NHS dentists; or, how I learned to start worrying and hate my teeth

I’ve just come back from having the second of two fillings put in at my new dentist. Why did I need two fillings, you ask? Well, this dentist is the first dentist I’d visited in over ten years. Why did I stay away for so long? I’m not really the squeamish type: I don’t have a problem with jabs, blood tests and so forth… I went ahead with a circumcision given an on-the-spot choice about having it that day, for heaven’s sake. No, I stayed away because the NHS dental system itself set the ball rolling on the cumulative fear process. The cumulative fear process, as I call it, is that process that occurs when you put something off because you’re scared of it, but the longer you put it off, the scarier it becomes, which of...

Posted by on May 9, 2011 in Politics | 2 comments

New York photos

I know it’s been over two months since I got back from New York, but I’ve just got round to post-processing my favourite 32 out of 2000+ photos I took when I was there. Hope you enjoy them! New York photo...

Posted by on May 7, 2011 in Personal | 0 comments

Agile Manifesto poster

Agile Manifesto poster

As a software engineer & manager, I’m a massive fan of the principles of Agile software development, as embodied in the Agile Manifesto. I really believe software development and the interaction between software development companies and their customers would be radically different if more people adopted these four basic values and twelve basic principles. But, somewhere in recent history, the word Agile has been hijacked by big companies and transformed into a synonym for iterative development. Now, while I’m a great believer in iterative development, it only works if it’s accompanied by the other principles of Agile development. Principles that are often ignored by big-business management include: Build projects around motivated...

Posted by on May 5, 2011 in Tech | 17 comments

Why is bin Laden dead?

So. Osama bin Laden is dead. I think we’ve all noticed that by now. Thankfully some of the media and public figures have started to decry the celebration and chanting following his death. It is still the death of a human being and this is not cause for jubilation. What I’m more concerned about, however, is why he’s dead at all. We’re told there was a “firefight” and that “no Americans were harmed”. We’re also told that he “tried to hide behind women”. This doesn’t sound like an all-out battle to the death to me. It sounds like they cornered him and then killed him anyway. There’s a name for this: summary execution. It’s illegal under the Geneva/Hague Conventions. And with good...

Posted by on May 2, 2011 in Politics | 3 comments

The Yes vote needs you!

The opinion polls are showing the “No” vote in the upcoming referendum on whether to adopt AV for parliamentary elections as being a dead cert. The “Yes” campaign needs as many votes as it can possibly get! Please get to a polling station on 5th May and cast your vote. Don’t waste it because you think the voting system doesn’t matter. Here are the reasons you should vote “Yes”, in a nutshell: Under the current system, an MP can be elected when a huge majority of the voting population votes against that candidate. Here’s a perfect example using beer and coffee to illustrate this. In a real decision-making situation like this, people would say “well, 70% of us want beer so let’s pick the pub we most...

Posted by on May 1, 2011 in Politics | 0 comments