Latest Posts
Climate Change Drives Startup to Hard Drive Farming
A blog post on Backblaze’s web site shares stories from employees, friends, and families about how they participated in a “hard drive farming.” In this scheme, they purchased external hard drives two at a time from retail stores and sent them to Backblaze to help the company survive a worldwide hard drive shortage. Although the stories are engaging and the images are amusing, underneath it’s a story about how climate change affected a Silicon Valley startup’s business plan. The hard drive shortage was caused by unprecedented flooding in Thailand, which produces about half of the world’s hard drives.
Ordering new cheques for my new BMO account is an absurdist drama
OK, dear readers, are we ready for another TWO examples of sub-optimal information systems design?
Example 1. I cannot order printed cheques for a new account from a third-party vendor, because I have never ordered cheques before.
Seeking customers for student projects
I will be teaching CSC 301: Introduction to Software Engineering at University of Toronto this fall. The course is meant to teach software process for small teams, also known as agile. Students work in teams to complete a software project. I would like the projects to be for social enterprises to incorporate service learning into the course. As a result, I am now looking for non-profits or social enterprises who need some software built. Here are some Q&A to help you decide if this is a good opportunity for you.
Winners of the Singular Source Contest
After careful consideration and discussion, we have chosen the winners of the Singular Source Short Story Contest.
We received a total of eight submissions to the short story contest, which made for a small slate of high quality candidates. There were no bad stories and every one was entertaining in some way. Every entry was read by all three judges independently. We subsequently met to discuss our assessments and to decide on a winner. (Actually, getting all of us together at the same time for a conference call was the most difficult part of the process.)
Wearing the Vibram Five Fingers
“Are they comfortable?” is the first question that people ask when they see my shoes.
Surprisingly, it’s not an easy question to answer. I’ve been wearing my Vibram Five Fingers for about two months now and they garner a lot of attention. I have had many conversations with friends and strangers about my shoes, so let me share my story.