Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.— Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
What's New
Call for Papers: Special issue of IEEE Software on Framing Stakeholders' Concerns
Current Projects
In my life as an architect, I find that the single thing which inhibits young professionals, new students most severely, is their acceptance of standards that are too low.— Christopher Alexander
- IEEE 1471 (ISO/IEC 42010)
- Since 1995, I've been involved with IEEE's architecture description standard (IEEE Std 1471), currently being jointly revised with ISO as international standard, ISO/IEC 42010. You might even want to join the IEEE 1471 Users Group.
- IFIP Working Group 2.10, Software Architecture
- I am a member of IFIP WG 2.10 which meets a couple times a year, to debate, discuss and otherwise hob-nob on issues software architectural.
- Software Architecture Portal
- WG 2.10 is operating a portal for software architecture. Check it out.
- ADX
- a markup language for architectural description, is a free software project to develop XML document types.
- "Things we've forgotten..."
- Some of my colleagues, old software engineers like me, have observed that ideas which were at the core of collective engineering consciousness 20 to 30 years ago, just aren't around any more! We thought it deserved a paper, or a blog (stay tuned).
Upcoming Activities
Recent Activities
- WICSA/ECSA 2009
- 14-17 September 2009, Cambridge, UK
- SHARK 2009: Fourth Workshop on SHAring and Reusing architectural Knowledge
- at ICSE 2009, Vancouver, CANADA, 16 – 24 May 2009
What's Cool
Idle tools are the Devil's hands.— Jay Edelman (1973?)
My MIT undergraduate time (1972 – 1976) was shaped by three interests on campus: the MIT Experimental Study Group (ESG), MIT linguistics, and MIT folk-dancing. All three activities continue at MIT. More about linguistics and Balkan folk-dancing in the future; MIT ESG continues as an undergraduate program at MIT, and I'm on ESG's Alumni Steering Committee.
Douglas T. Ross was one of the great thinkers in software engineering. Doug passed away in January 2007. Aside from a few archival publications, little of his most interesting work is widely available. So it good to have the following link: Applied Understanding Technology. I hope to write more about Doug's influence in the future.
Links to some valued friends and colleagues:
- David Emery
- John Federico and his blog
- Frances Harrison
- Aubrey Jaffer
- Philippe Krutchen
- Doug Milliken
- Peter Norvig
- Richard Stallman
- Kristofer Younger's [blog]
(that's Kristofer, the good-looking one on the right, with me long, long ago!)
In an earlier work life, which shall not be named, I and my colleagues found ourselves confronting many administrative obstacles to progress. We needed to find a way to go on. So we coined a phase: if you can't work, just parody. We were not alone:
| RTmark | Firesign Theatre |
Soccer
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.— Frank Zappa
| New England Revolution | Fulham FC |
Social Studies
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win.— Gandhi
Undiscriminating executions or punishments, without definite findings of guilt fairly arrived at, would not fit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride.— Harry Truman
Some links on politics and social studies.
Free software, software patents
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.— Niccolo Machiavelli
I am a member of the
League for Programming Freedom
Linguistics and Cognition
I don't get to spend much time thinking about these topics lately.
Music
I wish those musicians would not allow themselves any repetitions, and would go faster in developing their ideas or their findings, because I don't appreciate at all this permanent repetitive language. It is like someone who is stuttering all the time, and can't get words out of his mouth. I think musicians should have very concise figures and not rely on this fashionable psychology. I don't like psychology whatsoever: using music like a drug is stupid. One shouldn't do that: music is the product of the highest human intelligence, and of the best senses, the listening senses and of imagination and intuition. And as soon as it becomes just a means for ambiance, as we say, environment, or for being used for certain purposes, then music becomes a whore, and one should not allow that really; one should not serve any existing demands or in particular not commercial values. That would be terrible: that is selling out the music.— Karlheinz Stockhausen
I listen to, collect, and sometimes even make music. [More music]
Balkan Folk Dance
Another preoccupation I will have to expand upon in the future ...
Math and Formal Methods
It is a good day when I get to use some math. Here are some useful links. Here's a math joke:
A logician saves the life of a tiny space alien. The alien is very grateful and, since she's omniscient, offers the following reward: she offers to answer any question the logician might pose. Without too much thought (after all, he's a logician), he asks: "What is the best question to ask and what is the correct answer to that question?"
The tiny alien pauses. Finally she replies, "The best question is the one you just asked; and the correct answer is the one I gave."
Quick Reference
Hilliard is one of the rare English matronymic names, derived from the Norman female given name Hildiarde or Hildegard, comprised of Germanic elements hild = battle, strife + gard = fortress, strength. Variations include Hilleard, Hillyard, and Hildyard.
| Weather | CiteSeer (Computer Science) | There you have it! |
Last update: , Rich Hilliard