Automating buildings costs money. Lots, lots of money. The return on investment (ROI) is usually very low, and it takes a long, long time (on the order of 5 to 10 years) for such an investment to pay for itself. To make matters worse, people who rent the home or apartment they live in have […]
There’s a nice little article about green energy homes over at Greenprofs.com. The author makes a nice point that home owners have many options when it comes to choosing carbon-neutral energy sources: he mentions solar, wind and even hydroelectric power. I cannot help but submit, respectfully, that this article completely misses the point. There are, […]
Back in 2005, when I was writing Java software for an embedded home automation controller, we ran into a little unforeseen problem. The embedded virtual machine we were using implemented only the Java 1.3 API, and so did not offer any logging facilities (which only Java 1.4 started having). We ended up using the logging […]
According to Eric Evans, the author of Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software, one of your first goals as domain analyst is to define what he calls an Ubiquitous Language, i.e., a common vocabulary that your technical team and your business sponsor will agree on, and will use to communicate. Having such […]
I’ve read Thomas Friedman’s “Hot, Flat and Crowded”, and firmly believe this book belongs on the shelf of anyone involved in making buildings more energy-effective. Mr Friedman’s previous bestseller, “The World is Flat”, discussed the changes to our world that enabled more and more people to participate in a global economy. “Hot, Flat and Crowded” […]
Wikipedia defines polyphasic sleep as the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period. Proponents of this practice argue that it results in a much reduced total sleep requirement, sometimes as little as two hours total sleep per day. This concept immediately caught my interest when I heard about it, as it should interest […]