SPA2009

Also known as the British Computing Society Software Practice Advancement Conference, 2009. I attended SPA2009 from Sunday-Wednesday (5-8 April 2009) and was really pleased that I did! There were a lot of new faces, a lot of old faces, great new topics and content on programming, process and people stuff. There were some strong opinions that people were passionate about and argued the merits of - a great learning and networking event!

Best View of London

On 27 March 2009, after living in London for 2 years, I got the best view of London I have had yet!

I was fortunate enough on this day to be flying back to London Heathrow, and arrived over the UK as the sun was beginning to set. I had been napping on the flight until then, and awoke to the plane circling south of the O2 Arena.

Round and round we went ... the green scenery below getting darker and darker. The sun dipped lower, and the City's lights started coming on. Spectacular! The City itself...the tall buildings etc - all I could think was "google maps, with perspectives, eat your heart out!"

And then finally, we were allowed to proceed to Heathrow ... over Picadily Circus, over Hyde Park, South Kensington ... following the Thames River back ... over Kew Gardens ... and then we were landing.

I am now hoping that my next return flight on 17 April will come back at sunset again, which is possible because the clocks went back 1 hour :)

Introduction to Agile for Traditional Project Managers by Stacia Broderick

I just found this really good Introduction to Agile for Traditional Project Managers presentation that Stacia Broderick put together for Agile 2007. I am quite comfortable with what she says, and the relaxed pace that she presents it at. A well "knit" session integrating some good points from various influences and showing some solid experience she has clearly encountered in real world situations.

Hosted on InfoQ: Introduction-Agile-Stacia-Broderick.

Stacia's blog site: Agile Evolution Blog ... is not all "agile" focussed, but some gems are scattered. :)

I think it's a good complement to my Agile Introduction recommendation from about a year ago: Agile Project Management - a place to start though at 1 hour 26 minutes it is a little longer. But I think the time invested is worth it.

Thankyou for supporting!

The Inventor of the Wind-Up Radio

It is quite a good read from the inventor of the Wind-Up Radio - Trevor Baylis.

It covers great ground about inventing, inventors and a couple of other relevant topics: Trevor Baylis OBE.

Don't Shout At Your Computer!

An engineer shows what happens to harddrive performance if the harddrive is subjected to vibration, in this case, loud noises emanating from his shouting near them. ARGHHHHHHHH!.

Another wiki going places...

While doing some research for a last minute Sri Lanka holiday, I found this wiki that I was previously unfamiliar with. Content is good, growing fast, recent and accurate (for Sri Lanka at this time). If you want to avoid using a tour operator for your trip, you could do worse...wikitravel.

SANS Institute Publishes Experts-Agreed List of Top 25 Coding Errors

Some top people in the software industry, as well as critical organisations, have come together and agreed on a list of top 25 programming errors, and provided discussions and ratings on each. The information is well presented and easy to read: Top 25 Programming Errors.