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Returning home from a rain soaked running training session this evening, I caught the end of an interview on Radio 4’s Front Row with sculptor Richard Serra. Towards the end of the interview (28 minute offset) he made a fascinating aside about graffiti, specifically tagging, after being asked about a mark that the interviewer had seen on a recent installation:

If you notice, kids never tag advertisements because advertisements, they think, are something they aspire to, even though advertisements are probably what represses them and makes them conform more than anything else. Yet they’ll tag something they think has no useful function. And the interesting thing about art is that it’s purposely useless. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a use in terms of evoking feelings and sensations that nothing else can do, but it means it’s not useful in the utilitarian way that a doorknob is.

Thinking about it, I can’t think of any graffiti or tagging I’ve ever seen on adverts. But maybe other factors are at play – that adverts are replaced frequently, that they’re slightly out of the way, or maybe that I’m not paying attention. 

But I can’t shake the feeling that it hits a truth about the process. It struck me as a fascinating observation, and presents an interesting insight into the mindset of the perpetrators.

All go at the moment, so only time for a brief update:

• Wedding plans are proceeding well. We’re being cautioned by friends to stay calm as the day approaches, and I think we are managing that quite well. Got quite excited picking up the rings, as well as getting to see the finished product for something we’ve arranged. More on that after the big day

• Jury service. I’ve received a “you are on the shortlist” letter last week. Inevitable really given all of Frances’ family have had similar, so it was only a matter of time before I got one. I’m in two minds. On the one hand I’m fascinated by the process, and obliged to ‘do my civic duty’, but on the other it will stomp all over my business. Being self-employed has some big draw backs at times. More on this later, no doubt.

• Anime: Last year I hired “Spirted Away“, and absolutely loved it (Frances wasn’t quite as struck). Whilst poking about HMV last week, I figured it’d be fun to watch some more, so have “Laputa, Castle in the Sky”, and “My neighbour Totoro“. This last one has intrigued me as it’s frequently on muted loop at Ichiban. The blurb reads “Conceived as a family film devoid of conflict and suffused with the carefree pleasures of the summertime”. How can you not like the sound of that? Can’t wait.

• Comments (1): My advert music post passed 800 comments recently. Quite scary, but fascinating to watch, and I’ve discovered some great music. With Sigur Ros’s new album due, maybe we’ll start to get some new background music for adverts and documentaries

• Music: R.E.M. released their new album “Accelerate” on Monday. I “pre-ordered” it from the iTunes Music Store (as I had a birthday voucher to use), but winded up having to cancel my pre-order and order it again. Doubt I’ll use that service again as “you may not be able to download it when it’s made available” strikes me as undermining what pre-ordering is about. Surely I should get it first? As to the music, whilst the album is good, it didn’t really jump out at me on first few listens on the train through to Edinburgh yesterday. To be honest, I quite like where REM has been going (in particular I liked ‘New adventures in HiFi’ when it came out, which isn’t viewed as one of their best by critics), so this “return to form” leaves me in a funny place.

• Comments (2): It seems a comment from a friend on an old (2006) post about the misery of our kitchen/downstairs update, has attracted the attention of the company he was referring to. I take great care in what I post, and what I allow through in the way of comments, so this thread is exercising me right now. Thoughts appreciated.

• Work. I’m in the midst of great change. A new contract with an existing client, and finishing up with an old long-term client for a number of reasons (not least that work is coming at me thick and fast right now, so I decided to go with the challenge rather than the easy option). Plus this new arrangement, whilst featuring less working from home, does give me a bit more time to work on some longer term projects and clients. All good.

• Comments (3). A new plugin. In the hope of showing that there’s stuff going on here even when I’m not posting, take a look at the (tidied up) sidebar for the most recent comments to my various posts.

• Aching muscles. Went for a ‘trail/route familiarisation’ run in Pollok park with the club on Monday night. Oscar, one of the group B coaches, led proceedings. I discovered more paths I didn’t know existed in the park, and had a great time running through muddy puddles (much to Frances’ disapproval when she saw my shoes). But trail running seems to use different muscles, so came back quite achy and muddy. But great fun. Can’t wait for the next couple of seasons in the park.

So, bar the Jury service, things aren’t too bad.

A school of thought exists in many database and system administrators that performance tuning is the highest of arts, the greatest of skills, and the loftiest of aims. Buy any system and tune it well – so goes the theory – and it will perform to a level unanticipated by your peers. You will receive praise and adulation.

I fully understand that it is a rewarding and enjoyable occupation, for the task itself is beautifully self-contained. No messy “user requirements” or “business processes” to consider, just pure unadulterated tuning. Gather your metrics, dig out your obscure, imported, reference book (preferably with a cool red Porsche on the front), stick on the headphones (Radiohead preferred), sip your coffee, and start tunin’ them there systems!

You can probably tell that this is something I’ve done before. You certainly wouldn’t be wrong, and I do – I’ll confess – slightly yearn to find myself in that situation again where I can geek out and optimise to my hearts content, sure in the knowledge I’m taking the greatest test a geek system administrator can take, with a proof that is irrefutable: The system now runs five percent faster because I’ve tweaked insert_complicated_term

But there’s a problem with this. It’s not actually the best thing to be doing in most situations.

This might sound a bit controversial at first – especially to any sysadmins or DBA’s reading this – but do allow me to explain over the course of the next few paragraphs. I’m certainly all for doing it when the situation necessitates it. But as a means in itself, as a reason-d’etre, it’s really isn’t the best way of expending effort.

It’s my experience, gained over years of supporting systems that are often quite closely tied to the users – rather than abstracted away through layers of support and departmental obligations – that almost all of the performance problems I’ve encountered have been down to simple things, often simple programmatic problems or errors brought about by a misunderstanding (from the developer or administrator), an architectural choice, or simple resource contention.

Ok, so maybe in some places the developers are all top of the class, fully jargon compliant, aspect, object, extreme, agile, pure-jargon oriented folk with the lastest iPod and geek-chic t-shirt. But I’m yet to experience such a place, and heck, even the best developers (and certainly system administrators!) should admit they’re prepared to learn a thing or two from each other. Eagerness to learn is, in my mind, more admirable and beneficial than complacency and over confidence.

It’s true that it’s the administrators role is to ensure that the best performance is achieved from the systems in use, but all too often I see administrators and DBA’s zooming in on the minutiae, rather than looking at the bigger picture. Not seeing the wood for the trees, if you like (although that’s perhaps a bit unfair).

The rub is us system administrators are often quite an antisocial lot, no laughing matter the moniker “BOFH“. We find it easier to deal with machines, rather than engage with the developers. Yet it’s precisely the engaging with the developers where most of the big performance problems can be solved. Work together to find and correct those approaches – drawing on the best knowledge from the team – so that the application and the database work well together, and things will be much easier/faster – both now – in the future.

Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime

What I’m saying here then is, rather than focusing on tuning out the best performance as a means in itself, it’s better to sit up, take stock of the entire application infrastructure, and engage with the people working on it elsewhere. Take a holistic view. Don’t focus purely on the performance tuning detail, but engage with the users, the developers, the managers and the other administrators, and try and build a picture. Is the approach right? Challenge assumptions, and question decisions. But build a picture. With that picture, I’d bet that better performance can be built over time, certainly that can be built purely by focusing on the detail.

The Press release from Apple confirms it. Apple are moving over to use Intel chips. Probably the worst kept secret in mac fandom (well, it went from outside bet by most, to a dead certainty on Friday), but it makes a fair degree of sense if they’re not getting what they need and want out of the PowerPC platform.

That said, it’s surprising given the platform is ramping up with the XBox and such making use of it. But if they’re simply not getting what they want from IBM as a supplier of such a key component in terms of cost, responsiveness, strategy and so on, it makes sense.

I’m no PowerPC bigot by any means. I only see good things in the switch over to Intel, not least that it won’t be long before we see geeks moving OS X onto vanilla PC hardware rather than the no doubt proprietary Apple supplied kit. But competition will be good for all concerned (see Microsoft are quoted in the press release!), and I hope that – as The Register points out – we’ll be wondering what all the fuss was about in a few years time.

Update: Keynote from WWDC ‘05 available here

I’m pleased to publish an article I have been working on for the last few weeks. It is, in essence, an overview of version control, but I start from the premise that it is badly misunderstood by a large number of technology practitioners. Because it is badly misunderstood, I strive to address the “justifications” I have heard as to why version control has not been used, and why those arguments are largely incorrect.

I make no apologies for being perhaps a little aggressive in some of my arguments: I honestly feel that version/source control is as vital a part of the software development cycle as hiring good developers, making good backups, and delivering the requirements to the business. But many people, including senior employees, can put everything at risk when a version control solution is either ignored, not adopted, or – just as badly – not enforced.

Version control is not, and never has been a panacea. To the initiated, my arguments may well seem something of a statement of the obvious. But I’d simply ask that you conduct a straw pole of technologists in your organisation or social circle. How many of them, from programmers to system administrators to managers, are enthusiastic towards version control? If it’s more than twenty percent, I’d be surprised.

So my article provides arguments for and justifications towards version control. It will hopefully be a useful resource for both the casual reader as well as a help to any proponent of source control inside an organisation, struggling against the sort of apathy or hostility I have frequently encountered.

I look forward to any feedback of course. A big thanks are due to friends who helped with comments on the article.

A printable PDF version is available at the base of the article.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m convinced that music is undergoing a massive change at the moment, and the BPI (equivalent of the RIAA in the US) are taking the fundamentally wrong approach in suing people who are downloading and sharing music. The reason they are distributing files “illegally” is no different from the practices of the past, when – as kids – we happily copied tapes and records and make compilation albums of our favourite music. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been getting fed up with /. for a while now, but today it officially “Jumped the Shark“. They posted a made up quote from Linus Torvalds that was used to illustrate a point in an article at The Register. A point that was deliberately provocative and hard to believe, to draw attention to some of Torvalds recent comments on another matter. The /. editors are so clueless and sticking to routine that they can’t actually go and edit the main body of the article (on the front page) to point out the mistake, it’s a tacked on “update” to the main body of the article.

What’s always been good – until now – about /. has been it’s interesting tech/geek headlines, but that has become so horribly sub-standard. It’s never been a great site for anything approaching informed comment, as it’s heavily populated by both trolls and fools. But foremost amongst them have to be the editors for posting atrocious submissions which they clearly haven’t actually read beyond the first paragraph. So, once again, I’m stuck looking for some useful technology information source that had what /. used to have, which was a great source of information.

Here’s hoping the supposed owners/operators of /. slap down the editors and move the entire website over to a more useful and informed service, with more clued up – professional – editors, because until they overhaul this tired and pitiful website, they’ll soon be loosing readers by the thousands.

I’d almost forgotten about this, until I stumbled on a mention of it. Back in 1998, I was nominated for the inaugural FSF award for the advancement of free software.

Larry Wall pipped me to the post mind. But who uses perl anyway…?

Good news at last, as it appears Microsoft are facing a huge fine from the European Commission, at 10% of their global earnings ($3billion+ of $30billion earnings).

I’m no fan of Microsoft, and it’s good to see a large governmental body somewhere hold Microsoft to account for it’s anti-competitive practices. I’m all for competition, but when a company dominates a market place, and shifts the playing field in it’s favour through it’s monopolistic control of the desktop on a repeated basis, it’s time for somebody to act to hit the company where it hurts, in the hope it’ll respond and correct it’s ways.

I’m glad the European Commission is facing down US criticism in this matter. If Microsoft want to operate in Europe, they have to play by European rules, regardless of their corporate base.

The BBC is carrying a report that Bloggers are visiting parliament to campaign for more MP’s to run weblogs.

This is something I’ve been keen on for some time, as one of many ways in which politicians could better establish communication with their electorate, and go some way to mending the break down.

Hopefully, some MP’s will pay attention and at least start considering means of mending the fence, be it weblogs or simply more detailed summary of their activities.