Usually august is a good time to think on refactorings. During the year normal operation there is never enough time to look back. The sentence "I want all, and I want it now" it's a classical sentence from clients and bosses (many times followed with a "I want it fix, but don't touch any thing").
Also is good because too many managers doesn't care about refactoring. They don't really understand what this means and didn't give to it the real value of this action. For them, often, the maintenance of some code is sort of magic, they don't know how this can be made. Furthermore they don't care, and only think in do it fast an cheap.
In the case of the scope, we are currently using the scope waveforms in a Filling Pattern calculation using the Fast Current Transformer signal. This was the fpFCT project. In this case, we went far away from the original design of the access to the scopes. This original design was already improved long a go, and looks that now it's time to remade it base on the newer requirements.
The current bottleneck is the Visa middlemen. The agent that shows the user the interface of an instrument like an scope doesn't know about protocols. This agent knows the language to talk with the instrument, but not the channel used to have bidirectional communication with it.
From Max IV, there is a proposal to talk directly via socket. This will remove from the scene one of the actors, and for sure will improve.
The second proposal, should be helped by a new feature requested in tango: give the information to the device that someone is listening (or not) over the events on an attribute. This is, avoid to request information to the instrument if noone is listening.
Current idea of the refactoring is to use proposal one, and by commands (until the mentioned feature is available) configure the attributes that are being updated by an isolated thread, optimizing the scope access, in an approach to proposal two.
Update 20130806: Max IV has contributed with their nice idea in a branch.
2013/07/29
2013/07/09
Some more numbers from Alba, last 3 months
Some time a go, I wrote about numbers that are around this facility. I have say some summary, in the update at the end of the post, about the operation calendar. But this calendar has been changed by the management (unilaterally) after the problems we've faced after eastern until June.
I didn't post anything about those almost 3 months of unexpected shutdown, because I saw what happens as surrealistic.
After the week shutdown of eastern (April 2nd), it was not possible to start up the machine. Some of the collected data from the latest days shows that in March 27th the flow on certain places of the water cooling system went down due to an unknown reason.
Ok, at the beginning all of us thought that this will be a short problem, easy to be fixed in commissioned and well known system. But it wasn't the case. Day after day, the system was not recovered. Shifts of beam time where cancel. During April very shy, beam time cancel by weeks (but working shifts not). First week many people was purging the water cooling system in shifts. Popularly we start calling Alba as the purgatory (as a joke word combination).
Well, days pass and the origin of the problem was not found. In May the beam time of the month was full cancelled, one complete run. Even that, the work shifts wasn't. The workers on shifts gets the notification of the shift cancel by half a week, on average (but the spread makes people notified that the night shift is cancelled when they arrive to the facility).
Finally, past June was found a working point of the cooling system (meta)stable. Many things has been changed and from the information given to all the workers, it looks that is not fully understood what had happen, neither know what or which of the things made has make the system running.
But this was the end of the water cooling system issue, but the beginning of some other collateral problems. One of the things is that some dirt was found in the water circuit. As far as I know previously, this was a circuit of deionized pure water, but looks not compatible with what was found in there.
Another problem faced was a poor materials quality in some hoses. During one of the affected weekends, it has been explained to the workers, one PLC that manages the cooling system was weirdly hanged (no new values measured, but the last read was send with a new time-stamp as if it was really read). Because many equipments where in test, specially magnets, they heat up the water temperature and some hoses vulcanizes. Water leaks started, the circuit gets half empty, pump cavitates, and on Monday morning the problem was faced as burned pumps.
After 2 months trying to realise what was happening, this last was slap. Undermining the moral. But wasn't the latest issue. Even if you cannot believe, a TLD placed in a insertion device (ID) with standard stick to measure the dose in some encoders, fells on the cavity of the ID and when the gap was close it dent the cavity: enough to hit the beam, having to change the section.
By today, the synchrotron is up again and giving beam time for experiments. But the new calendar has magically appeared:
What has special this calendar? Well it sets the unexpected shutdown as "warm up" not as "off" as a shutdown is. Well, yes, it can be think like that. Many people has work very very hard this time, and no one of us was something like "off". (I'm not saying that "off" is no work because many maintenance tasks waits from those "off" periods).
One of (the many) issues of this calendar is that it is trying to recover the lost time telling the workers as "we have to complain with this unexpected problem". But is forgetting the efforts already made, and is asking renewed efforts foreseeing the problem as unpredictable. It wasn't an accident, this was a lack of knowledge! We still don't know what causes the problem, neither what fixes it (or looks like it fixes). There is no proves that this will not happen again.
But how the calendar has changed?
The expected 4992h of machine up time (57% of the year) it reschedules to 4592h (52%, converting the 2.5 months of shutdown in only a 5% of the year time). From the experimentation point of view, the beam time was scheduled to be available for 3600h (41.10%) and now would be 3312h (37.80%) only 3.30% of reduction.
But what has been lost in this unexpected shutdown is 1008h of the scheduled beam time (1176h of the machine up time).
It we lost the 11.50% of the beam time, how can be possible that at the end of the year this drops down to only a 3.30%? Easy, stilling the rest time. Now some of the "off" days and what was originally scheduled as "warm up" is now beam or machine time.
It's easy to realize that the 6 extra weekends that now are planned to work in shifts will not be worked by the rescheduled calendar...
Even all of those things, this morning, planned to have beam for users, the "solved" problem peep again:
I didn't post anything about those almost 3 months of unexpected shutdown, because I saw what happens as surrealistic.
After the week shutdown of eastern (April 2nd), it was not possible to start up the machine. Some of the collected data from the latest days shows that in March 27th the flow on certain places of the water cooling system went down due to an unknown reason.
Finally, past June was found a working point of the cooling system (meta)stable. Many things has been changed and from the information given to all the workers, it looks that is not fully understood what had happen, neither know what or which of the things made has make the system running.
But this was the end of the water cooling system issue, but the beginning of some other collateral problems. One of the things is that some dirt was found in the water circuit. As far as I know previously, this was a circuit of deionized pure water, but looks not compatible with what was found in there.Another problem faced was a poor materials quality in some hoses. During one of the affected weekends, it has been explained to the workers, one PLC that manages the cooling system was weirdly hanged (no new values measured, but the last read was send with a new time-stamp as if it was really read). Because many equipments where in test, specially magnets, they heat up the water temperature and some hoses vulcanizes. Water leaks started, the circuit gets half empty, pump cavitates, and on Monday morning the problem was faced as burned pumps.
After 2 months trying to realise what was happening, this last was slap. Undermining the moral. But wasn't the latest issue. Even if you cannot believe, a TLD placed in a insertion device (ID) with standard stick to measure the dose in some encoders, fells on the cavity of the ID and when the gap was close it dent the cavity: enough to hit the beam, having to change the section.
By today, the synchrotron is up again and giving beam time for experiments. But the new calendar has magically appeared:
One of (the many) issues of this calendar is that it is trying to recover the lost time telling the workers as "we have to complain with this unexpected problem". But is forgetting the efforts already made, and is asking renewed efforts foreseeing the problem as unpredictable. It wasn't an accident, this was a lack of knowledge! We still don't know what causes the problem, neither what fixes it (or looks like it fixes). There is no proves that this will not happen again.
But how the calendar has changed?
The expected 4992h of machine up time (57% of the year) it reschedules to 4592h (52%, converting the 2.5 months of shutdown in only a 5% of the year time). From the experimentation point of view, the beam time was scheduled to be available for 3600h (41.10%) and now would be 3312h (37.80%) only 3.30% of reduction.
But what has been lost in this unexpected shutdown is 1008h of the scheduled beam time (1176h of the machine up time).
It we lost the 11.50% of the beam time, how can be possible that at the end of the year this drops down to only a 3.30%? Easy, stilling the rest time. Now some of the "off" days and what was originally scheduled as "warm up" is now beam or machine time.
It's easy to realize that the 6 extra weekends that now are planned to work in shifts will not be worked by the rescheduled calendar...
Even all of those things, this morning, planned to have beam for users, the "solved" problem peep again:
No beam...
Universal (Hexa)Decimal Classification
Since I have started with research over elliptic curves, many papers, book and other similar stuff has been read by me to take the knowledge. But there is an issue when the number of this things get too big. How can I organize the information of those papers (or books and so) in order to get back to this information and refresh the memory contents?
Very long a go, I did a course on bibliographic search and catalogue. In this course I have learned the way that the libraries in general organizes the books in there: the UDC (Universal Decimal Classification). I've looking how can I reuse this to classify the documents I think relevant for my research.
I have set up my own main classes and also I have tried to let at least one of them vacant for further updates, that mean to extend the fields of research. Event that pretension, by today, it's full again. This means that probably I'll have to do my second refactoring of this structure, because in the past I had once already this problem.
There is another way to modify my classification to have more vacants, that is think in another base. As far as I understood, the UDC was restricted from 0 to 9 to have like only one character field. Then why not a computer scientist can think in a Universal Hexadecimal Classification (UHC)?
For the records, my current main classes and their categories:
What this system is not complaining is how to archive the notes that I wrote in the margins on the papers I read and place in here or the marks I set labelling pages on books, and so on. But this is an issue that this tool is not useful for.
How to have a search tool on this structure and inside those documents, including the posted comments?
Very long a go, I did a course on bibliographic search and catalogue. In this course I have learned the way that the libraries in general organizes the books in there: the UDC (Universal Decimal Classification). I've looking how can I reuse this to classify the documents I think relevant for my research.
I have set up my own main classes and also I have tried to let at least one of them vacant for further updates, that mean to extend the fields of research. Event that pretension, by today, it's full again. This means that probably I'll have to do my second refactoring of this structure, because in the past I had once already this problem.
There is another way to modify my classification to have more vacants, that is think in another base. As far as I understood, the UDC was restricted from 0 to 9 to have like only one character field. Then why not a computer scientist can think in a Universal Hexadecimal Classification (UHC)?
For the records, my current main classes and their categories:
- 0.Mathematics
- 010.Number Theory
- 020.Abstract Algebra
- 030.Information Theory
- 040.Logic
- 050.Elliptic curves
- 1.Public Key
- 101.Finite fields cryptography
- 102.Elliptic curves cryptography
- 103.Hyperelliptic curves cryptography
- 110.Cryptoanalysis
- 111.Finite fields cryptoanalysis
- 112.Elliptic curves cryptoanalysis
- 113.Hyperelliptic curves cryptoanalysis
- 120.Isogenies
- 121.Isogeny volcanoes and stars
- 122.Isogenies cryptography
- 2.Symmetric cryptology
- 210.Rijndael
- 3.Hash functions
- 310.SHA
- 320.Elliptic and hyperelliptic curves
- 4.Stream cyphers
- 5.Secret sharing
- 6.Homomorphic encryption
- 7. vacant
- 8. vacant
- 9. vacant
- A. vacant
- B. vacant
- C. vacant
- D.Computation
- D10. Distributed systems
- D20. Parallel computing
- E.Hardware
- E10.Embedded systems
- E20.Smartcards
- E30.Rfid
- F.Standards
- F01.Internationals
- F10.European
- F20.North American
- F30.Russian
What this system is not complaining is how to archive the notes that I wrote in the margins on the papers I read and place in here or the marks I set labelling pages on books, and so on. But this is an issue that this tool is not useful for.
How to have a search tool on this structure and inside those documents, including the posted comments?
(more) frustraited @ work
Alba is broken like since eastern. When we come back from that shutdown at the end of March. Water cooling problems, the water flow was unstable; sponges were found in the "clean water" cooling pipes, together with other dust; a weekend instrument hang causes a temperature increase and bad quality of hoses become vulcanized (below the specs) and caused a disaster in one of the two main power supplies of the booster; a TLD wrong placed in a weird space and when an Insertion Device was moved, it bends the beam pipe blocking the beam orbit, requiring to vent and replace a section. It's like we stomp shit.
This is one of the issues in this accelerator complex, but there are others that may interact.
Panic reaches the management at the beginning of this years when 12 people announces their new positions in other institutes. If you take into account that we are 145 workers, you can realizes the magnitude of the problem. From the people that says goodbye, 8 were from the computing division (around 50) and from those 4 were from the controls section (of 14). This panic didn't mention the 1 or 2 per month that has announced that the left during the past two years.
Management has announced 3 months later the creation of a commission from work behaviour improvements. Now, in July, this commission has made the first meeting by last week.
As I mention in the previous post, another reason of personal sadness: my bosses didn't case about a worker that has been called to do a talk in the university.
I didn't write here since then. I didn't found any reason to write about software design here.
But last reason to get one step further in frustration went last week.
Starting 2 months a go, in the tango meeting, there was a request to the tango community to introduce security embedded inside the tango implementation. From the last 4 years I've been trying to start a PhD in cryptology (but too busy due to the work at Alba), and I've been getting closer and closer to the field of the RFIDs and the smartcards. During the presentation where this was requested, I thought that many of the schemas to ensure RFID can be also valid to be applied in between the communication of the agents in a distributed system, like tango.
I thought it can be interesting for Alba and the tango community, to exploit that one of the workers has a hobby in cryptology and security. In this terms I've talked to my boss.
For that, I need 3 weeks to talk to my boss (this is already one problem). During this time, I've been able to, out side working hours, explain this idea to the research group in the university (they are in another city, 150 km away). I found a great acceptance about "Ensuring Tango control system", even more I've seen enthusiasm about the idea of a PhD based on an application of all the cryptological work made by the whole group (many things about public key -specially elliptic curves- symmetric cyphers, stream ciphers, secret sharing, homomorphic encryption and field like that).
At work, the response wasn't that good. The answer was like: "do what ever you like in your free time, but this must not affect your current duties at all. It's not possible to dedicate any of your working hours in such a thing". Clearly have said, if I do a PhD, is not meaning anything for Alba at all. Ooh!! This is a very clear way to motivate a worker. For my partners, also fun when was said "if you do, others would ask to do this", what's the problem on workers training?
Went I talked to my boss, I said many time to him and have to point here, that my duties have been increase every time that a partner left. Last Friday, there was a presentation about the Alba's controls system, and when the subsystems of the machine was listed, half of the elements on that list are on my behalf (and not all my duties were there).
When I went to talk about this with my boss, I went there offering my free time to work in a industrial PhD. My proposal was not to stop doing my job and disappear for full time dedication to this, my proposal was mostly the free time, but being realistic that the brain thinks at any time. As a collaboration between the university and the industry, all the involved has to put something, specially the PhD candidate.
Well done, with this deal, the simpler solution is that Alba will not appear at all in my PhD. Or if it appears will be to be mention explicitly that they haven't contribute at all; even worst Alba's position was opposition to doing a work like that.
This is one of the issues in this accelerator complex, but there are others that may interact.
Panic reaches the management at the beginning of this years when 12 people announces their new positions in other institutes. If you take into account that we are 145 workers, you can realizes the magnitude of the problem. From the people that says goodbye, 8 were from the computing division (around 50) and from those 4 were from the controls section (of 14). This panic didn't mention the 1 or 2 per month that has announced that the left during the past two years.
Management has announced 3 months later the creation of a commission from work behaviour improvements. Now, in July, this commission has made the first meeting by last week.
As I mention in the previous post, another reason of personal sadness: my bosses didn't case about a worker that has been called to do a talk in the university.
I didn't write here since then. I didn't found any reason to write about software design here.
But last reason to get one step further in frustration went last week.
Starting 2 months a go, in the tango meeting, there was a request to the tango community to introduce security embedded inside the tango implementation. From the last 4 years I've been trying to start a PhD in cryptology (but too busy due to the work at Alba), and I've been getting closer and closer to the field of the RFIDs and the smartcards. During the presentation where this was requested, I thought that many of the schemas to ensure RFID can be also valid to be applied in between the communication of the agents in a distributed system, like tango.
I thought it can be interesting for Alba and the tango community, to exploit that one of the workers has a hobby in cryptology and security. In this terms I've talked to my boss.
For that, I need 3 weeks to talk to my boss (this is already one problem). During this time, I've been able to, out side working hours, explain this idea to the research group in the university (they are in another city, 150 km away). I found a great acceptance about "Ensuring Tango control system", even more I've seen enthusiasm about the idea of a PhD based on an application of all the cryptological work made by the whole group (many things about public key -specially elliptic curves- symmetric cyphers, stream ciphers, secret sharing, homomorphic encryption and field like that).
At work, the response wasn't that good. The answer was like: "do what ever you like in your free time, but this must not affect your current duties at all. It's not possible to dedicate any of your working hours in such a thing". Clearly have said, if I do a PhD, is not meaning anything for Alba at all. Ooh!! This is a very clear way to motivate a worker. For my partners, also fun when was said "if you do, others would ask to do this", what's the problem on workers training?
Went I talked to my boss, I said many time to him and have to point here, that my duties have been increase every time that a partner left. Last Friday, there was a presentation about the Alba's controls system, and when the subsystems of the machine was listed, half of the elements on that list are on my behalf (and not all my duties were there).
When I went to talk about this with my boss, I went there offering my free time to work in a industrial PhD. My proposal was not to stop doing my job and disappear for full time dedication to this, my proposal was mostly the free time, but being realistic that the brain thinks at any time. As a collaboration between the university and the industry, all the involved has to put something, specially the PhD candidate.
Well done, with this deal, the simpler solution is that Alba will not appear at all in my PhD. Or if it appears will be to be mention explicitly that they haven't contribute at all; even worst Alba's position was opposition to doing a work like that.
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