On the principle that all publicity is good, here’s a link to my girlfriend’s job-hunting and career blog. She’s into CSR, PR, events management, marketing and, well, go have a look and find out more. Go on, you know you want to give her a job!
We had a bit of a movie binge this weekend. The highlight was undoubtedly Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I’ve always been a fan of Nick Park’s work and this is right up there with his best.
How they manage to get so much emotion into such tiny pieces of clay I have no idea. All I can say is that it works.
I’d like to pretend that I had a good reason for posting this, something other than blatant publicity for a friends website, but no. On the plus side, it is prettier than mine and she blogs far more frequently and eloquently than me…
So much of my favourite music only exists because of this man…
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | Obituary: Dr Robert Moog
CNN.com – Synthesizer innovator Moog dies at 71 – Aug 22, 2005
Let’s cut to the chase: if you’ve read and enjoyed any of Joel Spolsky’s ramblings on the web you’ll like this book. Skip the rest of this review and just go buy it.
For the benefit of those that have not heard of him, who is this Joel chap and what is the book and his normal prose about? The “About the Author” section describes him as an industry veteran that writes an “anti-Dilbert manifesto” on his website. I can’t think of a better description, which is why I have shamelessly copied it rather than finding my own phrase…
The concept
I liked the blurb on the back:
“This title addresses all of the skills required to effectively design and develop complex applications, including planning, building and developing the application and coding defensively to prevent bugs.”
It suggests that it can bring you from the stage where you focus entirely on the code to the point where you can take in a whole project, make it all work and delight your customers. Mike Gunderloy has 25 years of commercial experience and so has a lot to say.
Introduction
At the moment I’m reading Steve McConnell’s excellent ‘Professional Software Engineering,’ in which he talks extensively about creating a genuine software engineering profession. I believe that this is a great aim and, although I disagree with him on some points, I think the basic premise is both a good idea and inevitable.
However, that is not the point that I want to talk about, although it is related. It’s the fact that, even though I work in a relatively professional organisation, almost no-one here reads computer science books. Sure, there are piles of guides to complex Oracle stuff, C++ this and XML that, but there are no books around on how the whole process should work.
Introduction
So that you can believe what you see, I just wanted to talk you through the process I go through to get some beautiful parts of the world conveniently into your web browser.
It starts with a camera…
I have three cameras, two of them being traditional film-based models and the last one a digital.
The oldest images (pre-2001) were taken on a Canon Sureshot 70 Zoom. It has automatic-just-about-everything and a 35-70mm zoom lens. I have two SLR bodies which, with the exception of EF-S glass, I can use the same lenses on both machines. The first is a Canon EOS300, the second is a Digital Rebel, known in the UK as an EOS300D.
Introduction
A tip: if you’re going to read this book, don’t flip through to the back and read the ‘Authors note.’ It doesn’t actually give away the story, but there are clues that you won’t want to know. I should know, that’s what I did.
Fortunately, although you can predict the tone of the end of the book, there are more than a few surprises in store.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The way I saw it, Cuba had to be visited before Castro dies. And then, two days before I fly, I see headlines in the Evening Standard: Castro has fallen and has been hospitalised. Did I get the timing wrong?
No it turns out. He’s still alive and well, locals still talk about him with a hushed reverence normally reserved for religious leaders. The other bonus of arriving in late October is that the flood of winter tourists has yet to start and it’s still in the high twenties.