Posterous Migration [UPDATE]

I just migrated all my posterous posts to here, it decided to post all the drafts I had in posterous. This might take a little time to fix. 🙂

UPDATE: if it isn’t all fixed respond to this post and I’ll fix it.

To put it all in perspective!

To put it all in perspective! xkcd: Tests View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s post »

Star Trek: The QR Borg

Clayton Morris Awesome Borg Star Trek T-ShirtsTaylor Morgan has come up with a use for the QR code that’s actually quite clever. He’s printed it on the side of a Borg Cube, and when you scan the code, it reads, “We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.”http://society6.com/TaylorMorgan#11=49&4=75 View or comment on Dani??l Crompton’s photo »

Scrum Masters as Sri Ganesha’s pundits #agile #xp

You would probably not associate a god from the Indian pantheon with an Agile methodological, and there are many things that can be learned for Scrum masters from Ganesh.

In Scrum the Scrum Master focuses on 4 key areas:

• remove impediments
• buffer against distracting influences
• enforcer of rules
• focusing team on tasks

Ganesha is the Lord of Obstacles, both material and spiritually. And is worshiped as the remover of obstacles, although he also places obstacles in the path of worshipers. The Scrum Master also removes the impediments and places obstacles in the path of the team members. Ganesha fans his ears constantly to symbolize that often words are spoken, but one is not receiving inside. This is what happens when the length of the meetings is too long, or it digresses off-topic. This is also what the broken tusk is said to symbolize, with oneness of mind and single-minded devotion you can achieve everything. In your team you can keep your focus by focussing the energies on the ability of the team to create results, and allowing the members to achieve.

Image source: Vijay Bandari – Wikipedia, Anamika S

How large is a Two-Pizza Team? #scrum #xp

After reading about 2 pizza teams in Wired UK 03.12, I read that the comment came from Werner Vogels, the Amazon CTO. He says prefers two-pizza teams; “technology teams working on a given project typically can be fed by no more than two pizzas—usually eight or fewer people.” This makes no sense to me, and I’m sure you may find the same.

I can easily eat a 13″ pizza at one sitting. A 13″ pizza has an area of approximately 856.3 cm², the largest size that Dominos Pizza makes is 16″ with an area of approximately 1297 cm². This means that I would be full at approximately 66% of the 16″ pizza, when I split it evenly the pizza only feeds two and leaves us both a little hungry.

Read more articles on Agile, SCRUM or XP…

How does Vogels think he can feed up to 8 people with 2 pizzas?

Image source: VirtualErn

Just Finished Reading: Comedy Writing Secrets #book

I was given this book sometime ago, Comedy Writing Secrets, and had started reading it a number of times and was easily distracted by other books. I was wrong to put it down!

The main focus is writing, and it covers stand up as this is the primary way that comedy is usually delivered. I felt there could be an advantage to most of my work, whether this is written or spoken. The jokes in the text make it a joy to read, and the exercises helped to engrain the lessons in my mind.

A great read.

Still using Dvorak. 😉

Image source:

The Ladders’ fictional Betty Boss is hiring #recruitment

The Ladders created a fictional recruiter Betty Boss and interviewed her for the newsletter. They also share the reasons Betty didn’t hire me, so I would like to respond to fictional Betty Boss:

Hi Betty, thanks for allowing me to respond.

I never saw your resume

That’s true, you asked the recruiter to not reveal the company they were hiring for. They also couldn’t tell me the price they wanted to pay for my skills, so I didn’t send it. In the same way I am one of many, you are also just one of many.

Just Finished Reading “The Big Yin” #books

I was standing in a secondhand book store with my father, and we wandered round browsing when I spotted Jonathan Margolis’ The Big Yin, he told me I should get it and read it.

The Big Yin is the biography of Billy Connolly, a Scots comedian, musician, presenter and actor. The book is almost as funny as Billy, and tells the story of a boy who followed his dream to be a musician, and discovered he was better at talking in between the songs. A man accused of selling out, but following his dream to Hollywood fame.

Billy’s story is also a sad one, a battered and neglected child. Alienated from his mother, unable to sustain a relationship. Battling with alcoholism and workaholism. The only thing Billy can truly be accused of selling out to is a life many of his accusers can only dream of

A great book about an inspiring man.

Musing: Why can I fly solo?

After seeing a program about a lifecoach trying to find the time to get his pilot’s license I was struck by an in escapable fact: Aspiring pilots can flight solo without a license based on the opinion of their flight instructor. In fact it is a requirement that an aspiring pilot have experience flying alone before being able to get a pilot’s license.

This is naturally unthinkable when it comes to driving a car, yet an aspiring pilot without a license can. As I was musing on this I created a risk matrix.

vehicle	max. kills[1]	kills/2009[2]
car	>60	1.2 million
airplane	2988	1103

<sub>1. Airplane Accidents
2. Car Accident (Epidemiology)</sub>

What I see as one of the main reasons that a aspiring pilot would be allowed to fly solo is simply: Aviation accidents cause less collatoral damage. And there is less chance of another pilot causing an accident.

The Register: Too Quick In Writing Things Off

Again The Register writes off technologies that are still functioning. In OpenSocial, OpenID, and Google Gears: Three technologies for history’s dustbin they proudly pronounce the death of Google’s OpenSocial – even though there are 16 sites using it including LinkedIn, Plaxo, Hi5 and MySpace – Google’s Gears and OpenID.

I guess if I can end-of-life something on a whim, anybody can.

Technorati Tags: openid, google, gears, linkedin, myspace, theregister