Mirroring Cato and Socrates

Oratory skills, as I have discovered, is one of the many skills required by a Systems Architect. In my quest to mirror Cato or Socrates, I was introduced to local Toastmasters Club.

Toastmasters gives one the opportunity to improve one's public speaking skills. One of my favorite portions of my weekly Toastmasters meeting is what is called 'Table topics". In "Table Topics", you are given the opportunity to practice your "off the cuff" speaking skills. This I have observed is an excellent skill for a Systems Architect.

I am on a Communication Competency track in my local Toastmasters club. When I complete 10 speeches, I will receive my Communication Competency certificate. Ironically my second speech was about blogging.

I am now trying to figure out my next speech. Maybe something technical- Cloud Computing, SOA, etc; however because of my fellow Toastmasters are from a diverse background, my next speech may have to be less technical.

I do not have a smart phone

Although being a self-proclaimed geek/techie, one item I do not have in my geek/techie arsenal is a smart phone. That is right, I do not have an iPhone, a Palm Pre or any of the Blackberry variants. What I do have is my old trusty Compaq Ipaq Pocket PC (m0del 3850). Although is does not bring me closer to pervasive computing, it does serve its purpose.

My Ipaq holds my contact information, my appointments and my tasks. When it comes to my appointments, an alarm reminds me of an upcoming meeting 15 minutes before the the meeting starts. I can be reminded of when tasks need to bee completed

I usually find applications http://www.downloads.com/. If I do want to browse the web, I can insert a wireless card in the Pocket PC's expansion slot. The battery lasts me up to one week.

Overall, I have no complaint about my Pocket PC. I am in no hurry to get a smart phone. I will just observe and see which smart phone reign supreme.

Self-Tuned Remote Execution for Pervasive Computing

When I was doing my Master of Science degree at the University of Western Ontario,one of my presentations I did was called Self-Tuned Remote Execution for Pervasive Computing. This presentation was based on a paper,of the same name, written by Jason Flinn,Dushyanth Narayanan, and M.Satyanarayanan.

In this paper the discussion about pervasive computing concentrated on mobile devices "off-loading" execution of resource-intensive processes onto a remote server. The mobile devices would discover execution servers over a wireless network.
In addition, the paper introduced us to Spectra. Spectra would self-tune the mobile device. Specifically determine how much resources will be required to execute an application on the mobile device. For example, it could determine how much battery power to execute such application.It would be interesting to see if these new smart phones optimize the usage of resources. My subsequent blogs will discuss what I have researched.

Here is the presentation I did:

Self-Tuned Remote Execution for Pervasive Computing

View more presentations from kmcgregr.