These are the principles I’m currently trying to follow:

• Treat writing a blog like any other peice of published writing: spend some time on it, re-read it, correct it, don’t publish it till you think you’re done. Use the draft feature of your blog software if you need to.

• If you spot a spelling error or any other minor non-semantic blemish in a posting, it’s OK to correct that at any time.

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If you could be any two nationalities, which would you be? (i.e., your mother is one, and your father is the other). The only rule is that you cannot be, or have any relation to, either of them in real life. My current favourite is German-Chinese. Russian-Egyptian has also been suggested to me as an unusual combination.

Audio and video players such as RealPlayer use read-ahead buffering on the client when streaming across networks to accommodate for temporary slow-downs or delays in network traffic. Most of them also use a form of pre-buffering, in which a certain amount of data is read before playback starts (or when the buffer runs out). Some - such as RealPlayer - will also dynamically alter the bitrate being requested, if network performance drops for a period of time. This noticeably affects the quality of the audio/video.

I am a bit weak when it comes to putting off tasks. If I don’t feel like doing something right now, I will often find a way to delay it. As such, one of my current self-improvement tasks is to work at overcoming my problems with procrastination (I considered not writing this blog entry for at least 3 minutes, after it popped into my head, until I considered how ironic it would be not to write it). I am having a healthy amount of success so far.

I was listening to an IBM internal Podcast this morning, produced by some of my American colleagues. It was introduced with fanfare and a lot of casual banter. There was a lot of excitement and phrases such as ’let’s kick butt’. It got me to thinking - do our American friends have a greater passion for their work? Not just a more lively personality - they actually care more about their work and want to make cool stuff happen? As a rule, I hate generalisations. But it seems this might be true.

Just watched a short film called Cashback - about in a guy working in Sainsbury’s on the night shift, who narrates us through his life there. His sleepy, semi-dream-like state is both monotonous and joyful at the same time. The film is a piece of two halves - the first a series of surreal and humourous situations backed with some great comedic acting, ending with a crescendo of flamenco music in the background. The second half is slow, sexy, and beautiful, as the hero opines on the beauty of women. The film is superbly crafted and well scripted, although it’s amazing that Sainsbury’s (presumably) co-operated with the making of the film. It has been nominated for an Oscar.

Google News is a fascinating tool. After hearing on a BBC Podcast about the FBI arresting seven people for an alleged terrorist plot against the Sears Tower, I was curious (I visited it with Lizzie only a year back). Google News makes it easy to track down different versions of the same story. It’s striking the tone adopted by different news sources:

• Chicago Sun-Times - Terror plot foiled.

• Independent, UK - Plot ’not all that it seems'.

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Is is just me, or is this the most revolting sandwich title ever? Compass should be ashamed of themselves.

Presumably it must be logical that the more people know a secret, the less likely it will stay a secret (in the general case). Some organizations have only one level of secrecy (i.e. confidential). This is used for everything from secrets that 3 people should know, to secrets that 30,000 people should know. In the latter case, the secret is highly likely to stray outside the group.

Wouldn’t it make sense to indicate these differently? Increasingly the bureaucracy attached to such things isn’t a good thing to be doing, but surely we should also admit to ourselves that there is a practical difference between the two - perhaps to the extent of keeping fewer things secret?

Simply stated:

• Use WebSphere Process Server as much as possible, and WebSphere ESB as little as possible.

Process Server provides a layer to implement a business process - this is (or should be, or could be) ‘interesting’ to a business. ESB simply provides the glue to tie things together - auditing, converting one interface to another, etc. So don’t fall into the trap of faking Process Server functionality in ESB, when Process Server provides it all already.