Ronald's ScribblingsPosts
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Workplace
I have to admit that although my work place is close to ideal, even by my standards, I can’t help but be extremely tempted to write about the idiosyncrasies of my workplace. Forgive me if I may seem vague at times, but it’s all done for good reason – my poor command of English or secrets.
For the first detailed post on my work place, I shall attempt to describe the characters that make up my department.
The department is run in a pretty strange way, or so to speak, highly militarised. It’s something you will never see outside the context of the military due to efficiency and practical issues. You’ll know just by looking at the hierarchy of my office, more on that later. The thing about the military is that there is a very distinct (read: elitist) group of people known as officers, and ‘everyone else’. From my experience, whatever the officers say or think, it’s deemed to be right, regardless of logic nor reason. So basically, ‘everyone else’ becomes ‘yes men’ whether they like it or not. With the background of the military classes in place, I can begin with the hierarchy.
The department is headed by the ‘Head of Department’, a senior ranking officer. Working under him is the ‘Deputy Head of Department’, a mid-ranking officer who has probably gone through Command and Staff College. Further down, there is a vacant office, entitled ‘Assistant Department Officer 1’, staffed by a junior to mid-ranking officer (There’s ADO 2 too which is vacant).
Then, we have this ‘Department Middle-manager 1’ which is staffed by a Warrant Officer – Non-commissioned Officer who have at least 20 years of experience in the organisation (read: stagnation). The ‘Department Middle-manager 2’ is currently vacant as the person quit a few months ago, probably due to unhappiness with upper management. Then, there’s this ‘Department Lower-manager’, staffed by a senior Specialist – Specialists are generally NCOs (non-commissioned officers). Below him, are two ‘workers’, all NSFs, one of whom is yours truly (NSFs are generally victims of National Slavery).
We have at our assistant, a ‘Department Clerk’, an NSF who generally does mainly paper work and fight through red tape.
That in short is my working structure. My organisation has this obsession with ‘following the chain of command’ where by you’ll see message passing in action as mentioned in my previous post.
I have to disclaim once again that I’m extremely fortunate to be working there as I hardly have to hold any weapons and run around like headless chickens in the mosquito infested overgrowth known as Lim Chu Kang on a regular basis. This is just meant to be an amusing discourse about the organisation and the effect of the ‘lack of market pressures’ (read: virtually unlimited budget).
Case in point, we (meaning the NSFs) just managed to get our request to order S$1.6k worth of stationery approved. The figures are in my honest opinion higher than market rate as that’s how the suppliers rip the organisation off. Moreover, we don’t have a choice in choosing the supplier as there are limitations and restrictions on which supplier we can use to have our stationery supplied by, some of which, I’ll list below.
Before I get to it, I’ll need to go into more background. The organisation wants to be ‘paperless’ and thus, all purchases to be made must go through this procurement system. It’s basically a giant catalogue of products from all its compatible and recognised suppliers. The gigantic downside is that there’s no way around the system, it is extremely slow, and product names are quite technical, not something you see on product labels. This effectively negates the search functionality.
So, here are the rules:-
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Find it from the catalogue if possible. Create a non-catalogue item as a last resort (more on that later).
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Get everything from the same supplier, no mixing and matching, per request, regardless of the price.
Fulfilling the first rule is pretty hard if the search functionality is ineffective. Most of the time, we end up creating a non-catalogue item(s) request. This involving calling up one supplier found in the system, telling them what we need, and having them fax to us a copy of the quotation. Then, we have to go into the system to enter each item from the faxed quotation, its description, price, and all, and submit it with valid justification. Most of the time, our justification for the non-catalogue request is “item not in catalogue”.
So basically, that’s how that one supplier tends to rip the organisation off just because it has the widest range, not the most economical priced.
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iPod Touch
Playing with my iPod Touch today, it suddenly occurred to me that this device is actually a multiple more powerful than my Tungsten | T Palm-powered device. This device has 8GB compared to 32MB in my palm; a screen 1.5 times bigger and brighter; and with two times the battery life and almost equal functionality. The only thing the palm device could do better is that it has bluetooth hardware. Everything else, including pricing, this Apple device triumphs; even 802.11g wireless.
Price-wise, the Apple device is half that of my previous Palm-device, at S$388. I bought my Tungsten | T 5 years back for roughly S$700.
Software-wise, given the recent release of the Singapore Bus Guide for the Apple device, this handly iPod is possibly on-par with the Palm at the height of its success.
Little did I expect, it is Apple, Inc. that surpasses Palm, Inc. with an equally easy-to-use device at half the price and double the technology.
Historically speaking, looking at the past decisions of Palm and Apple through their respective valleys of deaths, Apple has taken the route not travelled while Palm has taken the route most recommended by commentators, Dvorak and the likes. It’s an extremely rare and compatible foil between the two companies.
Commentators have suggested, when Apple was on the verge of collapse, some of the following:-
- License its OS to other hardware makers
- Copy Microsoft’s Windows strategies
- Compete directly against Microsoft in IT markets
- Split into hardware and software companies
- Buy Be, Inc. for its BeOS
- Adopt the Linux kernel
- License Windows from Microsoft
Those advice is what Apple has not taken but wholly adopted by Palm.
Look at the difference now: The Egregious Incompetence of Palm.
In other news, the iPhone is sold totally unlocked and contract-less at Apple Store Hong Kong, online, at ~S$1000 for the 8GB edition.
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Sudoku
Lately, I’ve just started playing this game called Sudoku and found it quite interesting. As usual, the first thing that comes to my mind when I have a rough idea of how a game works is to code an algorithm to solve the puzzle using a computer.
There are a few approaches to this problem I can think of so far. The easiest and slowest of all is the brute-force iteration method. Just sub in a number, check if it contradicts any rules, and move to the next box, with a whole decision making tree of what to do upon alternative situations.
The second approach is by elimination. Fill up all the blanks with all possible but legal numbers. Through the checking of rules in a circular method from the centre, alternatives will be eliminated and most puzzles can be solved.
The third approach, the hardest and most interesting, is by inspection. By “visually” inspecting how set numbers are placed in a gird, reference to the rules of the game, some solutions are obvious and can be easily solved. The greatest challenge is to let a linear piece of code “read” the grids and say, “this looks like the only possible solution here”.
I shall think a little more about the data representation schema before starting work.
Python sounds like a rather good language to use...
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Touch and Tap
Listening in forums about the iPhone, many claim that they prefer other ‘touchscreen’ phones such as LG’s or Samsung’s, etc, whereby all but one fail to consider or realise the difference in their touchscreen technology.
iPhone and the iPod Touch uses a capacitance-based system, where it is “skin-activated” rather than pressure activated. As such, just tapping with your fingertips would produce a result. On the other hand, most other touchscreen phones employ a pressure-based touchscreen system, where a precise and pressured point is required to register an input. Moreover, most pressure-based touchscreens are confused when the size of the pressure point increases. Thus, the usage of fingers rather than fingernails on such touchscreens result in poor recognition. A stylus is therefore usually provided.
This tiny but distinct difference is huge enough to affect usability experience to the extent that it makes or breaks “typing” on the on-screen virtual full-sized keyboard. This also explains why critics of the iPhone claim that it is impossible to type on the iPhone virtual full-sized keyboard as they fail to realise the subtle difference in technology employed.
In my opinion, the capacitance-based touchscreen system is worth more than enough to compensate the apparent “software fixable” cons such as the lack of MMS, cut and paste, email attachment support.
The only problem thus far is the built-in battery with a three-digit replacement figure.
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