the pleasure of finding things out

is an excellent book by Richard Feynman (isbn 978-0-141-03143-9). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Looking at the bird he says, "Do you know what that bird is? It's a brown throated thrush; but in Portuguese it's a … in Italian a …, " he says "in Chinese it's a …, in Japanese a …," etcetera. "Now," he says, "you know in all the languages you want to know what the name of the bird is and when you've finished with all that," he says, "you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now," he says, "let's look at the bird."

I said, "Say, Pop, I noticed something: When I pull the wagon the ball rolls to the back of the wagon, and when I'm pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon," and I says, "why is that?" And he said, "That nobody knows," he said. "The general principe is that things that are moving try to keep on moving and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard." And he says, "This tendency is called inertia but nobody knows why it's true." Now that's a deep understanding - he doesn't give me a name, he knew the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something, which I learnt very early.

To do high, real good physics work you do need absolutely solid lengths of time.

You cannot expected old designs to work in new circumstances.

If you are in a hurry, you must dissipate heat.

We had lots of fun.

The people underneath didn't know at all what they were doing. And the Army wanted to keep it that way; there was no information going back and forth... I felt that you couldn't make the plant safe unless you knew how it worked… I said that the first thing there has to be is that the technical guys know what we're doing. Oppenheimer went and talked to the security people and got special permission. So I had a nice lecture in which I told them what we were doing, and they were all excited. We're fighting a war. We see what it is. They knew what the numbers meant. If the pressure came out higher, that meant there was more energy released and so on and so on. They knew what they were doing. Complete transformation! They began to invent ways of doing it better. They supervised the scheme. They worked all night. They didn't need supervising at night. They didn't need anything. They understood everything. They invented several of the programs that we used and so forth. So my boys really came through and all that had to be done was to tell them what it was, that's all. It's just, don't tell them they're punching holes. As a result, although it took them nine months to do three problems before, we did nine problems in three months.

Most of the trouble was the big shots coming all the time and saying you're going to break something, going to break something.

We used to go for walks often to get rest.

Advertising, for example, is an example of a scientifically immoral description of the products.

The magnetic properties on a very small scale are not the same as on a large scale.

But what we ought to be able to do seems gigantic compared with our confused accomplishments. Why is this? Why can't we conquer ourselves?

Erosion and blow-by are not what the design expected. They are warnings that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way… The O-rings of the Solid Booster Rockets were not designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not something from which safety can be inferred.

We have also found that certification criteria used in Flight Readiness Reviews often develop a gradually decreasing strictness.

The computer software checking system and attitude is of highest quality. There appears to be no process of gradually fooling oneself while degrading standards so characteristic of the Solid Rocket Booster or Space Shuttle Main Engine safety systems. To be sure, there have been recent suggestions by management to curtail such elaborate and expensive tests as being unnecessary at this late date in Shuttle history. This must be resisted for it does not appreciate the mutual subtle influences, and sources of error generated by even small changes of one part of a program on another. There are perpetual requests for changes as new payloads and new demands and modifications are suggested by the users. Changes are expensive because they require extensive testing. The proper way to save money is to curtail the number of requested changes, not the quality of testing for each.

Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believe it to be true, indicating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers.

It is presumptuous if one says, "We're going to find the ultimate particle, or the unified field laws," or "the" anything.

Alice in wonderland

is an excellent book by Lewis Carroll. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

It was labelled ORANGE MARMALADE, but to her great disappointment it was empty.

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?

She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).

Alice felt so desparate that she was ready to ask help of anyone.

Why, said the Dodo, the best way to explain it is to do it.

It sounded like an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it.

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.
I don't much care where - said Alice.
Then it doesn't matter which you go, said the Cat.

Have some wine, the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.
I don't see any wine, she remarked.
There isn't any, said the March Hare.

The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo.

Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.

Take off your hat, the King said to the Hatter.
It isn't mine, said the Hatter.
Stolen, the King exclaimed, to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact.
I keep them to sell, the Hatter added as an explanation: I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.

Begin at the beginning, the King said gravely, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

Losing my virginity

is an excellent book by Richard Branson (isbn 978-0-7535-1955-4). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

During January and February 1966, Jonny and I began to talk about how to change the school rules. We were fifteen years old, but we believed that we could make a difference. My parents had brought me up to think that we could change the world, so when I looked at how Stowe was run I felt sure that I could do it better.

Above all, you want to create something you are proud of.

Life in the basement was the kind of all-embracing glorious chaos in which I thrived and have thrived ever since.

Hearing others' stories made me realise how lucky I was in my relationships with my own parents. They had never judged me, and always supported me, always praised the good things rather than criticised the bad things.

Look, she said, I wouldn't lend you the money if I didn't want to. What's money for anyway? It's to make things happen.

I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics. This might be because, due to my dyslexia, I distrust numbers, which I feel can be twisted to prove anything.

Another man had to hand over his three-year-old daughter to his nanny and say goodbye to her. I just hugged him. There was nothing else I could do. We both had tears in our eyes. I was a father too.

It was clear that Lord King treated me with a contempt that would rub off on how everyone at British Airways felt they could treat Virgin Atlantic.

Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success.

Even though I'm often asked to define my 'business philosophy', I generally won't do so, because I don't believe it can be taught as if it were a recipe.

My vision for Virgin has never been rigid and changes constantly, like the company itself.

Our priorities are the opposite of our large competitors'. Convention dictates that a company should look after its shareholders first, its customers next, and last of all worry about its employees. Virgin does the opposite. For us, our employees matter the most. It just seems common sense to me that, if you start off with a happy, well-motivated workforce, you're much more likely to have happy customers. And in due course the resulting profits will make your shareholders happy.

It is my belief that most 'necessary evils' are far more evil than necessary.

It's just a matter of scale, but first you have to believe you can make it happen.

Tragically I was an only twin

subtitled The Complete Peter Cook is an excellent book by (isbn 0-09-944325-2). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Builders of Xanadu (Saturday Live, Channel 4, 1986)

...
John Bird: Got the job then?
Peter Cook: Yes, got the job.
John Bird: Big one?
Peter Cook: Well, fairly big. He's got very grandiose in his old age, Kubla has.
John Bird: Well what does he want? An extension?
Peter Cook: No, no. More than that. He wants a pleasure dome.
John Bird: Nice. What sort of pleasure dome did he have in mind?
Peter Cook: Well, he was a bit vague about it. He rambled on a bit. The only adjective I got from him was 'stately'. In fact, that's what he decreed.
John Bird: Oh, he's decreeing things now then, is he?
Peter Cook: Certainly. No pissing about with planning permission for Kubla. If he wants a stately pleasure dome, wallop! He decrees it.
John Bird: Yes, well why not?
Peter Cook: Why not, at his age?
John Bird: Did you bung him an estimate, then?
Peter Cook: No, it's a bit tricky, you see.
John Bird: What's the problem? A pleasure dome's straightforward enough. I don't know about this 'stately' though. What's this 'stately'? That's new to me. What's that? Plants? Hammocks? Not structural, is it?
Peter Cook: No, it's not structural, 'stately'. It's more of an ambience sort of area.
John Bird: Well then, we'll just budget for a regular pleasure dome, and see if we can pick up some stately trimmings down the market.
...
Peter Cook: ... Part of his decree, vis-à-vis the stately pleasure dome, is he has this bloody sacred river Alph running through the structure.
John Bird: A sacred river?
Peter Cook: Running right through the structure. He specified that.
John Bird: We'll need a plumber then. I can have Ronnie bodge up a river for you and we can bung up a sign saying 'Sacred River of Alph'. Something along those lines.
Peter Cook: Yes, but we've still got a problem with his specifications.
John Bird: What's that, then?
Peter Cook: These caverns he wants.
...
Peter Cook: ... with these caverns, you see, he's specified, here, on the docket there, 'measureless to man'.
John Bird: Measureless? He wants caverns you can't measure?
Peter Cook: Yes.
...

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 book of tea

is an excellent book by Kakuzo Okakura (isbn 0-486-200070-1). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

One of the cardinal concepts of Oriental thought, from even before the time of Confucius, has been the belief that alternating, diametrically opposed forces govern the universe, like day and night.

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

We must know the whole play in order to properly act our parts; the conception of totality must never be lost in that of the individual.

Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites.

It is much to be regretted that so much of the apparent enthusiasm for art in the present day has no foundation in real feeling.

We classify too much and enjoy too little.

requiem for C head cam

At the ACCU 2012 conference Uncle Bob gave his excellent keynote Requiem for C. Skillsmatter video'd the whole keynote and it will be available soon. As an experiment Uncle Bob gamely agreed to wear a Go Pro 2 head camera whilst giving the keynote! So here, possibly for the first time ever, are a few rough clips of what it's like to give a keynote.

smell-driven development

After much research by our scientists I can finally report a major advance in software methodology - smell driven development.

Our scientists have perfected a set of software metrics which accurately monitor the health of your software. These metrics are gathered in real time by our patented custom SmellWare servers. Each SmellWare server (prices to be announced shortly) is connected via USB to three glass vials and a sophisticated spray-atomizer.

• When the metrics read by the SmellWare server indicate your software is in a poor state, the atomizer will spray scent from the first glass vial.
• When the metrics indicate a further deterioration, the atomizer will spray scent from the second glass vial.
• When the metrics indicate a really disgusting codebase, the atomizer will spray scent from the third glass vial.

By choosing smells with an increasing tendency to get on the developers' olfactory nerves you can "visualize" the state of your codebase in a way that cannot be ignored!

The genius of this approach is that smell, being the oldest sense, has had the longest to evolve. The olfactory sense is, at the same time, both the most primitive sense and the most sophisticated. Even in humans about 1 in 50 genes is devoted to smell-related protein receptors!

Our odour scientists have studied the four aspects of threshold and tolerance; odour concentration, odour intensity, odour quality, and hedonic tone, and after extensive field testing the first (cheese based) vials are ready.

• Vial 1 (Yellow) is based on Pong-Leveque (Normandy) and is ranked "distinct, strong, and unpleasant" on the Odour Awareness scale.
• Vial 2 (Amber) is based on Epoisses de Pieds (Southern Italy) and is ranked "very strong, liable to cause rashes and sore eyes". (Epoisses de Pieds is banned from public transport in Italy).
• Vial 3 (Red) is based on Peixe-Podre et Meia (Northern Portugal) and is ranked "intolerable, liable to cause vomiting, diahorrea, and heart attacks". (Peixe-Podre et Meia is based on Blue-vein Smegma which had a 97% mortality rate before the EU made its manufacture a federal offense punishable by 25 years imprisonment.)

Believe us when we tell you that once your developers have experienced Peixe-Podre et Meia (Red) they will never again sit idly by while your codebase is merely in Epoisses de Pieds (Amber) state!

Bare bones ruby unit testing

This morning I spent a happy hour exploring a little of ruby's Test::Unit::TestCase. I started with this:

require 'test/unit'

class MyTest < Test::Unit::TestCase

  def test_one_plus_one_equals_two
    assert_equal 2, 1+1.1
  end

end

I wanted to see how little I needed to write my own, super-minimal implementation of Test::Unit::TestCase...

require 'test/unit'

class MyTest < MyTestCase

  def test_one_plus_one_equals_two
    assert_equal 2, 1+1.1
  end

end

After 204 traffic lights in cyber-dojo I ended up with this...

require 'assertion_failed_error'

class MyTestCase

  def self.test_names
    public_instance_methods.select{|name| name =~ /^test_/}
  end
  
  def assert_equal( expected, actual )
    message = 
      "#{expected.inspect} expected but was\n" +
      "#{actual.inspect}\n"
    assert_block(message) { expected == actual }
  end

  def assert_block( message )
    if (! yield)
      raise AssertionFailedError.new(message.to_s)
    end
  end

end

at_exit do
  ::ObjectSpace.each_object(Class) do |klass|
    if (klass < MyTestCase)
      klass.test_names.each do |method_name| 
        begin
          klass.new.send method_name
        rescue AssertionFailedError => error
          print "#{klass.name}:#{method_name}:\n" +
                "#{error.message}"
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

class AssertionFailedError < RuntimeError; end

which allowed me write...

require 'my_test_case'

class MyTest < MyTestCase

  def test_one_plus_one_equals_two
    assert_equal 2, 1+1.1
  end

end

and finally, I added this...

class MyTestCase
  ...
  def self.test( name, &block )
    define_method("test_#{name}".to_sym, &block)
  end
  ...
end

which allowed me to rewrite the test as...

require 'my_test_case'

class MyTest < MyTestCase

  test "1+1 == 2" do
    assert_equal 2, 1+1.1
  end

end

Fun :-)

my kanban 1's board game

Here's a slide deck explaining the essence of my kanban 1s board game. Jon Jaggers Kanban 1s Board Game

• You can play an early session with no clips so the players can see how inventory builds up (you can also push done story-cards to the next edge's corner, rather than waiting for them to be pulled).
• The clips that hold the story-cards are a crucial part of the game. They make it a kanban game.
• You can limit the number of clips per edge to create a natural work-in-progress (wip) limit.
• You can add a new rule: players can also spend a 1 to split a story-card in two, eg a 4 into a 3 and a 1 (assuming they have a spare clip).
• You can record the day a story-card comes off the backlog, and also the day it gets to done and thus measure the cycle time.
• You can simulate scrum-style discrete sprints.
• You can vary the number of dice at different edges.

hunger is the best source

I've previously blogged about being taught ITA spelling at primary school. About how it causes me spelling problems. I was reminded of this when speaking to Geir Amdal at the excellent Agile Coach Camp in Oslo. Geir showed me this wonderful blog post with lovely twist on the famous quote:

Knowledge is power.
Francis Bacon

It reminded me of something my Mum used to say to me when I was little:

Hunger is the best source.

For many many years I didn't understand what she was saying. I was seeing the word sauce as source. She was actually saying:

Hunger is the best sauce.

Food tastes better when you're hungry. Reflecting on my confusion I realize I'm actually quite proud of this mistake. This was a long time ago remember. I was a small boy at the time. Even then, it seems, software was calling me.

my kindle book-case

Here's a photo of the kindle I bought myself for Xmas.



When I bought my kindle I forgot to get a case to protect it. I searched around on a few sites looking for a case but didn't find anything I particularly liked. Before I knew it, it was time to head off to the awesome Agile Coach Camp Norway 2012. I wanted to take my kindle but needed a case to protect it. It was too late too order a case via the internet. But I had an idea. I could use a book! A regular old-fashioned hardback book.



I simply cut out a kindle-sized panel from the middle of about 100 pages and then glued the holed pages all together:



Viola, I have a case for my kindle. A book-case you might say.



I showed off my new book-case at the coach camp. It was a hit. At dinner one evening Marc Johnson mentioned he too has a kindle and loves it but misses the social aspect of a real book. The simple fact that most real books display the book's title on its front cover. People can see what you're reading. I sat next to a really interesting man on a plane once. He noticed I was reading Jerry Weinberg's Quality Software Management, vol 2, First-Order Measurement and asked me about it. We chatted away the whole flight.

My kindle book-case allows me to regain this missing social aspect. I can simply print the cover the publishers use for the real book and stick it to the front. So now I have something close to my ideal kindle case. It just needs a clear front cover sleeve so I can easily slide a cover in. And some kind of clasp. As a final bonus, I can pay homage to one of my favourite films:

Butter sighted at Olve's house

This is a photo of a pack of butter belonging to my good friend Olve Maudal. Olve has exactly 157 packs of butter in his house right now. All safely housed in his new super-sized fridge. Many of his 157 packs have been flown in specially by relatives visiting from abroad. Olve would only allow one pack out of the fridge for the photo. Even then he insisted it be taken out under the watchful eyes of the two security guards he's specially hired to guard the fridge - Lars by day and the other Lars by night. Well, you can't be too careful right now. Butter is selling for crazy money on the black (or should that be yellow) market.

Yes, it's just one small example of the butter shortage here in Norway at the moment. Apparently the cause is a new fat-rich fad-diet sweeping the population combined with the seasonal tradition of making butter-rich Xmas cookies.

Shortages like this are, as Stephen Fry might put it, quite interesting. At one point there was probably a very mild shortage. Word of the mild shortage started to spread (sorry) and anyone buying butter bought a few extra packets just to be safe. The shortage got a bit worse. Word of the worsening shortage spread further and faster. People bought even more. A self-fulfilling dynamic was thus set in place. Soon the shelves were stripped of all butter.

The shortage the customers are experiencing is, no doubt, fractally mirrored by the shops selling (or rather not selling) butter. Butter wholesalers just don't have enough butter to meet the orders from shops. Shops that get any butter get less than they ordered. Any butter the shops do get is bought in a flash (but only by relatively few people because of the bulk butter buying behaviour) and they're out of stock again. You can imagine the shop keepers pulling their hair out in exasperation. If only they could get more butter they could make a small fortune. But right when there's the most demand they have none on their shelves! They increase the size of their wholesale reorder hoping to cash in.

What will happen in a few weeks time? One possible (perhaps even likely) outcome, is that the wholesalers will finally get enough butter to meet their over-inflated orders. The shop keepers pile the butter onto their shelves and wait for the Krona to roll in... Some of the butter is sold. But not very much. After all, Xmas is now over. The fat-rich fad-diet has gone the way of all fads and the glossy magazines are now preaching a low-fat diet. And lets not forget that a fair percentage of the population has, like Olve, over 100 packets of butter in their new fridges. They're certainly not going to be buying butter any time soon.

The shop keepers then face the daunting prospect of vast butter-walls sitting unsold on their shelves, fast approaching its sell-by date. Lowering the price doesn't help. It all has to be thrown away. Again the same thing will be fractally mirrored at the smaller scale. Lots of people, such as Olve, will have more butter than they can possibly use in time. They too will have to throw out loads of butter as it goes past its use-by date.

The same lurching from one extreme to another can happen when the number of people trying to make phone calls starts to approach network capacity. People can't get through. So they try again. And when they do get through the line gets dropped. So when they do get through they stay on a bit longer. It happens on roads too.

It's dangerous to run systems at full capacity. They reach a tipping point and topple into a death spiral. Busy work and inventory pile up. That causes even more busy work and even more inventory. But almost no butter is being bought or sold. There is no flow.

The Princess Bride

is an excellent book by William Goldman (isbn 0-7475-4518-9). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

It's still my favourite book in all the world. And more than ever, I wish I had written it.

This is my favourite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

Miracles. Giants. True love.

Eyes like the sea before a storm.

We are but poor circus performers.

Absolutely, totally, and, in all other ways, inconceivable

Then one morning, Inigo was gone. In his place were three words: "I must learn" on a note pinned to his pillow.

I am not left-handed.

What you do not smell is called iocane powder.

Don't you rush me, sonny, you rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.

I AM THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS AND THERE WILL BE NO SURVIVORS.

More CyberDojos

I ran a CyberDojo at the excellent Tampere goes Agile conference recently (left photo). It got a 100% green card vote.

A few days later I ran another CyberDojo for the devs at Solita Oy, also in Tampere. A nicer bunch of people you couldn't ask to meet.

And a few days after that I ran yet another CyberDojo at the Ericsson Agile conference in Helsinki (right photo). @jussikm @htaubert and @karmolis tweeted that it was the most fun they'd had at work in 2011.