harlekins spirit

Magic Numbers…

Actually, I had reserved this particular Friday especially for an OpenShift4 Bare-Metal installation, but you know Murphy: Firstly, anything that can go wrong will go wrong and secondly, Murphy was an optimist. So I will report on my experiences with RedHat another time.

On the morning of the Friday in question, a colleague called with the usual phrase that technicians have learned to dread: “Please take a look.” The dreaded “5 minutes”. But unfortunately, it was important, because a critical application on the production system was at a standstill and nothing worked. So I went looking for the problem and tried to find the cause. Since the error occurred from one day to the next without any changes to the program, I suspected a data constellation that was problematic for the program as the reason for the crash.

Respect (part 3)

Harlequin “mix”

As this topic is very close to our hearts, several harlequins have commented on it. Here is our “Harlequin mix” with the collected comments:

All in my head?

… we’ve been here before. But this time it’s about something else: knowledge management in IT projects.

Time for new goals!

The first weeks of 2021 are already over and a familiar ritual is repeating itself. Well, around this time gym registrations usually skyrocket….

But didn’t we also have the more or less usual resolutions at the beginning of 2020? It wasn’t meant to be – and you can, I think, clearly pinpoint one culprit in 2020. @Harlekin Rüdiger: did you have viruses in your series on the art of blaming?

The Ten Commandments…

… of the early bird swimmers

In the year of the Lord 2020 we experienced not only a warm but once again dry summer. When the world was then also afflicted by Corona, people looked for alternative sports and leisure activities. And so it came about that young Mathias made the acquaintance of the community of the early bird swimmers.

The new normality?

What an awful term, it has been haunting me for some time now. Why? Well, I find it highly problematic – and I would like to share the background to it with you.

All in the mind…

… was what Andreas Bourani already sang in 2011. In the past days and weeks this phrase has often come into my head. The connection may not be immediately apparent to everyone, but the corona pandemic somehow made me aware of it again.

Everything must go…

… is a phrase everyone knows – it has even been filmed. In the business context this idea is also widespread, because most companies plan in annual tranches.

Take one, pay one, make two from that? No way…

In my last post I wrote something about crypto currencies and blockchain, but only hinted at what blockchains can be used for and what the fundamental innovations of blockchain technology are. For me, it’s the fact that the double-spend problem is finally solved – transparently and without having to trust a central authority.

But what does that mean in detail? The easiest way to explain double spending is as follows: If you buy a book in the real analogue world [1], you pay for a book once and get a book once [2]. And only you own the book physically. If your neighbours want to read it too because you raved on about how great the book is… Well, then you have to “lend” it, i.e. give it away – then your neighbour will have it. Thus there’s only one “instance” of the book, unless you copy it yourself and then distribute it (but let’s forget that now before we do overdo it 😊).

Are we failing or learning?

Wow, 2018 was an eventful year. On the last day of the year I saw the news from OceanCleanup, a great project that first had to fight huge resistance and is now experiencing a setback. But actually this article is about Bitcoin and Blockchain. By the end of 2017, Bitcoin and many other crypto currencies had reached heights that made many dream (and some are converting all their belongings into cash (1) to invest in Bitcoin and benefit from the hype). You could also say: greed had gripped people and in 2018 the situation returned to normal. But what comes next?