Permaculture principles There are two basic steps to good permaculture design. The first deals with laws and principles, while the second is more closely associated with practical techniques. The principles are inherent in any permaculture design, in any climate, and at any scale. They are, briefly: Relative location: every element is placed in relationship to another so that they assist each other Each element performs many functions. Each important function is supported by many elements. Efficient energy planning for house and settlement. Emphasis on the use of biological resources over fossil fuel resources. Energy recycling on site. Using and accelerating natural plant succession to establish favourable sites and soils. Polyculture and diversity of beneficial species for a productive, interactive system. Use of edge and natural patterns for best effect. Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture principles
Software developers have stopped caring about reliability An Article by Drew DeVault drewdevault.com Of all the principles of software engineering which has fallen by the wayside in the modern “move fast and break things” mentality of assholes modern software developers, reliability is perhaps the most neglected, along with its cousin, robustness. Almost all software that users encounter in $CURRENTYEAR is straight-up broken, and often badly. softwareprinciples
A Reflection of the Truth An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by Roger Kitching The need to recordMental infrastructureScientific writingA three-layered process of documentationIncidental details+1 More
The need to record With collecting comes the need to record. A specimen without a label is simply a (sometimes) pretty object. Without its associated data it is scientifically worthless. informationorganization
Mental infrastructure The diary provides the mental infrastructure that stimulates the mind to remember. To serve as a reminder memory
Scientific writing What Mick Southern taught me was both the imperative to and the means of writing scientific prose—“if it’s not published it’s not done,” as a later adviser put it. Mock showed me that the rather dry technical requirements of scientific writing did not necessarily mean that elegance, humor, and even wit need be excluded from the scientists’ products. Selling new ideasYou cannot consume what is not produced sciencewriting
A three-layered process of documentation A three-layered process of documentation: (1) First, there is the field notebook. This is where the actual numbers are recorded, together with passing observations relevant to the interpretation of these numbers. Paper is still proving more durable than electronic data. (2) The journal is a parallel record to that of the notebook—a daily account of events, thoughts, and observations. (3) Last of the three strata, then, are the publications. Traditionally, in science, these are articles in academic journals leavened with chapters in books. To be successful, a young scientist need aspire to no more than these two forms of output together with their oral versions at interminable conferences and meetings of learned societies. There came a time in my scientific development, however, when other forms of publication became important: magazines articles, and writing books. notetakingrecords
Incidental details In these journals lay the incidental details by which a book can be differentiated from a set of scientific articles. Such incidental details can become ends in themselves. details
Memory prompts Journals are memory prompts and perhaps capture exquisite (and not so exquisite) moments of experience. notetakingmemoryexperience