Find me a word

... which means, a logical sounding explanation for doing something that you would do anyway. Or a phrase.

For example,

"Oh, I always buy the yellow ones," he said, "they're better at catching flies." But actually, he buys them because that's what his mum always bought when he was a kid.

Version Control

You probably know by now that I work on Launchpad, and that I help make Launchpad and the version control tool Bazaar play nicely together.

But if you aren't a programmer, neither of those sites are going to help you much in your never-ending quest to understand what it is I do all day. Certainly, I've always had trouble explaining version control to the uninitiated.

Rands (aka Michael Lopp, author of Managing Humans) describes version control as capturing context. If you still don't get it, ask questions here.

Two in a Row

I've just done something that's rare for me: I've read two non-fiction books in a row.

The first is The Reason for God, by Tim Keller. This is a very good book that opens with a quote from Darth Vader and then quickly settles into calm reason that actually listens to both sides of the argument. This quote from the book is a great summary of something I believe very strongly:

Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts--not only their own but their friends' and neighbors'. [...] Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous or offensive. And, [...] such a process will lead you, even after you come to a position of strong faith, to respect and understand those who doubt.

If you want to get a good idea of my approach to questions of faith, religion and what not without me boring you to tears about it, then find some way to read the introduction to this book.

I have some criticisms of the book, which I'll save up for another post. For now, let's just say it's very good. If you are going to read any book about Christianity in 2009, this should probably be it.

The other book is Managing Humans, by Michael Lopp. It's a bunch of essays about being a manager in Silicon Valley. Some of the essays skated quite close to the bleedingly obvious (particularly the meeting ones), but are helpful since they remind you to get some perspective. Others aren't relevant to me, since I'm no-one's manager or because I don't live in the Valley. Still, I think I'll want to read through it again in a couple of years time for that perspective and to be re-told the core message: the people are the business, and they are humans like me.

Summer in the City

I haven't posted for a bit and I don't intend to post again for a while. I'm comfortable with my thinking being sub-coherent for now.

Swords in Australia?

I was toying around with an idea for a short fantasy-genre story called "A guy with a sword" last night and thinking about how (if at all) it should be influenced by my own Australian nature.

But then I was thinking, have swords ever been a big deal here? Are there any records of men dueling each other from the early days of the colony? In fact, has anyone in Australia ever been killed with an actual sword?

I've had a cold this week and I'm getting the cough I get after I get colds of this kind. My right arm feels like it has been twisted backwards in my right arm socket. The days are getting warmer and muggier and the nights aren't cold enough to let me sleep.

But that's all ripples on the surface. Beneath the churn is an ocean that's unaffected. I'd say a calm ocean, but that would be lying. If we had to stretch the metaphor further (and I feel we must), then I'd say there's at least some thermohaline circulation going on down there.

Reflecting on a year in Sydney, I realize that the words spoken by all my friends last year were true. It is a big place that's hard to get around. It is difficult to make friends here, even in church. I'm still trying to figure out what this means for next year.

In other news, I've finished reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy. I like it a lot, but I can't help but feel that it's a shallower knock-off of Infinite Jest, even if it was published twenty years before it.