Compu & IT Solutions

So, what's up with these leaves and acorns...... and what on earth have they got to do with :

Computer Science and Information Technology ??

Turn up the volume.... the sound effects will kick in after approximately 5 mins....

Some fruit company (Apple Macintosh Computers) uses the image of an apple as their logo, while some banking institution (First National Bank) has decided that a tree might do the trick... So, what do we have here ?? Well, as far as I'm concerned, we've got the tree, and we've got the apples.. but there ain't any leaves yet...... Therefore, I've made this miraculous discovery : someone still needs to supply the leaves. And evidently I've decided to make my contribution towards this fairy tale by donating the leaves :)

Whether there's a reason for this behavior of theirs (i.e. using apples and trees for logos), I don't know. But, what I do know, is that there's indeed a reason for the little leaves. And guess what.. the purpose of these leaves is not to fuel our computers, if that's what you were thinking.....

Short answer :

I like the leaves. I like Autumn, and I like Autumn colours, especially yellow. I think they're very pretty.

Even the screen-saver, that I've got on my cell phone, is a scene of leaves. Not just ordinary leaves... it's the dynamic type i.e. it seems as if they're constantly moving.

Anyhow, if this is not sufficient , and if you prefer , you can read the

Loooooooooooooooong, very complicated, "scientific" answer..............

After I've spent almost TWO days (non-stop) creating my trademark, I've sent (e-mailed) it to four people. These four people were Deon Lourens (my brother in New Zealand), Wim and Breggie Pretorius (my sister and her husband), Entia Shadwell (a friend of mine who also runs her own business), and Peder Maas-Olsen (one of my brightest Computer Science students). Their job was to reply with their own opinions about my trademark..... (and/or to confirm the fact that I've lost it and that I'm totally crazy..)

Well, actually my husband and my three children also had to give their opinions. Therefore, the "evaluation panel" consisted of about ten members :)

They responded as follows :

Deon said :

Hi Sus

Nice. Maar ek dink net dis bietjie kleurvol - jy gaan jou *&% af betaal as jy drukwerk laat doen (besigheids kaartjies etc.) Try bietjie rondspeel met minder, maar bolder kleure. Swart/wit en rooi/blou. Jy moet iets kry wat so eye-catching is dat selfs iemand wat nie in IT belangstel nie en jou logo sien, dit sal onthou. As hy dan later so iets soek moet jou logo in sy ROM ingebrand wees.

Martie (my sister-in-law, Deon's wife) said :

hi nicolieen

martie hier

dit lyk baie oulik, maar hoekom blare???

Wim and Breggie sent this message :

Hi Skoonsus

Ek dink jy het n ONGELOOFLIKE idee beet en as jy ooit laat los gaan jy vir altyd en ewig spyt wees. Jy het dit om n GROOT sukses hiervan te maak en belangrikste van als is dat jy ook n 100% ondersteuning van jou man en kinders het.
Nou die blare! Ek is van mening dat dit deel van jou menswees weespieel. Jy's 'bright', jy's vol energie en jy is n bron van lewe en energie. Dis jy! Jou keuse van die blare is n uitstekende een gewees.
Al wat nou nog oorbly is - GO GIRL!! - the world is waiting!!!!!!!!

Groete
Wim

Ns. As jou droom jou nie bang maak nie, is dit nie die moeite werd nie!!! (Dream BIG!!)

Entia said :

Hallo,

Dis baie oulik en belangrikste van alles......dis jou EIE!

Peder said :

Hi Nicoleen
Ek is nie mal oor die design ek sal iets wit of silwer vat in plek van die blare want dit lyk soo bietjie na 'n nursery

Peder

Wynand (my eldest son) frowned in that awkward kind of way, that only he himself is able to do, and said :

"jaaaa, whatever"..... (he's got a weird sense of humor so, yes, I understood exactly what he meant by this comment of his)

Eddie (my other little boy) said :

"dis baie mooi, het mamma dit gemaak ??"

Niekie (Nicoleen jr.) (my youngest, and the only girl) said :

"Ek like dit, ek wil ook so ene maak op my computer"

My husband said :

"dis baie mooi, maar hoekom blare ??"

And oh goodness, I almost forgot myself... Therefore, make that eleven. The evaluation panel consisted of eleven board members, associates and officers.

So, this brings us to this part where I figured that it would be appropriate for me to explain this whole "leaves thingy" to the rest of the world.... Or as Deon baptized it : "Die verklaring van die blare......" i.e. the declaration of the leaves.

Declaration for using the leaves : The Never Ending Story... of cycles.....

During one's first year of studying software engineering, you're expected to study (amongst other things) Mathematics. Mathematics at first year level consists of many modules but anyhow, one of these modules which we had to complete is called "Calculus". Apart from Artificial Intelligence (which we had to study at third year level) and the Network Management module (that forms part of the post graduate qualification), Calculus was probably one of the most difficult subjects I ever had. In Calculus you'll learn about limits, continuity, derivatives, integration, infinite series etc. to name just a few topics. In other words, it's an absolute horrific subject.

Anyhow, one day, while I was reading through this 10 pound 5 ounces Calculus textbook of mine (Deon's way of describing a BIG entity), I saw this following excerpt (?) which made me think about everything that I didn't know that I already knew..... In other words, it gave new meaning to my favorite little phrase :

"It's frightening to think about everything we don't know; more frightening is the thought of not ever knowing what we didn't know".....

For example, how afraid am I supposed to be if I stumble upon something that I actually knew, i.e. something that I didn't know that I already knew.... ?? This is what's known as CHAOS.... I think. Why ?? Because somebody once told me that, one is better of by knowing that you don't know something, than you would've been if you hadn't known that you don't know.... It gave a total new meaning to this little quote about knowing and NOT knowing... i.e. he was a genius, and the quote had been perfected. Why ?? Because, according to his remark, I'm better of knowing that I don't know... This was some sort of consolation (if you take into account the fact that we'll never be able to know everything there is to know). But now, what I'd like to know is this : what about NOT knowing that I ACTUALLY KNEW something.... ?? This is quite the contrary so, am I better of or not in this particular case ??

The excerpt from my Calculus textbook (i.e. the concept which this whole "leaves" thingy revolves around) :

"Periodic functions...

Functions like the trigonometric functions whose values repeat at regular intervals are called periodic.

Definition : a function f(x) is periodic if there is a positive number p such that, for all x, f(x +p) = f(x). The smallest such value of p is the period of f.

The importance of periodic functions stems from the fact that much of the behavior we study in science is periodic. Brain waves and heartbeats are periodic, as are household voltage and electric current. The electromagnetic field that heats food in a microwave oven is periodic, as are cash flows in seasonal businesses and the behavior of rotational machinery. The seasons are periodic - so is the weather. The phases of the moon are periodic, as are the motions of the planets. There is a strong evidence that the ice ages are periodic, with a period of 90 000 - 100 000 years."

This was something that really caught my attention. For instance, when I read this for the very first time I knew that this is not something new i.e. I already knew everything that has been said here, I just never thought of it this way before....

If you think about this one for a moment, you'll realize that practically everything in life is periodic.... our daily schedules, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, the seasons, the tides of the ocean, the moon's phases, the planets' movements, everything are periodic. All of the systems contained within the human body are also periodic i.e. the respiratory-, the digestive-, the nervous-, the endocrine-, the blood system, and lots of other systems are all periodic. The human race and its continued existence are periodic.

Even nature is periodic. The processes that happen within nature are periodic. Respiration, transpiration, osmosis, photosynthesis, evaporation, precipitation etc. etc. are all periodic. The growth of plants and the phases they go through, you name it, everything are periodic. And yes, you've guessed it right, the different colours of the leaves are probably the most visible sign that Mother Nature and everything contained within it, are indeed periodic.

Apart from everything that I've already mentioned, I can even add the following to this list of "periodic processes"...

The whole software process, computer programming and computer systems in general are also periodic. Each and every computer programmer and/or software developer knows that the phases of software development are periodic.... hence, we refer to the software life cycle. Most of the methodologies, techniques and tools used for software development, are iterative and incremental of nature. For example, we pass through the different phases of software development a LOT of times before the final product is eventually launched.

There are many variations when it comes to the process of software development. The methodologies in use literally come in all sorts, varieties and flavors. However, the different stages of software development can be "generalized" to some extent. So, even though there are many different stages, seven definite phases will be found in just about each and every software development methodology. This means that we will always "cycle" through the following phases :

1) requirements phase
2) analysis (specification) phase
3) design phase
4) implementation phase
5) integration phase
6) maintenance phase
7) retirement

Apart from these stages, we also have a "testing phase". However, the testing phase actually follows right after each and every one of the above-mentioned stages - except for the retirement phase of course.

The retirement phase means that the product (i.e. computer program) has come to the end of its life time, it will be removed from service and it will be replaced with a better and/or newer version of the product. So, if we really want to get difficult, we can even think of this new version (which replaces the old version), as the commencement of yet another cycle... Why ?? Because it takes us back to square one, meaning that everything will start all over, meaning that (due to the iterative and incremental nature of the software life cycle), the cycle of cycles will start all over...... meaning that, we're back at the concept called "periodic phases"........

The other six phases are all cyclic and all of them contribute to the notion that software development is indeed a periodic process. It's an iterative process, software developers iterate through all of these processes in an incremental manner until the product is complete. (Regarding the whole software development process, an analogy would be to think of the earth that rotates around its own axis, while simultaneously, also revolving around the sun.) Anyhow, during each cycle the product will be corrected and faults will be removed. It'll also be enhanced and updated in that changes will be made to the product's specifications. Further, it'll be perfected during each cycle as to improve the product's effectiveness and it will be adapted and/or adjusted in order to adhere to the changes of the environment and to comply with, for example, new government regulations.

Sooooooooo, this periodic phenomenon definitely applies to software development, computer programming and webpage designing. To a certain extent, it even applies during the process of assembling and repairing computer systems i.e. it even comes into play during network management and everything else that contributes to the hardware- and networking component of computer systems.

For example, the logical circuits, the inputs to the circuitry, the sensory signals themselves, you name it, everything happens in a cyclic manner. By starting to analyze the whole process, you'll realize that Boolean functions are usually implemented by networks of logical gates ("logical gates" as in, depending on the value of certain variables and the logical statements/expressions that regulate the flow of control within certain sections of a program, electrical current will, or will not, pass through these gates.. I can explain this concept a lot better on a black board..) Anyhow, you'll also come to realize that networks of threshold elements (i.e. threshold logic units TLUs) or other elements (1) compute a non-linear function of a weighted sum of their inputs, (2) and then compare this sum to a threshold value, (3) and then outputs a 1 if the threshold is exceeded, otherwise it outputs a 0. So, due to the fact that the input of every consecutive cycle depends on the output of the previous cycle, we end up with a cyclic process.

And yes, we can get real difficult if we want to... For one thing, we can decide that we'd like to "train" these TLUs.... And this is where things start to get real dirty... We now have, what's known as a neural network, which are circuits, of which the TLUs are thought to be simple models of biological neurons which fire, or not, depending on the summed strength of their inputs across synapses of various strengths.... In such a case the "learning" (which is, once again, an iterative process) is achieved by adjusting the weights in the network until its action-computing performance is acceptable. Have you ever seen that little walking, talking, shooting-everything-that-moves, "thingymagix" called the Terminator ?? Yes, it's called robotics, but it's also a concept known as trained TLUs.

At the more complex levels of computer programming we also find something called recursion, which is the ability of a function to call himself. It sounds very complicated but I can assure you that, once you get the hang of it, it isn't. It could just as well have been called "recur" (I think we would've had a lot more PASSING students if things weren't baptized so "complicated".) Anyhow, this is an excellent example of a cyclic process i.e. this is probably one of the "purest" forms of a cycle (maybe more of a spiral than a circle though). And yes, recursive functions are directly related to TLUs and the training of TLUs. The TLU's input depends (through 0 or more intermediate TLUs) on the TLU's output. This means that TLUs are recurrent networks, which is totally the opposite of feedforward networks. So, we can go around in circles forever if you like....

What do you think is happening every time when your computer runs into a run-time error ?? Yes, it crashes, but what else ?? It gets trapped in a loop.... and that explains why it's "hanging"..... It's not doing the thing called "doing nothing", it's actually quite busy... And it's busy in that it's executing the code of a loop... But instead of a smooth execution, it got "stuck" within that particular loop. By executing the piece of code, the state of the logical expression (that determines whether the loop should be executed once more) doesn't change like it's supposed to do (eventually, after a couple of iterations), and therefore the PC will be trapped within that loop forever. So, we're dealing with yet another circular (and/or iterative) process.

If you really start to get down to the roots of everything you'll find that there are actually so many examples... Think about the variety of problem representations, search techniques, sorting algorithms, the techniques used for storing and retrieving data in your PC... the list goes on and on.

And then, guess what.. ?? We can even apply this rule to the process of learning and education. Knowledge is something that you need to work hard for. We don't acquire it by simply grabbing it from thin air. Also, it's not something that just "magically" happens.. So, even though we go through many stages while learning and studying new (and old) content, we can define a few basic steps that will be repeated over and over again - in a continuous manner - until we've mastered the content and the concepts that are contained and included within a certain topic. In other words, there's some kind of basic ritual that we complete in order to get the stuff called "knowledge" inside the thing called "long term memory".

We all know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is concerned with intelligent behavior in artifacts. The thing is that intelligent behavior also constitutes of some circular "act". Why ?? Because intelligent behavior involves things such as perception, reasoning, learning, communicating and acting in complex environments. And these characteristics are in fact also circular processes.... (I'm starting to feel a little dizzy....)

One of my favorite quotes :

I believe that understanding intelligence involves understanding how knowledge is acquired, represented, and stored; how intelligent behavior is generated and learned; how motives, and emotions, and priorities are developed and used; how sensory signals are transformed into symbols; how symbols are manipulated to perform logic, to reason about the past, and plan for the future; and how the mechanisms of intelligence produce the phenomena of illusion, belief, hope, fear, and dreams - and yes even kindness and love. To understand these functions at a fundamental level, I believe, would be a scientific achievement on the scale of nuclear physics, relativity, and molecular genetics.

-- James Albus

February 13, 1995

I mean, THINK about this..... These processes are so circular of nature that one would never find your way to the outside "square" world ever again.... They're iterative, and I think that - figuratively - they're also incremental and periodic. We, humans, could go through many of these behaviors at different times in our lives... Also, each one of them could be more (or less) intense and/or dramatic than the previous one...

We can even try to relate (and/or link) our human- and our computer perspectives.... For example, we could try to find some common ground between these two different worlds... We can begin by saying, OK, the human brain processes its information in parallel whereas conventional computers do it serially. Nonetheless, both of these processes are circular. Also, even though conventional computing machinery is based on true-or-false (binary) logic, and even though humans use some sort of fuzzy logic, it doesn't matter; both these logical processes are performed in an iterative manner. The fact that computers use switches while animals (and/or humans) make use of neurons, is also similar in that both of their "building blocks" operate in a circular manner.... For one thing, electronic signals and impulses are sent through these "building blocks" ALL THE TIME.. It's not as though your nervous system (or a PC's circuitry) are on holiday (or strike) ever...

But to get back to the software issue.....

Now, the problem lies in the fact that I cannot show these software development cycles to you. They're invisible. Software development can be perceived as the process of making visible that which is invisible.

When a physical artifact such as a bridge or road is being constructed, the progress being made can actually be seen. With software, progress is not immediately visible. The "traditional" engineer is usually working with physical systems and physical materials like cement and steel. These physical systems can have some complexity, but they're governed by physical laws that are consistent. Software developers have to conform to the requirements of human clients. And it's not just that individuals can be inconsistent but, organizations (because of lapses in collective memory or in internal communication or in effective decision making) can exhibit remarkable organizational stupidity that developers have to cater for.

Also, the ease with which software can be changed is usually seen as one of its strengths. However, this means that where the software system interfaces with a physical or organizational system, it is expected that, where necessary, the software will change to accommodate the other components rather than vice versa. So, this means that the software systems are likely to be subject to a high degree of change.

Per Rand (or dollar) spent, software products contain more complexity than any other engineered artifact. Why ?? Because the software products are expected to change in order to accommodate all of the other components with which it interfaces in the system. As for me.. what better way are there to demonstrate these "changes" as well as the software life cycle, than by making use of an analogy..... such as the leaves of a tree ??

So, it's not a nursery, because it's not really leaves in the sense of "leaves"... These leaves are rather a set of phases, which is equal to one of nature's cycles, which is in turn is equal to only ONE of the many periodic cycles contained within the concept known as "life"..... i.e. this is just one of the periodic cycles which everything we know and all living matter revolves around.

After this declaration/explanation Deon replied with the following :

Hi Sus

Yeah, OK, the only better way to demonstrate it would've been the moods of a woman - which, of course, is also periodic HA HA!! About organizational stupidity - the best new description for a common concept that I've come across in ages - 100%!

Dit maak nou meer sin - thanx

Deon

Always remember : these things are meant to be understood :)

“The world of computers is meant to be understood” ™

Copyright © Compu and IT Solutions CC 2006-2008

All rights reserved.

Date published : 8 December 2006.

References (i.e. the books which made me realize “A”, “B” and “C”, and which consequently, resulted in the birth of the trademark) :

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