Destroy All Onions!

Another year older, which is never any fun.

And it’s even worse when the age gets to a round number again.

But some things came to cheer me up.

Exhibit A – a T-shirt found by my sister, one so fabulous that it almost hurts to look at:

Exhibit B – a remote controlled dinosaur. Yes, you read that correctly. When I rule the world, I’ll be sure to get some geneticists to make me some real dinosaurs, but in the meantime, what could be better? I’m calling him Rory, since he’s got a roar button.

Isn’t he gorgeous?

I have to admit that I’m also very tempted by an EEE PC.  I had a bit of a play with one in PC World this afternoon, and it’s completely loveable.

These are a few of the things that I might have blogged about while I was on holiday, except that I wasn’t on the internet for a week:

• The church was very friendly. Like many holiday destinations, there was a little English-speaking congregation, and they were very nice. They’re also planning to plant a new congregation up the coast a bit, in partnership with the Scandinavian church, which is cool in lots of ways.
• I read “Live and Let Die”. Although this was the eighth James Bond movie, it was actually the second one that Ian Fleming wrote, and therefore is actually the sequel to Casino Royale. And it’s not bad.
• Poor Yeremi Vargas is still missing. Last year, I saw his smiling face all round Lanzarote on posters. And this year I saw even more of them. That’s pretty sad.
• I saw one of those orange Ford Focus ST in the street. I know they’re a bit loud, but they are quite lovable. The alloys are particularly nice.
• Someone ripped 2 pages out of one of my other books. I got as far as page 33, just getting into it nicely, when it suddenly jumped to page 37. What kind of person does a thing like that?? Swine…

When you look in travel brochures, you will sometimes see that a hotel advertises that they have a hairdressers on-site. It’s not something I’ve ever thought about much. I mean, it’s hardly going to be a major influence on your choice of hotel. What kind of person gets a haircut on holiday?

Well, it turns out, people like me. My hair was a bit long before I went on holiday, but I didn’t get round to getting it cut. And then it annoyed me a bit on holiday, especially when I was wearing a bicycle helmet. So I decided to get a haircut. And it worked out just fine – I think it’s a perfectly good haircut. But I am aware from conversations with friends that they are very loyal to their hairdressers (or barbers, of course). I don’t really do this, and even at home I tend to change where I get my hair cut every so often, just because it’s more convenient.

So is this attitude breaking all the rules of polite society? Am I courting terrible retribution for my crimes? Or an I just a (mostly) harmless eccentric?

Wow. First the blog entry on shower curtains, and now haircuts. Something’s gone badly wrong round here…

Maybe I’m just a big softie, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the guys at Heathrow Terminal 5. Only a few weeks ago I was hearing about how it was a shining example of how to do things right, and how it had been helped by the use of Agile methods (which I talked about back here).

And now we discover that they are following another Agile principle – failing fast!

Good luck Heathrow chaps. May the force be with you.

ping Jesus

Jesus is alive!

(This is a really corny computer pun. If it means nothing to you, don’t worry about it.)

Monday was St. Patrick’s day, so I was off work for the day. And instead of lying in bed for half of the day, I got up early and went off for a walk in the hills of North Antrim with the walking group from our church.

It was a beautiful day, with bright sunshine, blue sky,  and beautiful views from the top. And Alan was right – a few days later what I remember is what a beautiful day it was, and how much I enjoyed the walk, and not the fact that I could hardly get up the stairs on Monday night.

This is the view from Tievebulliagh looking out towards the sea. To the left of this, we could see Scotland, and from the opposite direction we could see Lough Neagh. It was cool!

I heard the news last night that Arthur C Clarke had died. Although he died an old man at 90, it’s still sad news. He was a proper science fiction writer, not just someone who wrote imaginary stories set in the future. I guess he will be most famous as the author of the story that led to the epic film 2001, but that doesn’t really do him justice. He probably ought to be more famous for conceiving the idea of the geostationary orbit, on which all of our satellite communications is based.

Although I have to admit that in my mind he’ll always be associated with his television series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, which I dimly remember from my childhood. I don’t remember much about the content of the show; only the image of the mysterious crystal skull from the opening titles, and a tone of hushed awe for these phenomena that science couldn’t explain. I suppose nowadays it would all be a bit channel 5, but it obviously struck me at the time.

But perhaps in these troubled times in which we live, what we will miss most is the loss of a gifted communicator who looked into the future and believed that science could help us make a better world.

I spent most of the week staying in a hotel this week. It was quite a nice hotel. But as usual, it was impossible to have a shower without flooding the bathroom.

What is the deal with hotel showers?? Why is it so difficult for them to work out how to put up a shower curtain that keeps the water in the shower, instead of all over the floor? I don’t understand why almost every hotel is the same. What is wrong with these people?

And I can’t believe I have chosen to talk about shower curtains on the internet.

Nurse – sedate the patient!

This week I’ve been on a course on Agile Development (or Agile Delivery, or whatever they want to call it). This time round, it looks like the brainwashing is taking hold much better, and I think I’m starting to accept it a bit.

The key principle that I’ve taken to is that of accepting improvement, not expecting perfection. I have all sorts of arguments against Agile, but when they are challenged against that principle, I have to acknowledge that we don’t do them perfectly now, and we will continue to not do them perfectly in the future, but we may not do them any worse, and it’s possible we may do them better under Agile. (That sentence was clearly too long. I apologise to any reader who suffered mental trauma in reading it.)

From my own perspective in software design, Agile definitely has a significant risk of getting the design wrong because enough time wasn’t taken over it, and then having to re-develop based on a corrected version. But this happens anyway. The difference is that in Agile, the developers should only get 2 weeks down the road before it will be spotted, so reversing it shouldn’t be a major crisis. Or at least that’s what the theory says anyway.

The idea of accepting improvement also seems like a reasonable idea in life. Often we over-analyse a situation trying to find a perfect outcome, which may not actually exist or be achievable. Sometimes, it’s enough that things get better.

I guess if I’m going to live in Northern Ireland and have a blog, I’d better say something about the announcement last week of Ian Paisley’s resignation from front-line politics.

It’s a big deal for Northern Ireland. For as long as I have lived (and longer) he has been the single constant fact of local politics. Northern Ireland politics without Ian Paisley is almost unthinkable, as he has been such a feature for such a long time. Having continued until now (at the age of 81) I’d started assuming he’d go on until he died.

And I have to admit that I had reckoned for years that we’d never see progress in Northern Ireland until Paisley died, such was his unremitting opposition to anything that he believed threatened the status of Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom.

But I was wrong. Recently Ian did the last thing anyone expected, and changed his mind. He went into government with his political enemies, and has been successfully working with them. I truly never believed that it could happen, and he has earned my respect for doing it. The irony of course is that at the same time he has lost the respect of many of his supporters, but that’s another story.

It’s much too early to say what his legacy will be – after all, he still has a couple of months to go, and anything could happen. But I hope that among everything else, he will be remembered for showing us that the two sides of our divided community really can work together. If Ian Paisley can set aside a long history of enmity and work with former IRA members, then maybe there really is hope for Northern Ireland after all.