Thoughts on Business and Management (before 2011)

obviously written before retirement as I wasn't attending meetings any more.
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I really shouldn't be allowed time to think.

On my way to the meeting today I was questioning in my mind whether we were a Business School or a Management School, forgetting of course that we are the Management group in The Business School.

I contemplated what each was: What is Business?/What is management?, and  came to the conclusion that in order to do management you needed something to manage, - a Business.

Then what does a Business do? It supplies something, whether it be a product, a service, a process, or a skill. (and other things?)

It needs to:

- Create  the product or service

- Market it

- Supply it to customers

- do it legally. And legislation is always changing.

Each type of these requires management, and the forms(?) of management may vary.  The functions of management that are required, based on the specialities available in the Business School, and thoughts that came out of the meeting today, are:

Bean counters (  Accounting and Finance) {- already a group}

Legal people   (Law) {-already a group}

- Strategy

- HRM

- Direction of the business (day-to-day management/decision making)

- Production management ( Not taught in the Business School)

- Project Management

- Data Management?

- Marketing

- Disaster Management ( Hopefully pre-emptive)

- ??

And all of these require, in different forms and amounts BI (business Intelligence) which comes out of or is parallel to KM (Knowledge Management), which comes out of Information Systems.  ( Is this where data management is?)

Therefore, as Dean Brady said, IS should be embedded in every aspect of the teaching in the Business School.

At one point my differentiator between the BS and DEC was that in DEC they were taught the in-depth stuff of Networking and Communications (and Software) so that they could design the next generations of the stuff, whereas in the Business School students were taught how to use it and put it together in order to optimize its use in the Business World, and overcome 'the productivity paradox' (Goldman 2003). Nowadays I think that this has changed. The networks are there in the Business and techies exist to look after them. We must concentrate more on the 'Information' in IS, and the optimization of that.

Raspberry Pi as Casting device

31 May 2020:     We have a chromecast on the upstairs TV, but nothing on the downstairs TV so I wondered if I could use and Idle R-Pi for one. My R-Pi is a Model B rev 2, so it is quite old, and some of the Wifi dongles do not support use as a AP.

Here's links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhNc2cSULWQ
directs to https://www.novaspirit.com/2017/09/22/how-to-use-raspberry-pi-as-chromecast/
needs raspicast on Android Tablet

https://thepi.io/how-to-use-your-raspberry-pi-as-a-chromecast-alternative/
The same.    used this one to make it.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-As-Chromecast-Alternative-Raspicast/
The same.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/raspberry-pi-chromecast/
The saem, includes compilation and comment about using Kodi too.

None of these mention wireless configuration.
Loaded latest Raspberry OS on 8 GB SD card.
Installed usual network config stuff.
Wireless IP of 29

Have put question on the Raspberry Pi Forum.
 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=197143

3 june 2020 I turns out that omxplayer that was part of previous Raspbian distros was not part of Buster, so i have installed it.

Hah – Got it working. Uninstalled Raspicast from my tablet, rebooted, Installed again and realised that the tab for files showed files on the R-Pi, then started youtube and shared to Raspicast second alternative after ‘queue’, to actually play. And it worked.

Not as good as Chromecast, but it played Youtube videos.

2020-May- Further experiments with Raspberry PI RC car - Can I make it respond faster

The starting point for this is using the R-Pi as an ad-hoc  connection so that I don't need an access point, as described here:
https://madsmaddad.blogspot.com/2020/02/raspberry-pi-ad-hoc-wireless.html

In a recent issue of Linux Format magazine I found an article about alternate ways of doing all this so I have to try them.

3 things that you can do:
1. Overclock the pi, done with SD card 4 in a R-Pi B and seems to work
2. Modify the amount of RAM that is used, but the Pi-B only has 256 MB so difficult to do and wonder if there is any measurable  advantage.
3. Use different Web interfacing. Article not much use, look further.

As SD disk 7 is the one active in Car3, I'll try overclocking it.
Just set overclocking to 950Mhz (high) from basic 700MHz.

June 8 2020
Just did a search on Speed optimization in Flask. Got some good results

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39788630/speed-optimisation-in-flask

https://blog.socratic.org/the-one-weird-trick-that-cut-our-flask-page-load-time-by-70-87145335f679

https://damyanon.net/post/flask-series-optimizations/   Don't know how useful this one will be.

https://anthonyblackshaw.me/2018-02-17/speeding-up-url-for-for-flask


I have to think about how I will test these.  One thought is to build a new SD card  for the car 3 and use it as a test bed, or else to use car 2 which I have here and it has the servo steering modification. Thisn one uses SD card 4.  I think car 3 because the reactions will be more obvious.

First step will be to build a new SD card of the software, not forgetting the overclocking modification above.

I have used SD card 10 to duplicate 7. As an aside, I now have a backup of card 7 on my computer.
https://beebom.com/how-clone-raspberry-pi-sd-card-windows-linux-macos/    worked. - No it didn't. the file created was too large to blow onto the repalcement SD card.


I liked this tutorial.
https://towardsdatascience.com/python-webserver-with-flask-and-raspberry-pi-398423cc6f5d

14/6/20 Rebuilding System on another SD card. Connecting from Chrome on PC Via access point wireless, the response is very fast. So perhaps this is where I have to look for speeding up the system. When I have added the AP software to the R-Pi I'll connect the PC to it.

18/6/20 I think that word should be Ethernet, not wireless, But I will build a basic system (No AP)  and try that via Router wireless.

Wireless to Tablet is the slow item, so is it the browser/software in the tablet. How to test that.

20/6/20 The RC-Car on uSD card 4 responds pretty quickly to the tablet.
Must check again card 7 and 10 for response times.

Ethernet to PC - very fast
Ethernet to tablet, nearly as fast  - So that sort of says the Application on the Pi and the Wifi and Browser on the tablet are not holding it back.
Had a thought that it could be the AP software so searched for Hostapd causing slow action, and found hints that I should configure hostapd for wmm=1.

Now to test.
Humph. Wifi AP doesn't work at all. Not on house network or it's own.
from Dmesg:
  18.436844] usb 1-1.2: Direct firmware load for zd1211/zd1211b_ub failed with error -2
[   18.436875] usb 1-1.2: Could not load firmware file zd1211/zd1211b_ub. Error number -2
[   18.436888] zd1211rw 1-1.2:1.0: couldn't load firmware. Error number -2   

Difficult to resolve. Had to remove Hostapd, and update and then Upgrade SD card #7.  One of the things that seems to have happened is that the zd1211 drivers seemed to have disappeared so I had to reload them. That is probably the error above. Have got it working again with external AP, now need to reinstall hostapd and start again. 

                    

CTC DIY Printer Z-axis wobble repairs

First, an example of the wobble: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sz34dHOgt0r1nmJpUiQsRUgLw2h_Svmb

Now a solution suggested on Thingiverse, found from a youtube video:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2135784   I printed this, and it was necessary to file out the groove on it due to the effect of the Z-axis wobble. The side of the piece shows the effect of the wobble ( see picture)

This is the mechanism that has to be modified: [Picture 2]

and this shows where the piece fits, [picture 3]

with the metal piece screwed into the white piece and the rest of the mechanism resting on it.

How to do it.
1.  Undo threaded bar from coupling and remove it.
2.  Remove slider rod.
3.  Undo metal threaded part.
4.  find appropriate screws and mount  this threaded part on to white piece.
5.  Replace slider rod, and clip white piece in to it.
6  Replace threaded rod, through mechanism and through added piece.
7.  Align x-axis mechanism  for correct vertical positioning.
8  Test
9.  If successful, repeat  1-8 on other side.

This works, much less wobble. Here is the final picture. As the rod wobbles so does the white piece, but the frame doesn't. I had to do both sides. One of the main difficulties was finding small screws that would go through the metal, screw into the plastic, but not protrudre into the dome of the white plastic where it would affect the sliding motion.  It was necessary to reset the nozzle height afterwards.

All of this thanks to jpnurro the designer who put it on thingiverse.


I am quite pleased with the results, but will still work on how I can stop the threaded rod from wobbling, which is the cause of the problem.

11 May 2020
The problem seems to have got worse again, I don't know why, except that the Z-axis spindle does seem to wobble around a lot.  I have tried putting shims into the coupler where I think I can centre the spindle, but that doesn't seem to help.

This morning I put the X-axis machinery up on trestles and have removed the Zaxis threaded spindle.  The Coupler wobbles. THIS IS BAD NEWS.

In effect, back to square one. Does this mean that the axle of the stepper is bent? I have  seen that mentioned in a YouTube video.  Or is it that the stepper motor is mis-aligned? One of the screws bolting it on to the frame was looser than the others.  No. The way that the axle turns indicates that this last is not the problem.

12 May 20202 Have replaced coupler with plastic tubing and wobble is so much reduced. No signs of wobble in the stepper motor  axle.

CTC DIY Printer improvements

This blog to document what I have done with the printer to try and improve it.

The current state is that I have been printing face masks and they are not very good because the sides are rippled.

I tried to adjust the baseplate height but on one side the adjustment screws were completely tight and on the other side almost completely undone. At this point I measured the height of the horizontal guide bar (X-axis) and discovered that it was 6mm higher at one end than at the other, so I adusted that by turning one z-axis screw until both sides were the same height from the base. I then adjusted the z-axis  position of the nozzle so that it was with the plate about half-way done up on the adjustment screws. A business card  worked well to get the nozzle-baseplate seperation correct.

One of the problems that I have not been able to resolve is that the threaded z-axis rods are not straight but have a bow in them. Each level of deposition of the print is 1/8th of a turn of this screw.  I have removed and tried to straighten this rod, but have not been successful. The results are obvious in the picture below as you can see on the white knight . The black knight  was the very first thing printed on the printer.

What can be noticed is that the ripple up the sides of the white knight is very close to the pitch of the thread of the rod. One implication could be that as the rod turns  it moves the nozzle head from it's perfect position and  gives a bit of an offset to each layer.

In the next picture you will see that at the top of the threaded rod where is is held by the top board I have added a bushing to hold the top of the z-rod more firmly. This means that the bowing of the rod will push against the other vertical guide rod and force the print head mechanism out of position.   If I remove this bushing that I have added, then the bowed rod would have room for play in the top mounting, and hopefully will not affect the print.








Picture one - Closeup of Knights.

Picture 2 = Left hand frame showing guide rod and threaded z-rod (bowed) with blue bushing.

Removing the bushing sort of goes against good engineering practice, but if it allows the z-rod to flop around and not affect the print nozzle, it may have to be that way. There is also a bushing on the rod on the right side of the machine, but we will see if this sorts the problem to some degree.

Coronovirus lockdown- Second Week - Retrospective preparations

This  that follows is an expansion on an email that I sent to friends in Canada where the situation has not yet got to the state that it is in Britian. I expect it to grow as I think of more things.

Monday 9 March  Self - Isolation started
Friday 20 March Schools Closed
Monday 23 March Lockdown - Not allowed off property.

Belong to a Library and see what they have in ebooks, audiobooks and e-magazines

Tinned foods keeps well. It keeps even longer if you have a crap can opener.

Think about what decorating needs doing in the house and get in the paint, brushes, masking tape etc. 

There are going to be a lot of long haired people around when this is over.  Can you get some clippers so your partner can practice on you? 

Time to dig for Victory and plant a garden? Get seeds and compost and plant feed and fertiliser.

Get yourself in shape for it: Glasses checked, teeth examined etc. I broke a tooth yesterday and have got a fixing kit so am going to do some home repairs. 

Get a new computer while you can get it delivered.

Stock up on some powdered milk in case the real stuff is not available. 

The instructions are to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds every time. My hands have got very dry and are cracking up, so I would suggest getting in some hand cream. 

On the basis that you don't know what you will be able to get if you are locked in, here are some ideas:

Washing machine powder,

As I mentioned, with extreme handwashing my hands are cracking up, especially as I have to wash them after painting. 

Maybe get some rubber gloves in. I use them all the time anyway. 

I see that the social distancing of 2 Metres is not sufficient according to a Harvard or MIT study.

I should have got in more paintprushes, they don't last for long, especially when you are only doing a bit a day and cleaning them every time. 

and - Household glue - I use a fair bit of contact cement and my tube is nearly empty. I won't be able to get any more because all the hardware stores are closed for the duration.

One more thought. My Linux User Group message board suggested that we sign up for folding@home So most of us have. Let your computer keep working while you are gardening/painting.

https://foldingathome.org/news/

Also I was asked this morning how long  a car could be left without use. The best advice seems to be to take it for a 10 mile run every two weeks just to charge the battery and make sure the tyres don't get any flat spots. 

Lockdown - March 2020

24 March 2020: I have a note beside me that spells out the four steps of personal response to the Coronovirus pandemic.
1. Social Distancing
2. Social Isolation
3. House Arrest
4. Lockdown.

For the last week since we went to our coffee morning and only very few people were there, we have been practicing Social Isolation. It is very difficult to avoid touching something that someone else has touched, such as the food that Tesco delivers, and the post, and when Lian next door gave us some milk. When you read that the virus can exist for 72 hours (3 days) on hard plastic or metal, and for a few hours on cardboard and paper, you want to leave any post that is delivered until the evening to read.

For the past week we have been driving out and having our tea/coffee from a flask somewhere is the countryside, where we don't see anyone else. Now we are in lockdown and only allowed out of the property once a day for exercise. It will be interesting to see how that works. Ross next door started a new career yesterday with his coffee van. Dave (his father)  said that he had spreadsheet out all the figures before he bought into it, but this lockdown is going to blow a big hole in that.

I made a schedule of painting for the woodwork around the house. This is the second day and it is already blown. I painted the downstairs bathroom yesterday instead of the upstairs one as per my schedule, and today I am putting it back together and preparing the stairs for tomorrows painting.

Friday and on Thursday I painted one side of the staircase. Masking tape still there. I need a new brush.

We'll see.  I have a number of other tasks on a list that keeps on growing.