Outcomes of meetings

At Canonical, we normally work in a distributed environment. As such, when we do get together, it's either for intense, multiple day meetings or intense, multiple day hacking sessions. Either way, there's a bunch of useful talk and progress, and this often needs to get written up.

While minutes and daily reports are a barrel of fun, for actually doing things and telling others how much you've done, you only really need to record three types of thing:

1. Next Actions – what you're going to do next, and who's going to do it
2. Decisions – you've had discussions and come to conclusions, what were they?
3. Achievements – things that actually got done during the meeting / hacking session

You can remember these with the convenient acronym, NADA.

Time isn't money

According to The Economist:

Money has three main qualities:

1. as a medium of exchange, buyers can give it to sellers to pay for goods and services; 
2. as a unit of account, it can be used to add up apples and oranges in some common value;
3. as a store of value, it can be used to transfer purchasing power into the future.

Can time be a medium of exchange? I guess sort of, but it's a little like barter for services. Much better to use money for that.

I guess it can be used as a unit of account. It took me as long to write this as it takes me to fold my laundry and clean my room. Learning French to conversational levels might take as much time as playing through Arkham Asylum and the next Assassin's Creed. Useful things to know.

Turns out you can't store time though. Those few minutes of spare time you have can't be put into a time bank and then redeemed for extra spare time in the future. It goes stale very quickly.

Date picked!

For all of those readers who might be interested, and foreign friends who might be in London at the time, let it be known that Joliette & I have picked the date of our wedding. Let it be May 12th, 2012.

Engaged!

A couple of weekends ago, Joliette and I were on holiday in Barcelona, visiting our friends Jamu & Jenn.

While we were there, the four of us walked up to the top of Tibidabo, a mountain overlooking Barcelona. We walked to the very top where Joliette and I separated from our hosts to take a closer look at the church. After looking around at its interior a bit, we went outside. I drew Joliette aside underneath some trees away from the crowds, got down on one knee and asked her to marry me.

She said yes.

And then I started breathing again, and gave her the ring that I had been carrying around like a fool in "Europe's pickpocketing capital".

Since then, we've told our families, announced on Facebook and are mere hours away from deciding on a date. Wedding planning has begun in earnest. As Joliette's family is mostly in America, and mine is mostly in Australia, and we're marrying in London, we have our work cut out for us.

Coffee

I'm not a morning person. At all. I really don't like waking up, or indeed doing anything before 11am. Sadly, not being possessed of a fortune and thus able to live life at the mellow tempo of my choosing, I have to put up with it.

I've been doing an experiment to see if I can hate waking up less. The idea is to give up coffee and all other drinks with caffeine and see if I can draw from my own latent energy. After all, most of the "buzz" that regular coffee drinkers get is actually the relief of the withdrawal symptoms that they've developed over night. Or so I'm told.

Last week I gradually cut down my coffee drinking from "way too much" to "two shots of espresso" to "one shot" and then to no coffee at all. No tea, no coke, no other sources of caffeine besides the occasional square of dark chocolate.

I had major headaches on day two of the "two shots" stage, and felt mildly lethargic most of the week. Especially had a great deal of trouble focusing.

The weekend was my first "no coffee" days. Mild headaches & severe lethargy. No need to focus. Thanks to a very patient Joliette for two great days.

This week, the headaches and the lack of focus have been pretty tough. Today I've been headache free but very much craving a coffee as a way to signal, "right, time to knuckle down & get to it". The focus-fog seems to be worst in the late morning and best in the afternoon.

I've also been going to sleep earlier, although I've been doing more exercise, which may be a part of that.

I'm still waiting for the day when I bounce right out of bed, eager to face the world, and for a day where my brain focuses like it does on caffeine. I'm hoping the day turns up next week, because I'm definitely going to have a cortado or three when I'm in Barcelona.

Super powers

It used to be that if you asked me which super-power I wanted, I would tell you, "instantaneous, effortless, accurate, error-free teleportation". Something very much like Jumper, except with fewer determined foes and better acting. After all, that would mean no more flights, no more uphill walks, no more being late, no more forgetting things and plenty more holidays.

But recently, I've changed my mind. I want to be Video Game Man. I want the super-powers that every video game character actually has that aren't even treated as super-powers.

Infinite stamina: Practically every video game character can run, jump, climb and fight forever without becoming tired, experiencing fatigue or slowing down in any way. This would make kickboxing much easier.

Self-sustaining: No need to eat, drink or sleep. Well, maybe if I got injured I could eat an apple to cure me. Think of the time saved.

Pause: When things get too confusing or fast-paced, or when a difficult decision must be made, I could pause and take as much time as I wanted to think about it. Of course, it would only be thinking.

Quick save, quick load: Attempt difficult situations over and over again. Accidental death would not be a problem. Negotiations could be optimized. Future knowledge could be used to enhance past decisions.

Friend or foe: Know instantly who the bad guys are. No more moral ambiguity for me, thank you very much!

Know thyself: Clear knowledge of all of my own capabilities – no more Dunning-Kruger effect for me! – and also of my own status, health, wealth etc. Always obvious what I could improve and how much I could improve.

Maps: Always knowing where I am, and where I need to go.

Unbreakable: Although I could be injured, it would be impossible to break my limbs, blind me, deafen me, or even slow me down. No possible accident could reduce or remove any of my innate capabilities.

Looking over this list, I'm reminded of The Culture, a utopia designed by Iain M. Banks and the little I know of the Reality is Broken meme. Which reminds me, most reader of this blog should look at "Don't Play Games With Me".

Oh, and if you're able to get me that teleporting gig, I guess I could be convinced to settle for that.

Sun day

Winter is dragging on in London. There's a tree outside my window, perhaps I've told you about it before. When I first moved here a year and a half ago, its branches were bare and through the gaps between the ends I could see a dead building made of black and glass and a solid grey sky. It's like that now. Every time I look out my window I hope to see flowers budding or leaves growing, telling me that Spring is really here.

It's odd to care so much about it, and to look for those signs. In Australia, so many plants are evergreen, and you have to be as far south as Tasmania for seasons to mean much. Flower buds and singing birds are the sort of metaphors you read in books and have to be explained to you, in much the way that the rain-in-a-dry-land metaphors in the Bible have to be explained to the British.

I've spent the morning replying to personal correspondence, most of which has been sitting in a virtual drawer for months and months. I confess that a part of me saw it as a duty that had to be done, but that part quickly shrivelled once I actually started to re-read and reply to the emails. What I dreaded from a distance as a chore quickly became a pleasure when up close, and I truly am blessed to have such friends.

Now there are lazy Sunday chores to do before I'm off to church. Cleaning, organizing, reviewing lists, making lists and carefully avoiding becoming lost in code, books or video games.