Blog - Marcus Ahnve

Layers of Complexity at Smidig 2011
2011-11-16
I am in Oslo for Smidig 2011, where I gave a talk titled “Layers of complexity”. It centers around medium number systems and Cynefin framework in order to provide a model for software development and explain why we cannot use time based measurements in order to improve the process. It also mentions why time estimates are never correct.
Later today at 18:00 I will give my talk on Taylorism and Mass Production at Oslo XP Meetup. Hope to see you there.

Mongoid and Embedded Relations

2011-04-11

I am experimenting with Mongoid and embedded relations. I have a class A that can have three named 1..1 relations to class B, and I found it quite problematic to get the reverse relationship setup. After specifying class_name and inverse_of everything started working as expected.

class B

  include Mongoid::Document

  embedded_in :a, class_name: "A"

end

class A

  include Mongoid::Document

  embeds_one :something, class_name: "B", inverse_of: :a
  embeds_one :completely class_name: "B", inverse_of: :a
  embeds_one :different, class_name: "B", inverse_of: :a

end

Todo.txt and Zenity
2011-04-09
I’ve switched back and forth a lot to try to find a todo list solution that works for me. Gina Trapani’s todo.txt is the latest one, and while not perfect I do find it useable.
I have two zenity scripts mapped to keyboard shortcuts that allows me to quickly add and check off todo’s:
Speaking at DevLin 2011 with ShowOff
2011-03-10
I am in Linköping for Devlin 2011 where I will give a talk named “Git - Version Control You’ve Only Dreamt Of”. It is a one day conference organized by my friends at Responsive
I did the slides for this talk in ShowOff, which allows me to write my presentation in text and version it in Git. Firefox 4 supports SVG well enough for me to use it for all my images. This allows me to just save and directly use whatever I draw in Inkscape, no exports required.
Notes From Smidig Open Space on Why Agile Isn't About Development Anymore
2010-11-16
Today at Smidig 2010 I sponsored an Open Space session on the topic “How and When did Agile System Development Stop Being About System Development”
We had a very good discussion, and these are the notes we managed to gather, in the order they were discussed:
- It’s Scrums fault
- It’s easier to sell with soft skills arguments
- Agile is trying to sell into other fields where the technical practices don’t apply.
- Obsolete knowledge in management, old Cobol programmers not up to date with todays technologies.
- As people speak more at conferences, the less they program.
- More attention to people who are good at talking, and devs normally aren’t.
- Using wrong metaphors, i.e. factory, to explain process to managers who do not understand leads to wrong process.
- Recipient of system development does not understand the problem of why engineering practices are important.
- Soft skills are easier to acquire.
- Average organizations have average employees. Does not want to take responsibility, not that interested.
- Management who does not understand the process they are running.
  - Is this partly developers fault?
Thanks all who joined in!

1996 revisited

2009-04-15

After receiveing what I believe was the third promotional email from my beloved mobile phone operator, showing this not-so-useful information

I was curious to see what sort of HTML did not even render images in Safari.

Behold:

#html
<title>Sista chansen: Specialpris på Telia Mobilt bredband</title>
<base target=&quot;_blank&quot;>
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content=&quot;text/html; charset=iso-8859-1&quot;>
<META content=&quot;MSHTML 6.00.5730.13&quot; name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#818177 leftMargin=0 topMargin=0 marginheight=&quot;0&quot; marginwidth=&quot;0&quot;>
<TABLE height=&quot;100%&quot; cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=&quot;100%&quot; bgColor=#818177 border=0>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top align=middle>
<DIV style=&quot;FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10px; COLOR: #505050; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif&quot;>Ser mailet konstigt ut? <A style=&quot;FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10px; COLOR: #cf0566; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif&quot; href=&quot;#&quot; target=_blank>Klicka här »</A></DIV><BR>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=590 align=center bgColor=#aaaaa4 border=0>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top align=middle><A href=&quot;http://tr.anp.se/track?t=c&amp;mid=250386&amp;uid=124849854&amp;&amp;&amp;http://track.adform.net/C/?bn=212313&quot; target=_blank><IMG alt=&quot;Nu höjer vi hastigheten och sänker priset.&quot; src=&quot;http://adata.attraction.se/Telia/buss14/09-Utskick_v15/images/erbj1.jpg&quot; border=0></A></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top align=middle><A href=&quot;http://tr.anp.se/track?t=c&amp;mid=250386&amp;uid=124849854&amp;&amp;&amp;http://track.adform.net/C/?bn=212313&quot; target=_blank><IMG alt=&quot;Nu höjer vi hastigheten och sänker priset.&quot; src=&quot;http://adata.attraction.se/Telia/buss14/09-Utskick_v15/images/erbj2.jpg&quot; border=0></A></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top align=middle><A href=&quot;http://tr.anp.se/track?t=c&amp;mid=250386&amp;uid=124849854&amp;&amp;&amp;http://track.adform.net/C/?bn=212313&quot; target=_blank><IMG alt=&quot;Nu höjer vi hastigheten och sänker priset.&quot; src=&quot;http://adata.attraction.se/Telia/buss14/09-Utskick_v15/images/erbj3.jpg&quot; border=0></A></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top align=middle><A href=&quot;http://tr.anp.se/track?t=c&amp;mid=250386&amp;uid=124849854&amp;&amp;&amp;http://track.adform.net/C/?bn=212313&quot; target=_blank><IMG alt=&quot;Nu höjer vi hastigheten och sänker priset.&quot; src=&quot;http://adata.attraction.se/Telia/buss14/09-Utskick_v15/images/erbj4.jpg&quot; border=0></A></TD></TR></TABLE><BR>
<DIV style=&quot;FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10px; COLOR: #505050; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif&quot;>Vill du inte få fler erbjudanden från Telia till denna epostadress, <A style=&quot;FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 10px; COLOR: #cf0566; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif&quot; href=&quot;http://www.anp.se/oa/250386/4342584B72474751437243465143&quot; target=_blank>klicka här »</A></DIV></TD></TR></TABLE></BODY></HTML>
<img border=0 width=1 height=1 src=&quot;http://www.anp.se/Clicks.asp?sqid=250386&amp;sid=124849854&amp;pf_action=View&amp;pf_Link=&quot;>

Wow - it is like a time machine to 1996. MSHTML did supposedly generate it.

ThoughWorks Free Seminars in Stockholm
2009-04-07
ThoughtWorks will give two free seminars at Berns Tuesday April 21 2009.
The morning one is given by me and will be on the business value of agile and lean, and how it can be the competitive advantage in difficult times.
In the afternoon my colleague Zack Exley will give a behind-the-scenes look at the technological side of the Barack Obama campaign.
Both of the talks will be kicked off by our chairman Roy Singham who will give his view on why he believes Scandinavia has a great future in the software development world.
Read More…
Simple beats complicated
2009-04-05
Peter Krantz sent this clip from a Capoeira fight (rating: violent) which I see as a really good analogy for XP’s YAGNI and the simplest thing that could possibly work.
ThoughtWorks Hosts A Track and Speaks At Scandinavian Developer Conference
2009-01-22
ThoughtWorks cohosting and speaking at the Emerging Technologies track at the Scandinavian Developer Conference. Ola will speak about JRuby and I will give a presentation with a title stolen from XP: ‘The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work’.
It is a one day conference which I am really looking forward to - Kent Beck keynoting is reason enough to be there. See the full program here.
ThoughtWorks Sweden Gets A Roommate
2009-01-13
ThoughtWorks Sweden will move in with our great friends at Agical at the end of this month. Our new address will be
ThoughtWorks Sweden Västerlånggatan 79 2tr 111 29 Stockholm Sweden
Personally it will be the first time I have an office in Old Town - cool.

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