Parenting: Uncovering Unconcious Bias

One of the challenges of bringing up children[1] Up there with leaving the house & making sure they are alive at the end of every day is not passing on any biases or prejudices you have. On the face of things this would seem like an easy problem to solve, just don't discriminate and teach your children the values of equality. The problem arises when we actually stop and think about how we really perceive the world and the people around us. If we really get introspective then we can uncover personal bias that we don't even realise we have.

Let's look at an example. How many fathers out there think on public transport: "it's polite to give up your seat to a woman"? On the face of it you are doing a nice thing. However if you teach that to your son then you are teaching him to treat women differently. This isn't ideal when you want to foster the ideas of equality. In this case you may wish to opt for "it's polite to give up your seat to anyone less able to stand". Women are just as capable as men in standing up :)

Tackling unconscious bias is a tough problem for everyone to solve, you're dealing with how your brain is hardwired to think about things. Only by consciously making an effort to question yourself can you discover these "things that I didn't even know I believed in". Luckily (depending on how you look at it), as your child grows up they will inevitably develop a perfect mechanism to help you with this: The incessant stream of "Why? Why? Why?..."

Ranting About Retrospectives

Following on from Thinking About Code, I have since participated in a retrospective and the introspective process has inspired me to rant :)

Free Your Mind

One of the problems we had in our last retrospective was we were very much unprepared. Many of us did not have proper notes and worst of all there was a negative mindset toward the whole retrospective process. This time around everyone actively prepared and everyone was onboard with the idea of using the retrospective to improve the way we work. A positive viewpoint really works wonders and resulted in a much higher quality of the discussion :)

Bricks Without Clay

As the famous Sherlock quote goes, you can only put theories together when you have data. This principle holds true for any scientific process, including retrospectives. This is computer science we are dealing with after all!

In our case, data is as simple as our likes and dislikes about our work. However as there is a month between our retrospectives, forgetfulness is a major issue. Ongoing observation is the key here, we all need to constantly seek out analyse the way we work. This can be as simple as jotting down notes on what you feel is good/bad as you work. 

Get To The Point

Open ended questions like "what did you like/dislike this month?" are great for getting people to open up but can lead to rambling. In an ideal world you want everyone to distill their feelings beforehand and provide short and sweet summaries. The key is to move beyond raw emotions and use unambiguous statements: "I don't like rambling" is better stated as: "I like people being concise".

Mixing It Up

When undergoing the process of self reflection, it is important to have compare and contrast against others. Trying to view things from an outsider's perspective can throw into light problems/opportunities you would have otherwise missed. In our case, reviewing a piece of code written by an applicant threw up a lot of interesting viewpoints.

Conclusion

Overall I feel that retrospectives are having a positive effect on the team and the change in mentality is very refreshing. We are all looking at ways to better ourselves, both individually and as a team. The next steps are to achieve the things we have talked about, which is always easier said than done.

Recycling Time

Inspired by Sandro Mancuso's Software Craftsmanship book.

"… I would but I don't have the time" 

How many times do we lie to ourselves with this line? We all waste time, in one form or another. However if we really wanted to, we could "recycle" time that is used up by other day-to-day things.

Commuting is a brilliant example of this. I spend half an hour every morning and evening travelling on the London Underground. Previously I would fill this by playing random Android games or reading manga. When I joined the LJC Book Club, suddenly I had to find time to read everyday. So now on my tube journey, instead of pulling out my phone, I pull out a book instead.

Other examples of times that could be recycled include:

• While cooking/eating... 
• While waiting for people to arrive to meetings, at the doctors, etc...
• Over your lunch break at work 
• Before/after your marathon gaming session ;) 

Having said all of this, it is important to note that everything should be done in moderation. We can't be productive every waking hour of every day! In fact, doing things to unwind is critical to our productivity.

If you are tickled by this idea, highly recommend you give Sandro's book a go!

Epiphany Of Ignorance

As you can tell by the plethora of updates recently, I have been busy beavering away on various projects and interests. Recently some revelations have really struck home and I've come to realise the vastness of my own ignorance. Here is a random selection of them :)

Confidence

Confidence, or the lack of it, has been a major issue for as long as I can remember. Recently I have been effectively devoid of it, for no real good reason. For this reason I really have to focus on getting back in touch with my own innate abilities. This means trusting in myself and striving to realise my real potential (thanks to Kenric, Barry and Matt for helping me see this)!

Delusions

Fooling yourself is an easy thing to do though, I need to know my current limitations. As I learnt the hard way, cargo cultism can creep up on you without you even knowing it. My experience of TDD up to now was very much limited to using it as a tool for catching bugs and evolving established designs. When it comes to using Test Driven Design to rapidly build clean code out of uncertainty, my fundamentals just aren't quite polished enough yet (thanks to Sandro and the LSCC for enlightening me)!

Basic Mastery

Sweating the small things can actually be really important, in my case mastering the basics is fundamental to building a strong foundation. There are so many metaphors and allegories I could use for this, my favourite is from Bruce Lee:

"Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick."

Right now I am still working hard on learning... One of the best lessons I have learnt so far goes hand in hand with mastering the basics and that is the "Single Responsibility Principle". This applies to so many things in life, it is better to be an expert at one thing than to do many things badly (many thanks to Ben and Martijn for showing me the light on all of this)!

Practice

Practice really does make perfect. Not just any practice though, you really have to practice perfection. Getting it wrong is fine but it is always important to remember practicing is not for getting it right, it is for never getting it wrong. For instance, you practice arithmetic so you can practice calculus without worrying you got the basics wrong (thanks to Nigel for this, may you guide me for years to come)!

Faster Feedback

Achieving a long-term goal isn't done by doing a long task over time and slogging it out. Fast feedback is critical. This means doing things successfully consists of doing smaller things which aim you the right way and more importantly can tell you if you are succeeding (thanks to Kevlin for sharing the time to inspire me, you're simply awesome)!

Tax, Politics & The Bigger Picture

Despairing at the world after having just read this story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17622189

This is what is wrong with society, we need to stop looking through a microscope and start seeing the wider issues.   Are people going to start seeing elections as simple popularity contents akin to the drivel we see on our televisions year in and year out?

When making a list of important things we should know about the next London Major, how much tax he/she pays should be VERY low on the list. What they plan to do with the tax you pay and how you will get taxed is probably the most important thing.

For me, all I care about is if the next Major of London managed to give everyone better value on their taxes and fixed the antiquated transport system we have. I would happily pay extra tax toward cleaning all the crap from the tube, metaphorically and literally >.>

In any case, let's hope some semblance of common sense breaks through sooner rather than later.

Fatherhood

One of my growing corcerns in life is how I will cope with being a father.

This is not because I dislike the idea or children, but because I am terrified of letting my children down.

The comedian Ed Byrne commented on how people say "children don't come with instructions". Ed said this was a pointless observation and that you could simply buy one, for like £8! :)

Still there is more to parenting then following instructions in a book. The question for me is:

How do you mold someone in your own image whilst letting them freely become themself?

For me, it drives me insane when I cannot understand "the why" behind something. This is the essence of children though. They are born without morals or logic. Even as they grow up they remain irrational and emotional beings.

In spite of all this, I am intrigued and almost excited by the idea. Children have infinite potential and I look forward to seeing what they do with the world of tomorrow...

I just hope I don't screw mine up ;)

OnLive & The Cloud

My recent experiences with OnLive have sparked a discussion on the nature of "The Cloud".

More and more the world is moving toward digital distribution of media. Spotify and iTunes are perfect examples of this. People all over the world now download or stream their music, walking around with literal days of music in their pockets. Actually owning physical copies of all the music you want/have is impractical. An iPod Nano can hold an entire cd rack of albums in a space of a mini disc (remember those?).

Providers like Apple and Amazon have been hugely successful in part due to their product model. You pay upfront and get unlimited access to your media which you "own". Spotify on the other hand is a service provider, you listen to music but you do not buy music through them. You cannot in anyway claim to own the music you "rent" from them. Neither can you expect to listen to it without an internet connection. However all this works as you can literally pay nothing to use the service.

OnLive has attempted to merge these models to what I see as limited success. You either use OnLive as a service provider like Spotify, but you have to pay to have any access to full games and you require a really good internet connection. The makers themselves recommend you use a wired connection and during peak periods game performance can really suffer.

Paying upfront for the full game doesn't really help either, as you cannot download the game to play when you want, irregardless of whether you have an internet connection. In terms of this model, I think what Valve has done with Steam is pretty much the gold standard. Once you buy a game, it is tied to your account and you can play it anywhere you have it installed. This is what the Cloud should be, ubiquitous, always there for you and to suit your needs.

So to conclude these jumbled thoughts, I definitely think OnLive has a lot of plus points but its much better suited to the world of tomorrow, where high-speed internet is accessible everywhere on the go. If you haven't got a high-end PC or the latest games console, this is definitely a great way to access the latest and greatest games out there.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome has really changed the way I use the web.

The most innovative and intuitive feature, which I miss the most when using other browsers, is the address bar search. Why bother having a search box right to the address bar on other browsers? In this day and age, everyone navigates to their websites either by quickly Googling it or using their bookmarks...

Which brings me onto my all time favourite feature, the saved session. On my PC I have about 8 - 12 tabs open constantly. At one point I had 20+ tabs, with all my webcomics open. Gone were the days where I had to boot up my browser and then navigate through my bookmarks one by one. Now I can just fire up Chrome and everything is just there!

Another nifty thing I do with that is that whenever I want to read something but I don't have time to, I can just leave the tab open. This prompts me the next time, as I see it load, rather than letting it rot away in some bookmark folder.

I used to love this feature on IE (version 7 I think?), but it was fairly clunky and sadly removed in later versions (again I haven't used IE properly in ages, so can't say for sure).

Lastly, on my PC I have dual 24" monitors, one landscape and one portrait. With dockable tabs and Windows 7, I can undock a landscape tab in Chrome and Windows snap it full screen in my portrait screen. This is all done in one mouse movement and great for reading long articles/viewing tall pictures xD

I <3 Chrome!

London Riots

Petty acts of organised crime and senseless violence... What has driven us to riot over and over?

Is there that much of an undercurrent of rage in our society today?

Have so many escaped punishment for the "student loans" riots that they have exposed how feeble the "man" is? Is there no longer fear of retribution?

Yet whilst add this is happening, we still have so many of us observing from ivory towers. We joke about "peasants" who have come to pillage as we watch massive televisions being stolen on handheld phones worth twice as much...

Rather I feel like we are observing chaos, there is no stable state to the society we live in today. Wealth is increasingly becoming more sparsely distributed. The internet feeds every single piece of information anywhere to everywhere. We might just be seeing the tip of the iceberg...

I doubt its the end of the world, but this is most certainly another example of volatility which may become an inherent part of 21st century life.