09.28.06
Posted in rants at 6:04 am by stickupkid
And while I’m on the subject of Agile…
If anyone (credible or otherwise) starts railing against Agile (capital-A) as a bad thing, chances are they have missed the point. The fact that a senior voice at Google has joined the chorus of folk slagging agile without taking the time to understand it goes a long way to showing the dire state the IT industry is in today. Everyone is always too ready to call bullsh*t on any new trend, for fear it might upset their applecart and require learning new skills. Yes, Google boys, your interviews might be hard, but they don’t test for innovation or rational thought - only alpha-geekiness. Hence the “no delete button in gmail” fiasco. Hence Google boys feeling they have to “debunk” Agile and similar.
In a futile effort to clarify the debate for everyone once again:
Agile is for a set of specific circumstances:
- Limited budget
- Hard deadline
- Uncertain or poorly understood technology
… check the details of the approach in these terms and it comes clear…
- Test-driven development: because your underlying tech probably is buggy.
- Pair programming: because in a week they will be the two world experts.
- No requirements documents: because you don’t have time.
- No status update (or other, preferably) meetings: because you _really_ don’t have time.
- Deliver early, deliver often: because at least if you run out of budget, there’s _something_ to show for it.
- (SCRUM) Meet for brief periods of time to let your team know what you are doing for the next 24hrs and what they might have to do to make sure it happens: because you don’t have time to wait for each other to catch up.
… and so on, and so forth. Agile is a good approach to a particular problem. Much like Assembler is a good approach to particular problems, Django is a good approach to particular problems, Wasabi is probably a pile of bollocks, and J2EE is a solution looking for a problem. 
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Posted in tech at 5:51 am by stickupkid
Well, Joel has gone and had a brain fart again. After succeeding in destroying all his geek credentials with a mal-formed and ill-advised rant against rails while extolling the virtue of his own, proprietary, scripting language (wasabi), Joel has moved on to basically talk bollocks about agile programming in general, spurrred on by Google’s Steve Yegge.
James Robertson (who writes an awesome blog on Smalltalk goodness) sums it up better than I could (strongly suggest the visit), but it really seems like Joel is in some kind of ‘destroy your cred’ competition at the moment. With, I don’t know, K-Fed or something.
Apparently, Joel is still in the camp of folk working in software who still think that Agile programming is new and amazing, lots of “beta” tags and magic, as opposed to a fairly unamazing and effective approach to completing a project in a small space of time, with limited resources. Of course, this is the antithesis of Steve Yegge and Google’s world, where smart people get to hang out and never finish anything. Agile this is not.
So a quick refresher for everyone out there:
- Agile has been around for many many years now. Not as many as C, but almost exactly as many as J2EE (and that ain’t no coincidence, people).
- Agile == limited resources, small teams, defined end date. It’s a process of optimising for a limited budget, shifting technology, small teams and a hard deadline. Those are the only circumstances where it works perfectly, and unsurprisingly moving these factors causes “hiccups”.
- “Good agile” a la Steve Yegge (no end date, do what you want, unlimited resources) is *not* agile. It’s just plain bloated. Agile is, and always was, about doing the best you can with what little you have - something Google may have somewhat forgotten in the path to the largest market cap in history. C’est la vie, I guess.
- To summarise: Time, budget, scope. Pick two.
(Not rocket science, I know - but it had to be said).
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09.24.06
Posted in funb at 9:43 am by stickupkid
“This guy has put some amazing effort into perfecting NY-style wood-fired pizza”:http://www.sliceny.com/jvpizza.php - having had something similar from “Mario Republic”:http://www.eatability.com.au/au/sydney/pizza_mario_republic.htm in Sydney, I suspect his technique would be worth it. All in the dough, my friends…
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Posted in rants at 9:36 am by stickupkid
Well, I just returned from an attempt to fly to New Zealand today. Clearly, an *unsuccessful* attempt.
I scored the flight through QANTAS’s frequent flier scheme (which incidentally is one of the worst in the world), which meant I didn’t have a direct Sydney=>Auckland flight - QANTAS don’t let you take spare capacity but rather only specifically allocated frequent flier seating, which means you end up on really strange journeys - like today, Sydney->Melbourne->Auckland.
So, I got to Melbourne okay (getting pretty used to that flight) and got on the next leg. About 1/3 of the way over the Tasman, the captain found a warning of a possible engine malfunction, so turned back… _to Sydney_.
Now, safety is a priority when you’re in a metal cylinder hurtling through the sky, held aloft by hope and excessive speed. However, I couldn’t help but taste some bitter irony on landing in Sydney, back where I began. Oh well, at least I got to go home, unlike all the rest of the passengers!
(Special mention must go out to the passenger in Business Class who loudly complained that they had a meeting with the President of Chile and that the QANTAS peon should go order a plane to turn around and fly them to Auckland immediately. It was such a stereotype I kept expecting Ashton Kutcher to show up).
… I loooove flying…
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Posted in rants, tech at 8:29 am by stickupkid
Yes kids, it’s back! I took delivery on Friday of my Macbook… completely unrepaired. Yes, since I was no longer working in Melbourne, I had to collect my still unrepaired laptop from Apple to take to Sydney for repair at a later date.
After a suitable period of venting at a customer relations (digression: is it called “customer relations” because after dealing with them you feel like they’ve had some rather rough ‘relations’ with your tradesman’s entrance?) they put forward their view of the world:
- Apple made a defective product. Not their problem.
- Apple then couldn’t figure out how to fix it for several weeks. Not their problem either.
- Apple then had manufacturing problems making the replacement part. Also not their problem.
- Apple’s supply chain through Singapore had several problems, making it hard for them to land the replacement part. You guessed it, not their problem.
So the upshot being, after all aspects (design, testing, manufacture, supply chain, service, customer relations) of the process of delivering an item to a paying customer failed, it is the responsibility of the customer to bear the negative consequences. I call bullsh*t on that, Apple.
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09.19.06
Posted in reviews, funb at 9:28 am by stickupkid
In case anyone doesn’t know (and since the ticket’s aren’t sold out, _someone_ must not know), Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society are playing in a week.
I’ll be in fair New Zealand for this one, but I encourage you all to remember how much fun it is to play Fire It Up in Guitar Hero and head along.
Also, In This River is pretty deep (spot the pun, kids).
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Posted in reviews, funb at 8:09 am by stickupkid
Wierd Al does it again, but the standout awesomeness on his new video for White and Nerdy has to be Donny Osmond in the background as his hype man. Now _thats_ dancing.
… although top credit to the Segway moves around the middle - that man can handle a gyroscope!
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Posted in rants at 1:20 am by stickupkid
Apparently, the only person at Apple who can help me sort out my defective Macbook won’t take my calls. Calling the general support line gets me “we’ll leave him a message” and calling his direct line goes to voicemail. Every minute for around an hour (hurray for automatic redial!), several hours so far today.
So, I’ve referred them to the Victorian Consumer Affairs Dept (takes about 2 weeks, *sigh*), much good though it’s likely to do me. Unfortunately, I can’t demand a refund, as they believe the case damage (which I maintain is a defect) is caused by physical damage.
Since my time in sunny Melbourne is (at least for a month or so) coming to an end, I have no choice but to take the defective laptop back from the service centre, and start _all over again_ at a different service centre in Sydney.
Incidentally, anyone thinking about servicing a faulty Macbook, good luck - the service centre I’m at is currently waiting on *fifteen* replacement logic boards… that’s a lot of faulty laptops for a single store.
So, in summary:
- Macbooks: defective on an alarming scale.
- Apple Australia: unwilling to help or return calls.
- Me: screwed.
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09.12.06
Posted in rants at 7:35 am by stickupkid
I’m snakemothering sick of these snakemothering wifi spots with their snakemothering URL redirection!
Every time I’m on a new hotel internet access point, they throw new tech glitches into the mix. The one that I particularly love is when they do a URL redirect / rewrite to any request. So, when the connection drops out (they all are flaky as hell in Melbourne) my iTunes podcast downloads replace all the URLs with the login page. So, long story short, I lose all the URLs of all my podcasts, to be replaced by “auth13.wifi.org/login”. I don’t know who to be more p*ssed at, Apple or the wifi guys… either way, I have to reload all my podcasts for the 5th time… auuuugh…
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Posted in rants, tech at 6:46 am by stickupkid
So I spoke to Apple again today - still no ETA on repairing my Macbook. 22 working days after putting it in for repair, and not even a hint as to when I might expect it back. I directly asked Apple Australia Customer Relations if they considered it acceptable to spend 22 working days without replacing a work machine, they answered _YES_ (albeit with a bit of weaseling).
So, we have the definitive answer: Apple Australia is totally unwilling to support business users. Noone in business can expect a full month with no repair on a basic warranty issue. Irony is, had I thrown it off a building, my insurance would have replaced it _faster_ than Apple have been able to so far. Truly, I am shocked and awed at the sheer unwillingness to make a customer happy here…
Oh well, on the upside at least my Powerbook’s battery hasn’t ignited yet (touch aluminum)…
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