Older blog entries for MikeCamel (starting at number 18)

Reading
Feeling pretty awful today, so turned back nearly half-way to work and stayed home. Catherine's been around all day, which was nice. Yesterday I finished "Managing Open Source Projects - Sandred" - quite good, though halfway between trying to be academic and trying to be a popular book. I think that Wiley wanted to sell to the masses, and changed the format. At the same time, there's not quite enough there to make it a real academic book. It's a bit of a mishmash, and I wasn't sure who it was aimed at. If you're interested, drop me a line, and I'll tell you about it.

Started a heavy sociology book: "Trust - Piotr Stompka(sp?)". Pretty good so far.

Wrote my first real content for www.p2ptrust.org - a mini-essay scoping my interest in trust, which was largely prompted by an email exchange with niksilver. Next time, I can just point people at that, rather than having to write long emails. It was useful, though, and hopefully I'll get some time to expand on it at some point. I'd really appreciate comment on it from anyone in the Advogato community: is this interesting? Is it important? Am I missing something? Who else is writing about this?

Bed, now, I think.

hackery
jtrix looks interesting, and I've mailed niksilver with some questions. Given that it's in Java, it might actually give me an opportunity to be involved at a coding level, which would be pretty fun. Hopefully, there might also be chances for management-type things, too - but I don't want to step on the current team's toes, so we'll wait and see what they'd like help with.

update: Well, had a nice email from Nik, friendly and encouraging, and I've mailed him back, too. They're based in London, which is nice, 'cos it's in the UK, and gettable-to if needs be. I'm going to read through some of their docs and try to find out more. I gave him a phone call, too, which surprised him. He was very pleased to have had jtrix mentioned on these pages, so we know what that means: to make people happy, reference them in your Advogato diary! (That'll be a fiver, Nik.)

music
A comment - if you don't have a decent CD and pair of headphones at work, then get them. Your computer ain't good enough, and it's worth it if you care about your music. IMHO, obviously.

• Vivaldi - Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione: Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante. Marvellous new recording, including the Four Seasons. Astonishing new insights - it's a long time since I bought a Four Seasons recording, but this one is knocking me sideways
• Bare Naked Ladies - Gordon. Just started it, so no views as yet.
• More Bonzo Dog Band. LOL!

D*mn, but I'd forgotten how good the Bonzo Dog Band (or Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) are. Cornology (their collected hits) arrived today, and it reminds me of happy hacking days. It's witty, but listenable music, which I find great for coding. Pity I'm not doing any at the moment. Most of it written by Neil Innes, who also wrote lots of the music for Monty Python, so you're assured of quality. The guys in the band are great, too.

Some titles:

• Cool Britannia
• Can Blue Men Sing The Whites
• My Brother Makes The Noises For The Talkies
• We Are Normal
• Monster Mash
• Mr Slater's Parrot (British readers will know this from the 90's adverts for Cadbury's Creme Eggs, but don't be put off!)
• Trouser Press
• 11 Mustachioed Daughters
• King Of Scurf
• Humanoid Boogie

Phoon - two things: 1) kick that caffeine habit! 2) 5000 Americans. Not just Americans - don't forget that.

andrewsj - crypto beautiful. crypto lovely. you learn. (-8

work
I don't care. No - I really don't. technik - I'm with ya, buddy (unclear goals, wasted time, not making a difference, fatigue). Problems, though:

1. I've only been @ $JOB three months (next week)
2. they do cool stuff - only I don't, and to do cool stuff, they expect me to have won my spurs - why can't they realise just how talented I am?
3. I want to be in a smaller company (not 46000 people - yes, that's 46k persons)
4. recession (I blame the Yanks...)

If only I weren't so d*mn hot. (-8 I'm so pleased that no-one @ $JOB is going to be clued up enough to read this. And if they are, they won't be management so they'll a) understand and b) not be in a position to sack me. Don't you love it?

in case anyone cares...
... and I'm not sure I do anymore - the MBA exam went OK. I think I probably passed, but I won't know for at least another month. Everything now seems much less stressful, and I've started ploughing (that's how it's supposed to be spelled, people) through the O'Reilly P2P book. I finished the Queen Victoria biography the day before my exam!

Oh, and...
... has anyone done any work on the therapeutic gain provided by a blog or similar? I do find advogato very useful in that respect. And I don't think I'm alone. Care to comment, mirwin, my friend?

Projects
Another way to get into projects - this is a little chip on my shoulder, so stick with it - make use of managers. Not all managers are bad, and some of us embrace Open Source, even if we don't feel that our coding is good enough to contribute in that line. And I, for one, am good at making things happen, prioritising features, working to deadlines, understanding the bigger picture, and negotiating with people to get the boring stuff done, as well as the interesting work. In fact, the role that was outlined for the teacher/assistant professor was partly that of a manager. Now, in some projects, you'll have a talented lead developer who's quite capable of doing all of this, and may even want to, but in others, you won't - so why not use people who do this for a living? You'll find some older thoughts in earlier diary entries. Give me a call if you think I could help - before I call you (-;.

Next?
Apart from job woes (what should I be doing? how do I convince people to use me better? etc.), and my exam (see below), I've got a bunch of reading I'm really looking forward to. A sociology book on trust, some p2p stuff, some security stuff, and some general reading. It's going to be great. Hopefully, I'll then be in a position to put a littler more work into http://www.p2ptrust.org/. DVD player turns up soon (I got bored of watching them on my computer with DeCSS), having been sent back, and there are a few films I haven't seen at all. I've also just ordered Alan Partridge on DVD. It's going to be fantastic.

Music
What have I been listening to? Kate Rigsby, Stereophonics (Enough Imagination to Perform), Bach (Brandenburg), Stunt (who's this by?).

Life
Tomorrow is my "International Enterprise" MBA exam. I'm not sure how I feel about it - I've spent this evening watching some TV and turning to my notes from time to time, to remind myself of something here or there. I don't think I'm going to learn much more at this stage, and I think that I've got a decent chance. My main problem is that for this course, the markers really seem to want you to quote the names of the people who thought up the concepts, whereas I'm much happier applying the concepts: why should I tell you whose they are, if I understand them and can use them? Exactly.

pphaneuf - you need to be careful when talking about underwear: "spread out over time" could have some awkward (and/or painful) connotations. (-8

nymia - I'd consider starting with New Testament Greek (Koine), rather than Aramaic. It's what the gospels were written in, even if it's not what Jesus and the disciples spoke. A good NT Greek book will explain about some of the translation issues from Aramaic, such as wordplay, and is a good starting point. It'll also allow you to read the gospels in the original, which is pretty enlightening. Was for me, anyway. Finally - the Theology degree comes in useful!

mirwin - thanks for two issues: respect. Agree on #2, will check out raph. Keep the faith. - M.

Work
Well, I still have a job, because the email was stopped (see old entries). I'm rather relieved. Had a chat with the boss about work, and he's cool. Phew - I'd been dreading the conversation.

Advogato
privard - on your point about code reviews: I wondered whether you thought that part of the problem is lack of management of some projects? Might not be, but just wondered.

p2ptrust.org...
... is coming on. I'm adding information when I have time. After the exam (see below), I need to do some background reading and write something for myself, then do some criticism of the information that I've tracked down already, and make the site of some conceivable use.

Other
MBA exam revision's a pain - but the exam's only 8 days away now. I think that's a good thing.

If only I could get that 802.11b prism2 card to work. But cleverer people than I are failing, so I'll wait for them to sort it, and follow on. I just don't have the skills in this area.

Catherine managed to convince her sister that we don't need another two cats at the moment. Phew.