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Sebastian Kirsch: Blog » 2005 » January » 07

Sebastian Kirsch: Blog

Friday, 07 January 2005

Zutaten für einen Bollywood-Abend, Teil I: Kulfi

Filed under: — Sebastian Kirsch @ 22:03

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Kulfi ist eine indische Eiscreme aus Kondensmilch. Vorsicht: Sehr lecker, aber auch sehr magenfüllend. Das Rezept ist für Kardamon-Pistazien-Kulfi; man kann Kulfi auch mit Safran oder Mangos machen.

Zutaten:

  • 1 Liter Milch
  • 1 EL Reismehl
  • 5 Kapseln Kardamon
  • 4 EL Zucker
  • 1-2 EL gemahlene Pistazien
  • 2 TL Rosenwasser

Zubereitung:

  1. Die Kardamon-Samen aus den Kapsel herausloesen und mit einem Messer zerquetschen.
  2. Die Milch mit dem Kardamon vorsichtig zum kochen bringen und auf zwei Drittel bis die Hälfte der Menge reduzieren.
  3. Den Kardamon mit einem Sieb entfernen und die Milch wieder auf den Herd stellen
  4. Das Reismehl mit 2 EL Milch verrühren und zur eingedickten Milch dazugeben, ausserdem den Zucker und die Pistazien hinzufügen. Noch einmal 10 Minuten kochen lassen, dann vom Herd nehmen und abkühlen lassen.
  5. Zur abgekühlten Mischung Rosenwasser hinzufügen und sie ins Eisfach stellen. Alle 20 Minuten umrühren, damit sich keine Eiskristalle bilden.

In indischen Restaurants wird Kulfi meistens in kegelförmiger Form serviert, wobei der Kegel auf der Seite liegt und in Scheiben geschnitten ist.

Chaos everywhere

Filed under: — Sebastian Kirsch @ 01:28

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There is a common perception that software projects are notable for their rate of failure, but hard data about this fact is difficult to come by. Prominent examples in Germany are the recent toll collect disaster (which delayed a toll for lorries on German motorways for years) and the introduction of the new unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosengeld-II), which caused the bank account data of thousands of people receiving dole to be garbled, resulting in them not getting their money.

Some data is found in the Standish Group’s chaos reports. They report that in 1994, a staggering 16% of all surveyed software projects were completed on time and in budget; 31% of the software projects are never completed at all. The figures for 2000 are slightly better; 28% of the projects succeeded and only 23% failed outright. So, all the advances in software design, object-oriented programming, modeling tools, CASE tools, IDEs etc. managed to decrease the failure rate by 3/4 and increase the success rate by 3/4.

Still, this is a pretty dismal track record. If we build houses the way we develop software in 2000, the first woodpecker would still destroy civilisation. For two thirds of the software projects, it means a very bumpy ride to completion, requiring either massive cost overruns or severe delays, and if you are already on that track, you only have a two-thirds chance of ever completing the project.

The reports also contain a detailed analysis of the cause of failure; I think this should be required reading for any IT project manager. Unfortunately, these reports were not part of any of my software engineering classes.

Delicious bookmarks

Filed under: — Sebastian Kirsch @ 00:57

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I have not written about it in this blog yet, but my diploma thesis is going to be about community structures in knowledge networks, with applications in knowledge management and collaborative web search.

One tool for collaborative management of bookmarks is del.icio.us. Its greatest virtue is its simplicity: Every user can upload URLs and attach tags and a description to them. The URLs can later be queried by username or a combination of tags. For every URL, information about who else bookmarked this item is available, plus the tags used to bookmark the item. You can also subscribe to the bookmark list of other users and be notified when they bookmark new sites. (But you cannot find out who subscribes to your bookmarks.)

The system is completely centralized. There is no real community support for knowledge sharing. It also relies on manual tagging (though this could probably be hacked to include referrer information from web search engines.)

As with similar systems (AudioScrobbler comes to mind), it’s appealing at first because it is very simple, but the collaborative nature is limited because of the lack of communication facilities between users and the lack of community support. I suppose these features could be added eventually.


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