Thoughtful Moment

Oh won’t you sign my NDA,
I need this signed by yesterday.

Sign it here, and sign it there,
Don’t read through, don’t you dare.

Oh won’t you sign my NDA,
I need this signed without delay.

Stop reading all through and through,
Just sign it! Just sign it!
I’d happily sign, if I were you.

You understand technogibberel computerese,
But this is learned jumbly-mumbly legalese.

You’re just a programmer, you can read it all but you won’t understand,
Here’s a bronze rubbed rubber slippery stamp, hold it so and slam down your hand.

Oh just strike that confounding confuddling confusing clause,
Slam it with my bronze rubbed rubber slippery stamp without pause

Stop glancing across clauses in every page,
I can barely contain my roiling rage.

You won’t sign? You won’t complete?
We’ll simply strike that non-compete.

Hurry, Hurry the day grows late,
Just ignore that part, that’s boiler plate.

Don’t worry about what all 12 pages say,
Just accept my standard NDA.

And now you mention a rate I have to beat?
It will be your loss if our minds can’t meet.

I’m willing to adjust a small term or two,
Because I would never hoodwink you.

And finally, now the signing is complete,
Down here by the door on Market St.

Here are four languid liarbirds that lounge on a line,
Those four larking liarbirds that begged for my time,

Oh but sadly I didn’t listen…

I turned my feet forward, and kept my nose in the air,
I stepped out on Market St and met a man there.

He said…

Ignore those languid liarbirds that lounge on a line
Sign this NDA now, and give me your time.

I just need a programmer, a coder, a hacker,
a mathematical tough nut to crack cracker,.

I need a digital deducer of differential difficulties that exhibits double-deference to the dereference of a POO’s covariance,
And willingly wrangles contravariant marshalled functors with multiple weak inheritance.

My hypothetical hard programming puzzler needs expertise in eleventeen new technologies,
A minimum of twelve years in each at least I seek,
An unfungible, unflappable, unfinaglible coding beast.

My rare rockstar of ruby-esque artistry,
Is also a notable ninja of npm pedantry,
Steeped in learning deep and theoretical,
And during interview waxed about Big O notation hypothetical.

Who sat and stared at leetcode hards tasked with the best optimization,
And after twenty minutes came to reach the only realization,
That to improve upon the algorithm was a research thesis dissertation.

I sold you on the promise of work from the latest research journals ripped,
But it’s just another CRUD app, with CSS and HTML and legacy Javascript,

You answered lengthy questions about lambdas, inversions and Closures,
to support containers at web scale of all our active users totaling threes or fours.

I outsourced to a region that only spoke a language based on Slavic,
And our DevOps cannot read the error messages and now that’s catastrophic.

We’re funded by DAOs, DAPs, ICOs, and IPOs for capital,
Investor oversight we found incomprehensibly incompatible.

But let us step back and see what we have compiled and built,
It’s just a shity WordPress website of long nights made of manipulation, misplaced loyalty and deceptive guilt.

And now you see me for who I am,
Just another shady, serial businessman,
I stand to make millions, and you might get some,
For every ten bucks in cash I take, you might get you five, fifty, zero or none.
But I will dazzle you with usurious prattle and unpreferred deferred stock options,
A new-fangled investment vehicle that messes with your worldly assumptions,
A ponzi scheme dressed up in code that helps my tax deductions.

And long before that vesting period of one year and four,
You’ll tire of the toxicity and head right for the Market St door,
With a bright future ahead and a failed start-up behind,
Fresh with a crisp new certificated bootcamp in hand.

And next when you step out, on Market Street,
A bespangled-eyed entrepreneur you will surely meet,
A hustler who woos you with weasley words,
And finally, you listen to those four lounging liarbirds,

“Fuck.”

“You.”

“Pay.”

“Me.”

Changing the world, one line of code at a time.

Brilliant ad campaign…

I strongly believe that LEGO made me the engineer I am today.

 

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A psychology study I read many years ago had the thesis that rooms with low ceilings constrained both the thoughts and vocabulary of people who occupied the room. Goals were smaller in rooms with lower ceilings, and less often achieved, thoughts about the future were less inclined to dream big, and the language used was, overall, more pessimistic.

I also read a study, where the central thesis was that text messages on mobile phones constrained people’s thoughts, due to the size of the screen and the ability to express themselves easily.

And I read many more papers on the effects of walking and cognition, and they found that walking helps with cognition, but there is a multiplier effect when people walk outside (where there are far horizons and tall skies) that improves cognition and expressiveness far more than walking alone.

And yet another study found that people who live in cities with tall buildings thought in shorter timeframes than those who lived in more “human sized” settlements.

Conclusion: When you want to restrict someone’s thoughts, dreams about the future and their ability to plan, restrict their vocabulary, restrict their ability to express those thoughts, and restrict their ability to see a far horizon.

Which is pretty much what Orwell stated with his Newspeak and Doublespeak ideas and Huxley with his removal of words like “revolution” – remove words from the language to express an idea and you remove the ability to even think that idea.

If you only give people a little set of emojis to express themselves, then those are the emotions and expressions they can make, and it takes great mental effort to communicate outside of the prescribed dictionary.

I observe this effect in programming languages all the time, where different programming languages, with their differing grammar and/or crypticness, or good and poor choice of keywords can dictate how a programmer will tackle a problem, or not. You will often hear programmers talk about how “expressive” a particular language is, or how “opinionated” a framework can be. This isn’t simply engineering geek speak, it’s psychology.

I still write, on a daily basis, in longhand, on paper, with my dyslexia, and my dysgraphia and my barely legible doctor’s scrawl. And I try to do it whilst sat near a window, or on the front step, or at a coffee shop whilst people watching, or on the train during the commute; all expressive locations.

I don’t write a lot in longhand. I only need to capture the big thoughts. The details can be filled in by the usual word processor.

I find this interesting because I truly believe that the majority of the world is made of small-minded people.

And a lot of social media, and Twitter especially, is a medium designed for expressing small thoughts.

Which explains why Twitter is so popular amongst a lot of small minded people.

To express big thoughts, you need a big canvas.

Bought a bag of Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons today.

Popping one in my mouth they remind me of a girl I used to date.

Sweet, melts on the tip of your tongue and just thick enough to be pleasurable.

It’s National No Bra Day.

As I’ve always said, my favourite part of a woman begins with the letter “B” and ends with the letter “S.”

The greatest gift you can give yourself is to live a life that is true to yourself rather than one that others expect of you.

Every day I wake up and I find myself to be rich.

Not wealthy.

Rich.

I didn’t wake up to an alarm clock (unless a client needed me on the phone).

I woke up, lounged in bed for a bit, and got up when I felt like it.

That was a choice.

I decide what I will work on next.

Or whether I will take the day off.

I decide what I will eat for lunch and dinner.

Whether I will eat out or cook a meal from scratch.

I decide when to walk my dog.

Whether around the block or over at the dog park.

I decide to spend an hour in the workshop making some sawdust.

Whether that is for a book case or just practice cuts.

I decide to read a book for an hour.

Whether for pleasure or for business.

I decide when I will go to bed.

And in which city I will go to bed.

Every decision I made was made by me without the pressure of having to show up to a job, please someone else, or fulfill an obligation I never wanted.

I’ve stuck to this idea for several decades, if you have a lot of choices, you are very rich indeed.

Making a choice isn’t “making a decision.”

A decision is the metaphorical equivalent of whether you want burger or pizza for lunch.

Choice is deciding when to lave lunch, where to have lunch, what to have for lunch, who to have lunch with, and what you will talk about at lunch.

Every day, I am presented with choice.

And that makes me rich.

I’m richer than most everyone I know.

 

Twitter has always felt to me like the collective wisdom of a bunch of 12-year olds who are angry because they don’t understand something.

P.S. I include myself in that group. Don’t follow me unless you enjoy profanity spewed about things I don’t understand.

I am a great believer that you should always make sure that the woman you’re seeing and the whisky you drink are of the same age.

I have started to drink some very expensive whisky.

When you say something is good but are unable to express why it is good then your opinion is as valuable and valid as someone saying something is bad without saying why it is bad.

Ignorance is the most singularly destructive force known to mankind.

“Teaching our children.”

I think we should stop using that phrase.

I think we should start using “Teaching our future.”

Children are a commodity.

Everyone (almost) has one.

Everyone was one (probably).

But our future is precious, unique, and we only have one of those.

The most common answer is not always the right answer.

It’s too easy to get trapped into accepting the common answer and never questioning it because you are supposed to accept it.

Wouldn’t it be better to go through our lives collectively asking:

“Is that true?”

“Is it still true?”

“Who says its true?”

Most people use obscenity because they can’t think of what to say next.

I use obscenity to stop me from saying what I really want to say next.

When I am cursing up a storm I am never at a loss for words.

What I am really saying is “the thing that I want to say would be really hurtful, I’d rather look like an uncouth moron than ruin this friendship, relationship or business deal.”

I am re-reading “The Mythical Man Month” by Brooks.

The last time I read this was 1984 and I was 17 years old and had been developing software for about six years by then (and of course thought I knew it all).

It is one of those rare books about technology and software projects that is still highly relevant.

What I find interesting is my perspective on the book has shifted since I first read it.

I have gained a lot of experience in the intervening 30 years and I am looking on the examples given in the book not just from the perspective of a software developer but also a software developer that was influenced by the book 30 years ago and how my attitudes towards the book have changed.

Just got done re-reading “The Mythical Man Month” by Brooks.

In the intervening 30 years since I originally read the book, my conclusion now is that Brooks was overly-optimistic.

Why do you have so many separate blogs asked the person who was researching me.

“Because when I open a cook book I expect to see recipes, not a deeply interesting read on marketing your app in emerging markets and how to A/B test user acquisitions.” I replied.

No matter how many video monitors are connected to your workstation there is never enough screen real-estate for working on a spreadsheet.

The poor pay more in stealth taxes than the rich will ever know.

I’d rather make the people that matter to me happy, than make happy the people I don’t matter too.

If everybody likes you, you’re doing something wrong.

The ability to constructively criticize is vastly different from the ability to find fault.

Modern advertising isn’t designed to announce a product and make you aware of it.

Modern advertising is designed to indoctrinate you in to a cult of wanting more.

Bureaucracies are born out of someone creating a policy because somebody did something someone else didn’t like them doing.

I am a great believer in analysing any statement against a group of people based on the theory that if you were to change the gender or the race, the statement would immediately be considered racist or sexist, that the statement is then inherently racist or sexist.

And whatever argument you hold against the statement being racist or sexist is invalid.

As adults very few of us have responsibilities that we took on but a lot of us have obligations we were given.

Working in my workshop with the door open.

As the various families come home from work, the boyfriends and husbands get curious and wander over to see what I am building.

It is strange how many wives suddenly have jars they cannot open, garage door openers that need new batteries, groceries to put away and items on high shelves that cannot quite be reached and by the way it’s time to come home for dinner now.

I may be considered by many wives to be a bad influence on impressionable husbands.

Never regret trying.

I think we can all agree that Donald Trump says some utterly moronic shit at times.

The scary thing is if you read any quote or sound-bite by Donald Trump in the voice of Futurama’s Zap Brannigan it becomes both scary and serenely beautiful at the same time.

And then you realise, this isn’t a comedy show. It’s politics.

But I repeat myself.

Remember! Zap Brannigan’s voice!
“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

“He said that he’s pathological and he’s got basically pathological disease … I don’t want a person that’s got pathological disease.”

“I never attacked him on his look, and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.”

“I will build the greatest wall that you’ve ever seen.”

“[She] is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man.”

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese.”

My wife likes to “play doctor.”

Whenever I suggest sex she goes in her office and keeps me waiting on the couch for three hours.

I have actually learned to hold my wife’s hand when we go shopping at the mall.

She thinks it is an incredibly romantic gesture.

I treat it is an economic measure.

*psst* It stops her from wandering off and shopping.

You can always tell when a software as a service company is in trouble by how much they take away previously free features and start making them paid for features.

Oddly, even though I use my mobile phone an awful lot, I never actually dream about it when I sleep.

Same thing goes for my computer.

I guess dreaming about sitting at a keyboard or staring at a tiny illuminated screen just isn’t interesting enough for our sleeping brains.

Yesterday I closed my video game studio.

I launched my new business on September 5th 2001, and on September 5th 2008, seven years later, I officially closed the doors on the studio.

The economy took its toll, and one too many fiscally poor clients put us too far underwater to recover in any reasonable time frame.

It was a fun ride, and I would do it all over again.

But right now I need to move on.

The one thing I have noticed between playing Everquest for a few years and playing World of Warcraft for a few years is that I have a hankering to return to locations in Everquest but not in World of Warcraft.

I think psychologically this is because first person perspective (Everquest) puts you there.

Whereas third person perspective (World of Warcraft) makes you watch someone else be there.

My brother views me as the little kid.

I negotiate multi-million dollar deals with client management skills that he lacks.

But I am still his youngest kid brother.

At what point do we have more dead people on Facebook than living people?

Any creative output you have has a similar trait.

Your programming, your writing, your art, your opinions on life and your old social media status updates.

Your earliest work is nothing short of cringe worthy that you will find intently embarrassing when looked at through the lens of time.

Fortunately for me, the last time I visited my parent’s house I destroyed all the floppy discs with my angst ridden creative writing so that it would never haunt me in my future career.

So during lunch someone picked up a game that sounds like a sort of “dating sim”-style game where you play an intrepid lawyer who has to go around talking to people, solving quests, and building up a case for your client.

A logical extension of this would be one for other professions, such as for chartered accountants.

And a logical extension to that would be a “sim” game for a software developer.

And a logical extension to that would be a “sim” game where you play the part of an intrepid QA/tester working at a large game development company who you have to track down bugs in games that you are testing, enter comprehensive bug reports, hold meetings and talk to the other employees.

If someone ever did find a real bug in the game you could deny that it was a bug and claim it was actually a quest.

Though I imagine it would be really confusing for the actual QA staff testing the game as they would have a hard time distinguishing real bugs from quests in the game that require you to find bugs in the games you are testing.

Some of the wealthiest and successful people I know are some of the laziest and most procrastinating people I know.

The difference in their laziness and procrastination to the general populace is that they do the things that matter and procrastinate and ignore the things that don’t.

The difference is not their laziness and procrastination but in how they are lazy and what they procrastinate on.

When will the GDC (Game Developers Conference) start handing out awards for “best smell in FPS category?”

Cooking is pretty easy.

You just have to turn off that part of your lizard brain that makes you afraid.

General cooking is mostly art.

But baking?

Baking is where science and art meet.

I’d rather live in the Hell of reality with other people than alone in heavenly dreams.

Life is meant to be challenging.

If you don’t have any real challenges in your life, make some.

And I am not talking about the challenges of the amateur dramatics that your friends and family insist on bringing to your life.

If you could be a god, the only god in fact, a supreme being, in an alternative reality, would you do it?

Let’s assume this reality is just a big simulation on a powerful computer.

You would “live” in that reality for as long as you like, but once you step in, you cannot leave.

If you could be god in a virtual reality and give up this reality, would you?

Why not?

What’s the difference?

What part of you is you?

If you could transfer your thoughts, memories and other logical faculties to a virtual world or virtual reality or a robot body, would you do it?

Why not?

What’s the difference?

How much of you must remain for you to identify you are still you?

Don’t count the years, count the adventures you had.