Over the falls

That a Day on the Moon is the same as a Year on the Moon? A day is defined as a celestial body's period of rotation around it's axis. A year is defined as a celestial body's period of revolution around whatever it's orbiting. The moon is in synchronous rotation - both of these periods are 27.321 days, which is why the moon always shows us the same face. Which, of course, led to that dreary Pink Floyd album. (There's currently a furious debate going on between our help desk manager and LHS as to how this can be so. I hope it doesn't come to blows... )

When I was a kid, we had a marble craze sweep the playground. But it wasn't the traditional, knock the marbles out of the circle kind of marbles. Oh no. This was way more 'Lord of the Flies'. What happened was that kids set up shop by drawing a line in the dirt, and then putting a particularly attractive marble a certain distance away. Other kids could then front up to this 'stall' consisting of a dirt line and a kid sitting in the sand, and throw marbles at it. The rules were simple. If you hit the marble, you got to keep it. If you missed, the stall-holder got to keep the shooter marble. So every lunch time, the playground would be turned into this kind of dust bowl marble bazaar, with all these kids yelling 'One shot a Tom!' or 'One shot for two bird-cages!' As I recall, there was a discreet order of value, with 'normals' being near worthless shooter marbles, and a whole dazzling array of 'milkys', 'sheenys,' 'Steelies...

I was invited to test the new google page creator today. I recently spent some time with joomla , and a few other content management systems, and to be honest I was a bit disappointed at how complicated it was to create a web page. It's easy for nerds like me, but if you're a more casual web user, having to type html, or learn a scripting language is too hard. If a user has to read the manual, you've already lost. So I was pleased to see that google make it ridiculously easy, and all you need is a browser and you're good to go. That makes it easier still. The image uploading process was particularly easy - and a little different to the standard HTML file input that we see so often. The templates are all nice, and there's enough diversity to please nearly every one. So, yeah - nice one, you guys. Less power to the nerds, I say. If you'd like to see the results of my investigation, you can share the love here .

Stilly already posted this one, but I just got around to watching it: Seth's talk to the Googlers. Some great, candid takeaway points about permission marketing, and how making things you love can make products that sell themselves - (As long as someone else loves it, and tells a friend...)

Generalizations are all good. While I'm talking about that, let me just mention that the point of every software team is the same: build something great. A piece of software that fulfils its promises, is easy to use and learn, and adds real value to any human who wants to achieve whatever goals are incorporated in the system. That's great software. That's what we're all trying to do. The Google search engine is an example of great software. I'm not a player, but I bet World of Warcraft is great software. The .NET framework is great software. There are beacons of design that inspire every software team, in every field. When I first started managing software teams, I was a process nut. I just assumed that the best way to get great software was to join the process dots. Back then, it was all about the planning. Plan the planning phase, and then plan out how you were going to build it, in painstaking detail, from the very beginning. Then you build it all (exactly as you...

Google acquires Upstartle , the tiny silicon valley startup that made a pretty neat little in-browser word processor. Naturally, everyone's abuzz with Microsoft vs Google talk , and how Microsoft have got it all wrong trying to beat google at their own game, and how they should stick to what they do best, and whatever. Personally, I think that it makes some sense to move the office productivity stuff onto the web. The more stuff I can do on the web, the better, as long as it's not a hassle. That's the key, I think. If I have to install stuff, and poke around with any configuration at all, then the whole thing is a dumb idea. But the technology isn't really the issue here. But if the focus is true zero-footprint, nothing installed, just write a letter to your mom and save it from wherever you are office suite, then we've got something. Something that might just be the next wave not so much in technology, but in business development models. Naturally, Google will want...

Having spent so long in traveling mode gets really tiring. Crazy scattered thoughts of a tired man. I don't know how I can be so respectful of people as individuals, yet harbor such a deep-seated resentment and dissatisfaction at the money crazed, status chasing society that we've all created. It's like an ant colony- I can appreciate each individual ant for their own qualities, but I don't like the anthill. You know what? I don't want to be successful! I don't want a Raymond Weil 'Timepiece' or a buxom blonde wife dressed in Versace. I don't want to smell like those super attractive gay men in Hugo Boss advertisements. I don't want to 'challenge everything', or 'be a tiger', or 'always come out on top'. I don't want to buy a sports car that goes faster than you are allowed to drive it. All of these status driven capital achievements are stupid and hollow, and they are just stuff designed to compensate for things that ...

But the stupid IE browser at the Heathrow Terraces Lounge somehow manged to erase it. (I have a long, long flight ahead of me, and I can't be bothered typing it all again.) EuroTUF 2006 was really cool. It was snowing, and we got drunk and sang songs at night. We talked business during the day, and shared some new stuff. All of my demos went well. My vote for Worst Weekend Ever: Get on plane Friday Night, get off it Sunday.