Sorting with Sound

via Geek.com — yes, I subscribe to stuff like this in my RSS reader …

I thought this was interesting on two levels …

The Engineering student within appreciates the differences in sorting techniques (although I think I could speed up that bubble sort …)
I also think these videos provide a simple illustration of the power of [...]

The Sandpit

(via GNC, thanks for this one!)
A bit of artistic inspiration; a visually stunning film, combining time-lapse and tilt-shift photography.
For the intellectually and technically curious – more information here.
For the artist and the observationally curious – tai chi under the freeway? Nice.

Frustrating Paradox: Simple and Difficult

I think this is one of those fundamental concepts that, once it is pointed out to me, become self-evident and obvious (ie. why didn’t I think of that). I’m curious if other people agree …
When something is simple to describe, it is difficult to create.
When something is difficult to describe, it is simple to create.
I’ve [...]

Who owns Master Data in your company?

I’ve had to respond to this question, inside and outside of the company, in a number of different conversations over the past few days. It’s interesting, because this is one of those conversations where semantics mean a lot – what people say is just as important as what people don’t say. I only mean that [...]

Practical Applications of Twitter in Manufacturing?

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of interesting discussions about the introduction of Twitter to Manufacturing. When someone poses a question like this to me, it throws me for a minor loop, because for very basic, practical reasons, it just doesn’t seem to apply. More keyboards & data entry on the floor? [...]

I Think I’m Learning SAPanese …

Spent time at an industry conference last week (ain’t Boston great!), and heard the term SAPanese – that special language SAP users learn when immersed in worlds of Walldorf and their ubiquitous software. It’s not unique to SAP – lots of software companies develop their own vocabulary. Heck, IT “geeks” are famous for it – [...]

Finally! Relevant Applications for YouTube and Twitter in the Enterprise!

If you are involved with manufacturing these days, you’ve no doubt heard about Lean Manufacturing. I’ll not go deep into this area here, but one fascinating (for me) aspect is the thread (in some quarters) that ERP and computer systems are the enemy of Lean. On the whole, I don’t disagree – process improvement, kanbans, [...]

Corporate Web 2.0 is Spreading – Here comes the Blog

SharePoint is starting to take hold at work, and that will take us a few steps farther down the collaboration path. There is a promise of enterprise search in the reasonably near-term future, but newly available tools include blogs and wikis (of a sort). I am psyched – this is in general a good thing, [...]