Now, 25th July, 2016

Thinking aboutMy lightening talk on Risk Analysis and RFC 1149 for the first Asynchrony Labs internal conference on Friday 15th July. This is the first talk I've done where I've been recorded. There was applause, I survived. Stimuli and inputPeter Drucker's article Managing Oneself

Cover band names

Every once in a while you hear a phrase and think, "That would be a good band name." These are my current favourites: 1. No Visible Cow 2. Flying with Cats 3. Angry Hatstand 4. Unexploded Balm 5. Decaf Piranha 6. Teacup Hierarchy 7. Grumpy Old Queen 8.

Now, 4th June 2016

Thinking aboutScala. I'm new on a team doing a Scala project and learning how to write code and tests. It bothers me when training for Scala spends half the time saying how dumb and awful Java is, there's no need for that. I felt a lot

Recipe: Rock Cakes

Why yes, I am pathologically incapable of following a recipe as given. I assembled this from several recipes online and tweaked it to work with US measures. I made two batches, my other substitutions are below. This is a good recipe for using up small amounts of dried fruit and

Now, 23 April 2016

Thinking aboutWays to do my job that accommodate being a practitioner as well as a manager. I slid into a part-time gig on my old team, working under the guidance of my former apprentice and that feels fantastic. It took a couple of weeks of being there to feel back

Books to re-read

I was that child in school who read the encyclopaedia, cover to cover, Aardvark to Zulu. I got six books a week from Ipswich Library every Saturday while my parents did the grocery shopping, I read my way through the children's library and branched out to adult science

Name the skull!

I went with "Skulliver."

Now, 23rd March 2016

Thinking aboutThere are 36 Quality Advocates at Asynchrony Labs, in three offices across two states. It's a lot of people and I don't want to be a bottleneck for them getting stuff done. How do I best enable them to do good work? About the best

I drove a race car!

On Saturday 19th, I went out to Gateway Motorsports Park in Illinois, and I drove a V8 600hp 4-speed Nascar vehicle on the track. My top speed was 106mph, and I had a blast! I have a new respect for power steering, because the race car didn't have

Manager-speak

* Great idea, how can I help you do that? * What do you want to set as your goals? * Are you happy? * Do you need anything, that I can legally provide within the bounds of this company? * You did an awesome job with X! I really liked how you Y and