This was a real eye-opener. A geek reviews the Wii, and finds it lacking compared to his beloved 360. His reasons?

1. It was awkward to use

It wasn’t particularly fun for me, however. It was awkward to play videogames, which hasn’t been the case for me since I got used to controllers with more than a handful of buttons.

2. It *gasp* might make game controllers in the future different

I fear, perhaps too much, that future consoles will be more like the Wii than the 360. Even though it’s a fun idea to have people boxing pixels with their real fists and swinging virtual golf clubs and the like, my bread and butter will be shooters, and I do not want to have to use anything like a Wii-mote and a nunchuk to shoot down virtual enemies.

3. He’s lazy and out of shape

I don’t want to break a sweat while playing videogames. …. While some of the cyberathletes were athletic, too, I don’t think being in good athletic shape should be a requirement for gaming.

The review is really funny if you read it with an old man’s voice - like Dana Carvey as the grumpy old man on SNL “We had to walk on jagged stumps and we liked it!”

Why is software so buggy? They ask Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++. His answer (paraphrased)

Because the stupid users value other things more than they value quality

Yes, those stupid users. How dare they have preferences different from Dr. Stroustrup’s. The unmitigated gall!

Update: fixed a missing apostrophe.

I came up with the following headlines this morning, and thought they would be great as Onion articles.  however, it would be more fun if I opened the floor and let everyone take a stab at the article content.

here are the headlines:

New Plan Worries Alarmists

and

Lack of bad news a source of concern, says constant worrier

• Whenever someone throws out an idea, say “Interesting idea, but is it actionable?”
• Whenever someone suggests changing a process, say “I like the concept, but how do we measure success?”
• When your team starts a new project, say “We need to be clear what ‘Done’ means for this project”
• You can also say “What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for this project?”

update, with some inspiration from PierG

• On a new project: “What’s the ROI for that?”
• “What synergies can we leverage?”
• “this is nice, but where’s the WOW!?”

No matter what you believe, there are educated, intelligent people out there who think you’re a fool for believing it.

To the tune of “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my types
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your constructors have a Proxy
In so much space…. mmmmmm..

And when you cast there,
without care,
Objects get out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t code enough…
The compiler just knew too much

My objects are lazy….
My factories are lazy…
My typing is lazy…
Typically…

And then I learned how to write the best code in my life
But test twice… that’s my only advice….

Come on now, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you think you are?
Ha ha ha, R.O.F.
You think you have type control?

Well, I prefer lazy….
I write my code lazy…
I initialize lazy…
Generally…
My interpreters have the smarts to duck typecast on a whim
And all I remember is thinking “I want to cast it like this.”

And ever since I was little, ever since I was little, I’ve loved to code
And it’s no coincidence I’ve found
That strict typings’ no fun.

But maybe I’m crazy….
Cause I prefer lazy…
I write my code lazy..
Usually…

Peace out!

Why don’t infertile people make good testers?

Because they cannot reproduce

What’s the graphic designer’s favorite drink?

Hi-res root beer

How can you tell when there’s been an elephant in your data center?

People are walking around outside with a dazed expression saying “Holy crap - how did an elephant get into our data center?”

Welcome to the November 16th, 2006 edition of the Carnival of Agilists. This edition brings us controversy, thought leadership and pratical advice. You know, the simple things in life.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• We had another big controversy in the Blogosphere re: Agile. First, Dimitri Zimine wrote about “How Two Hours Can Waste Two Weeks.“
• Joel Spolsky responded in his usual style “You call this Agile?“
• Mishkin Berteig provided his thoughts on Joel’s critique in “The Case for Context Switching” (sounds like a techno-mystery novel)
• And Keith Braithwaite shared his thoughts on the Agile Forums “agile * flexible / consultancy = ?“

Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Ken Schwaber, one of the two fathers of Scrum, presents a video lecture about code quality in “The Canary and the Coal Mine“. Deb Hartmann follows up with a summary of the topics covered in the video, along with her own analysis.
• Scott Ambler has been spending a lot of time thinking about software architecture, and how you align it with agile development. He writes about these thoughts in “Scaling Agile via Architecture.“

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Ryan Cooper shares his thoughts on the difference between Camaraderie and Trust

Responding to change over following a plan

• Oliver Azeau writes an interesting article about how he views project management as a black box.
• If you haven’t heard, Britain’s Dept. of Health is having a rough time delivering a big project. If only they’d used agile development methods…
• But we Americans have our own examples of giant failed projects as well. Nicholas Carr spells them out.

Thoughts and Ideas

• Simon Baker lists what he learned from the Agile Business Conference. Wish I could have gone!
• Frequent Releases - another chapter from James Shore’s upcoming book.
• What is Agile Testing? Keith Ray shares some insights he’s gleaned from others.
• Amr Elssamadisy shares his thoughts on Using Patterns to explain and teach Agile Practices (thanks, Deb!)

Agile Tutorials

• How to test private methods, by Ed Gibbs.

Agile Fun

• A very useful process, but is it agile?
• Having problems getting your agile methodology on track. Here’s a book of spells that might be useful during agile projects. (If you’ve played D&D or other Role-Playing Games, this will make more sense)
• Simon Baker uses South Park Studio to create fun tracking charts for his team.

Previous Editions
All previous editions of the Carnival are referenced at the Agile Alliance website.

Join in the Fun!
Have something that you think is worth sharing? Don’t be shy! We love new ideas and insights. Send us a link to your post at agilists.carnival@gmail.com. If you’d like to be a part of the Carnival, let us know and share your editorial gift with us!
Future editions will be on the first and third Thursday of each month. If you would like to participate, please send us a link to your post at mailto:agilists.carnival@gmail.com Or, if you prefer, use this handy dandy carnival submission form.

Inspired by this “Computer Science D&D Spellbook”

• Invoke ScrumMaster
• Call Daily Meeting
• Otto’s Irresistable User Stories
• Summon Product Owner
• Cause Unit Test
• Increase FitNesse
• Sprint Of Heroes
• Continual Integration
• Remove Scope
• Phantasmal Feature
• Comprehend Customer
• Mordenkain’s Iterative Endeavor
• Silence Chicken
• Symbol of Burndown
• Iteration To Stone

Any others?

“Reviled did I live,” said I, “As evil I did deliver.”

Could also be:

Reviled did I live; evil I did deliver.

But my favorite of all time remains:

Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog

I added a Squidoo Lenz for myself.  It’s an interesting system - check it out.

• You’re in a difficult meeting at work, someone stands up and says “To hell with you guys, I quit.”, and the next thing you say is “Can I have your stuff?”
• You rationalize playing for an extra 5 hours because then you’ll only be paying an even 10 cents per hour for the month!
• A beautiful woman/handsome man asks you if you’d like to meet for dinner on Friday night and you say “Ooh, no, sorry, I promised my guild I’d be there to kill the Dragon of Darkness.”
• Your guildmates know more about your work projects than your spouse does.
• Your significant other says “Goodnight, honey” and you’re playing your MMO. They wake up the next morning and say “Good morning, honey.” and you’re still playing your MMO.
• You spend hours staring at your clothes, thinking of how you might change them to make them “more bitchin.”
• Your dog’s ears perk up when the computer plays the “quest completed” sound, and she starts wagging her tail excitedly.
• Your boss tells you that you need to go on a weeklong retreat with no internet access, and you feel your insides writhing in terror.
• You didn’t find the World of Warcraft South Park episode very funny at all.
• One of your guildmates announces that they’re going to cut back on playing because they are getting married, and your first thought is “Loser.“
• After months of relentless effort, you and your guild finally kill the one monster in the game that no-one else has ever killed. Then you discover, to your horror, that only hours before, another guild already did it, and they’re already posting screenshots of their win. You immediately start trying to figure out how they faked the pictures.
• You find yourself saying things like “My online friendships are just as valid as my real-world friendships.”
• The game goes down suddenly. You spend the next three hours hiding in a dark corner, muttering to yourself and rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
• You find yourself often saying the following sentence: “No, I think you’re the one who’s addicted - to being a judgemental creep!”
• You buy an extra computer and an extra subscription to the game, so you can play one character while the other one is healing up.
• Your friend holds up a lamp that he pulled from a free pile at a garage sale.  “Nice Loot!” You say, admiringly.
• When your friends disparage your choice of gaming as your primary pastime, you look at them, smile smugly and say “You know, Joi Ito says that MMOs are the next generation’s golf courses.”
• You sometimes forget that in real life, you can’t just respawn if you die.

With apologies to Monty Python

The Scene:

• Four strangely dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort.

First Programmer

Now that’s a good cup of coffee.

Second Programmer

Nothing like a tall cup of Sumatra-Arabica blend, eh Dennis?

Third Programmer

You’re right there, Ken.
Fourth Programmer

Who’d have thought thirty years ago we’d all be sittin’ here drinking Sumatra-Arabica blend, eh?

First Programmer

In those days we were glad to have the price for a can of Jolt.

Fourth Programmer

Without ice or a glass.

Third Programmer

Or caffeine.

First Programmer

In a shaken up warm can.

Fourth Programmer

Oh, we didn’t have cans. We had to drink it out of rolled up greenbar.

Second Programmer

The best we could manage was to spill it on our shirts, and then suck at them.

Third Programmer

But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were programming in Assembly.
First Programmer

Because we were programming in Assembly! My old Boss used to say to me “Fortran won’t bring you happiness, Dennis.”

Fourth Programmer

Yeah, that’s true. I was happier then, and I had nothin’ but Emacs and a VT102.

Second Programmer

VT102!? You were lucky to have a VT102. I used to have to program on a VT52, in VI. And every other day the server would have to go through a scheduled reboot.

Third Programmer

Eh, you were lucky. I had to program in TECO
First Programmer

I used to dream of getting to program in TECO! It would have been so much better on my carpal tunnel syndrome (shakes his wrists and grimaces). I used to program in edlin on a teletype, and the server would crash three times a day without notice.

Fourth Programmer

Well, when I said Emacs, it was really only sed and some fancy shell scripts I wrote, but it was Emacs to me.

Second Programmer

I wasn’t allowed to use sed. My Boss said we couldn’t afford the license for it. I had to use echo.

Third Programmer

You were lucky to have echo! I used to have to punch holes in cards and stick em in a shoebox.
First Programmer

Cardboard shoebox?

Third Programmer

Yeah.

First Programmer

You were lucky. I had to carry around my punch cards in a grocery bag, and stick into a server that would give back to me all crumpled and torn. I worked 15 hours a day for a dollar an hour and when I got back to my apartment the roaches would skitter around the room singing to me.

Second Programmer

Luxury. I had to carry my cards in a wet napkin, stick ‘em in a machine that rebooted every 4 1/2 hours and eat every 15th card. At night I had to sleep in the computer lab, cause my Boss insisted that I was receiving school credit, and I had to support all the wannabe programmers all night long.
Third Programmer

Well, of course, I had it tough. I had to carry my cards around in a flaming barbecue pit, stick ‘em into a machine that would fail every 30 minutes and spent 10 minute rebooting. My boss made me do his laundry for free every week, and I had to sleep in the machine room.

Fourth Programmer

Right. I had to wire the computer by hand, carry around a bag of vacuum tubes to fix all the ones that failed. The heat from the computer would set my clothes on fire, and I had to spend 12 hours a day picking moths out of the wiring. My boss forced me to write all his papers and raise his children, and I lived underneath the floor of the machine room and spent the whole night listening to the drives go thumpety-thumpety-thumpety.

First Programmer

And you try to tell the young people of today that - and they won’t believe you!

A graphic designer’s take on FAA flight information for a 24 hour period.

I haven’t seen Borat, and based on the reviews, I’m not going to, at least in a theater. I’m sure other people will enjoy it heartily, and I don’t think less of them for that; movies that show how professional comedians can mercilessly manipulate and abuse regular people just isn’t my thing.

“But wait - these regular people did it to themselves.” I hear you cry. But the fact is, we’re only seeing Mr. Cohen’s take on the events. How much film did he leave on the cutting room floor because people weren’t willing to go along with his schtick? How were the scenes edited - what did Cohen twist or reorder in order to make people seem more stupid.

Lastly, put yourself in these scenes. You’re trying to be accomodating to a foreign visitor, trying to be polite and pleasant, trying to tolerate his differences. He says something really strange and offensive, and you struggle, becuase you don’t want to be an asshole. Or maybe you thought you misheard him. So you say something stupid, or you find yourself nodding your head. And bam, you’re a yokel on TV, proof to the world that Americans are ignorant racist shits.

Yes, there are ignorant, racist American shits out there. But there is also an artist who is creating the story he wants to tell.

In reading the reviews, I was struck by one thing in particular - the difference in Kurt Loder’s review and at least two others - Creative Loafing and the San Jose Mercury News.

Compare this excerpt from Creative Loafing:

and a gun store owner gladly offers suggestions when Borat asks him which weapon is best for killing Jews

And the Mercury News:

When Borat pays a visit to a gun store in the South, he asks the man behind the counter what kind of weapon he would recommend for shooting Jews. Without hesitating, the salesman suggests a Glock automatic.

With Mr Loader’s review:

In one scene, Borat goes into a gun store and asks the mild-mannered clerk, “What is the best gun to defend against a Jew?” We can see the man hesitate for moment — wondering, perhaps, if he’s really understood the question being posed in Borat’s thick accent. Then, going along, he says, “Well, I’d recommend a nine-millimeter ….” As edited, the clear implication of this exchange is that the clerk is a typical red-state anti-Semite, possibly a violent one. But the man doesn’t give off that kind of vibe at all, and sucker-punching him in this way seems grossly unfair.

Did these people watch the same movie?

Update:

Jane Galt feels much the same as I do.

I read Mr Shmaltz’s book - The Blind Man and the Elephant some years ago.  It was a wonderful, short treatise on project management.  Having just found his blog, I highly recommend this article:

Why Project Managers Can’t Manage Projects

It’s a little abstract, but very insightful.  “Who are the chickens?” you might ask - well, most of you are.  You’re in control, but nobody seems to acknowledge that (often including you), and that’s why the project fails.

(Compare and contrast with The 5 stages of Innovation)
Advocate

• You say things like “We could use this innovation in our projects.”
• You actively subscribe to a bunch of blogs and email lists about the innovation

Cheerleader

• You start to look for jobs where you will be able to use the innovation
• You wince every time someone talks positively about the “old way”
• Your significant other complains because you are spending all your money on books and conferences

Troll

• You deliberately pick fights and post provocative articles and comments
• You actively refuse to work on projects that use the “old way”
• You grow more and more convinced that there is an active conspiracy against the innovation. The phrase “Fat Cats” starts to creep into your rants.
• Overlooking all of thier odious personality flaws, you develop or join a circle of like-minded companions.

Misanthrope

• Together with your like-minded companions, you create private discussion areas, so you can avoid all the “negative vibes”
• You begin to turn on other advocates, especially when they deviate from the “one true path” in any way. You use the label “Sellout” with gleeful abandon.
• People stop inviting you to neighborhood parties, because you keep getting into fights.

Bitter

• Having alienated just about everyone you know, you feel a crushing loneliness of despair and nostalgia
• You say things like “We didn’t lose faith. The world did.” to your few remaining true-believer friends
• You are filled with revulsion every time you hear about your favorite innovation.
• Eventually you quit the technology game and join a commune.

Denial

• You deny that the new innovation is worthwhile.
• You say things like ‘That will never scale’ or ‘That was done back in the 80s and no one used it’
• Whenever anyone mentions the new innovation, you present a laundry list of reasons why it won’t work.

Anger

• You actively unsubscribe from blogs who rave about the new innovation
• You snort with derision and roll your eyes when you see the innovation on a resume
• You engage in flame wars with advocates of the innovation
• The phrase “propeller head” appears in your writing, as does the phrase “Blah, blah, blah, I am so sick of hearing about ___”

Bargaining

• You look for ways to justify your disinterest, in the face of clear market interest in the innovation
• You say things like ‘Yes, but without support for XYZ, it’s dead in the water.’
• You’ll buy books that include the new innovation, but only as long as they also include something else you’re really fond of. For example:
• Agile Development and XML - the forgotten connection
• or
• Monads and Method Invocations - How Haskell is just like Introspection
• At conferences, you’ll visit the session about the new innovation, but you’ll leave early.

Sadness

• You start to feel tired, because the world is changing around you
• You say things like “I’m too old for this shit.”
• You feel stupid, because the new innovation just doesn’t quite seem to make sense

Acceptance

• Finally, you realize that everyone’s figuring out the new innovation, and it’s all a big mess.
• You read blogs or news articles and you say things like “Wow, they don’t know what to do with it either!”
• If you’re entrepreneurially inclined, you start to think about how you could build a startup around the innovation and retire early and rich.

For most innovations, many people will never move past anger.

(Compare and contrast with The 5 stages of fanboi-ism)

Pete Behrens gives us the Halloween/October roundup of all things agile.

I probably should have written this yesterday, but inspiration strikes at odd moments.

Announcing the new language - Lovecraft. It is inspired by the writings of the famous horror author HP Lovecraft, to maximize the thrill of programming.

Here’s the structure:

• The basic semantic structure is Ruby-like, but only in appearance. Its true nature is far more sinister.
• Lovecraft is, of course, interpreted. And, most importantly, in the past tense.
• You start with a number of threads, as many as you choose to allocate. Lovecraft is a highly concurrent language. The first one is the “Judge”, responsible for managing the rest. However, you can’t ever increase your threads - they will only decrease over time.
• Note that you don’t have to call it the Judge - you can also call it the Magistrate, the Investigator, the Governor, the Constable, the Examiner or the Sherrif - your choice.
• Once a Lovecraft program starts, it will only end badly.
• If a Lovecraft program “reaches the end” it will automatically start back at the beginning, possibly with fewer threads (see below)
• The only variable type is String. And all Strings are automatically encoded in an ancient language (EBCDIC) each time they are set or adjusted. You must run the decoder each time you want to do anything with the String. Note that any errors in the decoding process will cause the contents of the String to become randomized, the various characters leaping into each others’ spaces, combining and separating in a bizarre and apparently random manner.
• Strings are delimited by quotes, but you cannot use quotes inside a string. That would require an escape character, and there is no escape in Lovecraft
• The only logical operator in Lovecraft is the “if_only…alas” operator as in:
• if_only x equaled “5″ i_could_end_this_madness() alas
• There are no For loops, While, Do While or other looping constructs, other than Goto
• The entropic madness of an uncaring and soulless universe causes your variables to “decay” over time, becoming statistically less likely to contain the correct answer the longer the program runs, and the more often you access the variables.
• Note that each character in the String will degrade independently, and the probability of decay is uniform across the length of the String.
• Introspection, or any attempt to debug the variables significantly increases the chance that the variable will decay
• If you no longer need a variable, you can WasSacrificed() it. (Note the use of the past tense). Note also that, unusually, the variable name comes before the command:
• if_only x did_not_equal “42″
• x WasSacrificed()
• alas
• Note also that the more variables you sacrifice, the more entropy will be added to the overall program, increasing the likelihood that other variables will decay, so use WasSacrificed carefully!
• Inevitably, your threads will stop operating properly as the variables decay into meaningless garbage. It is possible for the Judge thread to mark another thread as insane in order to stop it from running. However, as I noted previously, you cannot create new threads - you must continue on with the remaining threads you have. Note also that there is no definitive test of whether a thread is insane or not - the “Judge/Magistrate/Examiner/etc” must evaluate the thread and make a judgement based on its own, possibly unstable state.
• At some point, the threads of sanity will be exhausted, and your program, lurching about erratically, spouting gibberish in EBCDIC must be WasCommited(). Committing a program does not end it - it merely leaves it forlorn and alone, occupying a small cell in your computer’s memory until such day as the great User decides to terminate its Universe forever.