Pragmatic Dictator

One more chance to feel alive,

One more chance to wind up dead,

One more chance to climb so high,

One more chance to bust my head,

One more chance to get on top,

One more chance to make a change,

One more chance for shit to give,

One more chance to even the blame…….

Saliva - One More Chance - Blood Stained Love Story

Never let ignorance stop you from having an opinion.

Never let an ignorant opinion stop you.

[ via Greg Guerin on the OS X/Java list ]

One got addicted and the other ran away
Some settle down a familiar place
One lets go the wheel while the other one steers

One got the money that the other put away
Some held the world and the others couldn’t stay
A few just follow their dreams while the others stood clear
After all these years
After all these years

All These Years - Adema - Kill the Headlights

Technorati Tags: music, personal

All my life
I’ve denied
Ever knowing what its like
You came around
You shook my ground
Now i’m searching for a drug to come down
You’re where I thought I’d never go
I can’t believe I did

Look out below
I’m letting go
Look out below
I’m falling completely
I lost control
I let it go
Now I can see so clearly around me
You’re everything I need

Closure (featured on the soundtrack for Billabong Odyssey - check out those waves).

Kind of - see Juan Martin should never really rock given he’s a flamenco guitarist. By any measure he’s a damn fine guitar player and along with his Flamenco Ensemble consisting of:

• Two dancers - one guy, one gal, amazing balance and posture, fast feet with tremendous fluidity
• One singer - with a scary big voice and a serious sense of rhythm conveyed via foot stamping and clapping (goes for the dancers too by the way)
• One flute player - also pretty mean with sax and clarinet
• One percussionist - I swear this guy had more than two hands

….put on a great show, Friday night in the Reading Concert Hall. An impressive display with the simplest of musical instruments (bongo drums and even a wooden box). And the ticket price - less than twenty pounds.

If you get a chance, go see them.

Technorati Tags: music, personal, Juan Martin

IMHO, this is terrible for the sport. If one wishes to ban team orders one must ruthlessly enforce the rules otherwise a gray area is left open to exploitation. Ron Dennis stated that his reasons for issuing orders were to ensure his drivers finished the race, trouble is a convenient side effect of this action is that Alonso takes the ten points which neatly helps to clean up the “issues” around the championship lead. Herein lies the problem, one cannot be certain that Ron Dennis had pure intentions, we must just believe which leads to a bunch of possible not so nice interpretations around the ruling:

1. Lewis Hamilton brings a lot of extra interest to F1 and we wouldn’t wish to poison that with a team orders embarrassment.
2. The stakeholders in the Monte Carlo race might not want it’s reputation tarnished.
3. Nobody wants another Ferrari win, anything else is preferable.

So here we are then, Ferrari could be judged to have taken action all those years ago to give themselves the best chance of having one of their drivers win the championship and that’s punished. Mclaren could be judged to have done exactly the same thing and weren’t punished. Just where is the line then? Perhaps it would be better to accept the team orders ban cannot be effectively applied and junk it so as to avoid this kind of mess?

Technorati Tags: personal, f1, formula one

There’s truth in your lies
doubt in your faith
what you build you lay to waste
there’s truth in your lies
doubt in your faith
all I’ve got’s what you didn’t take

So I
I won’t be the one
be the one to leave this in pieces
and you
you will be alone
alone with all your secrets
your regrets
don’t lie

Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

Technorati Tags: linkin park, music, personal

…..what I’ve done

Linkin Park

Technorati Tags: music, linkin park,personal

…..thanks for the memories.

Fall Out Boy

Technorati Tags: music,personal

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all..

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence,empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grand son thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

[With thanks to Dave Zaffery for pointing me at this]

Technorati Tags: personal, philosophy

….closer, lean on me now…….

Travis

Technorati Tags: music, personal

Argh, there it is again - the DVLA TV advert that warns of computers constantly trawling for those that haven’t paid their car tax and sending automatic fines. It comes complete with menacing and threatening imagery all in black, white and grey.

Then there’s the railway stations - on my daily journey through Reading and Paddington I’m assaulted with automated brainwash messages about security, late trains, slippery surfaces, surveillance etc.

Has anyone noticed how 1984 this all is? Do we think this is at all a good thing? What does it say about day to day life in our “modern” society? What might it being doing to our creativity, our spirit?

This stuff needs to stop…….

Technorati Tags: personal, philosophy

There’s been a lot of stuff going on of late, I certainly feel brighter than I have done in some time. It just takes time to work through things, gain perspective and come to conclusions.

But some things never really get “closed out”. Some things you look back at and wonder if they really were as good as you thought at the time. Were they really worth the effort or did they cost you dearly in subtle ways you didn’t notice? Were they real or simply a function of over-optimism, daring to dream and a little too much rose tinting of shades? Would I have been better off if it had never been?

“What if?”, “why did I bother?”, “was it worth it?”, “why can’t I let it go?”.

Are such things important? Who knows?

Technorati Tags: philosophy, personal

Having worked as an independent contractor for a number of years, I’ve finally been tempted to take a permanent job by Betfair. My decision to join them was driven by several factors:

1. The size of the challenge - Betfair’s systems are big, getting bigger and doing serious numbers
2. Ability to influence - as a contractor you are often pulled in to fire-fight or work within what has already been done you don’t get to innovate or change
3. The tech team - I gotta get more of these guys to blog. For now, I’ll point you to Ewan Silver
4. The kind of challenge - it’s broad and not about Jini

Those of you who know my technical background might be able to guess at the sort of things I will be doing. I hope to provide more specifics over time but for now, speculate away!

Some of you may be wondering what this might mean for Apache River and/or Blitz. I think this change will benefit both projects:

1. Blitz will return to being a fun side project with I believe an attendant rise in my enthusiasm - which you can already see in 2.0alpha
2. Apache River could really do with real-world experience such as that which might be gained from working in the Betfair environment

All that remains for me to do is thank all those who have supported me one way or another during my “Lone Crusader” years. That would include Vertex, Tangosol, various at Sun Microsystems (including alumni) and a too-long-to-mention list of individuals - good relationships I plan to maintain.

Technorati Tags: betfair, personal, technology