Software Engineering

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

- Albert Einstein

Writing software is a messy business. You come up with a solution that works. This is probably best exemplified by the Netflix Prize competition (see wikipedia article for a quick overview if you have not heard of it before).

One consensus I got at KDD Cup 2007 was a slight disappointment at the "hackish" nature of the leading team, which later won the 2007 progress prize. Their winning solution is described here.

It is easy to have bloat creep into code as bugs are fixed and features are added.

One positive plus of working in Google is the inclination to frown on code bloat, and engineers are recognized for coming up with simpler implementations. This philosophy of constant iteration of software engineering ensures that systems are capable of keeping up with features while being maintainable. (Unit testing is HUGE here too)

MOM

Doing a Google search on "mom" shows how overloaded the term is. Poor mothers... Not getting the mindshare of searches all over the world.

And of course, again we see evidence of Singaporeans' love for acronyms as Ministry of Manpower [mom.gov.sg] is such a high-ranking result.

Singapore finding unknown unknown threats

Interesting nugget - Larry Brilliant's won the TED prize in 2006 and his TED wish was to create a new global system that can identify and contain pandemics before they spread. See video [ted.com].

Singapore's version - RAHS (Seriously, do we need to make Risk Assesment And Horizon Scanning an acronym?). If only we could have used it to find, oh I don't know, missing terrorists or recalcitrant political activists. :)

Pseudo Nasi Lemak

If Nasi Lemak don't come to Yew Jin, Yew Jin will cook some pseudo Nasi Lemak. Our first attempt.

Memorial Day Weekend

Peace on earth. May all beings be free of suffering.

Orh

Today I found out that my wife nodding and replying "orh" to what I say does not constitute agreement or even understanding of what I am saying.

Case in point: Lately it has been very hot in Mountain View, reaching over 37 degree Celsius in the past two days. Our house, which does not have any inlets except for the main door, is generally not in the direction of the wind. This causes the apartment to a furnace during hot days and starts baking the occupants - something that I start hearing about in the afternoon when my wife calls me and yelping for mercy from the heat.

One solution we found is to switch on the fan while the door is opened. The fan draws the cooler air from the outside and cools our apartment. This solution is not ideal as it leaves, well, the door open (i.e. you can't be sleeping). As an added bonus, insects get in.

I started proposing an alternate solution to my wife over lunch - use a fan to blow air out of a window, and open the other windows while leaving the main door closed. As air is being drawn out of that one window, this creates moving air (aka wind) and circulates the cooler air from outside to inside. And even if the air outside is just as warm as it is indoors, the air movement will cool the insides of the house, thus preventing baking of the occupants.

Arriving home in the evening, I proceeded to close the main door, bring the fan to the bedroom window and face it outside. My wife walks in and demands to know what I am doing. To which I replied, "trying out that hypothesis I mentioned earlier today". I walk outside to the living room and show her that cool air is starting to be circulate through the house, and say "see... it works!"

My wife exclaims: "oh is this what you were talking about over lunch? I still have no idea what you are talking about though."