On Chess, Design Patterns and The Dying Art of Programming

Chess is probably one of the best game or sport to instill discipline and sportsmanship: you win or lose not because you did or didn't listen to and followed the counsel of your coach, but because of the choices you made. While basketball has Michael Jordan as its greatest player, billiard has Efren 'Bata' Reyes and Edison Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pele, is the best soccer player of all time, chess has the late Bobby Fisher. It's notable that of the sports greats I mentioned, chess again stands unique: its greatest and most popular representative has already passed away.

Reveries on Database Systems and Hiring

First, an apology is in order, I have to admit I've been on blogging hiatus for over a month, and hopefully you'd understand that my enthusiasm for blogging has not waned. My blogging hiatus is just that, a brief hiatus (and tons of events happened since then, like I'm in between jobs as of this writing, enjoyed the Westlife concert with my better half, had an opportunity to step back and see where I am and where I want to go to, Apple's Steve Jobs passed away a day after my birthday, and most importantly, got me Dr. Dobb's Essential Books on Algorithms and Data Structures CD-ROM Release 2 CD as gift for my birthday from my youngest sister), and what better way to blog actively again than to talk about my favorite IT infrastructure, the database system (could even be the most important!) and since I'm currently in between jobs, about hiring IT professionals.

But first let me relate an incident about a friend's newly bought desktop PC, built from choice components, you can consider this computer a bazooka to kill a fly off the wall. The problem was that my friend later updated the BIOS firmware and the new PC has since had mysterious behavior like shutting down for no apparent reason. In short, that BIOS firmware upgrade cost my friend wasted time bringing the rig to the shop to be fixed, good thing the PC is still within warranty and replaced. Moral of the story is: if it isn't broken, you have no reason to fix it, so don't mess with it, same goes with the database back-end of your application.

ArgoUML: Revisiting CASE Tools

If there's only one martial art I would recommend, it would be Aikido and The Secret Teachings of Aikido as guide because it's the only one designed as antithesis of war, using your opponent's strength as their weakness to subdue their aggression, and promotes peace and reconciliation.

Ironically, Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools are powerful software development aids whose strength proved to be its very downfall, thus they seem to be a rarity nowadays; the 1990s may have been the peak of its popularity, but it doesn't mean the idea behind it is already obsolete. Conceptualizing, designing and software development would be better coordinated using CASE tools and ArgoUML turns out to be a free, functional and practical system (not to mention the great documentation it has) that can aid in software development, be it for small to medium-scale development on tight budget (IBM Rational if you have cash to burn, I'm not paid to recommend this mind you).

AppArmor and Server Security

I was tasked recently at work to create a new instance of MySQL in a server where there were two (2) instances already existing and running. This task should have been a breeze and done in no time. Unfortunately, I was working on a GNU/Linux distribution, okay Ubuntu, with AppArmor activated with security profile for MySQL, and I figuratively banged my head on the wall for almost a week why the steps I follow doesn't work, I already stripped the config file to the minimum and the setup still won't work. Turns out AppArmor is in my way in it's objective to secure the system it runs on.

History of Number Systems, Civilisation and Our Digital Future

What does Jef Raskin (father of the Apple Macintosh, whom I proposed should be a saint in a previous article), Daniel J. Bernstein (author of qmail and djbdns), Edgar F. Codd (inventor of relational database management systems), Donald Knuth (father of algorithm analysis) and Google's Sergey Brin have in common? Aside from being some of the luminaries in the computer industry, they are also mathematicians, earning degree in mathematics either initially, solely or alongside computer-related courses.

Mathematics is probably the most dreaded subject by almost anyone who became a student. I've had my brief episodes of sleepless nights over some of math's specific branch (don't get me started with calculus!), but as this blog I read summarily points out:

You don’t need math skills to be a good developer but you do need them to be a great one.