.Open RJBottings Web Log . Thu Jul 31 09:17:15 PDT 2003 Plausible Penguins Started the day as usual with tea and a 1 mile brisk walk. Then continued reading .See [ChesnevarMaguitmanLoui00] on the logic of everyday and legal arguments. This reading led me to update my notes on proofs in $MATHS: .See http://www/dick/maths/logic_2_Proofs.html to say more about handling contradictory assumptions and started to link plausible reasoning to the way mathematicians handle normal vs abnormal cases. Why do `penguins` turn up as examples in formal logic? Next to upload the latest batch of citations .See http://www/dick/newb2003/newb0731.html and get ready to go to the dentist to get a new crown to replace the broken tooth from July 1st... . Wed Jul 30 09:50:21 PDT 2003 Small Technical Refactoring Working thru some old photocopies of papers on modal logic and software inspections. Decided to bite the bullet and reorganize how my web pages are generated. Previously a short and incomplete header was included using a shell script in the home directory (standard.include.sh) which showed where the user is. In a dozen sub-directories this script was reused and a line of local "buttons" added. This forced me to not have these in the home directory:-( So, today I split standard.include.sh from standard.inherit.sh. The standard.inherit.sh will be the incomplete line of links that is added to files and pages in subdirectories, and standard.include.sh will be a complete set of "bread crumbs" and "buttons". If this works the top of this page will show two lines before the "Contents". Success!! Next to test the subdirectories a bit... This is an example of how, over time, a satisfactory technique may need fixing. It is as if software rusts. Tom Gilb claimed that it was programmers who caused the rot. I wonder whether the rust is more apparent than real and so doesn't need any human intervention. For example silver tarnishes and needs cleaning -- even if an idiot doesn't put it in a strong bleach solution by accident. To put it another way, requirements are relativistic. What was OK yesterday now appears to need fixing. Slowly the shoe gets more and more painful.... and then you have to risk damaging the system to stop the pain. . 16:23:56 PDT Fame! Just discovered that my $bib CGI has been indexed at .See http://www.scirus.com/ on March 19th. Fame? I wonder whether this is some kind of smart spider or a human filing the link? Testing a sample at Scirus shows that other searches have not been indexed and so I guess it shows a degree of intelligence. . Tue Jul 29 09:25:52 PDT 2003 Good Feedback Someone sent in a comment correcting my description of ASCII .See http://www/dick/samples/comp.text.ASCII.html , I had miscalculated the range of lower-case letters. Many thanks to all who correct my errors or supply "plugin" information. My next task to find out why lookup.maths searches the correct files correctly, but $lab/$define2 do not. Also need to make a small change to $lookup. 10:04:58 PDT Included a search of maths/dictionary.html and (I hope) improved the layout of the output from $define2. $lookup has a small change to its comment form... 17:20:56 PDT Finished the day by adding dome new types of relations (euclidean eg) to my $STANDARD definitions and improving the $languages page. . 17:25:56 PDT Why this page Someone was wondering why I have this Web Log page. Here are the prime reasons: .List I wish to be able to account for my time as I earn my summer stipend. It is a handy place to find out what page I was working one and restarting. A memo to help me recover from elder moments. Writing something is a way of memorizing, reviewing, and thinking about what happens. Egotism. .Close.List . Mon Jul 28 10:57:37 PDT 2003 Stats of Maths Searches Weekend researching life in Oceanside California... Decided to prepare FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) pages for some specialized searches like "lookup.maths". Here are the 16 commonest searches (each twice) out 144: .Table .Row substr Substring operator in BASIC, awk, C, C++, ... .Row sinx Casual mispelling of sin(x), the sine function,... .Row r(x), x = 73, r = /10 ??? 0.73? .Row relational algebra Any algebra that has the same laws as Binary Relations .Row regular+exprssions Expresion made of sequence, selection and iteration .Row reflexivity Property of relationships. If R is reflexive then x R X is true for all x. (=) ==> R. .Row Pythagorean+Thearom The sum the squares on the two sides of a ... .Row pi A greek letter, normally means a constant, the ratio between diameter and circumference of a circle, turns up all over the place in math. .Row phi A greek letter, normally means a constant, the ratio that turns up all over the place in recreational math. .Row one-one and onto A kind of map/morphism/relationship. f is X---Y if every x:X maps into precisely one y and every y has precisely one x. .Row Linear+Programming A technique for predicting the optimal way of satisfying an objective subject to constraints. Both must be expressed as linear functions. .Row linear equations A set of equations where the unknowns are multiplied by given constants and added up. .Row distribution In statistics, the relative chances/frequencies of different events occuring. .Row C A constant, or a programming language. .Row box and whisper Mispelling .Row Box and whisker diagram A Statistical diagram that has a box for where most of the data is and whiskers showing the tail. Tukey .Close.Table Conclusion from scanning all 144: spelling is a big problem. Planning to create a new and experimental mathfaq::=http://www/dick/maths/faq.html page. . Fri Jul 25 10:32:58 PDT 2003 Instructions to lab users Added instructions to $lab. . Thu Jul 24 10:56:06 PDT Getting there! Extracted and checked 20 links to computer/software companies and placed them in $people. 17:42:46 PDT Spell cehcked several pages and moved some things around. Added a page of templates for writing patterns and expanded the definition of pattern in $methods. Redesigned the look of my $lab by using a table. Added 10 new items .See http://www/dick/newb2003/newb0724.html to biblography! . Wed Jul 23 09:01:41 PDT Progress Scars on forehead (see entry for July 1st below) are slowly fading Translated se.html into samples/se.mth this morning as planned. See .See http://www/dick/samples/se.html but this is temporary. Next was step to refactor content. I did this on the linux/RedHat/KDE workstation in my office using cut-and-paste with the mouse. It took a littel while to figure out access to the pages on the server from my office... Updated indexes and also got into fixing Ada and C++ pages. 16:33:07 PDT Now to test the results. . Tue Jul 22 09:24:39 PDT Small Accidents and Prehistoric Agility Found a paper arguing for what we now call "agile development" from 1962! Will post the citation to $bib later this week. Also: broke a finger nail, dropped wet clothes in the dirt and tripped over a miniscule crack in the patio. 17:16:01 PDT Good long pruning session on .See http://csci.csusb.edu/dick/se.html and discovered some interesting resources.... including a page that I had produced describing the ISO 12207 Software Development Life Cycle standard. Next step will be to translate HTML to MATHS, then to distribute into $methods, $languages, $etc. . Mon Jul 21 09:54:53 PDT Standards and languages Spent weekend trying to keep cool and thinking about what to teach in some new courses. This morning finished with $standards and $languages. PM. Finished transplanting $methods, and started on pruning the dead links out of my se.html file. One was to my collection of jokes taken from Usenet news. It should be at .See http://www/dick/doc/jokes . Fri Jul 18 09:50:29 PDT Cleaning and sorting Today I plan to wash clothes, check for errors in $etc and start to move items from it to $methods, $languages, and so on. 11:46:02 PDT I was able to quickly generate and integrate a $tools and a $people page because I didn't have to merge them with pre-existing unchecked data. Ran out of time on the $standards page:-( . Thu Jul 17 10:50:29 PDT Out of office experience Maria and other custodians are polishing the floor in my office at work. Continued pruning and tagging links from d thru to m in se.www.sites.html. This work being done in the freezing cold JB359 laboratory. Hoping to upload some $bib items on Agile methods, later today. 11:33:33 PDT Success! Back in office, sync'ed Palm Pilot, and editted .See http://www/dick/newb2003/newb0711.html 17:14:19 PDT One BATS meeting later and a lot of editting on the MS Notepad and `vi` (g/blah/s/blah/foo/) later. se.www.sites.html has now become $etc and is on the way to being refactored into half-a-dozen other files. Integrated with search but did not spell check or proof read. . Wed Jul 16 10:04:36 PDT Tidying software engineering links Continued to check links and remove dead onese from se.www.sites. Thinking about format of $bibliography. Reading Lem. Tidied up se.www.sites.html as far as the end of the 'd's. Atrted tagging each link with the file it probably end up in: $languages, $methods, $bib, $people, etc.. . Tue Jul 15 10:29:45 PDT Consistency Editted SEWORLD chapter proposal... and had to fix the diagram so that dotted/dashed lines still appeared dotted/dashed in the PDF generated by WordPerfect 10. Fixed for more CGIs (lookup202..lookup620) to Email same data when called as $lookup. Emerson may have written "Inconsistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" but consistency is the guardian angel of engineers. 12:37:14 PDT OK.... $languages is rennovated with links to Google Groups added. . Mon Jul 14 10:54:00 PDT Languages, SSADM, UML, etc. Spent the weekend working on a proposal for a chapter to compare SSADM with UML... also reading LA Times and getting my eyes checked. Meanwhile there were 500+ $bib searches. Spent morning fixing links in new $languages page and my $Z pages. 16:35:47 PDT Spent afternoon working on proposed SSADM/UML chapter and $languages. Also added more items to $bibliography: .See http://www/dick/newb2003/newb0713.html . Thu Jul 10 07:26:00 PDT Modified Bibliography searchs Added a trace of the "HTTP-REFERER" when looking up and retreiving items: $lookup. Noticed that some people are retyping items rather than clicking on them! Added an instruction to click on interesting items. 15:32:56 PDT Just discovered that a regular and peculiar "lookup" search appears to have been taken from a piece of EMail that I sent out in April 1999! I wonder how many other searches are out there? Did a web search for cgi-bin/dick and found one in the WikiWikiWeb .See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SoftwareHasNoShape and a couple in the Achives of SRE Mailing list. Feel like I've launched a small monster. The good news: face is almost back to normal. If you look closely you will see the imprint of the rims of my glasses in my forehead. Started to renovate my $languages page. . Wed Jul 9 13:56:51 PDT Reorganize "newb" I've been putting each batch of new bibliographic items in files of form "newbYYMM.*". I've just put the 2000, 2001, and 2002 items in a subdirectories newb2000::=http://www/dick/newb2000/ newb2001::=http://www/dick/newb2001/ newb2002::=http://www/dick/newb2002/ and regenerated the refs etc... 14:17:36 PDT Finished refactoring $methods and put new version back under old names! 16:10:07 PDT Replaced newsubjects.html (which only had `old` links) with a link to $subjects. Shrank the image of Sherlock Holmes's laboratory on my $lab page. Also made the default search include the bibliography. . Tue Jul 8 07:32:25 PDT More Cleaning Worked until 5:30pm last night and started 6:30am this morning. All this work comes from trying collect information from Usenet Newsgroups with minimum effort. Ad hoc data collection has to be paid for. . Mon Jul 7 14:39:29 PDT Cleaning continues and new reading Continued to clean $methods... and moved some jokes into the methods.glossary. Discovered some new SSADM and JSP/JSD links! Regenerated 30 miscelaneous pages to include traces in bibliographic refs of the source of the link. Uploaded ne items based on weekend reading: Communications of the ACM for June, and a text on `Systems Engineering` from 1957. Some interesting stuff on group structure and performance. .See http://www/dick/newb2003/newb0607.html . Sun Jul 6 09:09:11 PDT The Big Clean Up Starts Starting to refactor and prune the $methods page. There is a lot of lint this navel... Took a break to add some tracing to links to bibliographic items like .See [Bauer92] so that I record where the reference is made as well as the item being searched for. The idea is that when a CGI is called it will include "from=..." in its query string. As a side-effect improved the bibliographic search in my $lab. . Sat Jul 5 08:01:37 PDT Common search topics Here 10 commonest string found in the 2590 searches made in June: .Table Frequency String(ignoring case) .Row 18 object .Row 13 logic .Row 11 UML .Row 11 Ada .Row 10 XP .Row 10 aspect .Row 10 AI .Row 9 syntax .Row 9 LOTOS .Row 9 ERD .Close.Table . Fri Jul 4 08:12:14 PDT More Stats 2000 searches in the last 24 hours. It is very bursty traffic. Next a summary by the CGI that is called. .Table CGI Name Frequency Purpose .Row bib 20137 Extract one item given unique key .Row lookup 5340 List keys of items matching a string .Row define2 566 Search bibliography and notes .Row lookup320 210 Search resources for Programming Languages Course .Row lookup.maths 122 Search for MATHS items .Row Comment 63 Send a comment (all empty of content!) .Row lookup202 15 Search resources for Comp Sci 2 Course .Row Plugin 13 Send a URL to link into site (all empty!) .Row lookup360 7 Search for info on UNIX .Row Other 8 Other CGIs and Email .Row TOTAL 26137 .Close.Table The 'lookup' CGI gives a list of 'bib' items that can be accessed one after another. Here is an analysis of the transitions between the two CGIS. These may not be all for the same user, but the pattern is meaningful: .Table previous\next lookup bib .Row lookup 4012 1337 .Row bib 1338 18799 .Close.Table It looks like `lookup` and `bib` are being used as planned. Now, to summarize the bibliographic items being looked for. First some of the early ones were badly formed and generated by my own pages. These have been fixed. Secondly, just about every item has been accessed at least 2 or 3 times. Here are the 6 most popular items: .Table Item Frequency Content .Row Milner80 45 CCS .Row Boehm02 40 Economics and Agile methods .Row RobinsonBerrisford94 39 OO SSADM .Row LevesonEtal99 24 Experience with Specification Languages .Row Maddux96 23 Relational Algebras model Programs .Row ACM86 18 25th Anniversary issue republished the classic CSci papers .Row Etc ... .Close.Table It is not clear why these are accessed 10 time more than other works. I'm thinking about how to refactor my `methods` page. I'll probably move the links(if still live) to my $bibliography and the jokes and definitions to somewhere in my $MATH $samples. . Thu Jul 3 08:14:32 PDT Statistics Summary of usage of my search engine since April 8th: 266 "hits" per day, peaking on Wednesdays. Analysis by Day of Week .Table DoW Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Total .Row Number 2686 1975 8425 4876 686 3835 1728 24211 .Close.Table Average/Day for each month .Table Month April May Jun Jul All .Row Days 27 31 30 3 91 .Row Nbr/Day 15 321 439 227 266 .Close.Table . Wed Jul 2 17:45:41 PDT Fall out from stupidity Update: shortly after posting previous entry, a front tooth fell out. Rush to dentists... root canal... Now got a nice temporary front tooth. Also band-aids are off and able to wear spectacles again. Still shaky. Probably able to get back to working on web-site in a day or two. . Tue Jul 1 10:07:45 PDT 2003 Stupid Fall Tripped over stick and fell down while walking 6am this morning. A lot of blood and a bit shaky. Meanwhile, decided to put each month of blog entries in a numbered file, see $Previous below. . Previous 2002-Jun 2003: .See http://csci.csusb.edu/dick/blog001.html . Latest .See http://csci.csusb.edu/dick/blog.html . Glossary and Links bib::=one of my CGIs. Extracts a single item from my $bibliography. See .See http://www/dick/tools/bib for the code. bibliography::=http://www/dick/newbib.html, a large collection of publications on software development. CR::=http://www.reviews.com/home.cfm, Computer Reviews, a journal reviewing books, papers, etc. about computers. A prime source for the serious researcher in computer science. concordance::=http://www/dick/concordance.html, a list of about 300 words|phrases that appear in some bibliographic items and not others. etc::=http://www/dick/samples/etc.html, a collection of links to sites for software developers, engineers and researchers. lab::=http://www/dick/lab.html a place to search for data on my site. languages::=http://www/dick/samples/languages.html, information on computer languages. latest::=http://csci.csusb.edu/dick/blog.html, lookup::=`broken cgi`, .See http://www/dick/tools/lookup MATHS::=http://csci.csusb.edu/dick/maths/, a language for semiformal documentation like specifications, that is also good for weblogs, essays, lecture notes, etc. etc. methods::=http://www/dick/samples/methods.html, links and definitions about software development methods and processes, plus some jokes. Also see .See http://www/dick/samples/methods.glossary.html instead. people::=http://www/dick/samples/people.html, samples::=http://www/dick/samples/, samples of documents prepared using $MATHS. se::=http://www/dick/samples/se.html, links to things about software engineering and software development. source::=http://www/dick/blog.mth, I use my own $MATHS language to write these blogs. standards::=http://www/dick/samples/standards.html, STANDARD::=http://www/dick/maths/math_11_STANDARD.html, my personal standard definitions for $MATHS. subjects::=http://www/dick/samples/subjects.html, tools::=http://www/dick/samples/tools.html, Z::=http://www/dick/samples/z.html, specification language. .Close RJBottings Web Log