patterns of connection

When I read a good book I highlight passages that catch my attention. I copy a few of the highlights into a book-snippet.

This photo is of page 75 of my battered copy of The Secrets of Consulting. The yellow highlights are from the first time I read the book, the pink ones from the second time, the blue ones the fourth time. At the bottom right is one sentence outlined in pen and marked with an eight. That tells me I marked that sentence on my eighth re-read. (I've run out of new colours.)

I find it better to re-read a really good book 10 times rather than read 10 average books once each. It's the really good books that provide new insights each time I re-read them. Marking highlights in this way allows me to go back in time. What topics caught my attention in early readings? What topics in later readings? I can explore the differences. Of course, part of that newness is that I'm a different person each time I re-read. I'm older. A sentence triggers a new thought based an experience I've had since my last read. Also, I remember more of the book each time. For example I can see on my seventh re-read I marked this

The toughest problems don't come in neatly labeled packages. Or they come in packages with the wrong labels.

and I underlined the words labeled and labels because I'd consciously connected them to The Label Law (on page 64).

The name of the thing is not the thing.

Underneath that I can see I've written "The Dread Pirate Roberts". That's a connection to a scene from one of my favourite films, The Princess Bride. Westley is in the fire swamp explaining to Princess Buttercup how he has become the Dread Pirate Roberts...

Westley: I, as you know, am Roberts.

Buttercup: But how is that possible, since he's been marauding twenty years and you only left me five years ago?

Westley: I myself am often surprised at life's little quirks...

Westley: Well, Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. So he took me to his cabin and told me his secret. "I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts," he said. "My name is Ryan. I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts, either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia." Then he explained the name was the important thing for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westely.

John Gall (who was born in 1925), recently gave a fabulous talk called how to use conscious purpose without wrecking everything. He said:

As the years go by, the brain begins to put the dots together, to make conscious links between one experience and another, between one historical fact and another. A person begins to experience one’s entire life history as an integrated narrative.

This integrating capacity of the human brain is perhaps its most marvelous achievement. And you have to be old—usually fifty or sixty years old—to reach that point where it dawns on your conscious mind that that’s what’s going on. Unless you are already in your coffin, your mind is always a work in progress, an ongoing process of continual growth and greater differentiation, richer and more far-reaching correlations.

He chatted about how much his mind had changed during the first 40 years of his life compared to the most recent 40 years of his life. He said the latter change was far greater.
Isn't that amazing. Fantastic.
I'm looking forward to getting older!
I'm looking forward to seeing more and more patterns of connection.

the importance of living

Is an excellent book by Lin Yutang, isbn 978-0688163525. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.

I consider the education of our senses and our emotions rather more important than the education of our ideas.

Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.

Passion holds up the bottom of the world, while genius paints its roof.

The courage to be one's own natural self is quite a rare thing.

An Old Man was living with his Son at an abandoned fort on the top of a hill, and one day he lost a horse. The neighbours came to express their sympathy for his misfortune, and the Old Man asked, "How do you know this is bad luck?" A few days afterwards, his horse returned with a number of wild horses, and his neighbours came again to congratulate him on this stroke of fortune, and the Old Man replied, "How do you know this is good luck?" With so many horses around, his son began to take to riding, and one day he broke his leg. Again the neighbours came round to express their sympathy, and the Old Man replied, "How do you know this is bad luck?" The next year, there was a war, and because the Old Man's son was crippled, he did not have to go to the front.

The trouble with Americans is that when a thing is nearly right, they want to make it still better, while for a Chinese, nearly right is good enough.

When the chains of a bicycle are kept too tight, they are not conducive to the easiest running, and so with the human mind.

Tea in invented for quiet company as wine is invented for a noisy party.

Luxury and expensiveness are the things most to be avoided in architecture.

Taste then is closely associated with courage.

We must give up the idea that a man's knowledge can be tested or measured in any form whatsoever.

Only fresh fish may be cooked in its own juice; stale fish must be flavoured with anchovy sauce and pepper and mustard - the more the better.

The thing called beauty in literature and beauty in things depends so much on change and movement and is based on life. What lives always has change and movement, and what has change and movement naturally has beauty.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

is an excellent book by Robert Pirsig (isbn 978-0-099-32261-0). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

By far the greatest part of his [the mechanic's] work is careful observation and precise thinking.

Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristics of Quality.

As Poincaré would have said, there are an infinite number of facts about the motorcycle, and the right ones don't just dance up and introduce themselves. The right facts, the ones we really need, are not only passive, they are damned elusive and we're not going to just sit back and "observe" them. We're going to have to be in there looking for them or we're going to be here a long time. Forever. As Poincaré pointed out, there must be a subliminal choice of what facts we observe. The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care!

That's really why he got so upset that day when he couldn't get his engine started. It was an intrusion into his reality.

The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.

This isn't really a small town. People are moving too fast and too independently of one another.

I've a set of instructions at home which open up great realms for the improvement of technical writing. They begin, 'Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.'

Peace of mind isn't at all superficial really, I expound. It's the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test's always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.

There is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see.

It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.

It is not the facts but the relation of things that results in the universal harmony that is the sole objective reality.

Always take the old part with you to prevent getting a wrong part.

Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take.

Mu means "no thing". Like "Quality" it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, "No class; not one; not zero, not yes, not no." It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is an error and should not be given. "Unask the question" is what it says. Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.

Apart from bad tools, bad surroundings are a major gumption trap.

Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion.

When handling precision parts that are stuck or difficult to manipulate, a person with mechanic's feel will avoid damaging the surfaces and work with his tools on the nonprecision surfaces of the same part whenever possible. If he must work on the surfaces themselves, he'll always use softer surfaces to work with them. ... Handle precision parts gently.

Want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all experts do it.

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

The Tao of Pooh

is an excellent book by Benjamin Hoff (isbn 1-4052-0426-5). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.

It is useless to you only because you want to make it into something else and do not use it in its proper way.

One disease, long life; no disease, short life.

Unlike other forms of life, though, people are easily led away from what's right for them, because people have Brain, and Brain can be fooled. Inner Nature, when relied on, cannot be fooled. But many people do not look at it or listen to it, and consequently do not understand themselves very much. Having little understanding of themselves, they have little respect for themselves, and are therefore easily influenced by others.

For a long time they looked at the river beneath them, saying nothing, and the river said nothing too, for it felt very quiet and peaceful on this summer afternoon. [A.A.Milne]

I think therefore I am Confused.

All work and no play makes Backson a dull boy.

"But you should be something Important," I said.
"I am," said Pooh.
"Oh? Doing what?"
"Listening," he said.

the Bisy Backson Society, which practically worships youthful energy, appearance, and attitudes.

It's really fun to go somewhere where they are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have lots of time.

We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. [Henry David Thoreau]

From caring comes courage [Tao Te Ching]

...too many who think too much and care too little.

The unknown craftsman

is an excellent book by Sōetsu Yanagi (isbn 0-87011-948-6). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

The good artist or craftsman has no personal pride.

Seeing relates to the concrete, knowing to the abstract.

To divine the significance of pattern is the same as to understand beauty itself.

A pattern is both true to nature and artificial.

If the material is poor the pattern will suffer.

By and large, good pattern is of communal parentage.

Beauty must have some room, must be associated with freedom.

The Theologica Germanica, written in the fourteenth century, tells is: "He would know before he believeth cometh never to true knowledge". Applied to the perception of beauty, this means that if a man employs the function of knowing before seeing, his power is impaired.

Intuition is the power of seeing at this very moment.

The thing shines, not the maker.

They are made without obsessive consciousness of beauty; thus we catch a glimpse of what is meant by "no-mindedness", whereby all things become simplified, natural, and without contrivance.

Pride and revulsion

Here's a bug that bit me recently. I wrote a very small quick and dirty TDD header for C in my CyberDojo. It has a macro called CHECK_EQ which you use as follows:

CHECK_EQ(int, 42, 9*6);

Part of the macro looks like this:

#define CHECK_EQ(type, expected, actual) \
    ... \
    type e = expected; \
    type a = actual; \
    ... \

Can you see the problem? Well, suppose it's used like this:

    int e = 42;
    CHECK_EQ(int, e, 9*6);

Can you see it now? The problem is that this line in the macro

    type e = expected; \

gets expanded into this line:

    type e = e; \

Ooops. I thought about choosing a very cryptic name instead of x. Perhaps incorporating __LINE__ as a suffix. But I felt there had to be a solution that would always work. After some thought I came up with this. Brace yourself...

#define CHECK_EQ(type, expected, actual) \
   ...
   if (#expected[0] != 'x') \
   { \
       type x0 = expected; \
       type x1 = actual; \
       ... \
   } \
   else \
   { \
       type y0 = expected; \
       type y1 = actual; \
       ... \
   } \
   ...

Like Tom Duff, I feel a mixture of pride and revulsion at this discovery.

Mozart a biography

is an excellent book by Piero Melograni (isbn 0-226-51961-9). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Mozart was great (among other reasons) because he knew how to have fun.

Some people believe that music flowed from him almost spontaneously, thanks to his genius. In reality, from earliest childhood he practiced for thousands of hours every year.

He lived only thirty-five years, but he lived them at a wolf's pace and went far in that short time.

In a letter dated 20 August 1763, Leopold Mozart relates that in many places in Germany the well water was so bad, smelly, and muddy that it was habitually mixed with wine. It was worse in Paris. Parisians drank the repugnant water of the Seine, into which the city's garbage was thrown. The Mozarts, like many others, let it settle in a pitcher for a few hours, where it formed a worrisome solid layer.

In a letter dated 1 April 1764 Leopold reported that when an eclipse of the sun had occurred, Parisians rushed into the churches to protect themselves from being poisoned by the air during the temporary disappearance of the sun's light.

Wolfgang fell seriously ill with smallpox. He was blind for nine days and hovered between life and death, for the second time, after his bout with typhus in 1765.

Mozart performed several times on the harpsichord, astonishing his listeners with the agility of his hands, his left hand in particular. Some Neapolitans, perhaps influenced by a culture that tended to superstition and like mysteries. asserted that the boy played as well as he did thanks to a magic ring that he wore. When they demanded that he take off the ring and play without it, they saw that his playing depended on talent rather than spells, and they applauded all the more.

In those days, a composer would not dream of writing the arias for an opera without consulting the singers who were to interpret them… composers were craftsmen, paid by the piece, and were completely subservient to the true superstars of the age, who were the singers.

In those days no one hesitated about applauding in the middle of a work of music.

His fingers were deformed, either because of continual keyboard exercises from childhood on or from arthritis.

Only artists capable of innovation can give a long life to their works. Innovation prompts tension, curiosity, and awe.

Understanding comics - the invisible art

is an excellent book by Scott McCloud (isbn 0-06-097625-X). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Do you hear what I'm saying? If you do, have your ears checked, because no one said a word.

For now I'm going to examine cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification.

Since cartoons already exists as concepts for the reader, they tend to flow easily through the conceptual territory between panels. Ideas flowing into one another seamlessly.

These first symbols - cartoons really - gradually evolved away from any resemblance to their subject, toward the highly abstracted forms of modern languages… and eventually to our totally abstract sound-based system.

The longer any form of art or communication exists, the more symbols it accumulates.

In this chapter, we've dealt with the invisible worlds of senses and emotions, but in fact all aspects of comics show it to be an art of the invisible.

The more an artist devotes him/herself to either of these two focal points (form and idea/purpose), the more dramatic the change if he/she decides to switch.

Symbols are the stuff of which gods are made.

All media of communication are a by-product of our sad inability to communicate directly from mind to mind. Sad, of course, because nearly all problems in human history stem from that inability.

The wall of ignorance that prevents so many human beings from seeing each other clearly can only be breached by communication. And communication is only effective when we understand the forms that communication can take.

Barbel fishing on the River Wye

Caught on sweetcorn on the Whitehouse beat. What a beautiful river. And what a beautiful fish.

Charles Sargeant Jagger

I was at Paddington station a few days ago and I stopped to look at this superb statue (it's at the edge of platform 1). I noticed it was by Charles Sargeant Jagger!

The hole isn't in my part of the boat

After the XP2010 conference in Trondheim its nice to back home and walking Patrick to school each morning. I collect rubbish on the walk back. A whole carrier bag full after one week away. It's a four minute walk. And I live in the country. People must actually be winding their car windows down just to throw out rubbish! :(

The road less travelled and beyond

Is an excellent book by Scott Peck. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Community has to do with communication.

The word "diabolic" comes from the Greek diaballein, which means to throw apart or to separate, to compartmentalize. It is the opposite of "symbolic" which comes from the word symballein, meaning to throw together, to unify.

Virtually all truth is paradoxical.

Consciousness is inevitably associated with pain.

Perhaps the best measure of a person's greatness is the capacity for suffering.

The essence of this discipline of balancing is unlearning and "giving up" something in ourselves in order to consider new information.

Through the learning of emptiness, we experience a temporary state of consciousness in which the mind is utterly open and receptive and therefore totally alert.

There is no formula. All such decisions must be made out of the "agony of not knowing".

There is something far more important than inner peace: integrity. Integrity requires, among other things, the willingness to endure discomfort for the sake of truth.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how relatively few people understand what courage is. The absence of fear is not courage; the absence of fear is some kind of brain damage. Courage is the capacity to go ahead in spite of fear, or in spite of pain.

All discipline is a form of submission.

Speaking the truth - particularly when it requires some risk to do so - is an act of love.

The development of consciousness is thus, among other things, a process of the conscious mind opening itself to the unconscious in order to be congruent.

The unconscious is always one step ahead of the conscious mind.

The basic tenet of systems theory (which is actually not a theory but a fact) is that everything is a system.

Contingency theory (which, like systems theory, is not a theory but a fact) simply states that there is no one best type of organization.

Systems inherently resist change.

Patterns of Software

is the title of a truly excellent book by Richard Gabriel. I reread this every year or so. Each time it speaks to me with new depth and wisdom. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

My overall bias is that technology science, engineering and company organization are all secondary to the people and human concerns in the endeavor.

Compression is that characteristic of a piece of language in which each word assumes many meanings and derives its meaning from the context.

What [D'Arcy] Thompson insisted on was that every form is basically the end result of a certain growth process.

The process of software construction is the single most important determining factor in software quality.

Methodologists who insist of separating analysis and design from coding are missing the essential features of design: The design is in the code, not in a document or in a diagram.

Poincaré; once said: "Sociologists discuss sociological methods [not sociology]; physicists discuss physics [not physics methods]." I love this statement. Study of method by itself is always barren.

Study software, not software methods.

If we hope to make buildings in which the rooms and buildings feel harmonious; we too, must make sure that the structure is correct down to ¹/₈^th of an inch.

To get wholeness, you must try instead to strive for this kind of perfection, where things that don't matter are left rough and unimportant, and the things that really matter are given deep attention.

Without large structure, the design cannot hold together; it becomes merely a jumble of isolated design elements.

The nature of a system is such that at almost granularity it looks the same; it is a system.

In the modern era, we have come to favor simplicity over complexity, perfection over imperfection, symmetry over asymmetry, planning over piecemeal growth, and design awards over habitability. Yet if we look at the art we love and the music, the buildings, towns, and houses, the ones we like have the quality without a name, not the deathlike morphology of clean design.

More beauty in the detail

Tiny tiny plants are growing in the wall on the walk to Patrick's school.

Beauty in the detail

Lichen covered bricks in an old weathered wall on the way to school.