Software projects are by definition people centric: software can only be produced by humans, and therefore all it requires is human capital and what goes with it (budget, communication, ...etc.).

Since people are the main component, communication is crucial. Like every project involving humans, communication can break down, and the results are suboptimal to say the least.

In IT projects, this was immortalized using the Tire Swing Cartoon. I recall first seeing this cartoon in the late 1980s. It depicts how each stakeholder in the project envisioned the product, or delivered his part.

Thank you for your interest.

At present, I am not considering full time employment, and therefore, my resume is only provided upon request.

However, if you have a need for contract or project work in the web development, specially using Drupal or Backdrop CMS, you can ask for a quote via 2bits.com, my consulting company.

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, and in other places as well (e.g. Veterans Day in the USA), where those who died in war are remembered.

A common symbol to wear is the Red Poppy in Canada and other Commonwealth countries.

This year, some war veterans in Edmonton are upset that some are promoting the white poppy as a symbol on Remembrance day, as a symbol for peace.

I always felt that the red poppy is a symbol of war. The poor soldiers who have to go to war and lose their life, body parts, or sanity are not the main perpetrators of war. The politicians are the ones who start the war and let others die for their own purposes.

I finally bought myself a new laptop. It is an HP DV6120 CA. In this article I describe how I setup Linux on it, what works, what needed workarounds, and what doesn't work. If you have helps or hints or tips, please add them as a comment to the article.

Rogers Cable has introduced a new service that allows portable internet.

The service works by plugging a modem in any power outlet in 20 cities across Canada, including the Kitchener Waterloo Cambridge area.

Pricing is $50 per month, which is slightly more than other high speed solutions. A separate purchase for the modem is required and costs $100.

This solution is good for someone who needs to access the internet from several places, such as going onsite to clients, working from airports, ...etc.

APC Mag is an Australian technology magazine site that is powered by Drupal.It was on Slashdot today, and seems to be holding fine to the onslaught caused by the slashdotting.What is also interesting is that this Drupal site is part of NineMSN, a Microsoft joint venture in Australia.

From the "siteseeing" department.By sheer coincidence, I found today that the web site for the secondary school that two of my daughters go to is running Drupal.Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School's site has that tiny Druplicon for a favicon that gave away what was used to build it. The school publishes results on their web site and send the parent an email notification. Each student has a code name for privacy reasons, so the exact student cannot be identified publically. This seems to be an integration with Markbook. It was when I was checking the marks that I noticed that Druplicon, and got intrigued.

Drupal participated for the second year in the Google Summer of Code. This is a way for open source projects to earn some cash, to get new participants, as well as get some code done.

This year, Drupal decided that two mentors will be assigned per student, while Google would only recognize one mentor as the official mentor. According the these rules, I was not supposed to get a T-shirt since Owen Barton was the official mentor for Wolfgang Ziegler.

No sooner that I wrote about a warm and dry winter expected in Canada because of El Nino that we had our first snow fall in the season.Yesterday, there was a snow squall with significant accumulation on roof tops and patches of grass. Today, there are still patches of snow on the ground, although most of it melted since the ground is not frozen yet.It felt like the dead of winter in January, but it was only October 13. This is very unusual for this time of the year. The CBC called it "historic", and the magnitude of it in the Niagara penninsula was huge. The town of Fort Erie had 30 cm of snow causing it to was shut down, including schools and business. Power was also disrupted for up to 155,000 customers.

Thanks to El Nino, most of Canada is expected to have a warm dry winter.I guess we would not need the Canadians For Global Warming movement that much this year.