This has been the busiest year ever. True, last year I was in school and (consequently) working twice as much. But this year, I’ve actually gone places and done things that have generally kept me away from posting here.
In January, I went to the Electronic Imaging symposium in San Jose, promised to write about what I learned and then did not. In February, I went on a “business trip” to Cozumel — via cruise ship — and then posted some of the photos I made on my Holga camera. Then in March, Lisa and I went to Paris to celebrate my graduation. I could talk your ear off all day about how much I love Paris; and if you’re Lisa, you’re probably sick of hearing me walk around the house sighing and saying “I miss Paris.” (Sorry!) Most recently, I promised to post pictures from my backpacking/camping/hiking trip to Utah. I did put some of them into a photoset on Flickr, but I haven’t gotten them here yet. Tomorrow I’m off to Iowa for a family reunion.
“But what about the other 15-or-so weeks of the year? Why no posts?”
It isn’t that I haven’t had any ideas. Here are some of the things I jotted down that I should write about:
Physical architecture vs. software architecture, with respect to the visibility and communication of design — I actually started writing a bit about this after some lengthy conversations with coworkers. Basically, I yearn for the day when software engineers can have books like this, this, and this. We need a shared visual grammar, shared materials, and shared processes so that we too can have coffee-table books that inspire our cohort.
A response to Jeff Atwood on (not) reinventing the wheel again . . . and again — Given what I just wrote above, it’s no surprise that I would be disappointed after reading an article that advocates waste. I hope one day to live in a software engineering world which is more like a real engineering world, a world in which there are two kinds of software businesses: (1) the businesses where almost everyone buys off-the-shelf or special-order parts and uses them to build incredible things, innovating very broadly and (2) the businesses that specialize in making those off-the-shelf and special-order parts, making them well, and innovating very deeply.
Design blogs — I’ve been making a little list of design blogs that I like. . . . I’m a total tease, though, so I’ll share them later.
My notebooks — One of those afore(un)mentioned design web sites has an occasional series looking inside designers’ notebooks. (For example.) I keep most of my thoughts (and some designs) worth remembering in journals and took some beauty shots of them. I’ve actually downloaded the photos off my camera into Lightroom.
French music — The French are different. Especially in their musical tastes. I like some of it and thought about shilling for folks like Mylène Farmer, Mara Tremblay, A.D.N., Abd al Malik, Karna, MC Solaar, Cœur de Pirate, Alain Bashung, Dumas, Karkwa, Noir Désir, Prototypes, Vulgaires Machins, and Indochine.
Women in Software Engineering — Though I’m not part of the Ruby/Rails communities I was disappointed to see the kerfuffle over a recent presentation which reminded many of us how few women there are in our profession, how they’re often (subconsciously) typecast, and how their accomplishments don’t often get enough attention. So here are some belated congratulations to Barbara Liskov, winner of the most recent Turing Award. And I like Liz Keogh’s web site.
My grad program — In a nutshell, I enjoyed my time at Brandeis as I worked toward my master of software engineering (M.S.E.) degree. I learned a lot of practical things related to software construction, tooling, and process (just as I hoped that I would).
And finally, Lent and my year-long cleaning project — After graduating I looked around my office/library and was shocked at how cluttered it was. So just before the new year, I resolved to get through all of the magazines, papers, articles, etc. in my big cardboard “in-box” — seriously, it’s big — by the end of 2009 and recycle whatever is left on January 1st, 2010. My progress is slow. (I’m being very generous to myself right there.) So for Lent I decided to better myself by working on my reading pile. In particular, I forbade myself to add more things to it. Basically, I’ve gotten to that point in my life where I need to put myself on an information diet or two. Which I’ve done, although I find myself snacking a lot.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing: reading from the big in-box, watching some of the 499 films in my Netflix queue, reading other people’s web sites*, writing in my own journal, photographing, gardening, carpooling, and more-or-less not writing here. More to come, eventually. . . .
* Thanks for nothing, Facebook and Twitter! Just kidding. You know I love you.
