The need to dispense a product properly Difficulties in getting Scotch tape off the roll, for example, prompted the development of a dispenser with a built-in serrated edge to cut off a piece squarely and leave a neat edge handy for the next use. (This provides an excellent example of how the need to dispense a product properly and conveniently can give rise to a highly specialized infrastructure.) Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things infrastructuremondegreens
Mondegreen A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to clearly hear a lyric, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, writing that as a girl, when her mother read to her from Percy's Reliques, she had misheard the lyric "layd him on the green" in the fourth line of the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" as "Lady Mondegreen". Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org Misinterpretation as inspiration creativityunderstandingwordsmondegreens
Misinterpretation as inspiration A lot of people think dreams and drugs involve some magical inspiration. I think otherwise. I rarely get inspired by dreams or drugs, but I have my own secret source of inspiration: mishearing other people. Somebody says something, I misinterpret it, and the misinterpretation is quite interesting – more interesting than anything I would have come up with on my own if asked to generate an interesting idea. Maybe it’s a clever joke or turn of phrase. Maybe it’s a neat idea. Sometimes I misunderstand people’s entire positions, and end up with positions much more interesting than the ones they were trying to push. Scott Alexander, Negative Creativity slatestarcodex.com Mondegreen mistakesinterestdrugsdreamscreativitymondegreens
What is Pattern? Since a pattern is the depiction of the fundamental nature of an object, it is what remains of an object’s form after all that is unnecessary has been removed. Since a pattern is a crystallization, it is also an exaggeration. But it is not merely that; it is an accentuation of the truth. Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Everyday Things mondegreens
Do We Need This? An Article atthis.link Ultimately this redesign has been a study in less, trying to dig deep and find out what it is I actually want for this site. A momentary visual “wow”, or quality content that is worthy of your attention? I decided on the latter, with less visual clutter it is far harder to try obscure bad or shallow writing behind a veneer of pretty images and effects. Posts may take longer to write but I hope this new design will push towards content that is worthy of your time. mondegreenswwwminimalism
The State of Agile Software in 2018 A Talk by Martin Fowler martinfowler.com On the surface, the world of agile software development is bright, since it is now mainstream. But the reality is troubling, because much of what is done is faux-agile, disregarding agile's values and principles. The three main challenges we should focus on are: fighting the Agile Industrial Complex and its habit of imposing process upon teams, raising the importance of technical excellence, and organizing our teams around products (rather than projects). How we can do betterTaylorism in software A late change in requirements is a competitive advantageMake the change easy agilesoftware
How we can do better It actually doesn't matter whether you actually have a formal retrospective. It doesn't matter whether you have four or five labels of things on your retro board, or exactly how you do the retro. What does matter is the notion of thinking about what we're doing and how we can do better, and it is the team that's doing the work that does this, that is the central thing. agileprocess
Taylorism in software Interestingly, just as software people were talking about how we need to kind of follow this very Taylorist notion as the future of software development, the manufacturing world was moving away from it. The whole notion of what was going on in a lot in manufacturing places was the people doing the work need to have much more of a say in this because they actually see what's happening. craftwork