Ablaze Software

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On Cheap Suits and Entry-level Technology

 

suit When I graduated from University, I went to buy a suit for job-interviews.   As a poor but now ex-student, I gravitated to the swankiest, upper-class stores and tried on expensive suits that I had no hope of affording.   I recommend every man at least once in his life tries on a top-end suit that he can't afford.   Anyway, I had sales people dressing me in these wonderful suits (and boy, they did feel nice) but I had to ask finally for a "bog-standard" suit.    After being given a look that made me feel distinctly unwelcome I was advised that this particular store did not stock "entry-level" suits.
So when last week we released Eze mobileScan 1.5 (with 29 improvements in it), I was again reminded of "entry-level" products.   First of all, Eze MobileScan is our entry-level software costing around 2-4 months of a months licence for our Inventory and Warehousing Software, Pick & Send.    Secondly, Eze MobileScan 1.5 is now available in two editions.   For the first time we are offering Eze MobileScan on a proprietary non-Windows PDA:  the Honeywell Optimus S. 

The Honeywell Optimus S is an entry-level, text-based PDA and scanner and Eze MobileScan really does run on it, although there are some features and functions not available in the basic edition.   (You can compare the editions here).

So why did we do this?   Simple:  the Optimus S sells well around the world to users who are price-sensitive and do get value of having a simple tool just do stocktakes and price-checks like Eze MobileScan.   We think Eze MobileScan will do well - both on the Optimus S and the Pro Edition on Windows CE/Mobile for those who need something nicer to use and slightly more feature-rich.

Honeywell Optimus S PDA Scanner now running Eze MobileScan for Retail Price Check and Stocktake
As for the entry-level suit I ended up buying: it was scratchy, untailored and with a low thread-count but it did the job-on-hand:  getting me through interviews.

 

 

 

Making Servers go faster

hard-drive-data-recoveryYesterday we decided to rebuild a server named Maudslay, which is responsible for automatically building our products every night.  It had recently developed a somewhat pronounced limp, due to a couple of bad blocks. on the hard disks.   Fortunately, nothing was lost, though we started to notice some strange and scary behaviour.


It was the first time I actually opened it up, and I was surprised at the hard drive that had actually started to fail. It was an oldschool  Seagate 20GB drive (you know, like the one Noah kept his TurboCAD drawings of the Ark on). A quick check of the Seagate date code reveals it was manufactured on 25 July 1999 - how's that for durability?   The hard drives were even older than the server itself!

 

In any case, both of the drives have now been replaced with more modern units, configured in RAID for some extra safety. The system is also being migrated from Windows 2003 to Linux in the same go, which (together with the more modern hardware) has yielded some interesting results with regards to how fast the system builds Pick & Send - though I wondered if moving to/from Linux would make a big impact.

 

I was very pleasantly surprised. Compared to my development machine (a pretty-speedy Core2 Duo with plenty of RAM and a pretty speedy HDD), it absolutely flies despite having less than half of the memory of my PC...

 

 

Performance: Before and After
My PC Old Maudslay New Maudslay
Performance Increase
System startup 2 minutes 3-4 minutes 10-20 seconds 1400%*
Building Pick & Send 2:30
5:30
40 seconds! 825%

* doesn't really count because it's been changed from Windows to Linux, but still!

 

... and we were speculating that we'd see an improvement of, oh, 30 seconds to a minute off the build times of the old Maudslay?!

 

So the moral of the story is upgrade your hard drives and run Linux!

 

 

Engineers with Cool Projects

Last Friday, I went to the Auckland Uni and passed judgement on 10 soon-to-be-graduate engineers and their research projects.   After four years of studying engineering, these guys had come up with very cool projects for their research.   Since Ablaze was a sponsor for the research projects, I got to choose one team to rule them all.  Well - at least to win thier category.

This year, I was judging the Software Apps category.   Software Apps is a difficult category to be in because it's a little difficult to wow your audience when beside you is a swimming robotic fish that swims around without bumping things until you draw on the screen - and then it swims around in the route you drew.   However, I wasn't juding that one - just the Software Apps.

 

Thus, I awarded Raymond Yeung and Han Narapanich the Ablaze Software Winner of the 'Software Apps' Category for their research on studying in Second Life where I had to perform a titration using Second Life.   I hadn't done a titration since Stage I Chemistry at Uni and I had never used Second Life.  Auckland Uni have their own island called Long White Cloud, which has a virtual medicine center for training nurses by simulation.   Naturally I started thinking about training Pick & Send users using simulation in Second Life...

 

 


 

 


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