The soundtrack of my life

So Before Sunrise and Reality Bites were disappointments, but in his defence he featured in a really great film, Gattaca. Admittedly Ethan Hawke isn’t the reason this film is so good but he deserves praise for not messing it up. Sometimes that’s enough; I, Robot for example was a huge let-down not through being bad, but because it could have been so much better. Gattaca delivered partially down to the story but I mostly remember the music. Michael Nyman composed the score for this and another great film, Wonderland. Two films with completely different subjects but alike with musical scores of such sadness; sorrow has rarely been so beautifully expressed. One film that of a clinically clean dystopian future, the other of a grimy depressing present; and I love them both – it must be down to my sunny personality. Not exactly the soundtrack of my life, but there's definitely a theme.

Shhh…

Against expectations I found time to watch Wings of Desire, but I needed a couple of strong coffees as I was feeling very tired. I’ll pay for that later. It was poetic, hypnotic and I liked the background; but if I were to make one criticism it would be the scene at the bar/lounge - too many words. I can’t think of another way to phrase that and I know it makes me sound like a Neanderthal, an opinion that will be hardened when I mention another film with the same problem; Before Sunrise. In all other respects it’s an unfair comparison since it was one minor quibble of a film that was otherwise excellent; whereas Before Sunrise, consumed with its own importance, was self indulgent crap - though I’ll bet fans of Dawson’s Creek loved it.

Ouch, that sounds a bit harsh doesn’t it? It’s the last film I can remember not watching to the end. I’m fanatical about such things, even complete rubbish, so I must have had some kind of allergic reaction to stop after less than half an hour. But hey, I’ll be magnanimous, I’ll give it a second chance, I just pray that at some point Ethan Hawke pauses for breath. It was the second time he’d let me down, having gone to see Reality Bites at the cinema and being tempted to walk out after – oh – about thirty minutes. Annoying, but I’d paid good money (whatever that means) so I endured the tale of obnoxious-little-jerk meets girl, obnoxious-little-jerk wins girl; I guess it was back in the days when being an obnoxious little jerk was – like – cool – yeah?

Out, damned report

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, though since I can’t remember any good bits I’d take that with a pinch of salt. I am so tired and I can’t decide whether it’s due to a lack of sleep or working on reports, or a lack of sleep due to working on reports. I do know I don’t want another week like that, but since I’ve not yet finished there’s every chance I will. Regression testing will prove even more painful since there’s work on systems of which I have even less or no knowledge - but then neither does anyone else. On one report I removed an entire list of recipient addresses, people involved in the development, people who have all been made redundant. My address is on there now but for how long?

So I would be well advised to make the most of the weekend. However my hope of watching Wings of Desire, years after getting the DVD, has failed to materialise. Saturday afternoon was my chance and I’m realistic enough to know how the evening will turn out. You see that sad grey haired man sunk on the sofa, brain barely active (it’s for the best) whilst watching Casualty on BBC One? That’s me that is, that’s my future.

I call them jumpers too

From my first I knew
'Please do tell me
But don't say a thing'

Then I saw you
And my mind raced ahead
Though my heart would sing

So listening in I said
'I call them jumpers too'
And you turned to me

And smiled

A weekend of Internet Explorer, Jessica Alba and air hockey

So much happened, but not to me. I continued my voyage of discovery with HTML/CSS and had that light-bulb moment when I started to realise why so many people have it in for Internet Explorer. I wasn’t one of them and I’m still not, but I get the frustration. Then there were the Fantastic Four films, yes I watched them both, featuring the air-brushed perfect Jessica Alba. They’re enjoyable fluff and to me the most comic-book like of all the recent comic book adaptations. But most of the weekend was spent on a Christmas present from my parents. Thirty years too late they bought me the ultimate gift and after putting it together this weekend I’ve been practicing how to lose to Little Miss R at air hockey. It’s a lot of fun.

Do developers dream of agile sheep?

Circumstances being what they are I’m currently working in a very small team. That would be the team of one, starring Chuck Norris. There are some advantages, besides the ability to fight off terrorists with my bare hands, such as worrying less about reviews whilst maintaining quality. I still review; it was the memory of past conflicts that always had me worried. I’ve been lucky to have worked with some personable people for several years, thus the process was relatively untroubled, but have been around long enough to remember a few toxic environments; where failure was less an opportunity to learn and more a chance for one-upmanship and the establishment of hierarchy.

Somewhat behind the curve I’ve been thinking a lot about Agile, this despite the mention of daily stand-ups. I didn’t pay much attention to this element at first but recently it’s occurred to me that far from being a euphemism there are probably some who interpret this literally – who require it. Having no first hand experience I’m ill-placed to comment, but who’d have thought keeping a meeting on-point would require something so prescriptive? Certainly not me; anyone who’s been in a meeting with sales knows that standing up won’t help… though running away might.

However I’m still fascinated, I always liked rapid application development. It’s the potential of seeing it done well that grabs the imagination; to interact with others on a regular basis with constructive comment given and taken, driving the project forward, continually improving the outcome. Only I’m not sure how the more ‘robust’ personalities are encouraged to value others as much as they value themselves. Perhaps this isn’t in the remit; yet I’ve read a blog or two that hint at the possibility. Wouldn’t it be great if a methodology enabled better product and better people? Or should I just go and hug a tree?

HTML madness

I’ll have to stop this. Given blogs ought to be about content I spent a ridiculous amount of time tinkering with the layout yesterday. I think I’ve become slightly unbalanced; this is very sad but I’ve been having a lot of fun.

It started early last week when I discovered that you could create pages in Blogger. This feature could have been there for ages before I noticed but thankfully this time it really is new; new to Blogger that is, WordPress has had it forever. Typically I decided to style the page list control, for which I have to thank the contributors to the help forum for pointing out where to look, but it was unfortunately the start of a slippery slope.

It wasn’t long before I started to experiment with overlaying elements. First I wanted a static non-scrolling image and then I spent an eternity with some relative positioning of the ‘contact’ images; Twitter, Facebook etc. Relative positioning alone was troublesome as it affected the layout where the images would have been. Relative inside an absolute positioned element did the trick until I found that Chrome, my browser of choice, rendered differently to IE and Firefox; you’d have thought IE would be the odd one out. I got it in the end but it chewed up an obscene amount of time. One of these days I’ll learn to organise it properly but I’m enjoying the novelty.

Today I watched the football instead, like a normal person; though I can’t escape the feeling I should get out more. I don’t think the trip to the tip counts and if I arrive at work tomorrow morning wondering where the weekend went, who am I going to blame?