For London

Funeral Blues
W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.


Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.


He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.


The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

We'll always love you Pundy.

The Box Doesn't Exist

One word that always causes me to shudder: 'Content.' This is now apparently the standard word that people in the software industry use to refer to that which is created and owned by their users.

To me it's just the latest horrible, bland, meaningless MBA word. Except it's not. Like all words, 'content' implies something about that which it refers to: that it's irrelevant and doesn't matter, that anything would do in its place. Content is what you put in a box so that the box is no longer empty, it doesn't matter what it is, it's just there to fill the box.

Sure, as software people you're all very proud of your box. You've put a lot of effort into making your box very pretty, and emergent, and Web 2.0, and now you just need something to fill it up. When all you do is build boxes it's very easy to only see boxes.

Well, guess what? Your users don't even notice the box. That content that you regard as interchangeable filling is all they care about. That's what they've spent time, effort and emotion in creating. They don't want to just dump it in some box somewhere, they want it treated specially and with respect. Referring to it with some bland management-speak term is not showing respect.

Words matter. The words you use to refer to something shape your perception of it. If you're in the business of building something where users can display their creations you need to remember that those creative works are the entire purpose of your web site. So don't refer to it as 'content' and then focus on the box. Remember the box don't exist, and treat your user's works with respect.

Don't call it 'content.'

Ticket'd

Spotted out our window one cold winter night:


A drug bust? A shooting? International crime syndicate? Nah, just a P-plater getting a speeding ticket.

Is Something Burning?

We suspect this singe:


On this cat:


Was caused by one of these lights:


Trendy though they may be, it seems that if you have a brain the size of a peanut and a love for heat, heat, glorious heat, halogen lights set at floor level are a little too attractive on a cold winter's morning.

If they hadn't attached themselves to humans cats would long since be extinct. Probably through some accidental fire.

Where-house?

These were taken in January, after we picked up the keys but before our stuff had been moved in. By now I figure that those of you who can make it here to see our new home have, so these photos are for the rest of you.


The building is a converted warehouse from the late 1890's. Until (I think) 1994 it was used as a warehouse. For most of that time as the headquarters, offices and printing rooms of the Sunday Times, Sydney's third Sunday paper. From the 1840's to the 1890's there were smaller buildings on the site, and before that, the area was market gardens.


The envelope of the building (the external brick walls) is original, and a lot of the original materials have been reused in the reconstruction. There's an old wooden pillar by the front door, for example, and some of the floor joists are original, though the floors themselves have been moved. Moving the floors has given us the 6m ceiling I've mentioned before, and the bedrooms have been tucked into a mezzanine that hangs over and opens out into the living area. The black rectangle in the photo is one of those openings.


They don't mention the joys of living in a converted 1890's warehouse in the trendy New York novels: our wall leaks. That's right: wall. Ahh, well. I call it character.

Embrace Your Inner Geek

Why bother reading long posts about esoteric language features that your language doesn't provide, or even if it does, it's not a good idea to use too often?

Two and a half reasons really.

Understanding your language is important. This is not magic we're doing here. It's engineering, one of the purest and most mathematically oriented branches of engineering you're likely to earn money engaged in. When it's magic you're not supposed to know what's going on, that's why it's magic. You are supposed to understand engineering though. Languages are the most complex pieces of computer software. You understand complex things by exploring the boundaries. What do they do well? Why don't some things work at all? How could they be better? All professional programmers should be able to name several critical failings of the language they are currently working in; if they don't hate it all together.

Related to that, when programming it's not enough to memorise the class and function names from the whopping great big framework of the week. You'll generally have inferred something about how the framework works underneath. You'll know that before calling function A, you had to instantiate class B first, unless you called function C first, because that happens to create a B for you. Blah. Languages are the same. Why does a variable declared inside a while loop disappear outside? This isn't voodoo. The goblins don't eat it. There's a reason. The language is implemented in a certain way by the compiler and runtime combination that causes these things to happen. You should understand that relationship. Every thing we write is built on some similar layer of abstraction. You need to understand (at least theoretically) how to implement the layer immediately beneath you or you'll end up wandering off into some abyss you didn't even know was there.

And finally, we're professionals, dammit. Where's the intellectual curiosity? Where's the 'Hey, that's cool. Now, how do I break it?' Or, 'I wonder what will happen if I do this...' Or, 'How does that work?' And most basically of all, 'Why?' Geeks are supposed to be into that sort of thing. We got beaten up in high school because we were enthusiastic about things it wasn't cool to be enthusiastic about. Now there's a lot of money to be had out of that enthusiasm. Let it out, embrace your inner geek. Enjoy this amazing, complex, unique, ever-changing world around us. Explore those things you've always felt a connection to. If you're in computing, there's a good chance that's something mathematical. Most things in computing are... For me it was languages. What's it for you?

Oh, and last week at the pub we had a big discussion about category theory, higher-order functions, contination passing web servers and finishing up with the difference between a program that generates a program and writing a custom compiler and interpreter. Geeky you may say. Well, today I noticed a colleague reading up on continuations on Wikipedia. That's what I'm talking about.

The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes

The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
Neil Gaiman

Is that how you credit authorship of comics? I don't quite know. There are artists involved, and I'll leave it at that for now. But yes, that means I'm reading comics now.

I've never been a comics reader. Sure I read some comics as a kid. Asterix and Obelix and Footrot Flats were both pretty important to me. I'm pretty sure I've read them all. I also read the occasional Tintin, and there was one dark single issue comic Where the Wind Blows that I discovered in high school that was pretty damn good. But I never read seriously the Marvel and DC comics involving Spiderman, Batman, etc, etc.

Sure I'd get hold of a comic here and there. But it would usually be issue 23 out of 148, then several months later I would read 92, then 5, then the grand finale. Overall, the story didn't make a whole lot of sense...

I have always been a big fantasy reader, and for the last five years of so I'd been hearing a lot about Neil Gaiman. Very popular, very well regarded. But when I looked into him I found he'd only written a couple of novels and a collection of short stories. Strange. It usually takes a long line of novels and an epic series or two to build this kind of cult following. Looking closer he was always credited as 'gaining his following through the cult 1990's comic series The Sandman.' Interesting...

After talking to friends, reading blogs and then reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, my interest in comics, especially the more modern darker ones was lifted. For example, I thought the V for Vendetta movie was pretty damn good, and apparently the comic was significantly better.

So, on finding Kings Comics on Pitt St, here in Sydney I decided to start with The Sandman. This is the first volume and so far I'm impressed enough to go back for the next. It's a dark, kind of gothic horror fantasy story. I can't review this as any sort of expert comic reader, but I enjoyed the stories and the artwork. Most importantly for me, the character of the Sandman was one that interested me. He is not clear cut. Not a hero, not a villain and not always someone you appear able to trust.

For me so far, comics are looking good. I want to read more Sandman, V for Vendetta, and as Damana also bought volume one of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, I'll be checking that out as well. Any other recommendations?