff today, and now there's actually an organization of sorts to this site. This page, danielcstarr.blogspot.com, is my actual blog. Then I've got a few one-entry blogs, danielcstarr-lastprotector, danielcstarr-tech, danielcstarr-bikes, danielcstarr-beer, which contain links to stuff about the book, my writings on project management and software, my motorcycle adventures and my favorite beverage. Then there's another pseudo-blog that's just a collection of pages containing stuff like the deleted scenes, biographies and such. With any luck, I've actually figured out how to organize this stuff.
But enough about the mechanics of maintaining a web site, on to some fun stuff. There's a new deleted scene out there, a rather silly disco song. Probably a good thing I cut it from the book, but fun to sing, especially after a few beers. You can read it (and sing along) by clicking HERE.
But enough about the mechanics of maintaining a web site, on to some fun stuff. There's a new deleted scene out there, a rather silly disco song. Probably a good thing I cut it from the book, but fun to sing, especially after a few beers. You can read it (and sing along) by clicking HERE.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Movin' In...
Because Google's decided to migrate users of their Google Pages service to the new Google Sites, which doesn't seem to quite do what I want, I've been in the process of moving my stuff from there to a collection of blogs here. So, all the posts below this one were actually brought over, and so while they're all officially from September 6, the titles contain the dates they were actually added. Of course, I still have a ton of work to do, moving over stuff related to my software and project management writings, and the rest of the deleted scenes from The Last Protector, but I think I see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Oh, wait, that's a train headlight...
Oh, wait, that's a train headlight...
9/2/08: A RUBBER DONUT PLAGUE?
I've got a simple page-hit counter on this page (it's that little number at the bottom of the page), and I've seen a strange thing the last few days: most of the hits to this page have been coming from the page in which I describe my technique for replacing the rubber engine-mount isolators on my old tube-frame Buell. I have no idea why this is happening, and I don't collect anywhere near enough information to actually figure out who's looking at the page or why, so it might be nothing more than a statistical cluster. Or, perhaps, there's some sort of plague out there, all those bad rubber donuts? If you've got a clue, drop me a line at danielcstarr (at) gmail.com.
8/20/08: ON HUMAN ADAPTABILITY, AND OTHER GREAT MYTHS
I finally got off my duff and wrote up a "war story" article for the ProjectsAtWork website. Look for it to be published in September (I'll add a link at that time). It's partially about the lengths people will go to in order to preserve their comfortable way of working... even if it means falling well short of the project's goals.
Writing this piece got me thinking about the great myth that we humans spread from Africa to occupy the whole planet because we're so adaptable. We must adapt well, the thinking goes, since we live everywhere from tropical jungles to Arctic tundra, from sea level to mountaintops.
But in truth, I don't think we adapt very well at all. We can't grow fur, let alone grow and shed in a cycle matched to the weather (something many dogs can do). We burn in the sun, freeze in the cold, dry out in the desert. Drop a naked human into the Arctic, or the desert, or onto a mountaintop, and he's dead within hours. Physically, we're pretty optimized for 60-90 degrees Fahrenheit, not too dry, not too wet, and we really don't do too well outside that environment.
The real secret of our so-called "adaptability" is our trick of taking little bubbles of our native African savanna environment with us. The igloo in the Arctic, the lean-to in the jungle, the air-conditioned shopping mall in Phoenix--these are all examples of how we take little micro-environments with us. So is an astronaut's space-walk suit, of course--or the Shuttle or Soyuz capsule, and the Space Station both are visiting. Or, more prosaically, the respirator that a farmer wears when heading inside the composting silo (where there is typically too little oxygen to support life) to do a repair.
We're not above stealing from other, better-adapted creatures, of course--one of the first things we did when we headed into the colder regions was to borrow the fur from native animals. Heck, once we ate him, that polar bear didn't need his fur anymore.
The furthest extreme of our adapt-the-environment-to-our-comfort habit is the good old science fiction concept of terraforming. Tinker with the atmosphere of Mars, add a little carbon dioxide to trap heat, and in a few centuries (or so it goes in the stories) you've got an earth-like planet where people can stroll about without those uncomfortable space suits and respirators.
All of which leads me to an alternate formulation of this whole global warming issue. The "Gaia hypothesis," hopelessly oversimplified, says that all life on earth fits together to form a single organism, which adapts itself and the planet to be more conducive to life. Well, what if global warming isn't just an accident or the product of corporate greed? What if it's the human species unconsciously altering the entire planet to expand the range in which we're comfortable? Not to say it's working all that well, given the expansion of deserts and coming submergence of coastlines. Then again, if Siberia were to become a comfortable grassland like the Great Plains of North America, it might represent a significant expansion of our range. Who's to tell? I guess we'll find out if we live long enough. And it might make for an interesting SF story...
Writing this piece got me thinking about the great myth that we humans spread from Africa to occupy the whole planet because we're so adaptable. We must adapt well, the thinking goes, since we live everywhere from tropical jungles to Arctic tundra, from sea level to mountaintops.
But in truth, I don't think we adapt very well at all. We can't grow fur, let alone grow and shed in a cycle matched to the weather (something many dogs can do). We burn in the sun, freeze in the cold, dry out in the desert. Drop a naked human into the Arctic, or the desert, or onto a mountaintop, and he's dead within hours. Physically, we're pretty optimized for 60-90 degrees Fahrenheit, not too dry, not too wet, and we really don't do too well outside that environment.
The real secret of our so-called "adaptability" is our trick of taking little bubbles of our native African savanna environment with us. The igloo in the Arctic, the lean-to in the jungle, the air-conditioned shopping mall in Phoenix--these are all examples of how we take little micro-environments with us. So is an astronaut's space-walk suit, of course--or the Shuttle or Soyuz capsule, and the Space Station both are visiting. Or, more prosaically, the respirator that a farmer wears when heading inside the composting silo (where there is typically too little oxygen to support life) to do a repair.
We're not above stealing from other, better-adapted creatures, of course--one of the first things we did when we headed into the colder regions was to borrow the fur from native animals. Heck, once we ate him, that polar bear didn't need his fur anymore.
The furthest extreme of our adapt-the-environment-to-our-comfort habit is the good old science fiction concept of terraforming. Tinker with the atmosphere of Mars, add a little carbon dioxide to trap heat, and in a few centuries (or so it goes in the stories) you've got an earth-like planet where people can stroll about without those uncomfortable space suits and respirators.
All of which leads me to an alternate formulation of this whole global warming issue. The "Gaia hypothesis," hopelessly oversimplified, says that all life on earth fits together to form a single organism, which adapts itself and the planet to be more conducive to life. Well, what if global warming isn't just an accident or the product of corporate greed? What if it's the human species unconsciously altering the entire planet to expand the range in which we're comfortable? Not to say it's working all that well, given the expansion of deserts and coming submergence of coastlines. Then again, if Siberia were to become a comfortable grassland like the Great Plains of North America, it might represent a significant expansion of our range. Who's to tell? I guess we'll find out if we live long enough. And it might make for an interesting SF story...
7/28/08: OF THINGS THAT WENT AWAY...
My sister-in-law came over yesterday, with a copy of The Last Protector, and asked me to sign it. Of course, I wanted to write an appropriate note above the signature, and since Marj is big into sewing, embroidery and the like I figured I'd put in a reference to a scene on page 56 where Scrornuck (for those of you who have just joined us, he's the hero of the story) gets out needle and thread to patch a rip in his kilt following a battle. But when I looked, I found the mention of sword-swinger-as-garment-worker was gone, apparently snipped out in one of the many passes I made through the manuscript to remove "unnecessary" words. Oh well...
Speaking of deletions, I've put another entry on the deleted scenes page. When I first sold The Last Protector, Scrornuck had a friend in his home land, a guy named Schaughnessy. Somewhere during the edits, Schaughnessy went away, a victim of the need to keep the book down to a reasonable length. But I liked the character, even if there wasn't any good reason to keep him in this book, so I've put his two scenes on the website. Enjoy! (Note 9/6--still haven't moved all the deleted scenes. Give me a few days, please!)
Speaking of deletions, I've put another entry on the deleted scenes page. When I first sold The Last Protector, Scrornuck had a friend in his home land, a guy named Schaughnessy. Somewhere during the edits, Schaughnessy went away, a victim of the need to keep the book down to a reasonable length. But I liked the character, even if there wasn't any good reason to keep him in this book, so I've put his two scenes on the website. Enjoy! (Note 9/6--still haven't moved all the deleted scenes. Give me a few days, please!)
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