• After 1,100 miles and 52 days, Eddie Izzard has finishing line in sight – Awesome achievement. And I don’t mean “awesome” as in an “awesome hot dog.”
• John Marcotte, Author of the 2010 California Protection of Marriage Act – Marcotte is trying to get divorce banned. “People who supported Prop 8 weren’t trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That’s why I’m confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical. "
• PM apology after Turing petition – About time too!

• Birds show off their dance moves – Funny video, fascinating science, bad music…
• Intelligent Design Sort – It would seem that intelligent design has “uses” outside explaining the diversity of nature. It works for Computer Science too. Who’d have thought it?
• Scrap ID cards now, say Cabinet rebels – Maybe there is some benefit in the dire state of the economy…

A few years ago I was subcontracted to one of the large consultancies. I was taking over from someone who was, supposedly, quite senior and the task at hand, I was told, was very hard. I should take copious notes as she wouldn’t necessarily be around afterwards to help me. Making a mistake or missing out any one step could be disastrous to the whole process. If I did everything properly each new installation would take about a week.

This is probably the meanest article title I’ve ever written, as the “W” refers to a person, someone that I used to work with¹. The critical phrase went something like this:

“How hard can it be? It’s only a button!”

Those two, tiny sentences hide a lot. Let me explain.

I’m mainly technical. I have been in the industry for over ten years now, did a computer science degree and spent many hours when I should have been revising for my German GCSE programming my Sinclair Spectrum. This means that when someone says “It’s only a button” I instinctively cringe. I may not know the details but I’ve seen enough “simple” buttons with days worth of work behind them that I’ve learned to be cautious.

• Ars Book Review: “Patent Failure” – Interesting book review about the effect of patents on an industry. Apparently cost more money than they make in anything but chemical and pharmaceuticals.
• Lucky to be a Programmer – I don’t program as much as I used to but this explains why I love to when I get the chance.
• WordPress 2.6 – Usual drill. I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, the underlying software of ZX81.org.uk. If you see anything wrong please let me know!
• 20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA – Still in any doubt that computerised voting machines are a bad idea for free and fair elections?

• Why the Kibibyte is freaking me out – From the “well you learn something new every day” category. Apparently a kilobytes probably isn’t what you think it is…
• Earthquake hits much of England – We actually felt this here in London, although in my half-asleep, half-awake doze I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was real or a dream!
• Danish wind turbine eats itself – To all those that said that wind power was safe…

When it first happened I was irritated. A few days later I was irritated that I was still irritated. It didn’t make any sense, it wasn’t a big thing and it shouldn’t have bugged me at all, much less still a few days later.

After a while I realised that my irritation was more rational than I initially thought so I started to write them down as a way of structuring them. And here they are.

Introduction

However, most of the successful projects were run using fairly heavy-weight methodologies, CMM or ISO accredited, for example. Extreme Programming promises to deliver the benefits while still being simple. I was sceptical. This sounds a little too close to one of Fred Brookes Silver Bullets.