Harry Nieboer

New blog moved to WordPress

2006-06-03T07:47:00Z

I moved my new blog to http://hij2mc.wordpress.com/.
(hij2mc = how I jump to my conclusions, I continue the name of the blog)

I used Blogger some time but changed to Wordpress as it offers better ways to organize your content.

The RSS Feed for my blog is:

https://hij2mc.wordpress.com/feed

On some readers, like RSS Bandit, you have to uncheck the option "autodiscover and verify the feed" when you add a description.

Moving on and making place ...

2006-05-04T22:08:00Z

This night I set up a new weblog, How I jump to my conclusions with Blogger at Blogspot.com, since I'm switching from my current employer Infosupport to Getronics PinkRoccade. Unfortunately, Getronics apparently does not (yet?) have a company blogsite.

I really enjoyed blogging at Infosupport and heard that my (mostly) non-technical posts were a nice supplement to the more technical posts of my Infosupport collegues.

My collegue Richard Zaat will be posting soon (I arranged for his blog to be created) and I hope he will become a worthy continuator.

As you can see on my new weblog, I kept the pay-off about “jumping to conclusions.“

I migrated an old post on UML2 tools (by hand, to see how that works) and posted a new one on the full feedback effects.

Hints on migrating posts are welcome!

The Onion Router (TOR) Network & DNS Security Extensions

2006-04-30T19:42:00Z

This item (an invitation for a presentation) is in Dutch

Dinsdag 9 mei a.s. vindt de 22e lezingenavond van NINJA
plaats. De sprekers van die avond zijn Merijn Vogel en Miek Gieben.

(zie ook overzicht eerdere lezingen)

Het verhaal van Merijn Vogel heeft als titel
"De geur van anonimiteit, Tor, the onion router network“
Het is een feit dat onze vrijheid op internet steeds meer wordt
beperkt. Het surfgedrag wordt bijgehouden, google bewaart de
zoekqueries, en meer instanties proberen de gebruikers in de
gaten te houden. Tor poogt om de anonimiteit van de
internetgebruikers te vergroten. In zijn lezing zal Merijn
op de geschiedenis, opzet en gebruik (bv. in je browser) van
Tor ingaan.

Miek Gieben (NLnet Labs) zal een verhaal vertellen over de transitie
van DNS (Domain Name System) naar DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions).

Hij zal hierbij eerst ingaan op een stukje geschiedenis om daarna
de nieuwe inzichten met DNSSEC te behandelen.

Zoals gebruikelijk begint de avond om 20u00 in de benedenzaal van cafe De Fiets,

Grotestraat 8, 6511 VD Nijmegen.

Dr. Angry and Mrs. Smiles

2006-04-25T20:39:00Z

On a close-up view, you can see on the left face, an angry man and on the right face, a woman with a neutral facial emotion.

But further back (walk some 5 meters back from your computer monitor), the faces change expression and even genders! If you squint, blink, or defocus, an angry man should substitute for the face of the woman and the left angry face should not be angry anymore.

More images like this on Computational Visual Cognition Laboratory @ MIT

(Tip from Marike)

Four essentials of good management

2006-04-25T20:31:00Z

In The Deadline, Tom DeMarco tells stories to pass on wisdom, like this one:

Four essentials of good management:

· Get the right people.

· Match them to the right jobs.

· Keep them motivated

· Help their teams to jell and stay jelled

(All the rest is Administrivia)

(for Dutch readers: to jell = vorm geven, vorm krijgen)

Excerpts from The Deadline can be found on the weblog of Wayne Allen

The preface and chapter one and an interview with Tom DeMarco are on-line at www.systemssguild.com/Site/TDM/Deadline.pdf. Take a look.

Harry Nieboer: How I Work

2006-04-19T10:28:00Z

Who wants to know what Harry Nieboer, Senior Systems Analist, Member of the Professional Development Center at Info Support, Teacher and Weblogger does on a day-to-day basis?

Richard Zaat does!

Richard has been appointed as my follow up at InfoSupport, and currently I'm transferring all kinds of knowledge to him. We found it is difficult to transfer almost 20 years of experience.
So we talk about the questions I get during courses, the questions I answer on forums, how I deal with different kinds of students (including wanna-be-guru's, talkers and sleepers), the problems I encountered in introducing RUP and what I would change in RUP.

Tough questions though. Time for some Donts, Dos and Maybes links:

What I Learned About Project Development

What I've learned from failure

Richard will run his own blog here soon at blogs.infosupport.com/richardz

Busy, Busy, Busy

2006-04-16T22:00:00Z

Last two months I did not post as much as you would expect me to. I had two reasons for that.

First reason is that my 77 year old mother broke her hip again. She had to go to the hospital and since it is the second time in two years she broke the same hip and operating it not without danger at that age, the doctors decided on a conservative way of dealing with it: let my mother use it as less as possible and see if it gets healed in three months. So now my mother moved from the hospital to the "Zonnehuis" for controlled revalidation. Since both the hospital as the Zonnehuis are three quarters away from where I'm living in Nijmegen, Holland, visiting my mother takes a lot of time.

Second reason is that, after almost twelf years working at InfoSupport, I decided to leave the company, put my resume on Monsterboard and talked to several interested companies. I had the most interesting conversations with Alain and Nico at Getronics, so I decided that Getronics would be the place to be for the next twelf years. As you can imagine, looking outside of InfoSupport also took a lot of my time. I planned on making the move half of June, so by that time I need another place for my blog. As Getronics currently does not have her own blogsite, any suggestions are welcome.

Don't use wishy-washy language

2006-03-31T22:14:00Z

I referenced Marcus earlier when he presented some tips on staying calm during presentations.

Recently he added some more presentation tips, including the wishy-washy one:

- From start to end: Some more presentation tips

- The soft side of presentations

I liked his tip on dealing with people who start side-conversations during your talk (just read the post!) and agreed on several other tips, including the one on using presentation aids people can hold and feel.

On a presentation for a larger audience I handed out red and green paper cards that people could use to vote in favor or against suggested solutions. It really became an interactive presentation.

By the way, I kind of felt what Marcus meant with "wishy-washy" even though I'm totally unable to give it a decent Dutch translation.

INXS uses wishy-washy language!

2006-03-31T21:36:00Z

INXS Song Lyrics
Wishy Washy

(From the album "INXS")

I got a place with a view
You can see the cars
As they travel down the freeway
To clubs and bars
There's a woman downstairs
With matt-grey hair
And she smiles when she tells me
There's no room for me here

They've got it in the city
They've got it in the country
But here in the suburbs
It's all so wishy-washy
It's all so wishy-washy

I got another place
This time with a fireplace
And a woman can come around
Write poetry and feel safe
I said it's good for me now
But I'm not being fed
I said it's good for me now
But I'm not being fed

You can even download it as a ringtone ...

Harry Potter and Snape have different training styles

2006-03-30T19:54:00Z

The IT Training Doctor: Harry Potter and the Trainer of Dire

A nice, LEGO-illustrated story on how following the right course saved Dobby's life.

Why training is useless

2006-03-30T19:46:00Z

In his blog (David Maister > Passion, People and Principles) David, who earned a lot of money training people, states the (most) training is useless.

He argues that most of the time, companies want changes in behavior from their employees, and send them to a training to accomplish that. But if nothing changes at the company, training won't help.

David has more inspiring publications on his blog:

- Dangerous Rubbish About Leadership

- Managerial Underperformance

- Marketing is a Conversation

Africa Experience - My adventurous nephew

2006-03-27T22:21:00Z

My nephew Clint and his friend Jaap Jan left for a trip from Holland to Ghana this morning.

They had some spare time between exams and decided to buy a 4WD, take it on a trip to Africa, sell it in Ghana and use that money to buy tickets to fly home. That is ….. as it is planned.

See their Afrika Experience - web-log.nl to see how things work out!

Important tips for pointy-haired managers

2006-03-09T22:14:00Z

Top ten tips for preventing innovation -Tyner Blain ,

Dilbert's manager would not hesitate to implement them:

fun stuff Fridays and the differentiator developer

2006-03-09T21:57:00Z

Scott (Tyner Blane) introduced some (to me) new terms describing approaches he uses to build the right software.

The problem he addresses is: how to decide which features to include on your first release.

Even though we all know the including 100% of the ‘must have’ requirements rule, that does not differentiate you from your competitors, since they will be implementing the same 'must haves'.

In Prioritizing software requirements across releases Scott describes two ways to ensure that the differentiating features are included in your first release:

- fun stuff Fridays

- dedicate one developer as the "differentiator" on your team.

When doing a RUP project, the differentiating features are looked after and documented in the Vision document, in the "Product position statement". That statement has the form:

For our customers

Who have <needs>

Our product has <some features>

Unlike our competitors products

We even have <differentiating features>

The product position statement is a great tool for MoSCoWing (deciding whether a proposed new feature is Mandatory, Should have, Could have or Would/Won't have). It the proposed feature aligns with the product position statement, include it, otherwise drop it!

Tips on scheduling a project

2006-03-06T23:19:00Z

You just need to keep a few things in mind when you schedule your project, things that will keep you out of trouble.

Christopher Hawkins published an article titled Why Your Schedule Is No Good - And How To Fix It explaining why you can not run a six month project in six months.