We’ve started to work for a new customer, Festo from Germany, on the control software for a special 3D printer created at the fabCom lab, based on the Fab@Home design originally created at the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab.

We’re responsible with making the special, tripod-based printer calibrate and work properly, by applying the required 3D coordinate transformations, and making sure the printer is controlled smoothly and reliably by the software. At the end, we’ll be able to ‘print’ real objects nicely with this piece of equipment.

But now I’m back, ready to take on commercial-grade software engineering challenges that we tackle here at EU Edge. I was missing this field actually, working on pragmatic problems, making people’s lives happy.

The solution, as most of the time, is in between.

Faced with an issue, engineers, having a perfectionist stance, deem any ’solution’ a failure, unless it is a 100% solution. If the tap is leaking, the only solution is such that there are no droplets coming from it if it is closed. Whereas for managers, the goal is to keep the issue at bay, and know how to maintain a status quo. Using this approach, placing a glass under the tap, and making sure it is emptied regularly is solution in itself. After all: there’s no unknown leakage anymore, and everything is kept under control.

Of course, the best usually comes when these worlds are combined: let’s improve on the valve, so that dripping is very limited, but still place and empty the glass underneath, albeit emptying with much less frequency - something that would not be considered a solution by an engineer at all. But from a managerial perspective, the maintenance resources are decreased considerably, and thus this is a major improvement in itself.

Shigeo Shingo suggests that this is actually a very good way to eventually achieve a ‘perfect’ solution, as it is easier to tackle only parts of a problem than the whole. One can ’solve’ say 60-80% of the cases with a naive approach, and put it into effect right away, already harvesting the benefits. And then there’s time to go for the remaining 20-40% later.

To the frustration of perfectionist engineers, this latter improvement sometimes never happens, and then there’s a feeling that ‘everything is broken’, ‘nothing is done properly’. And from his perspective, this view is understandable. But then again, making 60-80% improvements on other parts of the process is most probably a time much better spent than attacking 20-40% yields for the sake of perfectionism.

Nevertheless, the source of the conflict is ever there, and one must be wise to mitigate it regularly.

Very thrilled and excited to show our project at such a prestigious venue.

The project is interesting from an architectural standpoint, but is also very interesting technologically, as it involves cellular automaton models, Zigbee wireless mesh-networked sensor motes, Augmented Reality viewports among other things.

I also held a presentation on the Zigbee motes used in this project at the Budapest New Tech Meetup this January.

It was very exciting to speak with these guys and to absorb the knowledge and wisdom they hold. Craig’s repeated reference to the 14 principles of “The Toyota Way” really reminded me of Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of 5 Rings.

“I’m not worthy” is all I can mutter

(And thanks to Stefan for inviting me in the first place)

The Widget Jones Library is a lightweight, flexible, template driven widget build system. It is intended to simplify creating portable widgets. Write your code once, build it with WJL, then run it on several widget platforms like

• Apple Dashboard
• Windows Vista Sidebar
• iGoogle
• add your own…

The Widget Jones Library is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 1.1.

To learn more about the WJL, visit the Widget Jones Library project page.

Despite the issue being raised earlier on the linux-kernel list, this was not yet fixed in the kernel. So I posted a patch again, hoping for the best.

Let’s see how the open source movement works in this case.

But then again, the issue wouldn’t come up at all if one could get X-Plane compiled for 64-bit systems, or better yet, re-compile X-Plane on his own for whatever platform he wants to.

Now we only have to wait until January for the next Meetup.