Indoor lightning
October 29, 2004
I woke up about twenty minutes before my alarm rang this morning. My initial thought was to go back to sleep, of course, but this turned out to be difficult because I really needed to pee. So, I got up, waddled to the door and hit the lightswitch, whereupon one of the lightbulbs flashed like lightning and shattered into a thousand pieces. The fuse blew as well, so by now I was standing barefoot in the dark with shards of glass all over my floor. Drat.
Luckily I managed to escape my room without cutting myself to pieces. I flipped the automatic fuse, found a pair of shoes and went back into my room to pick up the largest pieces of the old lightbulb. I had to hoover to get up the smallest pieces of course, and by the time I was finished with that my alarm had gone off.
The moral of the story is: life punishes you if you get up early.
Pragmatic investment plan update
October 24, 2004
Just a little update on my progress acomplishing the goals listed in my PIP. I have:
- reviewed Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck (excellent book)
- started learning a foreign language
- had more than 100 unique ip hits on my website
I’m a bit unsure if I should count the last one, as it was on days when I released new versions of my software projects on Freshmeat.
New Debian repo
October 24, 2004
I have moved my Debian packages from brautaset.org/debian to debian.brautaset.org. I used mini-dinstall to set this up, and I can update it a lot more easily now. Expect more frequent updates of my Debian packages. For starters, I’ve updated many of my packages.
I have also removed the old link from my old arch archive location to the new one. I used to keep it for backwards compatibility, but it is now many months since I changed and enough is enough. I have a strong dislike for multiple paths to the same information.
This entry is outdated. I no longer provide a debian repo. However, ggtl and sl are available in debian etch and beyond.
Once upon a blue moon
October 18, 2004
This evening, on this day, a rare event happened. I myself am almost delirious, not quite able to fathom the extent of what I have just done. I watched and waited patiently as the smooth, cold steel I was holding grew hot between my hands. In front of me, I had prepared a high table, covered with a close-fitting cloth of heat-resistant fabric.
I let the hot steel fly; over and over I let it slide over rough fabric, heating and smoothening it between the metallic cloth and the hot steel I was wielding. Recalling memories of skills long lost, I eventually managed to mold the fabric before me into a shape resembling that of the legends of old.
Rest assured I will not iron my shirts again any time soon.
Project updates galore
October 17, 2004
Just uploaded new releases for sl, options and ggtl. I’ve also added releases for them to Freshmeat, as usual. I also added ggtl-games to Freshmeat. We’ll see how that is received…
GGTL games bundle available
October 16, 2004
I have prepared a tarball containing the Othello and Connect4 games previously bundled with GGTL. It is available for download in the GGTL section.
Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
October 11, 2004
- Author: Kent Beck
- ISBN: 0-201-61641-6
Software development projects can be fun,
productive, and even daring. Yet they can consistently
deliver value to a business and remain under
control.
The book consists of three main parts made up of 27 chapters, all crammed into 166 pages (not counting the glossary and index). The first part explains the problem with current software development practices. The second part covers how Extreme Programming (XP) provides a solution to the problem. The third part covers how your team can make the switch to XP.
Beck uses the act of driving a car as a metaphor for the XP software development process. Carefully pointing a car in the right direction, locking the steering wheel in a death-grip and flooring the accelerator is seldom a good way of getting from A to B. Sure, you must have the “big picture” idea of where you’re going and how to get there, but you should be prepared to apply constant small adjustments to the direction, brake and accelerator as you go along to make sure you stay on the road. Additionally, you better be prepared to ask for directions unless you know exactly where you’re going.
One concept introduced early on is the four variables of a software development project: cost, time, quality and scope. To successfully develop a high-quality project on time and to budget, external forces (customers and managers) get to decide the value of any three of these variables and the development team gets to decide the value of the fourth. Beck explains how quality and time tends to suffer when external forces get to pick the value of all the four variables, leaving you with crappy software behind schedule.
The importance of testing, refactoring, pair programming and short release cycles is stressed throughout the book, as is keeping a constant dialog with the customer. Also covered is how to manage an XP team, as well as the various “specialist” roles (coach, tracker, tester, etc) within the team itself.
One feeling I am left with after reading this book is that the term Extreme Programming is a terrible misfit. The term, at least to me, conjures up an image of tireless programmers holed up in a cave of computers programming hard & fast for 36 hours a day. However, this is not at all an accurate image. In my opinion, the processes and concepts described in this book are better described as Extremely Sensible Programming. Hardly as catchy though.
Should you read this book? Yes, I think so.
Once more, with feeling
October 9, 2004
Nadia and I finally got around to see the famed all singing, all dancing episode of Buffy last night. It was great, though the singing was cringeworthy in places. Tara had quite a good voice, however, I noted that Willow didn’t sing a line (on her own, anyway). Dawn’s escape-attempt dance was quite good too.
New releases
October 7, 2004
Yesterday I announced pre-releases of several of my software projects (namely, ggtl, options and sl). The common theme among them is that I’ve dropped the package-framework configure and build system in favour of the GNU Autotools. The reason for this was that I wanted my software to offer shared libraries, which they now do.
All three releases are available for download from my projects section.
Early hours
October 1, 2004
Had to be at work at 7 today, so had arranged for a minicab to pick me up at 6:30. I had set my alarm at 6, but things always take a bad turn when I’m due to get up at weird or unusual hours. This time it manifested itself in me weaking up at 5 and not being able to go to sleep again for love nor money. sigh
