Zone

Talked up the parser today and checked in on some BPR-related issues. The self-generating code is working out great. • Advice: When you're asked to develop a piece of software, even a quick one, write code that writes THAT code FOR YOU. You shouldn't be building things. You should be building things that build things. • Went over the May 20th stuff with NW and picked up some proprietary binary formats for dinner. Should be able to at least crunch them a bit in 010 (http://www.sweetscape.com/010editor/) and maybe affect some changes. There's some plaintext XML interleaved between the binary chunks. • Hexidecimal is your friend. (Makes me wanna write for the PIC18 again. I think I will design some more MIDI/CV circuits soon.)

Feedback

Another cave day. Cranked out the first pass of the parser. The docs quickly went from ugly to mildly comprehensible to squeaky clean. Decent success. Parser output is regular line item delimited text with type identifiers - your basic event-driven parse-as-you-go type stream reader. • Second pass on the code yielded tighter organization, and now the parser is writing code for itself (and for me). Feedback.

s///g

Met with the President of US Operations today and discussed efforts related to intra-company engineering reuse, etc. • Got a new request for writing a tokenizer/parser to grok some standards publications. The overall goal is to make the information computationally available, and feed it into a number of efforts via some transitional formats. Targets include Excel, C# lib, Project, web service, process asset library, BPMN notation, etc. Regex.

440 Hz wav

http://lumin.us/msr/forums/440hz.wav

Format: .wav
Resolution: 16 bit
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Size: 882,044 bytes
Length: 10 seconds
Channels: monaural
Amplitude: -1 db

Cave day

Wrote a client for AD testing. Need to see what the schema classes provide.

Battle plans

Discussed scope of plans moving towards having SI efforts in place for the remainder of the FY. Targets include AD, SA, iGrafx, dashboards, lifecycle accounting (somehow) and the whole SOA that links everything together. If not a SOA, then web services, but SOA in the back of the mind. Need to work on the diagram showing how everything falls into place, probably as a set of DoDAF OV outputs. Curious to see how big of a bite we will attempt. • Took a very brief look at accessing AD. Need to dev a C# test kit on/for the lab servers and then roll that into the data half of a web service.

The opposite of work

No work today. (FH)

Detectives 'r' us

Tried to track down the list of domain apps, but the holder was out of office today. Looks like there will be sufficient information for determining requisite DoDAF artifacts per app, with some extra footwork done with IM/IT to get a handle on update frequencies and app magnitudes. • In other news, worked a bit on the args for having some kind of lifecycle accounting tool. CMMI OPD process area pretty much mandates it (and also MA area, depending on the interpretation of what 'measurements' is measuring), so showing that along with a UML use-case diagram should suffice. Essentially, the point to make is that we need a mechanism for capturing the life of a process instantiation, and this should double as, or work into (via BPEL?), the appropriate process diagrams from the (to-be) process asset library. • The recurrent iGrafx and/or SA question reared its head again today with the news that it's available with the dev seat on the N-M boxen. • Tried to get moving on JB's request for assistance with CQ cross-domain javascript issues, but the tools aren't in place. • This link completely rules: http://www.cmmi.de/cmmi_v1.2/browser.html#hs:null
• Writeup for process asset library and measurement repository is done.

Pushing boxes

Today, I had a phone conf with Telelogic crew about Systems Architect. Studied up on some relevant docs. NW says we need to start catalogging apps in the domain to scope SA license needs as well as work this into the refinement of the SER process. I'm picturing a spreadsheet with some checklist type stuff - db? frequency? magnitude? etc. • I've also got to work on the blurb for kick starting a look into what a lifecycle-accounting support there will be on the SI side.

State of the nation

That's causing deprivation.

Current status...

Took the modular out of the telecom rack, where it looked like a decorated rendition of Kubrick's monolith, and placed it into two SKB pop up racks I had laying around. Power modules and supply are affixed to the insides with screws and washers. (Battery powered drills are handy, especially when free.) The walls of the cases are quite robust, so I don't anticipate any problems.

Gear rearrangement in itself is nothing new, but I did something else today that has been the first new anti-intertial activity in quite a while -- I ordered some kits from Synthesis Technology. Not an amazing feat considering it doesn't take much to type in some numbers and hit 'order', except that I didn't know kits were still available. Luckily, Matrix and TJ, a MOTM-centric blogger, relayed the information out into the cyber on account of there being a 10%-off sale. Gonna have to get some Synthesizers.com blanks for mounting; will be a good chance to try out methods for front-panel artwork. Don't think I really wanna deal with silkscreening so we'll see how the modelical method works.

First kit is the MOTM-120 (4x) sub-octave generator. Simple idea really, just some 4-bit counter ICs which generate something approaching a small army of square waves, but they've included a potentially interesting function that ring mods A and B inputs. Four bits by four bits equals the all important sixteen. Techno serendipity. The sub octs get multiplexed in, going deeper and deeper as the sixteen steps unfold. To use the most annoying word ever invented, I'm curious to see how texturally stable the effect can be made by mitigating the lower frequencies with the Synthesizers.com Q107 SVF HPF. Highspeed B-signal testing will also be a must.

Second kit is the MOTM-380 quad LFO in a one-space unit. Kind of plain, and definitely not as cool as the dual Oakley Little LFO + MFOS offsetters module I cobbled together, but you really can't argue with the single-space footprint, plus the self-mixing of these MOTM LFOs is an interesting feature with alot of potential for cheaply attaining non-symmetric (in the short-term time domain) waveforms. Er, one more thing, the LFOs are free running so there's no syncing (i.e., for trigging of envelope generators), and for that matter, no square waves. Rectifying will produce some useful shapes to be sure, and the potential for using the LFOs in lazy evolution duties will be fine (no pun intended). Did I mention it's only 1 space wide?

So, that's the news on the gear front. It's a battle I'd burnt out on, since the social payoff has completely waned, but whatever -- ultimately, the goal is to create a two hour mix on-the-fly. No rest for the weary, and frankly I'm hungry for it. After not doing anything creative for the past four months I'm chomping at the bit to get the whole System of Systems running again.

The long tail

Now that I've had plenty of time to settle in, I think I will start writing some posts.