Today I realised that every time I hear the phrase if it isn't broken, don't fix it I feel kind of uncomfortable. I fully understand the notion: the process yields the results we want, so why bother?  As it is being said, I detect the whatever works attitude emanating from the person saying i... [More]

It was Aristotle who said "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind", but what is it about paid jobs that make this the case? To find the answer let’s consider the differences between paid and unpaid jobs. One summer I got a 5 day job working at what could only be described as an ex-bo... [More]

Meet Roofus. He’s a professional painter. He paints because he’s discovered that paintings sell pretty well and it affords him the finer things in life. Roofus gets particularly stressed when producing his work, and sometimes he’s not even sure if the painting will work out. Usual... [More]

Often I hear short meaningful statements that seem to make so much sense. I thought I’d note them down so I can remind myself of them later. Learn by doing. Self-organising and autonomous wins over managed. Be inspired and have a well defined vision. Work is not unenjoyable by definition. It takes... [More]

Most of us have worked on our own little side projects. Usually we have some inspirational moment where we conceive an idea and then go through a mental process to map out the project in our heads. At the end of it we have a new killer idea for a project. In mapping out the idea, we have thought a... [More]

And now for something completely different. A programming language allows a human to talk to a computer, in the same way that a spoken language allows a human to talk to another human. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s consider what programming and spoken languages have in common. The... [More]

This year my birthday fell on the not-so-lucky day of Friday the 13th February. I’m pleased to say that nothing unlucky happened, but it did get me thinking about the date. Can the previous events of your particular birthday explain anything about you today? Perhaps only for the superstitious or the... [More]