Month: November 2018

Toyota’s Six Rules for the application of kanban

Toyota has formulated six rules for the application of kanban

  1. Each process issues requests (kanban) to its suppliers as it consumes its supplies.
  2. Each process produces according to the quantity and sequence of incoming requests.
  3. No items are made or transported without a request.
  4. The request associated with an item is always attached to it.
  5. Processes must not send out defective items, to ensure that finished products will be defect-free.
  6. Limiting the number of pending requests makes the process more sensitive and reveals inefficiencies.

via wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban

Show Biz Wisdom

“The show must go on.”
“Always leave them wanting more.”
“You see the same people on the way up as you do on the way down.”

“There are no small parts, only small actors.”
– Constantin Stanislavski

“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”
– Oscar Wilde

“All the world is a stage”
– Shakespeare

“Make sure you get paid.”
– Mick Jagger

Kurt Vonnegut on Armistice Day

When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut. 1973
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_of_Champions

Health care workers and computers, Atul Gawande on.

Why Doctors Hate Their Computers

More than ninety per cent of American hospitals have been computerized during the past decade, and more than half of Americans have their health information in the Epic system. Seventy thousand employees of Partners HealthCare—spread across twelve hospitals and hundreds of clinics in New England—were going to have to adopt the new software. I was in the first wave of implementation, along with eighteen thousand other doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab techs, administrators, and the like.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their-computersc

Armistice Day

Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning—the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918.

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day

This is what a world war 1 battlefield in Verdun France looks like today. from interestingasfuck

Watership Down

waterhsip-down

Watership Down is a survival and adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.

via Wikipedia

Rabbit in Skyline Park

20181105_160122.jpg

‘El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.’

Watership Down, Richard Adams

Clojure Hello World

user=> (println “Hello World!”)
Hello World!
nil
user=> exit
Bye for now!

check out ->

Leiningen is the easiest way to use Clojure. With a focus on project automation and declarative configuration, it gets out of your way and lets you focus on your code.

https://leiningen.org/

Build Your Functional Skills One Idea at a Time, by Russ Olsen
https://pragprog.com/book/roclojure/getting-clojure

 

Shibboleth

A shibboleth is any custom or tradition, particularly a speech pattern, that distinguishes one group of people (an ingroup) from others (outgroups). Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation or keeping out perceived threats.

via Wikipedia

The general name for this type of thing is “Shibboleth,” after a city whose name was used that way in the Bible. Shibboleths are interesting to learn about, partly because it’s deep-cover spycraft, and partly because they words used are always whackadoodle nonsense.

In WWII, the Dutch would identify German spies by how they pronounced “Scheveningen,” a district in the Hague. The Germans pronounced the first syllable as something like the English word “chef,” while the Dutch version has a guttural “skhef” sound.

via reddit