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Well, I did it! 50,0032 words written in less than 30 days. The biggest problem is that the story is only half-told! In my notes I reached a shade less than the official 1/2 way point. I’m thinking that I’ll write the last couple of scenes in the next week and then a big fat “to be continued” like in the movies! Have to wait a while for the concluding part of the story! |  |
This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved
Joel Spolsky, in his blog “Joel on Software” wrote:Dmitri Zimine has a hypothetical story of how interrupting a programmer for a two hour emergency request needed to close some sale can actually waste two weeks. “If Sarah spends just two hours thinking of her old project, she loses a day of productive work on the new one,” he says.Joel goes on to say,Agile development is supposed to be about agility. It’s supposed to mean that you can change plans quickly. It’s not supposed to be about rigid programming teams who are so slavishly devoted to their Two Week Plans that they can’t rearrange their schedule a bit to serve the needs of the customer. Dmitri’s conclusion, I’m afraid, strikes me as the very opposite of agile development. Agile is not supposed to be about swapping out one set of bureaucratic, rigid procedures for another equally rigid set of procedures that still doesn’t take customer’s needs into account.I think I’m going to file this one under “adventures in missing the point” or “All the facts? What’re those?”
I’ve never seen Joel say anything good that didnt promote his company’s bug tracking software, the consumate salesman in that regard. Agile development methodologies stand opposed to the old fashioned “waterfall” method. We all know that ____ rolls downhill, and the “waterfall method” of software development is a great example of that maxim in action. Agile development aims to take the big design up front and the long testing time at the end of the classic waterfall process and wrap them around a given sub-unit of the software; Agile methodologies attempt to bring manufacturings “Total Quality Management” processes to the software arena. Agile development will reduce, but not eliminate, the need for a dedicated testing group and therefore the number of licenses of bug tracking software that the testers would use to communicate back up the waterfall to the developers. And so, I come back around to why Joel displays a dislike for all things agile.
Why “adventures in missing the point”? Simply this: every agile project measures team velocity. After the team estimates the amount of work involved in finishing a given sub-unit of the project, that estimate is compared to the time that it actually took. Meetings, phone calls (blogging!) and other distractions will reduce the overall code-output of a developer: a given developer will never work a “perfect” day. Team velocity tracks the effects of these distraction and accounts for them when assigning work for a given iteration. The team may well be delivering a clean build that brings business value to the customer every 2 weeks, but their velocity will allow for a certain amount of “emergency” items to slide into place as they move along. If Joel knew agile development instead of simply attacking it, he’d have recognized this fact.
The National Novel Writing Month (Na-No-Wri-Mo or simply, NaNoWriMo) is set to kick off in 4 days time. There’s a kick-off party for folks here in St Louis on Sunday 29th, in the St Louis Bread Co in Clayton (10 S Central Ave, St Louis, MO). For those coming, there’s parking at Maryland and Central, with a short walk down Central to get to to party. I cant wait!
For the last few years I have provided a set of motivating progress meter / graph widgets for people to put on their websites. This year is slightly different. I contacted the technical folks at NaNoWriMo.org to let them know that I wanted to donate the code to their cause. They will officially be hosting the widgets this year.
Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo, posted an article “Parties and more” in the “Breaking News” section of the site. At the end he wrote:ps: We’re a day away from posting a few items created by the extraordinary Paul Hawke that will freak your brain. But Russ told me not to talk about them yet, so I can’t. Really. Not even a hint (cough, beautiful NaNoWriMo widgets, cough). Ahem.In an email to me, earlier in the day, he wrote:Dear Paul,
First off, I’m so sorry it’s taken me approximately four years to get back to your original email. I’ve been meaning to write you forever to thank you for all the great work you’ve done for NaNoWriMo participants in the form of your beautiful, simple, and helpful widgets. They’re awesome and motivating as all get-out, and I nearly peed when I just saw this year’s batch that we’ll be hosting on the NaNoWriMo site. So great!
Would you mind sending me your mailing address, so we can send you a few tokens of our esteem?
And thanks again, Paul! You rock!
ChrisI guess this is my famous “15 minutes of fame”, and I can slide into utter obscurity once its over? I’m bowled over, boggled, that I’ve registered on his radar - the founder of Nanowrimo. Wow.
To Quote:
The Muppet Matrix is a recreation of the original theatrical trailer that replaces the character cast with the much beloved muppets. Made up of more than 10 fully animated characters and 150 shots, the entire project took 2 months to complete with the devotion of three individuals.
How could I complain about a combination of the Muppets, and my favourite science-fiction movie?
Oh no! Remember that post recently talking about movies that should never have been made - specifically sequels - it seems that MGM are gearing up some more to add to my list:
Film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc on Wednesday said it is expanding global TV sales to reinvigorate operations, adding some 100 new employees and promoting a key executive to run the unit.…
“There is a tremendous expansion in the marketplace that is occurring now,” said Chief Operating Officer Rick Sands.
…
Wednesday’s announcement included the unveiling of thrillers “Species 4″, “WarGames 2″, “Into the Blue 2″ and romance “Cutting Edge 3″, along with “Legally Blonde 3″ which, Sands said, will not star Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon.
Given that “Legally Blonde 2″ had all the charm and appeal of a train-wreck, how do they think they can force the public to stomach “Legally Blonde 3″? Who in their right mind, after sitting through “Species 3″ (a straight to video title) would think, “yeah, that was such high quality entertainment that I want to see the next installment on the big screen for $10″? Personally, I wouldnt want to waste one of my Blockbuster free-rentals on it! Thank heavens that Reese Witherspoon saw sense and decided not to do the film. Heh. I wonder which poor soul will star in it - will it bomb? Could we convince (say) Ben Aflek to star, that would pretty much doom it from the get-go (”Gigli”, anyone?)!
OK. For some reason I found myself at “The Covenant” last night - looks like I will have to get a group of the guys together for “The Protector” and see it another time.
The movie was spoiled by a group of 4 teen girls who decided to talk ALL the way through the film. In a loud whisper at one point I said “shut up” (restraining myself from the “STFU” I really wanted to say) and a guy from the row in front stood up, turned around and gave them a piece of his mind at one point.
Overall the movie was reasonable … a “good bad film” (you know, like “Snakes on a Plane” was bound to be a bad movie but somehow they executed it with style). It had the feel of being borderline straight-to-dvd, but a shade better special effects meant it landed in movie theaters. The special effects were quite good - the big show-down at the end looks to be where they spent the real money. Overall Im left with too many questions though. They left it too wide open for sequels. If I had to give it a score, it’s bubbling around a B-. My vote would be to wait and get it on DVD, and while you’re there, rent “The Skulls” for a double-feature.
Im a nut for martial arts movies and it was a refreshing change to see the 2003 film “Ong Bak” on DVD. Refreshing in that the Thai martial arts used are very different from the “standard” (Hong Kong action movie) style.
“The Protector” opens this evening and it stars the same guy (Tony Jaa) who was in Ong Bak. The trailer for it looks fantastic, some slick moves. Definitely my pick of the week!
I also enjoy horror movies, even the cheesy ones. When “The Omen” was re-released I was soooo stoked to get a ticket to see it on 6/6/06 … how could you NOT go see it on that date? Some might say I have “goth tendencies” with my enjoyment of vampire flicks. Oh well!
Also opening tonight is “The Covenant” which looks to be a teen horror/action flick. In many ways the trailer reminded me of “The Skulls”. Strange as it might seem, and cheesy as the movie might be, I think I want to see it.
Overheard conversation from the next cube over
I’m phoning because I love you.
*pause*
I love you more than monkeys.
I love you more than monkeys frolicking in the trees.
I have odd co-workers!
It’s official. Im committed (or, should be committed). I will be participating in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year. Last year I plotted out my story and knew where things were going before I started. Right now I have a good idea of where things are going for this year’s story. If you want to keep track of my thoughts - things that are inspiring me - take a look at the thoughts page on the website I created for the novel.
One of the biggest things I am planning is to podcast a serialized version of the novel. Whether I do that as I go along, or once the NaNoWriMo heat has cooled down, I dont know. Until November I am planning to podcast some “behind the scenes” thoughts and a few “prelude” episodes that will tell the story of a few of the supporting characters, and set the scene for the Nano novel.