Writing ... or Just Practicing?

Back in June, when I signed my life away and made my pact with the blue badge, it seemed like a good idea to restrain my exuberance in one or two areas. Wandering aimlessly around the world attending conferences, and pleading with Web site editors to buy my articles, were obvious first steps. And a quick sanitization of my own Web site seemed like a good idea - trying to tempt any unwary dev shop I could find to give me a job was probably not a good idea either. And, in particular, losing the PowerPoint presentation that grumbled about the lack of inspiration and direction in the Web world seemed like a really positive move. Especially as it was robust enough to need words with asterisks in. Read More...

I seem to have spent a large proportion of my time this month worrying about health. OK, so a week of that was spent in the US where, every time I turned on the TV, it scared me to death to see all the adverts for drugs to cure the incredible range of illnesses I suppose I should be suffering from. In fact, at one stage, I started making a list of all the amazing drugs I'm supposed to "ask my doctor about", but I figured if I was that ill I'd probably never have time to take them all. They even passed an "assisted suicide" law while I was there, and I can see why they might need it if everyone is so ill all of the time. Read More...

It may seem like this week's disjointed ramblings follows on from last week's topic, in some lexographically eerie and unexpected way. I can assure you that this wasn't intentional - the capability to avoid straying off topic during the course of a single short article has so far always eluded me, and I see no reason for that situation to have changed. After all, there's no sign yet that I'm actually getting the hang of this blogging thing. Still, at least I'm not frightened of computers, as are some people in my age group. Read More...

So I was on-site at a dev shop the other day watching three guys fighting with a printer. It seems they needed some particular project report to send to a customer, and the printer was refusing to play ball. I watched them try various combinations of "press-and-hold" buttons on the printer, check the network cable, try printing from another program, try printing from another computer, ping the printer, and reinstall the printer drivers a couple of times. Read More...

I just discovered last week that I'm supposed to be able to "moving quickly and lightly", be "as sleek and agile as a gymnast", and be "fleet of foot". Either that or I'm supposed to be an X-ray and Gamma ray astronomical satellite belonging to the Italian Space Agency. Not much hope of any of these happening, I guess. Probably I shouldn't have decided to search the Web and see what "agile" actually means (and, in case you are wondering, the Italian satellite is called Astrorivelatore Gamma ad Immagini LEggero. Read More...