Monday 30 April 2007

Extract

I made a new entry in my technical blog on my 'discovery' of this SQL function. Check it out here.

Thursday 26 April 2007

Mind Mapping as an analyzing tool

A few weeks ago I read an article by Kathy Sierra on Tablet PC's and Mind Mapping. I had only seen the technique used once before, by one of my colleagues, to organize the topics for a meeting. I thought it looked neat, but as attending or organizing meetings isn't one of my day-to-day tasks, it didn't stick to my mind.
Kathy Sierra however, is quite good at rousing enthousiasm, so I downloaded an open source mindmapper, FreeMind. I played around with it for a while, and then I got the idea to use it as an aid in extracting some structure out of a myriad of bussines rules summed up in Use Case documents. So far they've been a great help, seeing as on the project I'm working on now, there's a vast no man's land between the Use Cases and actual coding. Oh, and they look hip too. Too bad I can't post any screenshots, as the content is confidential, but there are plenty on FreeMind's Sourceforge page.

Tuesday 24 April 2007

A Modest Destiny (Sean Howard)

I'm a big fan of Sean Howard's pixel art comics. If you're into strong characters, witty humor and well-constructed plot twists, check out A Modest Destiny, a series already spanning four episodes. The pixel art is great too, I can't imagine the time and dedication it takes to make something like that. A lot of people compare it to the old Zelda and Mario Bros graphics, but it doesn't do him justice.

Oracle nr 30 in Brandz Top 100

Millward Brown released its annual report ranking the top 100 of strongest brands measured by dollar value. Google shines at number 1, dethroning Microsoft. Oracle is on 30, SAP on 27. However, Oracle has a 28% growth in business value. It would be nice to have a more detailed analysis of this figure. I'm guessing the Fusion/Middleware catch-up is a significant factor.