Well, well ... i've finally spent some time (during Christmas ) to reorganize my movie-database (800+ movies and TV-episodes) on my Apple-TV (yes, with a 1 TB raid-secured NAS attached ) ... but, as u might know, I'm practically deaf so i need subtitles (i even have russian-sound movies with english subtitles ) ... well, just download the subtitles and there u go: bad translations, hacker inserts and worse of all, a seriously bad synchronization .. but hey, I'm a programmer right? ... so there i had my first project since a long time ... of course written in Ruby on a Mac, it took me a few days to get my brains into shape again .. I guess management and strategy leaves a few neuron-cells unused .
Anyway, if u have a Mac with Snow Leopard and the latest download of Macruby (here) .. u can find my first attempt here
I already dusted my closet of movie subtitles pretty quickly so it's at least a great tool .
Have fun watching movies ... merry Christmas and a happy new year !!!
Suppose you work for a 100.000 people services company. Somebody decides that with the new strategy a new image should be styled by a new Powerpoint template design. The decisionmaker even throws in about 50K for a professional marketing agency for extraordinary good stuff. Done! Well, not really .
Suppose of those 100.000 people about 20% gives a presentation only once a month. A real one, not the "dull-bullet-point-sleep-shows" but a presentation you would want to share with others as an example. Information-rich but concise, challenging, inspiring and just good looking. But good stories just do not pop up all of a sudden. Usually they are based on vast experience, research and re-use of valuable own work done in the past or by others. So let's say a good presentation consists of 10 slides of which 5 are new and 5 are based on reusables of earlier work. All in all a good day of work to prepare your keynote.
"Lean Production" (based on the Toyota Production System, TPS) has become the example for producing fast and cheap with good quality. The IT-world now seems to embrace its principles but, however much I fancy for standardization in general, most implementations tend to miss the point about being Lean. Everybody is focusing on extreme standardization and reducing waste and (intermediate) "stock" in order to achieve cost reduction on the spot. While that might be true in some circumstances for the short term, the holy grail of Lean is elsewhere with a promise of some real benefits for the long term like lower costs, higher volume, better agility and improved image.
The guiding 4 P's of the Toyota Way (Jeffrey K. Liker, 2004) stand for Philosophy, Process, People and Problem solving. This still is pretty cryptic so let's rephrase that into an overall statement:
"How can I inspire people by envisioning a common future with full focus on people-, leadership- and partnership-development and with standardizing of commodity processes to bring additional energy to continuously improve themselves including the tasks they are working on?"
I am sure that a lot of u have seen the TV-show Mythbusters on Discovery channel. If not, u might want to have a look here
The purpose of the show is to "bust"or "prove" a story almost everybody knows and assumes or may be hopes to be true. Like "Can you survive a falling elevator by jumping when it hits the ground?" ... or ... "Was the Ming Dynasty able to launch an astronaut?" ...or ... "Can you swim as fast in syrup as in water?" ...
You all know by now I can be a little sad sometimes complaining about engineers not re-using each others stuff enough and speaking different "languages". Everybody seem to enjoy reinventing the wheel every day. Also some discussions I was in during the last years looked sometimes like fights about religious details like in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, sometimes it's valuable to come up with some reasons, to find the origins of this behavior. Well, it's not that difficult. Developing and speaking different langauages is just very human !!! )
Well, well ... i've finally spent some time (during Christmas 
) to reorganize my movie-database (800+ movies and TV-episodes) on my Apple-TV (yes, with a 1 TB raid-secured NAS attached 
) ... but, as u might know, I'm practically deaf so i need subtitles (i even have russian-sound movies with english subtitles 
) ... well, just download the subtitles and there u go: bad translations, hacker inserts and worse of all, a seriously bad synchronization .. but hey, I'm a programmer right? ... so there i had my first project since a long time ... of course written in Ruby on a Mac, it took me a few days to get my brains into shape again .. I guess management and strategy leaves a few neuron-cells unused 
.
.
Suppose you work for a 100.000 people services company. Somebody decides that with the new strategy a new image should be styled by a new Powerpoint template design. The decisionmaker even throws in about 50K for a professional marketing agency for extraordinary good stuff. Done! Well, not really 
"Lean Production" (based on the Toyota Production System, TPS) has become the example for producing fast and cheap with good quality. The IT-world now seems to embrace its principles but, however much I fancy for standardization in general, most implementations tend to miss the point about being Lean. Everybody is focusing on extreme standardization and reducing waste and (intermediate) "stock" in order to achieve cost reduction on the spot. While that might be true in some circumstances for the short term, the holy grail of Lean is elsewhere with a promise of some real benefits for the long term like lower costs, higher volume, better agility and improved image. 
I am sure that a lot of u have seen the TV-show Mythbusters on Discovery channel. If not, u might want to have a look 
You all know by now I can be a little sad sometimes complaining about engineers not re-using each others stuff enough and speaking different "languages". Everybody seem to enjoy reinventing the wheel every day. Also some discussions I was in during the last years looked sometimes like fights about religious details like in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, sometimes it's valuable to come up with some reasons, to find the origins of this behavior. Well, it's not that difficult. Developing and speaking different langauages is just very human !!! 
