April 2011
1 post
Durham House For Sale →
October 2010
3 posts
BBC - BBC Two Programmes - Horizon, 2010-2011, Is... →
Due to feature some of Hannah’s illusion models.
Twitter / Uncle Bob Martin: Agile is... →
Agile is meaningless. Scrum is watered down gruel. Kanban and Lean are variants. And XP is alive and well.
“Staff Liquidity is a staff allocation approach that meant we always had the most...”
–
XPDay Experience Report proposal by Chris Matts Olav Maassen
May 2010
7 posts
John Lewis Partnership →
In 1999, in response to a fall in profits, there were calls from some Partners for the business to be demutualised and floated on the stock market. If this had gone through, each Partner would have…
8 Websites You Need to Stop Building →
“I don’t get it. How do you *do* social media?”
“Well it’s all about the ROI, of course! I engage with the community to monetize my social presence.”
“Oh I see, so you’re a talentless D-bag!…
Hartwell Paper - Executive Summary →
[…] the organising principle of our effort should be the raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does…
Still hatin’ on git: now with added Actual... →
The bottom line for me with git is that I am sick of being pushed around. It swans about as though it owns the place. It make arbitrary demands. It tells me what to do. It’s as though ext2fs insisted…
The Hartwell Paper - A new direction for climate... →
The “Kyoto” approach was constructed by quick borrowing from past practice, with other treaty regimes dealing with ozone, sulphur emissions and nuclear bombs. It was not unreasonable that…
Semantic Versioning →
A simple example will demonstrate how Semantic Versioning can make dependency hell a thing of the past. Consider a library called “Firetruck.” It requires a Semantically Versioned package named…
“I could not but hint that in my opinion the problem of reaching the Pole can...”
– Scott’s Antarctic Diary - http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/diaries/scottslastexpedition/2010/05/09/9-5-1911/
March 2010
1 post
Creating a custom HTML theme | Tumblr →
I’m quite impressed how customizable it is.
January 2010
13 posts
9780670887033 →
Started reading 9780670887033 by Somebody.
9780670887033 →
Finished 9780670887033 by Somebody.
“planning is guessing, and for a start-up, the focus must be on today and not on...”
– Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner: David Heinemeier Hansson, 37 Signals - Unlearn Your MBA
“After a few iterations, our fear level was actually lower than how we used to...”
– Lessons Learned: Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events
“Continuous deployment makes releases non-events and checking in code is...”
– Lessons Learned: Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events
Harvard Business Review motivates TDD →
Out of instrumental support, progress, interpersonal support, collaboration, and important work: progress was the top motivator by a large margin.
Terralien - What Makes a Good Estimate? →
Good estimates happen to savvy founders, since they set a reasonable time box and then actively engage with the team building the product to simplify and fit the result into the estimate.
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world by... →
1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should…
The Boss's Journey: The Path to Simplicity and... →
As psychologist William Schutz explained, “Understanding evolves through three phases: simplistic, complex, and profoundly simple.”
Teaching Magic →
However a world with too much magic and not enough knowledge is very risky and dangerous - ask anyone who weighs the same as a duck.
What did I learn in 2009? →
Reading parody sites like this: http://www.ambysoft.com/certification/ and finally asking awkward questions about Scrum (it’s a very bad sign when no-one will publicly answer a question like “is it…
Agile Certification →
Interested in easy certification? Then you’ve come to the right place. The SCUM Alliance, the founder of the Software Graftsmanship Manifesto, is happy to announce the new SCUM Certified Agile Master…
The Passion of Steve Jobs - Bits Blog -... →
Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.
December 2009
7 posts
“Soon after the consultants left there was a backlash on anything labelled...”
– Gojko Adzic » Software process improvements with Lean and Kanban at BNP Paribas
Two Reasons We Have to Build Software Iteratively... →
Business people don’t know what they want until they see it. And developers don’t know how to do it until they’ve done it.
Code: Flickr Developer Blog » Flipping Out →
Like Chris R, I’d prefer to do this than have so-called feature branches. Although, it sounds horrible, it has the benefit of making the costs of “branching” much more explicit. I’d also hope the…
Dec 12, 2009: Ruby Manor 2 : Manor Harder at The... →
Ruby Manor 2 : Manor Harder
The Guvner is opening the doors to The Manor once again, and just like last time it’s up to you to fill my echoing halls with the sound of Ruby.
It’ll be the same…
“This is analagous to the ‘indulgences’ that the Catholic church sold...”
– James Hansen (head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) talks about Obama’s “cap-and-trade” legislation in Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet →
Started reading Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs.
“Effectiveness is often inefficient: cross-functional teams, pair programming,...”
– Dan North - Our Obsession with Efficiency on Vimeo
November 2009
9 posts
Scott Adams Blog: The Bad Management Stimulus... →
The Dilbert Principle observes that in the modern economy, the least capable people are promoted to management because companies need their smartest people to do the useful work. It’s hard to design…
Are Nash Equilibriums Killing Agile Initiatives? →
“Over the past two years I have seen a lot of debate about the success of Agile software development. Agile methodologies can produce great results. This is well documented. Yet, in many companies,…
“In software, adding a six-lane automobile expressway to a railroad bridge is...”
– You Don’t Know Jack About Software Maintenance | November 2009 | Communications of the ACM
Deep Economy: Economics as If the World Mattered →
Finished Deep Economy: Economics as If the World Mattered by Bill McKibben.
“The idea that I have in mind is to flip technical debt around. We need to see...”
– Michael Feathers’ Blog: Beyond Technical Debt
“If you’re a Ruby author who cares about distributing your software to more...”
– Bytemark blog | Ruby gems, and when we’ll be shot of them
“But the biggest mistake made in Gems was to add to the language. In Java, or C,...”
– Bytemark blog | Ruby gems, and when we’ll be shot of them
“That the message of the XP and Agile community was once “professional...”
– Thoughts On …: The Death of Agile by Bill Caputo
“At the very least, don’t hire someone who will make the code base worse”
– Putting the tea into team: Pair Programming interviews/auditions
October 2009
19 posts
Engleby →
Finished Engleby by Sebastian Faulks.
Deep Economy: Economics as If the World Mattered →
Started reading Deep Economy: Economics as If the World Mattered by Bill McKibben.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly... →
Finished The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Simplicity is Complicated →
Complexity is like an air pocket trapped under a layer of airtight plastic. If you push it down it just pops up somewhere else. Most of our attempts to “simplify” software really amount to pushing…
Testable Java by Michael Feathers →
Never hide a Test-Unfriendly Feature within a Test-Unfriendly Construct.
“Unlike open source projects, customers needs/desires aren’t publicly...”
– Rails Underground: A Chat with Dr Nic
“The real tragedy with this story is that this competitor is not all that...”
– Startups: How To Build A Barrier To Entry With Inbound Marketing
“Your strategy shouldn’t be “go raise a bunch of money, then use that money to go...”
– Startups: How To Build A Barrier To Entry With Inbound Marketing
“One of the main fears, expressed repeatedly during the evening, was the sheer...”
– England’s libel laws don’t just gag me, they blindfold you | Simon Singh - Times Online