Friday 30th May 2008:
There are more pics on flickr. It was a great night — thanks very much to all my (former) workmates for showing up on a rainy night to eat curry and drink beer. And be with me! Of course. The most important bit. Ahem.
A nationally broadcast Candadian radio station recently interviewed me about Microsoft making me change my gamertag on Xbox Live because my name was deemed “sexually offensive”. The broadcast can now be downloaded from their website:
http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/pastpodcasts.html?43#ref43
My interview starts at 21 minutes into the file. They also have a short writeup on the story.
This morning, I chose to walk half a mile to the office instead of catching the train from Cardiff Central to Cathays. On the way I stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast but I only had a plain toasted bagel with light Philadephia cheese. For lunch I had a ham and mustard sandwich from Tesco’s, with a bag of apple slices and grapes and a pot of pineapple, mango, kiwi fruit and blueberries.
I’m as baffled as you are. Must be the new job!
Ctrl-R and then:
Add Ctrl as a modifier to the key above and you will debug tests instead of running then.
See also: http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2007/01/29/1552795.aspx.
Top posting annoys me, and here’s why. This was originally written for Usenet but applies equally to email and indeed the hip new forums all the kids are talking about these days.
=================== begin generic top-posting cuss ==================
Regarding top-posting:
1) Some quoting is necessary. This has to be done in order to give context to your reply. Remember that it might have been several days since the viewer has read the original article you are replying to, and due to the vagaries of NNTP propagation, he (or she, naturally) might not have read it at all. Some quoting is therefore necessary. This also ensures each article is readable as it stands, without reference to previous articles the poster might (or might not) have read. Depending on the nature of the article being replied to, some or most of it might be quoted. Signatures should always be removed, and you can choose to indicate the removal of other text by inserting the word {snip}.
2) Having decided to quote, it dramatically improves the readability and flow of your document to intersperse quote and reply in the manner usually adopted on most newsgroups. Top-posting means that anyone trying to read your article as a free-standing document must scroll up and down, trying to figure out who said what and to whom. It implicitly carries the message that "my time as an author is worth more than yours as a reader" and so offends people. It takes seconds to compose a properly trimmed and quoted reply. Please do so.
Remember that Usenet is very, very old indeed in computer terms. These rules of netiquette have evolved over that time, and although they may look odd, there are very good reasons behind them.
Finally, it is true that many newsgroups accept top-posting. When I am in one of those newsgroups, I respect that convention, and I do not cuss people for top-posting. This newsgroup is one of the ones that does *not* tolerate it, and I would ask you to extend us the common courtesy of respecting our conventions when in our newsgroup.
For further discussion on this matter, please see
http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/nquote.html and
http://www.malibutelecom.com/yucca/usenet/brox.html
which have some other arguments. If you wish to read more,
http://www.google.com/search?q=usenet+netiquette+top-posting
has plenty of suggestions.
In short, please don't top-post.
=================== end generic top-posting cuss ==================
After around 24 hours, I’ve managed 23 songs of the Drums solo career on Medium difficulty. It’s making me sweat now and I’m less than halfway up the song list. I haven’t failed a song yet though (even when I cockily tried I Think I’m Paranoid on Hard). Since I’ve never drummed in my life and my drumming skills were the source of speculative… dismissal… in my household, I am quite pleased with that.
We’ve also done a bunch of two and three player stuff, and observed that yeah, it is very nifty indeed. Meanwhile Davydd Grimm, a regular poster in BETEO, has completed most of the drums career on Expert and snapped his drumsticks! That’s what you get for being a proper drummer.
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7417359.stm
According to Richard Sennett’s new book, The Craftsman, this ability to master a skill and then practice it well satisfies a basic human need. For Sennett, a craftsman doesn’t have to make beautiful inlaid cabinets or chisel stone. He could be a software programmer, a cook or even a parent. This satisfaction in the job itself seems to me the best sort of meaning there is. As a journalist, I survive on those rare jolts of pleasure that come when you find just the right words
and get them together in just the right order.Yet this sort of “craft” meaning isn’t open to everyone. Shoving junk mail though letter boxes isn’t a craft. Neither, at the other end of the spectrum, is being prime minister. Indeed no jobs that involve managing or leading are crafts, which is one of the things that makes it so particularly hard for managers to find meaning in what they do. In fact managing is one of the most thankless jobs in the world. What managers are mainly trying to do is to get other people to do things that they don’t want to. To work harder, for a start. Their other primary function is to carry the can, and to get blamed for all sorts of things that probably aren’t their fault. Not only are they creating little meaning for themselves, they get blamed for destroying meaning for people below them.
I’ve never thought about it quite like this before, on a gut instinct level, this is why I’ve never wanted to be a manager. I derive a lot of job satisfaction from solving problems — the recent Honda ads with the slogan “every problem is a playground” really resonate with me. I’ve always had an aversion to the idea of being promoted into a team management role but never been able to elegantly say why, but now I can: it takes me away from being a craftsman and being a craftsman is what gets me out of bed in the mornings.
I think I’m far from the only one who feels this way, which is why we’ve seen the growth of Technical Architect as a recognised job title and as a career path over the last few decades. It’s to give options to software engineers who aren’t comfortable with the traditional “team lead -> dev lead -> CTO” career path.
Recent Comments