Viewing posts for the category Uncategorized
Boston area job opening: Project Manager
Posted by: mhughes in Uncategorized 3 years, 11 months ago
The company I work for is hiring a project manager with an engineering background. I think we'll be doing some cool stuff over the next couple years if you're interested. This product will make a difference in a lot of kid's lives.
Every time I post one of these I get a flood of contact from way too many people. Here's a few answers:
- Yes, this is an on-site position we are not considering any remote option.
- No, do not email or call me, I'm not the hiring manager / contact person on this one. The email address to contact is below.
- No, recruiters are not welcome to contact me in any way about this or anything else whatsoever.
Software Engineering Project ManagerTom Snyder Productions, a Scholastic company and developer of innovative educational software products, is seeking a Software Engineering Project Manager for a major new math education project. This position is directly responsible for coordinating the resources, schedules and deliverables of multiple engineering teams working on components of an innovative software-driven math curriculum product. The ideal candidate for this hands-on position has:
• Ability to provide schedule and deliverable management for multiple engineering teams • Experience with Agile methodology for focusing on manageable development iterations and coordinating the work of multiple engineering teams with “Scrum of Scrums” process • Excellent communication skills – listening, verbal and written • Strong problem-solving skills • Desire to work as part of an efficient, agile software development and publishing organization • Enthusiasm about education
Responsibilities include: • Recruiting and staffing of multiple engineering teams tasked with developing multiple application modules, including content authoring/management system application, classroom course-delivery software, individual response/polling systems, interactive mathematics tools, individual differentiated-instruction environment, and performance data collection and analysis framework • Development of master engineering schedule; management of schedules, milestones and engineering tasks across multiple teams • Synthesis of technical requirements from detailed use cases and functional requirements • Estimation of task labor, tracking of engineering progress metrics and adjustment of future scheduling
This position offers the tremendous satisfaction of contributing directly to the lives of young people by delivering extraordinary learning products into their classrooms.
Tom Snyder Productions, a Scholastic company, is the developer and publisher of award-winning educational software products for K-12 classrooms. We offer a vibrant and friendly work atmosphere focused on making a difference in the lives of students and teachers.
Compensation is based on experience and includes excellent benefits.
Job Qualifications/Requirements • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. • Minimum 4 years experience in software industry, including at least 2 years of technical project management • Hands-on problem solving skills, and outstanding oral and written communication skills • Software Engineering skills desireable, including experience coding in object-oriented languages and frameworks such as Java, ActionScript 3, Flex • Experience with configuration management, defect and test case tracking, design patterns • Capable of learning new processes and technologies quickly
How To Apply Interested candidates please send resume and cover letter to: Email: Proddev@tomsnyder.com
My Flash CS4 favorite new feature
Posted by: mhughes in Uncategorized 3 years, 11 months ago
I've only been using Flash CS4 for a couple weeks now. The 3d stuff, the reverse kinematics, even the new text stuff hasn't been all that interesting. But this little baby rocks my socks:
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="CS4 Library Search Field"]
[/caption]
Flicker related to modules and custom components
Posted by: mhughes in Uncategorized 4 years ago
In a Flex application I'm working on we've been plagued with some flickering problems that have been very tough to pin down. I think I've finally figured out (at least one) source of the problem. We have a bunch of custom components developed. Those components have static intializers that set up the default styles for them like this:
private static var classConstructed:Boolean = classConstruct();
private static function classConstruct():Boolean {
if (!StyleManager.getStyleDeclaration("NumericDisplay"))
{
var myStyles:CSSStyleDeclaration = new CSSStyleDeclaration();
myStyles.defaultFactory = function():void
{
this.fractionLabelStyleName = "";
this.wholeLabelStyleName = "";
this.topGap = 0;
this.barStrokeColor = 0;
this.barColor = 0;
this.barWeight = 2;
}
StyleManager.setStyleDeclaration("NumericDisplay", myStyles, true); }
return true;
}
Now, usually, that works A-OK. It runs before there's anything on screen so no flicker.
But, what happens if the class that contains that isn't in your main application swf and is instead a loaded module? Well, that initializer doesn't run until the module loads. And the call to StyleManager.setStyleDeclaration causes the entire application to update it's display which causes a visual flicker.
I was considering some solutions like: Making sure the class gets compiled into your main application swf. Add the default CSS to a .css file that gets loaded at startup instead of doing it in code.
But then I realized that the last param to the setStyle call determines whether or not to update styles, setting that to false fixes the flicker. Since the static initializer has to run before any of that component are constructed, we don't actually need to be doing an update anyways.
StyleManager.setStyleDeclaration("NumericDisplay", myStyles, false);
After googling a bit, I found "best practice" examples that did it both ways. I'd suggest sticking with "false" due to this type of problem.
Bookpool update
Posted by: mhughes in Uncategorized 4 years ago
In the beginning of April I had blogged about the apparent disappearance of Bookpool. It's since been by-far my most commented on post ever. I got in touch with my former boss there and got this update from him, so I thought I'd share it here:
I was the person in charge of IT in Bookpool from 1998 to 2008, which means I’m not an employee any more, but I know the site disappeared on March 23 around noon. They called me to shut down all the servers properly in case they revived the company later. The owners moved all the equipment to a location close to Boston, I don’t know the details but it seems to me unlikely that it comes back.Although it wasn’t my business, I feel very touched by your comments, it’s great to hear that you liked our service so much. Richard said it was like “losing a relative”, and Koko was willing to promise to buy a certain number of books. This is better than hearing our boss saying that we made a good job, thank you!
I had the luck to work with great engineers, like Marc Hughes and others, also the office and warehouse employees (I won’t mention names in case they want to keep anonymity), everyone was awesome and we made a terrific team. We put a lot of hard work to provide the service you got used to. This is why today I feel as sad as you with Bookpool gone.
I agree with you, there should have been some type of notice explaining what happened, unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it, the owners must have a good reason to do things this way.
But not everything is bad news, I was also a fan of the famous Bookpool bookmarks, and I have saved some that I’d be happy to share with you. They’re somewhere in my basement, when I find them I’ll post a note here to distribute them to the people interested.
Regards, Braulio Carreno.
Long commute? Optimize it!
Posted by: mhughes in Uncategorized 4 years ago
I've got a long commute into work on a daily basis. That commute gives me a lot of time to sit alone in my car and contemplate the fact that I have a long commute.
In the middle of the night I can drive it in 45 minutes, but with traffic it's never under an hour, often 1.5 or more. I've noticed that very small variations in when I leave, even just 10 or 15 minutes one way or another, can really make a huge impact. But it's not a sure thing. Some days leaving at 7:45 is the best, some days it's 8:00. I don't know why it differs.
It's my belief there are certain patterns that might take into account things like weather, day of the week, departure time, school vacations, and a bunch of other variables. But I don't have a good way to that figure that out since I'm lacking the data.
Which brings me to my latest mini-project. I'm writing some mobile software for my phone, plus a website that will help to record my daily commute and visualize what's happening. Eventually, I hope to bring in some statisitical models to help predict my average commute time based on when I leave the house.
- Phase 1: Start collecting data on my phone
- Phase 2: Collect the data on a website.
- Phase 3: Visualize the data.
- Phase 4: Make predictions based on a single user's data.
- Phase 5: Collate multiple users who commute in the same area to improve #3 and #4
- Tomorrow, what reasonable time should I get out of the house for the shortest commute?
- I'm running late, should I work from home for an hour or head straight in to avoid some traffic?
- What week is the worst traffic-wise of the year? (And hence, what week should I favor for planning a vacation)
- What's my fastest commute time? Did I break that record today?
Any other commuters out there be interested in something like this?
P.S. "Long commute" is a very relative term. A half hour might be long for some people, and a 3 hour commute might be long for others.