Software Diagnostics Library

I read this book in just one day from cover to cover. I’m not a professional biologist and learnt about evolution 25 - 30 years ago from Marxist perspective. My understanding of evolution has greatly improved this year after reading Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, This Is Biology, Breaking the Spell, Evolution: The First Four Billion Years and The 10,000 Year Explosion books. I’ve also started reading (and listening to its unabridged version on CDs simultaneously) the latest Dawkins’ book “The Greatest Show on Earth” (to be reviewed as soon as I finish) after the thought “Who’s that guy?” finally tipped. I noticed the partnership of D. Dennett and R. Dawkins when reading books and also rants from religious camps when reading reviews. So I was very keen to read the promised history of Dawkins thought in “The Selfish Genius” book and I really enjoyed it. Judged from the background knowledge I acquired while reading various books about evolution “The Selfish Genius” seems fair and balanced. Sometimes it reminded me the similar problem in Physics: String Theory vs. Others (Not Even Wrong and the Trouble With Physics). When I put “The Selfish Genius” and resumed reading “The Greatest Show on Earth” I immediately noticed a footnote on page 216 (ISBN 978-1-4165-9478-9): “epigenetics, a modish buzz-word now enjoying its fifteen minutes” and if you are curious about the source of this anger read “The Selfish Genius” book. I also like the point of the book that for different people with different backgrounds “Evolution” means different things. For me it is about evolution of software but mainly about evolution of software defects: Darwinian Debugging and I even bugtated Dawkins’ meme: Bugtation No.108.

The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin’s Legacy

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Previously announced Software Maintenance Institute was finally registered in Ireland (Reg. No. 400906) and its certificate was received yesterday.

Here is the current component structure of various institutions (depicted in UML):

Interface Tags:

IIP Interface of Iterative Publishing
IRD Interface of Research and Development
IDR Interface of Defect Research
IIR Interface of Information Repository
IME Interface of Memetic Engineering

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

As a dual to my previous Resume and CV: As a Book (it actually has a “bug” on the cover, try to spot it) I plan to publish the long time memories in the following book next year:

My Failed Job Interviews: Reflections on 50 Percent (ISBN: 978-1906717889)

The recollections of my pre-memory dump analysis era span East and West, small and giant software companies, full time and part time, office and remote job positions, direct and recruitment company hiring, phone and on-site, technical and business interviews.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Threads in my process run very fast. Not long ago the watch variable had the value 5 and now it is 6:

switch (years_at_citrix)
{
  case 5:
    write_blog_post(”I’ve just passed 5 year mark … “);
    wait_for_certificate(); 
    write_blog_post(”Shortly after celebrating 5 years … “);
    break;
  case 6:
    write_blog_post(”Threads in my process run very fast. Not long ago … “);
    break;
  case 7:
    // … TBD 
}

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I always carry my blogging notebook with me. A few weeks ago I was pictured while trying to reach it and write down one of ideas that usually spring to my mind during nature and family walks:

I plan to update The Perfect Gift for a Blogger in Q1, 2010 taking into account my year long experience with it and various accumulated suggestions. It will also have a short Twitter section.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

While finishing Comrades book I started to read this “sequel” to Young Stalin (it was published before the latter book). I’m interested in psychology of a court and think this book is a good supplement to The 48 Laws of Power book that I started reading too. I have also Beria biography on the reading list. Actually I became interested in Stalin epoch after reading a book in Russian 2 years ago with a title that can be translated to English like “Killers of Stalin and Beria”. The main idea of that book were that Beria (and Stalin) wanted to do Perestroika similar to what Gorbachev did and Khrushchev murdered him (and possibly murdered Stalin too) for that. Anyway The Court of the Red Tsar was very smooth and fascinating read, revealing hidden transcripts of Stalin power. At the end the author also mentions the possibility that Beria was a possible precursor to Perestroika but contrary to that Russian book I read before he mentions the hypothesis that Beria himself poisoned Stalin’s wine. The finishing touch of Valechka weeping on Stalin corpse like Russian baba really made me sorrow. I really liked Postscriptum where the fortunes of Stalin’s and other magnates’ relatives, children and grandchildren fortunes after Stalin death up to now was mentioned.

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This Sunday while drinking Turkish coffee (after 3 years of blogging) I was thinking about the new publishing year starting in September, the new year of reading (already started) and, in particular, about the cover of the forthcoming September issue of Debugged! MZ/PE magazine (to be revealed tonight).

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Today I celebrate 3 years of blogging that resulted in 1,430 posts across 8 blogs. I would like to thank everyone for their continuing support!

The updated timeline

This blog post belongs to the 4th year of blogging. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I finished reading Dirac’s biography The Strangest Man 3 months ago and started to read this book. Its title intrigued me when I was browsing recent physics releases on Amazon and I bought it. It looks to me like the mix of brief biographical notes with explanation of physical theories. Here learning from mistakes undoubtedly helps to understand special and general relativity better. I also liked the short and clear explanation of EPR paradox in just one page, “revisionist” and unusual biographical notes on other scientists and their faults, like Galileo and Newton, and notes about Einstein’s private life. This makes him really human (he was like an ideal scientist from Plato Universe for me before). When I was reading Not Even Wrong and the Trouble With Physics books I thought of the possible “yellow press physics” (which is not bad, and doesn’t mean bad quality for me, I like to read yellow press sometimes and listen to pop music) and one day, at lunch, when reading about Newton madness and other peculiar character traits I thought about “yellow press physics” again. Was the choice of this book hardcover and jacket colors (yellow) made deliberate? Anyway, while approaching the end of the book and reading about how Einstein wasted 20-30 years on his idée fixe unified theories I immediately recalled String Theory, and indeed, the author voiced the same thoughts a few moments later when I turned a page over. I also liked the discussion on how General Relativity might have been discovered if it wasn’t formulated by Einstein. The author tells us that it would have been done via a QFT route. Einstein has fallen in my eyes, and now, after reading this book, he is not quite the hero of science like I imagined before. Nevertheless, his stature from McDonald’s is still on my shelves.

Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius

I don’t want to repeat Einstein’s mistakes… 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This is an encyclopedic work I bought in a local book shop and finally finished reading today. It took me a year to read from cover to cover and pages were falling out of the glue but I continued to read. Highly recommended for education and another view on human history. The review of Freud was enlightening to me because I didn’t know about the recent scholarship criticizing his work. In fact, I so liked this book that just bought it again in a hardcover version from Folio Society and start rereading it again soon.

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The second encyclopedic book seems was written before the previous one but looks like the logical sequel to it. I’m starting reading it next week.

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

The idea to have a reading notebook online came to me after I recalled that at school I heard that Lenin had Philosophical Notebooks. You can find them in Lenin Internet Library, volume 38 of his Collected Works. As a schoolboy, I was curious about Lenin’s notebooks and even borrowed them from the school library to see how they looked like inside. I wasn’t impressed though due to the lack of philosophical knowledge on my side but the idea stuck to my mind. At my school age I read his biography several times and my favourite episode was an assassination attempt by socialist revolutionary Fanny Kaplan.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Found today on Amazon that one seller sells cheap chopped copies of Memory Dump Analysis Anthology:

“The LOWEST PRICE because the spine binding & glue has been CHOPPED OFF; the binding is MISSING; this makes the loose pages suitable for photocopying or for hole punching to place into a 3-ring notebook. The pages have no marks or highlights. I also have Volume 2 with a cut spine for cheap.”

The seller has been contacted to stop this advertisement because the page number 2 in both volumes says:

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer.

There is also the standard clause about reproduction and storage.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Here is a bit of history of Memory Dump Analysis Anthology. Back in 2008, in January-February I was in search of the title name and was focused on variations of Crash Dump Analysis until one day I stumbled across this book in the local book shop (UK version was available earlier in February before US and you can still buy it on Amazon UK):

Memory: An Anthology

I immediately understood how I needed to name the collection of blog posts. Thus Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1 was born.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Finally I reused component-like frame previously belonged to an MCSD certificate displayed at Programming Research office where I worked 6-7 years ago (books in a row there are all about C++):

Old Frame

Today I dug it from dusty corners of my apartment and inserted a page 1152 snapshot as promised:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I read this book from cover to cover while flying on a plane from Dublin to St. Petersburg and back. That was so wonderful reading experience - I couldn’t put the book down during those flights. I recall that I visited the Department of Mathematics a few times when I studied Chemistry in Moscow State University although at that time I knew next to nothing about Russian mathematicians. The book touched me so deeply that I bought the main work of Florensky: The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, the history of Russian philosophy and several books explaining Orthodox Church. This is the best mathematics history book I have ever read, my feelings perhaps comparable to those that I experienced when I finished reading Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty by Morris Kline but that was more than 20 years ago.

Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

A picture taken during my recent visit to Peterhof (one of the 7 wonders of Russia):

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

This post number is 1,000. Wordpress admin panel reports that I have written 999 (excluding this one):

Of course, I wrote my 1,000^th blog post some time ago if I count all my 7 blogs but this is 1,000^th post for just this blog.

To celebrate this event, I’m posting a picture of troubleshooting and debugging labyrinth resting on a notion of universal memory dumps that are observational snapshots and include both memory and various traces we collect to resolve problems.

This picture shows how we arrive to problem resolution. For example:  

I’m also working on another picture, called T&D Tangram

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I recently became interested in who else has the same surname. Vostokov means Mr. East, east - ost (Ger.) - vostok (Rus.). Here is the brief list of people with links I’m going to expand periodically.

Alexander Vostokov - One of the first Russian philologists

Yevgeniy Vostokov - Composer

Sergei Vostokov - Mathematician

Viktor Vostokov - Author. “Secrets of East Healers”, “Lessons of Tibetan Medicine: The Art of Relaxation” and other books in Russian

Eugeny Vostokov - Artist

More to come.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -