Month: August 2010

bookmark_borderI was in Edinburghertown

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I’m alive!

Speaking of which, who sings that song? The one in the Five Alive advert with the Dodo? Anyone? CBATG…

Having been and went and done Edinburgh on Sunday, I had planned to write up some blog posts but, alas, I’m old now and an entire day drinking takes an undue toll and leaves me moulded to the sofa with only enough energy to make toast and coffee every couple of hours.

That said, it was fun, as it usually is, spending a day in the mania that is Edinburgh at festival time and, amongst several pubs, many beers and a rather delicious burger in Holyrood 9A, we even managed to catch a short comedy show, Ronna and Beverly which included Mike McShane as one of their guests and even he seemed a delightfully bemused by the two bickering Jewish Matriarchs. Thankfully, despite pointing out the “Three young gentlemen” at the start of their show, they didn’t pick on us. They did, however, mention a sexual practice called “Dog in the bathtub”, which was new to me.

Yeah, I wouldn’t google for that at work though.

Also don’t google “one man and a jar”. EVER. I’m serious. Just hearing about it… ohhh no I can’t even think about it again… *barf*

I’m serious, I know you are all thinking… ohh it can’t be that bad, I’ll have seen worse. Trust me. Don’t do it. And yes, I should probably not even mention it here but part of me is interested to see which of you perverted sickos will go and look at it (apparently a couple of people I follow on Twitter made that mistake. To them I apologise, but I DID WARN YOU!!).

Anyway, the ‘we’ in question was myself and my best mates Stuart and Keith, unfortunately the other two usual suspects, Ian and Bill, couldn’t make it. Bill lives in Holland now (yes, I know, I WILL VISIT SOON!) and Ian was working in Ireland. So, being the type of good friends we are we shared some of the joy of drinking beer outside in the sunshine by emailing pics of said beer to Ian. He really, really did appreciate it. Honest.

The advantage of having friends you’ve known for a long time is that some things never change. We’ve many good shared memories, despite the fact we all tend to forget things, like each other’s birthdays, the fact my Dad had a heart attack several years ago (“Your Dad had a heart attack? When?” “Ehhh like 6 years ago” “ohhhh, ohhh yeah…”) amongst others. And one advantage of having a mate who works at the festival every year is that he knows all the little pubs that sell good beer and are never that busy. Hic.

Always good to spend time with my friends, just chilling out and talking bollocks. As friends are wont to do. It’s also good to revisit many of the old jokes and, as usual, make drunken promises of holidays and visits knowing fine well it’ll likely be Christmas before we are all together again. Yes, yes indeed, a good time was had.

bookmark_borderThe Presumption of Common Sense

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If there is one phrase which should set off alarms in the mind of a technical writer it’s when a developer says “Ohhh but they wouldn’t use it like that…”.

Because, as I’m sure you all know, they will.

I am currently working with a few people to try and pull together a solid set of product usage recommendations. We provide an SDK and a feature rich application built using our own technology, and that application is extended and configured for specific uses. There are plenty of hook points in there and, for the most part, usage follows accepted patterns. However there is always the time when a certain component is bent and twisted and used in a way we hadn’t expected and it’s these instances that we are trying to understand and capture.

We get a view of them by exploring edge cases when testing, but it occurred to me that there is still one thing that can catch us out. Our old nemesis, ‘presumption’ (which is usually coupled with it’s friend ‘common sense’).

So now I’m on red alert for any statements which are based on presumption. Sometimes they are right, but it’s the times when they are wrong that we need to explore them, capture them and help our customers by giving them some frame of acceptable usage. It’s not an exact science, but even just pausing to have those short conversations seems to be helping.

bookmark_borderGoing out

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Quick house sale update: We had a viewer and they liked the house. They are waiting on receiving offers on their place though, but still, progress! Exciting! And other exclamation mark worthy statements!!

One thing I’ve been starting to do over the past few months is get out more. Meet up with people, even just for a coffee or a drink, or just spending time wandering about Glasgow meeting random people. People like Svetlana.

But I’m not going to talk about Svetlana (don’t worry I’ll introduce her to you all soon*).

I’m a pretty confident guy and share the ability to talk to anyone with my sister, although admittedly I can’t quite match her words-a-second ratio (I can only presume she’s mastered circular breathing as she can talk for minutes WITHOUT ONCE DRAWING BREATH!), so I’m quite happy sitting in a bar on my own or chatting to shop keepers and the like.

It feels good to be out and about in the city, and I can’t wait to move into it (or at least to the edges of it) and whilst I know there are drawbacks, it’ll be good to at least feel a part of something.

Clubs will be next, as in joining some, not battering baby seals to death. I’ve a couple in mind which should keep me out of trouble, add in joining a local gym and I’ll need to remember to leave sometime for just chilling out and reading books.

Speaking of which, have you ordered a copy of Dance Your Way To Psychic Sex yet? It’s avery limited print run of an excellent book, well worth the money! I’d also happily recommend Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll which WILL make you laugh, guaranteed!** I’m reading it at the moment and have been asked to stop laughing so much!

And yes, it is a COMPLETE COINCIDENCE that both books have the word SEX in the title (Hello Google!).

* she’s not a person

** not really but it really will make you chuckle!

bookmark_border56

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I’ve been gamed.

Or rather, I’m gaming myself.

I’m fully aware this is happening, and yet I’m actually enjoying letting my behaviour be dictated by the simplest of mechanisms, a number displayed on a screen.

The premise is simple enough, the higher the number the better.

I started at about 44 and slowly rose, week after week until it hit 55.3. It peaked there for a while and then crept up further, plateauing at 55.5.

I thought that would be it, and if I’m honest I almost accepted it for a while. 55.5 would be the highest it would go and there wasn’t much else I could do if I wanted to influence it.

Except that’s not true.

With such systems it’s always possible to eek a little more from the working set of parameters, adapting in finer and finer increments until you get a perceptible gain.

It’s been a long time but in the past couple of weeks 55.7 was reached, then 55.9 was touched, all too briefly. The last week saw the number fluctuate, 55.8, 55.9, 55.8, 55.9.

Such torment!

And then, finally, on Sunday the display read 56!

I know I’ve been gaming myself, using the number to adjust things, changing this and that to keep it rising higher and higher. I could probably keep going but at some point there must come a balance and I’m happy enough with things as they are.

Yes, 56 is a good number. I’m happy with 56.

bookmark_borderAn honest to god miracle

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Have I mentioned the tour of the brewery from last weekend? I don’t think I have.

Was a company thing, a tour of the WEST brewery in Glasgow, which follows strict German brewing guidelines, followed by a BBQ of German meat products (and some salad stuff) and lots of free drinks.

LOTS and LOTS of free drinks. So many that, to our eternal Scottish shame we didn’t even use all of our free beer tokens! (I’m expecting to be excommunicated soon).

It’s safe to say I was quite merry. Quite merry indeed.

In fact, it was only on Tuesday that someone reminded me that, in amongst several pints of a delicious amber nectar called Munich Red, a couple of rounds of shots, we’d also quaffed a few jugs of cocktails. THAT’S how merry I was.

It was a bit silly of me, considering I had a surprise afternoon tea party the very next day, but you know how these things go. Best intentions soon go out of the window when the beer starts to flow and the laughs certainly help distract you from both the amount you are drinking, and just how fast the clock is moving. Ohhh the stories I could tell, but I won’t.

I mean it wouldn’t be fair to point out that someone got so drunk they fell over (not big, not clever but double-trouble funny as he took out another guy on his way down). And I certainly wouldn’t mention who it was that happily accepted £1.71 to eat a slice of sausage that had been on the floor, dunked in dregs of beer and other such ‘garnishes’. And there is no way I’ll bring up THAT conversation with THAT guy which really only confirmed some suspicions and left me pondering some aspects of myself.

It was a good afternoon/night.

And the best bit? The best bit was probably Sunday morning. Wakening up slowly, waiting for the pounding headache to kick in. AND NOTHING HAPPENED!!

It was a miracle! A MIRACLE, I TELLS YA!!

Normally, even though it was spread out over a many hours, and there was some hearty eating in there too, I’d still have woken up with a bit of a ‘head’. I think it’s down to the beer I was drinking being brewed fresh in the building, with no additives or chemicals.  A very pleasant surprise indeed.

It’s almost enough to make me join CAMRA.

bookmark_borderTCUK10 – quick guide

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This is an update to a previously published post.

Not all of the sessions are scheduled yet, so I’ll update this as and when but, if you are wanting a quick print out of the session to, for example, convince your boss to splash some cash, then hopefully this PDF will do the trick:
Technical Communications Conference 2010.

(Note: a similar PDF is also available from the conference website but I think mine is prettier :p)