thekua.com@rest

I really like the language choice given to me!

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Last year I saw Momix’s previous production and was so impressed by it (and gently encouraged by an offer from LastMinute.com) that I decided to see their current production, Lunar Sea. This production was once again held at the Peacock Theatre, a nice little intimate stage that tends to be very popular for acrobatic or rich visual movement performances.

Compared to last year’s production that included many more props and elaborate costumes, Tuesday’s performance was much simpler but much more evocative drawing upon large scenery projections, deep tribal like music and some impressive choreographed visualisations in costumes that lit up under a black light. The theme between the ocean and the moon flowed in and out throughout the performance with some exceptionally eye-boggling eye tricks.

Half the time I found myself wondering how they even accomplished some of the impressive stunts such as simulating a flock of seagulls flying, to simply sitting back and losing myself in the surreal world presented on stage. It’s definitely not a show that will whet everyone’s appetite, but it is distinctive enough to be well worth the ticket price.

TheKua.com Rating: 7.5 out of 10

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This Sunday was my first time to visit the Royal Albert Hall, a large and majestic theatre with a capacity to hold an overwhelming number of people. It was here that I saw the musical bonanza titled ‘Best of Broadway’. This composition of this show was extremely simple - one song from the most popular Broadway shows ever all performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a handful of West End musical stars. They performed a wide range of songs, from the more traditional shows such as Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Evita to some more recent ones including Wicked, Mamma Mia, and The Lion King. I was expecting a little bit more of a well rounded audience, but perhaps it was the choice of performance and the Sunday afternoon show that meant well over 70% of the theatre was filled with bus loads of a much older crowd of sorts.

I can only recommend this show to big fans of people that enjoy the music from the most popular musicals as each song does not last too long, and the show seems a little bit disjoint moving from one theme to another so quickly. I was at least still impressed to be sitting inside an amazing venue and listening to the impressive Philharmonic Orchestra.

After this though, I am even more intrigued to see what the performance of Modest Mouse will be like in this venue next year (23 May to be exact).

TheKua.com Rating: 5 out of 10

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Something that add values…

Three people with different sets of skills (application developer, server administrator and release engineer) all looking at what could be causing an issue that manifested itself only in the production environment at release time.

In contrast with something that doesn’t…

A manager not involved in the release, sitting over everyone’s shoulders while they’re trying to understand the issue, reminding them to record the time spent against the estimated times in the plan and all the other paperwork.

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In May this year, Jamie Hewlett, co-creator of virtual band Gorillaz won the ‘Designer of the Year Award’. While refurbishment of Royal Festival Hall is underway, an exhibition showing a mural of his band’s characters is up until February 2007. The series is not large but some of the artwork is nicely detailed and quite large.

If you’re in London I suggest taking a look if you’re in the area, or check the rest of them out here.

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A couple of Saturday’s ago, the UK office of Thoughtworks ran an internal conference that we call an ‘Away Day’. A work colleague of mine, Tom Scott and I presented a workshop titled Lean at Large: The Value Stream Map. Our goal was a tough one to fit in an hour, with a fundamental aim of giving people experience at value stream mapping and drawing some conclusions from it. Thanks to all the people that came along and participated - we certainly got some great feedback and more importantly we hope you got something useful out it.

We spent some time first talking briefly about lean theory, its relevance to software development before talking more about the wastes in manufacturing and production and their equivalents in software development. We gave an example of how you would leverage a value stream map highlighting system wastes, and then how you might analyse it to gain the most improvements to your system.

The next part of our session was more hands, with four volunteers acting out different roles using lego to create a car production line. The other observers broke into groups to observe and map out their value stream maps. Based on feedback notes we handed out and what people said to us after the session, I think most people found it fun and energising for such a late session in the day. Some peopel found it relevant and useful and some others could immediately see parallels in the game to the ways things operated on their current projects or current work environments.

Since we believe in continuous improvement, here are specific actions we will be doing for the next time we run this session:

• Creating handouts that summarise the wastes and more examples about those you might see in software development.
• Spend some more time explaining how the game will run and what is expected from each group
• Run through some more example value stream maps and lean principles before starting the exercise as well as reinforcing them at each iteration.
• Run the entire session for a minimum of two hours so that people have a chance of implementing one or two changes to see how it affects the entire value stream.
• Give groups some stopwatches so they can measure how much time is spent on each process
• At the end of the exercise, draw more parallels with the example production line to a software development project.
• Potentially expand the complexity of the game with additional roles or constraints for each role

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The Case: A late night in town
Date: November 9, 2006
Time: Late
Location: Little Italy, 21 Frith St, London, W1D 4RN
Synopsis: Run by the owners of the chic Bar Italia, this modernised Italian bar fronts a classy multi-tiered restaurant serving delicately presented Italian food. The wait staff buzzed around, talking surprisingly quietly to each other in Italian while the three excessively attentive bar tenders execute orders with amazing precision and speed. In contrast, the ladies next to us at the bar leisurely work their way through a couple of bottles of champagne and indulge in the bowls of free olives that sit at the bar. As per the He Who Knows Challenge, we ordered a round of Long Island Ice Teas that arrived in a flash. These versions are slick, served in the proper rounded tall glass and had the perfect balance between being smooth and tasty (as well as toxic). The result was a drink that needed no help and slid down the throat far too quickly.
Atmosphere:Attracting a little bit more of an older crowd, and a certainly better dressed crowd than most other bars I’ve been to, the brightly polished wooden floors and sharp lights set the perfect mood lighting. The elegant dining areas on the multiple floors are filled with white table-clothed tables set perfectly with fine cutlery and glass sets that look like they’re waiting for a fine three course meal to be consumed.
Conclusion: A place that certainly wasn’t getting any emptier as the night wears on and proud to declare their commitment to late nights by keeping open until 6am until Christmas, this place is a great place for drinking some fine drinks at equally fine prices in a quality atmosphere.

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On our current project, we try to keep testing as close to as what’s going in proudction as possible. We take frequent database backups (appropriately clean some of the data) and then each developer and the QAs restore them to local copies of SQL server. The DB in production is massive with its transaction file, so here’s a way of speeding it up for local copies.

1. Restore the DB into a copy of development
2. Trim what tables/stored procedures/etc you don’t need
3. Shrink the DB
4. Detach the DB and remove the log (LDF) file (our prod log file is about 2G and even though it’s empty when we back up, it takes an excessive time to restore)
5. Reattch the DB and back that up
6. Restore whenever you want and it should be faster

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