getting back to basics
37 Signals, creators of Basecamp, Campfire and many other great products (including spinning off the awesome Ruby on Rails) have released their book/method/rant “Getting Real” for free to read online. Totally recommend checking this one out, they have a really good attitude.
Google Video has the full documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” up for a limited time - download it here. Definitely worth a look in this age of oil dependence and underpowered hybrid cars…
AppleInsider is reporting that users at the http://macbookrandomshutdown.com site are trying to arrange a class action law suit against Apple over the dreaded Random Shutdown Syndrome. Anyone in the US should definitely contribute to this one, and in the interim I’m going to find out the details of how to arrange a class action in Australia (which of course is harder).
By the way, the Victorian Fair Trade Commission wimped out, dang em.
And further, I’ve now had the blackbook back in service with Apple for about 3 days with no repair forthcoming… not exactly holding my breath.
Joystiq is reporting Capcom have closed down Clover Studio, the brilliant authors of the Viewtiful Joe series, Okami (which I hope to get an import copy of soon) and the not-so-brilliant God Hand. Given how much I enjoyed VJ, and how great the reviews for Okami have been, it’s truly a shame that another great studio failed to connect with a commercial audience.
It very much reminds me of the relatively disappointing sales for Shadow of the Colossus, (which is truly brilliant) despite overwhelmingly positive critical reaction. Seems people really don’t buy some of the good games, yet Halo continues to be a huge seller. And don’t forget Madden. Guns and football, people… the end times, they are a’near.
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:
… check the details of the approach in these terms and it comes clear…
… 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. 
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:
(Not rocket science, I know - but it had to be said).
“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…
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…
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:
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.
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).