With tens of thousands of dollars of equipment on hand, one would think that the seemingly simple would be possible. Oh dear. Not even close. For years I’ve been putting binding on blankets and embroidering them with, generally, just a couple words- a name or something. I wanted to do a bigger project- a quote […]
Metrics for sunsetting systems
Really, these are similar metrics to what you would use to choose systems- except they’re often on the tail end of a choice made years ago. I frequently see multiple systems run in parallel that really should be integrated (e.g., why would one have separate time and access cards?). If you’re going to choose between […]
Assessing risk (and pitfalls)
I’ve already mused a bit on project estimation, and I have an upcoming post about how to think about sunsetting systems. It occurs to me that there are at least two more fundamental questions to address: what does it mean to talk about the risk in a system, and what biases might we have when […]
Algorithms that are 80% good aren’t scary.
Leaving aside the difference between sensitivity and specificity: if people know the machine is sometimes wrong, it’s not so bad. Things get scary when the machine is 99% or 99.9% accurate, and you’re caught on the wrong end of a presumption. I’ve often wondered, for example, how many people get picked up on warrants for […]
Vexing little bugs
I find that, particularly with geek stuff, I get hung up on tiny little details. For example, I did a deep dive with Javascript and CSS the other week, trying to find out why I couldn’t get an input field to select all the text inside when I clicked on it. This ties back to […]
2018 Law license reciprocity update
It’s been awhile since I blogged about the UBE and Kansas. I was surprised that Kansas took an extra couple years to join, and even more surprised at the adoption in the northeast. I had always assumed that jurisdictions such as California, Florida, Texas, and New York would maintain their own licensing regimes- but New […]
On project estimation
This may or may not be a series, but I wanted to dash off a few thoughts. I have a feeling this post will come across as very stream-of-consciousness but will be clarified by followup posts. The essence of estimating projects is to evaluate two things: How long is it expected to take? What risks […]
Controversy and Conversation
For (I think) the first time on this blog, I’ve made a post password-protected. I don’t really want to make that a regular habit, but the subject matter is sufficiently nuanced and potentially controversial that I wanted to let a few trusted folks review it before I made my position globally visible. Fundamentally, this issue […]
Protected: On crime statistics
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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You’ve probably seen something like this in a book at one point or another. This seemingly contradictory statement is there for a good reason: it’s there to prove that the printing process worked, and that the customer isn’t getting a botched print job. Books are composed of signatures: one large sheet folded to compose several […]