So, I’m off to JavaOne next week! This is an unexpected and very pleasant surprise. I’ll be there with Martin (of the Disruptor fame), and Martijn (that’s not going to get confusing at all). Martin will be talking about the Disruptor on Thursday, and Martijn is busy talking about… everything. Most importantly for the LJC … Read more
Remember a while back I talked about my first public appearance? Well, I chased down the video, because I’m masochistic, and here it is for you all to enjoy. Pleasingly my mannerisms are slightly less of a camp man trapped in a woman’s body, which was my impression the last time I saw myself presenting. … Read more
As a survival trait for living and working in the cites1 of London, I have a set of rituals to avoid hangovers. If you are not a single person living in a city like London, you might not understand how vital this is. Most networking, particularly in the financial services industry, is done in the presence of alcohol.
So preventing the inevitable hangover is quite important to the other part of the job – the actual working bit. I'll let you into a secret and tell you my nightly ritual:
On Thursday I was at Simon Brown's Effective Sketches session at Skillsmatter. Just because my pictures are pretty awesome doesn't mean there's no opportunity for continuous learning.
The points Simon made in the session really made sense to me, and I wish I could have had something like that as a primer when they taught us UML at university. Without the context of what the diagrams were supposed to mean, to convey, all the boxes and lines made no sense to me back then. I'm still not a fan of large chunks of UML because I think the convention sometimes gets in the way of real meaning.
My take-away points were: