Author Archives: Dorian

Echoes in the Endless (A Preview)

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Today brought many disappointments to light. Some trivial, others complicated in their machinations. Then I remembered my todo list for this year. And since a few of you asked me personally about what I’m writing. So I present to you an excerpt of chapter 1 of Echoes in the Endless.

Note that this is an early revision of the book. The end product may be radically different. Enjoy.

Echoes in the Void
By: Dorian Antoni Puła
Chapter 01

Two Ligian Jaguar interceptors tore out of the Magnus Prime Ice Cloud that marked the end of the Gamma Trannes star system. The milky white ice cloud also marked the edge of Allegiance space. Captain Ewa “Hunter” Kruk sighed as her interceptor cleared the last of the ice cloud.

“No immediate threats detected.”, Ewa said. She watched as the sensor mast’s data floated ghostly in front of her forward cockpit monitor.

“Negative on Allegiance presence.”, her wingman repeated. Ewa looked to her right and sighted her wingman’s interceptor. The monitor overlaid a green triangle around the flat triangular hull of her wingman’s spacecraft. The interceptor’s camouflage skin softly faded from a light grey speckled with blobs of white into a uniformly dark grey. Powdery ice dust swirled off the interceptor’s forward swept wings and the high gain transmitter mounted to the belly of the interceptor. The transmitter encrypted and relayed the information to the Sentinel carrier group still hiding inside the ice cloud.

“Acknowledged Alpha Flight. Proceed with sector sweep.”, the deep voice of Admiral Jeremy Nelson boomed in her ears.

Ewa looked down at the floor of her cockpit. The cockpit’s bottom monitor displayed a large hexagonal sensor array hugging the belly of her own Jaguar. Thin long pale graceful ice dust trails streamed off the sensor’s edges. The monitor drew a orange outline around the sensor. Cleaning sensor array – 60%. The message written in large orange font flashed across the sensor. The surface of the sensor pulsated as its membrane tried to throw off the sticky dust. Cleaning sensor array – 63%.

“Permission to clear buffer zone. Particle interference with array.”, Ewa said.

“Granted. Proceed with caution.”

The admiral’s words sent a shiver down Ewa’s spine. Without the standard set of capital ship buster and anti-spacecraft missiles on either her or her wingman’s interceptor, she felt vulnerable. A Jaguar interceptor could outrun and outmaneuver any Allegiance interceptor. But if the Allegiance placed a beacon drone close to their position, it would sense their presence and sent out an alert to the nearest Allegiance fleet. Neither the carrier nor the accompanying Hibernian lance frigate would have time to escape. Ewa breathed deeply and eased her fighter out of the cloud.

To be continued…

All rights reserved. Copyright Dorian Pula.

Update: 200th post too! w00t!

Perfection in Your Process

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I have a serious character flaw. I’m a perfectionist. Nothing kills creativity like trying to get everything right the first time around. One of the most important skills I learned in professional writing: is create first, edit to perfection later. Give yourself leeway and freedom to make mistakes and to experiment.

There is a second part to the lesson though. You must treat and follow your process as closely one should practise religion. In writing, a process gives you the structure to write faster, better and with more freedom. In programming and developing applications, rigour in sticking with your process is essential for the project’s health and your sanity.

Processes like planning, documenting, testing, deploying and fixing bugs should be well worked out in the developer’s mind. Being drilled, the developer can control her environment better. In a controlled environment, there are no surprises or unexpected issues. Everything works with the precision, logic and accuracy of a Swiss watch. With a well documented and followed process, you can measure efficiency and progress.

In a controlled process, you can work out what you can expect to happen and how. Your developers can gauge how their work is progressing. Your designers can see how well the implementation follows the design. Your testers know where to spend time testing. And your business people, can figure out the cost in time, people and materials your project will take. Everyone know what is expected of them. Your team feels less stress, and works more effectively. That is why ideas like Sigma Six and best engineering practises exist. Japanese manufacturer stressed over their processes bring them to perfection. No wonder why Japanese manufacturers can corner the market.

Without a process, chaos ensues, stress builds and projects fail. So if you manage a team or a project, do your team a favour: figure out a process that works for everyone and stick to it. Your team will appreciate less stress and chaos. And your bosses will appreciate a project well done. Perfection belongs in your processes.

Nighttime Rambling about the Weekend

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Too busy to blog this long weekend. Still I feel a short update is in order for my readers.

Went out on Friday with the Rudy and Olga, to a nice little place in downtown Toronto called West 7. Open 24 hours, nice Italian cuisine, tea candlelights and jazzy-lounge music; basically you can’t go wrong with a formula like that. And they make a mean bruschia. Almost as good as the one I had in a villa in an olive grove overlooking Terni, Perugia. You may be jealous.

Also I got to play around with somemore overhyped AJAX and WSDL web technology. I still think that the entire over-the-web technology needs to move past the whole document and browser interaction paradigm. The KDE 4 promises to change that with their Plasmoid concepts.

Moving on to Saturday, got to hike in Hockley Valley again. Nothing beats walking through forests and old fields. Ok, mosquitoes always suck. But the smells, sounds and sights of nature relax the soul in ways no urban or suburban landscape can. The sound of water rippling by. The sunshine filtering through the cedar forest, filling the air in a sweet woody smell. The flurry of grasshoppers springing up, avoiding your footsteps as you walk through a sun baked pasture. Reconnecting with Nature is an exhilirating and sootheing experience.

I got to reconnect again with Nature today, by attacking our hedge with a pair of shears. This time there was no love lost between me and nature. Almost crashed into a hornet’s nest. Cutting thick branches also sucks. But the hedge is trimmed now.

Kinda jealous that this semester’s web development course at UofT gets to tinker with some pretty neat Web 2.0 ideas. My own web development course of JSP, CGI-Perl and Servlets with database applications feels dated by comparison. I don’t knew all this Ajax and web services stuff as much as I’d like to. Hmm… Another technology to learn?

Anyways, it is 1:14 now and need my sleep for tomorrow’s workday. Night.

Self-Motivation Pre-Game Pep Talk

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I went off-topic with my posts a while ago. You’re probably asking, “Dude, nice blogs where are the gamer posts?” Fair enough.

I’m no great shot in FPS matches. My aim often deviates from my target. And missing another player just gives them a reason to exact gruesome retribution, usually with an overpowered rocket or shower of plasma. So why don’t I leave after a few respawns, and call it quits? Why do I instead rush back into the largest battle in the arena?

Not because I’m addicted to gaming. Not because I’m an aggressive bastard. Nope. I’m self motivated. Faced with a problem or challenge, I try to surmount it. And persist in trying until success or the realization of futility sinks in. I challenge myself to get better. It makes for an exciting game and for a fulfilling life.

So here is a challenge for you: how self motivated are you? Take this test from MindTools.com I got a score of 44. What about you?

As a Tree Grows, So Does One

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In the headlong rush that my week or rather month turned out to be, I failed to notice it. From the parking lot that begins my morning commutes, I just noticed a beautiful tree growing at the side of the street. Thin, olive green leaves sprouting out of gnarled, weathered grey bark, and everything in contrast with the dark grey overcast sky. I’d take a picture, but it is hard to blindly aim a mobile webcam.

I wouldn’t of noticed this tree, if I hadn’t maken time to walk to my bus stop. Rather than engaging in a mad desperate morning dash, I walked. By walking, I could notice things. But only if I knew where to look or by nearly running into them. So it is with life.

The endless stream of tasks, deadlines, wants and desires often takes precedence over the great beautiful things in life. Like a tree, the good things grow on the side. Take a moment, notice them and observe them. You will feel peace.

At Least I’m a Full Employee

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I’m not feeling particularly creative today. Or rather the hustle of both my professional and personal life is taking a toll on my creativity. Also sorting out stuff and figuring out a road map for immediate goals takes time.

At least one of the stresses of whether I’ll work for my current employer more or less disappeared. So it looks like I’ll get to keep growing in my current role as a software consultant. Development in real life differs greatly from the sheltered realm of university. Gathering requirements is more difficult. The code base most likely won’t win awards for breivity, simplicity and elegence. And a perfectionist approach to engineering, will drive you insane or into pessimism. Finally consulting requires one to be diplomatic nearly all of the time. For an asocial (not anti-social, I just need solitude more than others) individual, this can be quite a challenge. So far I think I’m achieving this, more or less.

Writing and blogging at least gives a nice way to unwind. But unfortunately this week is so hectic, that I have very little time. In fact, I got to end right here.

Micro-Blogging

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So far I’ve had some success at blogging at daily intervals. As you may have noticed that the brievity of my recent blogs. First, the device I blog from now doesn’t let my type as fast as a regular keyboard. Second I am concentrating on the science fiction novel I’m writing now. Just finished the rough draft of chapter 3.

An Invitation to a Party

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Somewhere out there in Wolverhampton, UK, four large gents and there large group of friends, followers and groupies are having one helluva party. Unfortunately I’m not with them. As Aq pointed out on a previous blog entry, Toronto is a bit of a ways. And in days of stellar expensive flights, I couldn’t afford such a trip. 🙁

I did listen to the last studio recorded LugRadio podcast. On my N810, a device which first heard about in LugRadio. Or was it from Bert & Ernie on LAS? I keep on mixing up my muppet shows. 😀 And whats up with the melon?

Anyways, thanks again to the entire LugRadio crew, for the crazy banter and great times. You will be missed. And if I ever meet you guys in the flesh, I’ll be buy ya a beer. Or more if necessary. 🙂

Oops, I broke something

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I broke my Internet Tablet today. Not physically.

Rather I used Dolphin from KDE 4 for some file transfers yesterday. Me and my obsession running beta versions. And to add insult to injury, yanked out the cable without unmounting (safely removing) the device. Silly me.

Well now the internal memory is read-only. Dmesg reports filesystem panic, and fsck.vfat errors out. So it looks like I’ll need to backup and reformat that partition. But hey at least I learned to gain root access on the N810 (install rootsh and run sudo gainroot in the x-terminal.

A big thanks to johnx, and others on #maemo on irc.freenode.com for all the help.

Football (Soccer) Madness – A Quickie Update

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Ok, I’m just gonna post a quick update as part of my resolution, to post daily. I reckon that my life is not as half boring as I make it out to be…

I surprised my system admin at work that my N810, is in fact a Linux device. It is true that there isn’t too many Linux of such a small form factor. Updating to the newest version was a great idea.

Also we played a round of soccer (European football). I played a fantastic game. Maybe a bit aggressive, but thats just my intense focus when I game. I would love to do this on a weekly basis.

These past few days, I’ve a bit panicky. So many new adjustments and things happening to me. I am still adjusting. Please bare with me.