Monthly Archives: January 2016

Zoot Suits and Not-So-Bad-Dancing

I started swing dancing in 2001, during the tail end of the craze that started around the time of the 1998 Gap Commercial (famous among other things for popularizing the 3D still pan effect also prominent in the seminal sci … Continue reading

Posted in Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Multiple Paths To Victory

With the release of the game Settlers of Catan in 1995, German inventor Klaus Teuber unleashed a product popular enough to introduce Americans to the Eurogame style of tabletop gaming. Per the Wikipedia entry, “A Eurogame, also called German-style board … Continue reading

Posted in Economy and Society | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“The Secret of Selling Anything,” by Harry Browne

Today I took the time to finish reading a classic book on sales by Harry Browne, entitled The Secret of Selling Anything. I read it because it is regarded as a classic in certain circles, because I have appreciated many … Continue reading

Posted in Soft Skills | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Ultimate Limits of Simulation

Last time I discussed the factors that drive the scale of any simulation or business system. One a less practical, more theoretical, more fun note, we might ask just how far a digital simulation can go? What kind of scope … Continue reading

Posted in Simulation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

What Drives The Scale Of A Business Or Simulation System?

The scale of a business or simulation (continuous or discrete-event) system can be driven by a number of factors. Scale can be measured in terms of CPU cycles, communication bandwidth, disk storage, dynamic memory usage, power consumption, and perhaps other … Continue reading

Posted in Tools and methods | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Discrete-Event Simulation vs. Business Logic

I wanted to continue yesterday’s discussion by describing some differences between discrete-event simulations and systems that might be implemented to carry out business logic. The first diagram below shows a model of privately owned vehicles and commercial vehicles passing through … Continue reading

Posted in Tools and methods | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Handling Complex Wait..Until Conditions

Last Wednesday I discussed some of the internal workings of discrete-event simulations. I should also mention that all of these discussions are based on a program running in a single thread that is trying to coordinate many activities. There are … Continue reading

Posted in Tools and methods | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN 2.0)

Today I was able to complete a thorough power-read of the book Real Life BPMN by Jakob Freund and Bernd Rücker. I’ve performed discovery on, analyzed, characterized, automated, modeled, simulated, documented, controlled, and improved various kinds of customer processes more … Continue reading

Posted in Tools and methods | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Discrete-Event Simulation: Looking Under The Hood

Yesterday I mentioned a few constructs that a discrete-event simulation system would have to have. They are: A time-ordered future events queue where events are created and entered into the queue, and then processed one by one in time order. … Continue reading

Posted in Simulation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How Timing Works: The Internal Architecture of a Discrete-Event Simulation

On Monday I described the different ways time and events are handled in continuous and discrete-event simulations. Today I want to go into a little more detail about how those things work in a discrete-event simulation because the internal architecture … Continue reading

Posted in Simulation | Tagged , | Leave a comment