Over the falls

Gord's Ukulele Ringtone for the iPhone

2009-08-26T02:27:00.005-04:00

Late last night I picked up my Ukulele, where it had been lying neglected in the corner of the office, under a small whiteboard covered in work scribble.

And as I was reading the work scribble, and feeling quite overwhelmed by all the work I have to do, I absentmindedly played this little diddly - which I decided sounded kind of like it should be a ringtone - so I turned it into one.

If you have an iPhone, you can download it here - just drag it to your ringtones directory in iTunes, and it will show up on your phone when you next sync.

This Is Just To Say

2009-04-15T01:04:00.002-04:00

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

- William Carlos Williams

For Keith

2009-02-24T06:05:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine died today. He wasn't a particularly close friend, or even someone I had spent a long time with. He was a work colleague - we'd worked together at TOWER Software. To Me, Keith was a bit of an enigma - a records manager, ex military, he was organized and careful in his approach to his work. I could always be sure that when I needed a stapler, or sticky tape, that I could find it easily at Keith's desk. When the cancer took hold of him, his desk was often empty. (This made the task of sneaking paperclips much less pleasant. )

Keith's specialty was the JITC (Joint Interoperability Tactical Command) Certification process. If that sounds boring, well, just wait - it gets way more detailed. The US Defense force certifies Record Keeping solutions to ensure that they comply with their strict policy of retention and control. This process is immensely complicated - it requires compliance with literally thousands of different rules and regulations. Because it is so complex, (and so difficult to understand, yet alone comply with), the JITC standard has become something of the Holy Grail in record keeping. TOWER's record keeping software, TRIM Context, was the first system to ever be granted the accreditation under this hyper-complex maze of compliance regulation. This was largely due to the work of Keith Cameron - a dilligent, smart, and careful man, who paid attention to the detail.

His was a kind of talent that I am deeply envious of. There is no way that I could possibly be even vaguely competent at the kind of work that Keith did. I am too short-minded, too impatient, and not careful enough to watch the details. As you go through your life, you meet people who are different to you. At first you might be tempted to mock them, or to give them a wide berth, because they don't fit into the way you see the world.

Over time, I've become profoundly appreciative of those people like Keith, who think differently to the way you think. They are an opportunity for you to learn something about yourself.

The world lost Keith today. Like lots of us, he was a husband, and a father. He had an infectious laugh, and a great attitude. I remember that when I last saw him, at my farewell from TOWER, he gave me a hug. It was a bit awkward, and I think we both knew that it was a permanent goodbye. We were a couple of colleagues, who respected and liked each other. It seemed the right thing to do.

So, Thanks Man! - Although it's only work, and not "real life" - your presence in my life for a couple of years was important to me. And the work we did together was always great fun.

Money the money money

2008-09-19T09:03:00.007-04:00

This Financial Crisis on Wall Street thing started me thinking.

Since we arrived in the US, I've been contemplating how strange it is that America seems more concerned with money than it does with people. And now, with a trillion dollars already handed out to high finance, and discussions about even more massive handouts, well - it's pretty clear who America loves the most.

For me to send my children to University here in the US will cost me about half a million dollars, assuming average current College prices. If I get sick, say with an expensive disease like cancer, I could be easily looking at 300,000 dollars a year in treatment costs. When it comes to preserving my personal health, or my ability to contribute to society, the United States wants to contribute absolutely nothing. And yet, the US Government will spend trillions of dollars - that's over a thousand billion dollars resuscitating businesses that have effectively done stupid, bad things. The kind of thing that you should go out of business if you do.

The injustice, at least from where I sit, is huge. This bailout money is not coming from a giant bank vault filled with cash. It's a promise. It's a repayment plan - a credit deal imposed on taxpayers. Indirectly, it's coming out of people's pockets over the next 50 years. And these people are the same people saving for college, and arguing with HMOs over their cancer coverage.

This is more money than has been spent to date on the war in Iraq.

Conservative estimates on the cost of providing health care insurance to cover every uninsured American would cost 90 billion dollars. That's less than one tenth of the money already spent on the bailouts.

Let's be clear here - America now has her citizens shoveling their personal cash - cash that they haven't earned yet into the pockets of rich Wall Street stock brokers and investment bankers, at the same time that they are struggling to pay for things that most other governments provide for free.

Is this really government for the people?

Thinking of Illinois

2008-08-14T11:38:00.001-04:00

I sit, pensively leaning over my keyboard, stilled for the first time in an hour.

The lilting piano music had caught part of my conscience. I stare out the window at the Virginia sunshine, fading in the afternoon. The green, filtered light falls dappled onto the lawn between me and the dogwood tree at the gate. An elderly gentleman pedals along James street, wearing a blue denim hat and a white T-shirt.

Somewhere, a fanfare announces the advent of something. Some kind of thought dances elusively as I stare abjectly into the world. And then it hits me. That the time spent is gone. That great intentions and potential are worthless. The future is also worthless. Green light is reflected from the trees in an instant.

I think about it now.

This life

2008-07-18T22:10:00.005-04:00

I haven't seriously written anything here forever. I was re-reading some old posts, and realising that I really liked reading them. So, in the interests of posterity...

Living in America for the last two years has been a wonderful adventure. It's been strange, and entertaining, and frustrating and all the things that life probably should be, if you're trying to make a decent go of it. But, times change, and the lure of Australia is calling us back across the Pacific. So, me and the family are going to pull up stumps and head on home in October. (I still haven't figured out baseball. )

This brings a huge amount of stress, and excitement, and chaotic planning, and other things that life probably should be, if you're trying to make a decent go of it. I feel like I have two different todo lists - one for work and one for home. And when I look at each of them, I think - yeah, I can do that in two and a half months. The trouble is, there's two of them...

Cognitive Bias is a strange thing. When you look at the list, you recognize a huge series of strange ways of thinking - because they are underly the way you think.

I was musing the other day about the kind of person who re-defines failure as success. This is a pretty common scenario - typically arrogant, ego-centric folks who are afraid of failure tend to be very dismissive of any effort. Not so much because they actually think it can't be done - more that they don't want to risk being seen as committing to something that failed. These folks will often be so adamant that a project will fail, that they will subconciously sabotage a project - just to be sure that they can fold their arms and say - "I told you so."

That's not something I've experienced of late - just something that I recalled - given that I haven't really been in "the workforce" since Dean and I started Infovark. Working for a startup of your own with no customers is a wonderful experience! We've been working really, really hard - but the kind of focus that you get when you have one single thing to do is really motivating.

There's a lot of risk and anxiety in our project. Most startups fail. But I feel a huge kind of zen satisfaction that comes from grabbing an idea and wrestling it into existence. I'm not sure how it will be received - that's where the anxiety comes from - but I am completely confident that the idea is a good one, and the implementation has been done right.

My kids are on the extended Virginia summer holidays, and are musing about getting ready for bed. My precious wife has put up with so much of an absent husband through all this crazy working, and yet she still seems happy to see me when I come home.

It's a charmed life, this one. Just trying to make a decent go of it :)

That's SO Raven.

2008-07-14T22:36:00.002-04:00

You know how it is - You're busy working , trying to get your startup to beta.

Then Little Headed Simon pops up and posts you some link he saw on boing boing.

And then he says that the link isn't really that interesting, but the way he misread the headline was actually much more interesting.

So then you say - "you should make a game out of that..."

Yeah, yeah I know- that's like every other day, right?

Except that this time, He actually did.

LHS - you are seven different coloured lasers of awesome.

My highest score is 2.

Now

2008-05-07T19:29:00.004-04:00

Here's a first. This post has a soundtrack.

The reason this post has a soundtrack, is because this mp3 is a recording of the music I was playing with my band on the weekend, when I came to this realization. And somewhere in the middle of a somewhat self-indulgent but very satisfying twelve-eight blues progression, this weird notion of immediacy hit me. So, I thought I'd attempt to share it. Press play, if you didn't already, and see if you can follow me on this one...

The realization comes from this notion that when you're playing music, as soon as you play a note, it's gone. I know that's kind of obvious, but when you're playing with people who are much better than you (which is always a good thing to do) you really have to concentrate. And I found myself concentrating on which note to play, and which change to make, when. But once I had "made it", and played the right note, it was gone. It might as well have never been there.

There were other changes coming up, but they were a fair way away. Part of my brain was keeping an eye out for those. And part was feeling kind of proud of the fact that I'd managed to keep it together so far.

And then it dawned on me, that all of this past and future stuff was kind of a distraction. The only thing I really needed to pay attention to - the one thing I needed to do right - was to play this note. The next one. The one right now.

Which led me to question my internal motivation. Mainly. I just wanted the music to sound great. But, part of me was keen to avoid the 'knowing glare' from my bandmates, if I messed up.
People have evolved a natural tendency to evaluate each other. Sometimes intentionally, othertimes almost subliminally, you're evaluating the people you meet in your life. As an extremely social animal, humans have a very complex reputation management system, which helps us decide who we should engage with, and for what. This is an extremely important skill, and it's one that may be the cornerstone of all society.

But this Reputation Mangement System also sucks. Reputations are easily damaged. Sometimes they are percieved as damaged, when they're not. It can lead to feelings of low self worth, and anxiety. (This is why people fear public speaking more than death.)

Your reputation is really just a weird arbitrary evaluation that starts with people who have met you. It's based, almost totally, on your past activities, and your future potential. So, I thought that maybe, just like the music, that it too is a distraction. That the only thing you really need to be concerned with is right now. How you were in the past is gone. And how you will be in the future is completely irrelevant.

I found it to be an amazingly uplifting thought. You should give it a go. Just focus on your actions right now. Pretend that there is no future, or no past.

You don't have to rely on those things to "average you out".

Anyway, this is all getting a bit deep. But, it really stuck with me.

And I wanted an excuse to share some of Carl and Tommy's awesome guitar solos.

:)

Did you know?

2008-02-05T15:09:00.000-05:00

That NetVibes let's you create your own page title?

Cool huh? They really let you type a lot of stuff in there. That's very nice of them.

Groundhog's Day

2008-02-02T16:50:00.000-05:00

Hmmm.

Simon was picking on me the other day for not being a good blogger any more. (Part of me was all offended - "You are incorrect - I'm teh awesome!", but mostly I was thinking - "That must mean that he thought I was a good blogger once - which is still pretty cool.")

Alas, It's been a really long time since I've had much interesting to say, and most importantly the time to actually say it. Running a startup business is hard work, it takes a lot of time from you, and most of my precious blogging time has been spent on getting stuff together over on the infovark blog. It's a good site, and I'm very proud of it, but I admit that it does lack the kind of personal-ness that I like to read in blogs. Reading over my old posts here, I tended to write very honestly, and I didn't need to have a topic - I'd just waffle on about any old crap. Corporate blogging is quite a bit less freestyle, and more structured.

So, in an effort to recapture my blogging mojo, let's take stock of the things that are in my head today.

I like to play music. I've been getting together with an old friend from TOWER each weekend and rocking out playing in a band. We're pretty bad, but man - it is such a fun thing to do! filling your whole self with music is a wonderful experience.

Quitting TOWER was a really good thing for me to do. Life in the USA as an IT consultant is perhaps the most tiring and time-consuming thing I can imagine. I spent way too much time focussing on my job, and not enough time on my family. My job was interesting, but my Family are much more important. Now my job is great, and I have more time and flexibility than ever.

My kids are obsessed with FancyPants 2. It's really fun!

And, on that note - I have to go and fix the toilet. That will surely be at least as fun...

And the award for "Best Use of Flash Ever" goes to...

2008-01-16T17:37:00.001-05:00

http://producten.hema.nl/

Why can't all online shopping experiences be like this?

(no,no - not in Dutch... Go see for yourself :)

The Nerdiest Video Ever

2008-01-02T23:07:00.000-05:00

Have you ever seen one of those 'viral internet videos' and then said something like:

"You know, that's the nerdiest thing I've ever seen."

Well, Be prepared to eat your own words:

Eat them! Tasty Wordy Goodness. Right?

Le Minivan trop-plein!

2007-12-17T20:42:00.000-05:00

What sort of crazy people jump in the car to go North to Canada in Winter?

Well, that would be me and my family. We're currently in Quebec, Quebec - the most French place in Canada. My French is limited. No, check that, it's actually somewhere between non-existent and hopeless. Thanks to Madame Brown in Year 9, I can sort of say some stuff. (Most of it wrong) Anyway, we've been enjoying the snow - so far there's been just under a metre.

We've been swimming outside in -17 degrees, Cross country skiing in Montreal, been to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa (including the coolest children's museum) driven through the driving snow (It was driven mainly by the wind) and somehow, haven't managed to drive each other crazy - despite having eight people in our dodge minivan.

(we managed to rope Ali's sister Jen and my Sister Kirilee into the adventure.)

Anyways - there's free internet here at the best western in Quebec, so I'll try to get some pictures and more impressions up soon. Adieu!

Binary Solo!

2007-11-29T17:55:00.000-05:00

Oh dear... my sides ache.

And it's all thanks to the Flight of the Conchords..

(via Big Headed Simon)

Idle Hands, the Devil and Heffeweisen

2007-10-24T22:18:00.000-04:00

Just cleaning the kitchen after a busy days worth of work on the infovark project. Sometimes you have those days where you feel you're working your very hardest, and yet, things seem to go backwards just to spite you. After a solid 6 hours worth of code, less then 2% of the 300+ unit tests that we've written were passing. Oh well. I guess you get that on the big jobs.

I was just pondering, as I was scrubbing those pesky pans (does it ever seem to you that all pans seem perpetually dirty? It's just like you're cleaning them, but you can't really scrub off anything more than one layer of dirt. Pan dirt is special. I think it contributes to much tastier food.)

Anyway - oh yeah - pondering. I was thinking how sad it is that no matter how well humans adhere to whatever their particular religious code may be, that there will always be someone somewhere else who would view them as condemned to some kind of hell. If you're the world's most pious Christian, then the Orthodox Jewish faith would see you as going to hell. And the Muslim folk. And a bunch of other, not quite exactly the same but similar divisions of the Christian faith.

If you're the best Buddhist ever, and you never even step on an ant or swat a mosquito for your whole life, then, there will be a bunch of Christians who will be honestly very sad that you never "saw the light" and "accepted Jesus into your heart". Your religious peers may well revere you, but to everyone else, you're just plain old damned.

It makes me feel a bit sad for all those people striving to be faithful, knowing that somewhere, someone will condemn them.

Personally - I'm an atheist, so as far as anyone else is concerned , I'm going to their own individual religion's version of hell, and I'm okay with that, because frankly, the whole think seems completely nuts.

But scrubbing pans is universal. We all have to do it at some point. In the pan scrubbers religion, nobody is damned. We all get to go to pan heaven, where the stainless steel shines so bright, we all gotta wear shades.

Or something. It's late :)

Changing the 'We'

2007-10-14T15:44:00.000-04:00

(This is cross-posted with my new company blog, inforvark.com
I'm pretty excited about the new job, new challenges, and so you can expect to see more project management, Enterprise 2.0 technology and software posts happening over at the infovark site. I'll try and keep Over The Falls up to date with personal stuff, but no promises! )

For most people, the use of the nominative plural pronoun (’we’) tends to refer to themselves and to the other significant people who happen to be sharing their lives.

If you work for a company, or any kind of collaborative venture where there are multiple people working towards a similar goal, you’ll find that you use the word ‘we’ an awful lot. For example ‘We need to refactor that code, and we should probably add some comments’ or ‘We need to get our TPS reports done by Monday’.

I think that the use of the word ‘We’ is one of the nicest things about being at work. That one little word indicates collaboration is occurring. It shows that you accept some joint responsibility for your success (or failure), and it reminds you that you’re all in this together. Whenever you start a new job, or a new project, the first few times you say it, you notice that you just said it. It’s a thing, at first. Then it quickly becomes part of the corporate vernacular, and you aren’t as aware of it anymore.

Personally, in the last five years, most of the time I said ‘We’, I was referring to TOWER Software. TOWER make a well regarded ECM suite called TRIM Context, which is designed for the government and highly regulated markets. After 5 years, I decided that I was brave/crazy enough to try something on my own, and was fortunate to find a kindred spirit in my TOWER Colleague, Dean.

And so for both of us, Infovark is a new kind of ‘We’. We‘re a small startup based in Northern Virginia, who have a vision for changing the way people work together.

Anytime somebody says ‘We’, we want Infovark to be there supporting them. To make it easier to share information. To help them make decisions. To help them get to know each other. And to take away the burden of complex, enterprise software that is hard to use and understand.

It’s an ambitious goal, but it’s one that we’re utterly committed to.

And so, it starts! We hope you’ll stick with us, and share the journey.

Quote for the day...

2007-09-11T09:14:00.000-04:00

“If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."

- General Eric Shinseki.

Found on R.Todd Stephens new collaborage blog, via Jesse.

Inspiration

2007-09-06T18:44:00.000-04:00

Apparently Einstein once said:

'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we used to create them.'

That's way cool, if it's true. And even if not, it's still way cool :)
*

Social Networks ate my blog!

2007-08-03T20:26:00.000-04:00

Hello!

I haven't updated my blog in forever - and personally I blame Web 2.0.

Between Twitter, and now Facebook, and my crazy work commitments, I seem way too busy to even think of anything interesting to say...

NeoHippy Leanings

2007-06-21T21:53:00.000-04:00

Simon's new blog, The Cluttered Desk, talks about how people in your head when you read are composites of people you know.

It's true - it reminds me of how I read somewhere that one theory of dreaming is that all of the people you meet when wandering around in your dreams are really you. Ocassionally in a vaguely lucid dream, you can become aware of this, which makes weird dreams even weirder... But on some level, this makes sense - for instance, while you think you are talking to your Wife, you're really talking to the way you imagine your Wife to be - it's not like she's actually in your head...

Reading is similar to dreaming in that respect. The late Kurt Vonnegut, in his last interview, said of reading that he thought reading was a difficult task. If you could do it right, you could be transported to the murky waters of the Atlantic with Herman Melville, or a deserted tropical island with Defoe.

But if you couldn't do it, I guess there's always TV, right?

Lifehack - Nothing is Easy

2007-05-31T17:37:00.000-04:00

"I'm annoyed!" I announced to nobody in particular.

I pushed the desk away from me and rolled back into the middle of the cubicle.

"What by?" Dean asked, turning away from his machine.
I thought for a bit.

"Well... I'm annoyed that things don't just come into existence because I think of them."

"Uh -right... You're actually annoyed by that?"

And you know, I was. I mean, I still am.

In software development, solving conceptual problems isn't always easy, (or even possible) but it is usually rewarding. Unfortunately, just solving the problem isn't enough. Once all the hard thinking is done, you then have to sit there, and wiggle your fingers in a very exact and particular sequence, until your design is completely implemented. Then remove all the mistypes and little deviances from your perfect unimplementable design.Then re-test it, over and over. And that's the thing that's annoying.

And the more I think about it, the more this little truism seems to apply to everything in the world. Knowing what you have to do is all fine and dandy. It's the doing of it that's annoying.

For example, I know I have to get up and go into the office tomorrow. I won't want to. I will want to lay in bed, and listen to the Typewriter Bird outside the window. I know I should eat less, and excercise more. I know that watching CSI:Miami is a complete waste of time. I know that. Doesn't all that knowing count for something?

Bah. Being smart enough to know what I need to do should be enough!

But, one thing I do know with my thinking brain is that reality doesn't work like that. That nothing comes as easily as thinking.

And so, lately, I've resolved to pursue reality with a little more vigor than I previously have. To work harder at materializing these clever thoughts into actions and artifacts.

And central to this, is the mantra that 'Nothing is Easy." Essentially, I've just assumed, slightly pessimistically, that everything I need to do will take more attention and concerted effort than my default appraisal might expect.

And so far, it's been a remarkably liberating thing. I find that at the end of the day, I've done much more, simply as a consequence of expecting to do much more.

Today, for every action you conciously pursue, from preparing breakfast to all your daily work tasks, remember that it will take MORE than you think.

That nothing is easy.

Aw...

2007-05-30T23:22:00.000-04:00

For some reason, I was a little bit disappointed when I visited:

http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com

Every Good Domain Name is taken. Here's Why.

Random Link of Random Joy

2007-05-22T10:06:00.000-04:00

What's not good for eating soup? Not the moon, that's for sure.

TeaCups!

2007-05-20T13:22:00.001-04:00

Blather...

2007-05-18T08:41:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm still alive - and feeling largely refreshed after a long over due vacation to DisneyWorld, the happiest place on earth. To try and get y'all back up to speed (yes, they really do say that down in the South), here's a bulleted list of stuff that I've found interesting...

As well as being the title of this post, Blather is a plug-in that my friend Stilly wrote for his gTalkBot, that allows you to publish all your twitter-esque daily musings to your Blosxom powered blog. Very cool, and Stilly's Blathering is pretty entertaining too...
While on the topic of Stilly, his second book just got published! - it's a how to guide on building your own PVR using Myth TV. I had a go at this a while ago, and it was really kind of confusing, especially for a Linux N00b like me. A book is long overdue...
My friend Ian Schue, who works with me here at TOWER NA has started blogging. Apparently the birth of the universe, donuts, quantum computing and giant ants are all somewhow connected... A great read!
My lovely Sister-In-Law, Ruby, now a proud mum for the second time, has also given birth to a blog;
I've also enjoyed a vicarious European vacation, courtesy of Simon and Karina.
I finally bought a Das Keyboard II - easily the best keyboard I've ever typed on. If you spend a lot of time at a keyboard, you should consider getting one of these.

Lindsay went to Disneyland and rode the teacups too! I have to dig out the vomit inducing footage of the whole Taylor family squished into a single teacup...
If you were wondering what else I'm up to, I'm been slightly more vigilant at updating my twitter feed than my blog.