In trying to organise our Christmas vacation, I’m visiting the Russian consulate to organise my Visa. I’m heading there tomorrow as it works out conveniently for myself and our client (it’s only open between 9am-noon) but I need a passport photo. Panic set in this afternoon as I had to print my digital photos and I got home rather late. Luckily enough, my local Boots was open (in fact, right up to 10pm and it took me less than a minute to print. Love it!
Last week I heard that the project I just rolled off was a huge success, both for our UK office (in terms of significant wins and growth), as well as the development team (for the freedom of both process and technology choices). When I started work on the project, I was working with Joe Walnes, and one of the project’s foundation principles was about making technology and process decisions that helped to reduce the build time (and therefore delivery time). I have been on, and heard about, many other projects that end up with several staged builds, leading to the average developer build of around an hour. When I left, we had a sub-minute build (including end to end testing) and a deployable application with a dependency on only Java 5 and Ant (but okay, it’s not a huge system yet).
I’m posting this entry so that somewhere I hope that someone learns something which they apply in optimising their own build (or even sharing their strategies) to make their projects even more agile. What follows is a list of some of the more significant decisions we made, and more importantly, why we made them. (more…)
‘Nuff said!
After catching up with people from work for Dim Sum today (think of Yum Cha for all you Aussies), I was going to head to Bar Italia to have a coffee. Everyone seemed to be in the mood for a bit of a coffee break so we all headed there together. Located in the heart of Soho, Bar Italia attracts all sorts of people for its food, drink and buzzing atmosphere. It is located just opposite Ronnie Scott’s (the most well known Jazz club in London apparently), and has plenty of tables and chairs lining the pavement.
While Monmouth has been the most popular coffee for those in the office (and I’m yet to have a bad one from there), Bar Italia’s coffee is actually quite comparable and was well prepared. Their hot chocolate the same standard as Amato’s (it’s powdered stuff) but, I was told by one of people who had it, that it was pretty decent. It seems like a place where people go to people watch, as many of them sit on one side of the table, simply facing the street instead of each other.
The street Bar Italia is located on is not as busy as other streets in Soho, but still has its fair share of people walking around and seeing the sights. It is right next to the bar/restaurant Little Italy (which is currently closed – sorry He Who Knows but I won’t be able to do a review for now). The food offerings, looking at the small menu, appeared fairly good but seeing as we just ate lunch, I was in no big rush to try anything. It’s a great little café, located on a great street and manages to serve really good coffee.
Details:Bar Italia
Found on: 22 Frith Street, Soho, W1D 4RF
Contactable on: 020 7437 4520
Highlights: Great coffee and is great for those that are into a slightly buzzing atmosphere and potential for lots of people watching,
Room for improvement:I’m not too sure it would be too pleasant sitting outside on the pavement during bad weather, and it’s unfortunately a little small inside.
The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10
All the projects I have ever worked on have never been technically difficult (in fact I think that most of them in the world are not). The biggest challenge I find is learning the language that all the people who work daily on the project speak in. To put this in context, after rolling onto my newest project, my biggest problem has been trying to understand what it is exactly that everyone speaks of because, to me, it almost seems like a completely different language. There are certain patterns that I am trying to use to come up to speed quicker. I am sure that there are established learning patterns, but I thought it might be useful to share some of the ones that I use.
Decode the Acronyms – Most languages have an abbreviation for extremely repetitive terms that are important to people in the domain. Decoding acronyms helps with the next pattern of Defining the Vocabulary.
Define the Vocabulary – Think of the ubiquitous language from Eric Evans’ Domain Driven Design and simply put, is used to translate special terms people involved with the domain into something a person who does not know anything about the domain can relate to. Fortunately for me, the Vocabulary on my current assignment has been documented pretty well. I find that repeating them in daily conversations with people who know about the domain (and can correct me) is a useful technique for truly understanding what they mean.
Adopt the Grammar – Common words are especially dangerous on a new project because they are things you assume mean one thing but when put together in a special way or in a different context, can mean something totally different. Adopting the grammar is a lot more readily accomplished once you have learned the vocabulary.
Discover the History – New languages emerge because once they are understood, they can be a more effective communications mechanism for operating in the same context. Discovering the history is about finding out where the vocabulary and terms come from, and why they are used in the way that they are. These factors can come from many sources including technical, political, environment or just conventional.
On Saturday I took a trip up to Oxford to visit my good friend Kath from back home. I’d been meaning to visit her since I got here as she’s come down to visit me twice now, so I thought this weekend was as good as any. There are several ways of getting to Oxford but by far, the best I know of is the series of buses called the Oxford Tube. In almost all ways, the Oxford Tube is much better than anything that the London Public Transport department has to offer. The double-decker buses that come almost every ten minutes operate 24 hours and are fully air-conditioned, outfitted with reclining and very comfortable seats and a toilet to boot. The buses have three pick up and drop off points in London city (one very conveniently a ten minute walk from me at Notting Hill Gate) taking about one and a half hours to get to the high street in Oxford city.
Despite the prediction of gloomy and drizzly weather, we were spoilt with almost clear blue skies for most of day and got to see Oxford when it was most spectacular. There is an open topped tour bus that takes you around to all of the different sights to see, but because we had Kath as our own little tour guide, we got to see it from a completely different and most probably much better angle.
Unlike the universities we have back home or in the United States, Oxford is laid out as if the entire city is the campus. Students must be affiliated with a college that is really more an association that anything (only the freshers or first year students tend to stay on campus) and are strewn between the cafes, pubs and stores of the city. The actual University buildings are a little bit further out but things are within a decent walking distance made even shorter by a bike or bus ride. Every college is extremely private with visitors not generally welcomed and the grounds kept pristine at all times. We had a good laugh at the story that Kath told us of the beautifully green grass that college members had “grass privileges” for in the summer time allowing them to sit on it, or play croquet only between the times of 11 and 1. Having said that I suppose there were very good reasons it was as green and lush as it was.
The town itself is beautiful filled with many historic and well maintained buildings linked together by a series of cobblestone paths. We saw many sights including Carfax Tower (the best aerial view of Oxford), Christ Church (one of the largest colleges surrounded by stunning gardens and rivers full of rowers and punters), the Radcliffe Square and Radcliffe Camera, the Bodleian Library (that stocks all of the published articles and journals in the world), and the Bridge of Sighs (a model of the famous Ponte de Sospiri in Venice). All the buildings are intricately detailed with stunning stone work and heads of people, dragons and gargoyles adorning the outside.
We had a great lunch at the pub, Far from the Madding Crowds, and indulged in the whole café, market and book culture (the amazingly huge Blackwell’s). It was a great day thanks to Kath and we headed back completely tired and content.
Obie posted this entry that coincided with an issue I’ve been thinking of for the last few days. I probably need more time to refine this but at the least I think when errors occur in programs they should, at the very minimum, describe:
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