Monthly Archives: July 2014

Come watch me talk

NYC, Pals

If you’re interested in how software gets made when there are very tight deadlines and lots at stake, I’m speaking on a panel for the Hedge Fund Technology Group tonight.

Application Development Lifecycle Management

Even though we operate in the fast-paced and dynamic world of hedge funds, there is still a requirement for well-defined process to facilitate planning, creating, testing, and deploying software systems.

In order to ensure productivity and quality in development projects, many firms rely on a more formalized approach to their Application Development Lifecycle Process (ADLC).  In recent HFTG meetings, we talked about the governance and project planning aspects of ADLC.  In this session, we will focus around the “development” methodologies and tools that help the custom application development process including:

·         Version Control Systems – tools and best practices used for software control.

·         Revision Control Systems – transparency into code changes, who made them, and why they were made.

·         Continuous Integration – removing manual intervention for an automated build process.

·         Issue Tracking – track defects and understand what goes into each release.

 

Several of our members will share their methodologies, technologies, and experience with the group.  We hope to see you July 29th to join in on the fun.

The HFTG Members of the panel are:

  • Dan Chamberlain – Fir Tree Partners

  • Sean Lee – Coatue Management

  • Dave Avraamides – Centerbridge Partners, L.P.

  • Matt Katz – Perella Weinberg Partners

  • Josh Blackwood – Viking Global Investors

  • Kurt Brungardt – MSD Capital, L.P. — Panel Moderator

  • Nick Lagaros – Viking Global Investors– Panel Moderator

A speech called “The Nontrepreneurial Spirit” about the benefits of working for companies, the crappy side of being an entrepreneur, and how to do what you want while getting paid vacations and not having to deal with accounting etc.

A prime-time sitcom where one of the minor characters is bitterly aware they are fictional but hides it from the others to not seem crazy.

A game where you hunt animals, then you hunt people, then you are hunted. For mobile phones.

Poison as a Service – firefox and chrome extensions that instead of hiding your actions on the web the perform more background noise type actions. Perhaps they swap your tracking ids with those of other users.  For systems where there are insufficient penalties for putting in bad claims, make it much much easier to submit claims.

Key idea: When you are faced with an all consuming monster, you don’t fight it, you feed it more than it can handle.  Let its strength become its weakness.

 

Someone walks past me, on the corner of Mercer and Prince in the brilliant morning sun, wearing Google Glass, and I instinctively step back and into an alcove, away from the machine vision. Stray photons have taken seven hundred and seventy five thousand years to reach New York City from the outer halo stars of the Milky Way, and SoHo’s lone Googlenaut hoovers them up with his weak extra eyeball. I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for him. I’ve never seen Glass in the wild before. The thing sits on his shades like Minimum Viable Science Fiction. Toy future.

via Warren Ellis’s Morning, Computer.

I had a similar experience recently. We went to the NY Tech Meetup, saw the launch of Electric Objects & The Satellite.

I also saw my first Google Glass – what do I call them? Glasshole sounds so aggressive, Glasstronaut too kind – wearer. He looked like the kind of young rich white guy who has the cash to spend $1500 on a tiny computer you strap to your face. I had reaction of revulsion, so of course I started seeing him everywhere. How do I express kindly and firmly that I don’t want to be recorded by him? I don’t mind if he looks at me, but I don’t want him pointing a camera at me – I’m not a public figure intentionally. I don’t want to confront him or shame him, but I really don’t like this. He’s not doing anything wrong, not anything you couldn’t do with a smartphone – but it feels rude to not do it publicly, for my consent or notice to not be involved.

Of course he jumped into the elevator I was in. I grabbed the door and excused myself.

“I think I’ll wait for the next elevator.”

Review: Against a Dark Background

Books, Pals, Reviews,

Against a Dark Background
Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was good – but not as amazing as his other books. It felt like it fell apart more and more at the end, so many great ideas scattered across the field and then never explored, so many plot twists that meant nothing…

It’s kind of the Transformers: Dark of the moon for good thoughtful SF. Does that make sense?

View all my reviews