yppahpeek

So, I'm living agile for a year . It started as a joke to myself but now that I've completed my first 'sprint', I can see the benefit in doing this. It sounds sad, but I have genuinely been more sociable (as in, I've planned  meet ups with friends, rather than just gone along). I've also got more life admin - lifemin  - done, and I've got a better idea of the sorts of tasks I'd like to do in the next couple of weeks. At the end of each sprint, I will write a brief summary. I don't expect people really to read these posts, they're more for my benefit, allowing me to look back over the year to see what I did as the months pass by. I will also write more generally about things I have learned along the way, and will probably share these posts to a wider audience. So without further ado... At the end of Sprint 1, I have: Added an introductory blog post explaining what I'm trying to do this year. This got quite a nice uptake, with over...

"So this is New Year. And what have you done?" I found myself asking this during the long train journey between the capital cities of Scotland and England on Monday 2 January 2017. "Well. I don't know really," I answered. 2016 2016 was a bad year for musicians, actors and global politics, but it was a pretty good year for me. I got myself settled into a new job at Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity . I rode a bike ride to Paris ! There was fun (and board games), I was on TV and I visited 10 Downing Street. 2016. A bad year for global politics, but a pretty good year for me. ...and there was Scrum. I am a man with half a hip, so I'm not talking about Rugby, but instead a "15-minute, timeboxed meeting that allows a sprint team to provide updates and share solutions to problems". Since attending Scrum Master training I've described myself as an "Agile nerd*". I really like that Agile project management a...

I remember reading an essay - I think it was by Paul Feyerabend - that argued against holding science in a higher esteem that other methods of reasoning. I was angry with the article at the time. To me, a recent science graduate, it was as if he was kicking the world I knew from under my feet. He seemed to argue that science isn't important. It's taken me a couple of years to get, but I think I understand a bit what he was on about. I vaguely remember the phrase scientism  being bandied about in the article. As I remember, scientism is essentially the belief that science holds all of the answers. Thinking about it now, Mr Feyerabend was not arguing against science but against scientism. And this is something I think I understand now. Cryptic research notes A project at work There's an ongoing project at work with the goal of making our website easier for the people who use it to find the information they are looking for. Technically this is a really easy projec...

I think it's about time to get some more posts on this blog. There's this great subreddit. /r/writingprompts does exactly what it says on the tin, someone posts a theme and others write a short story based on the theme. I have decided that I will write something from this as often as possible (once a week to begin with). So without further ado.... The secret to immortality is found! It's not worth it.   I think back to my own birth. Waking up in a warm tank – an adolescent body, young and strong and fit. I still remembered my previous lives and I was, of course, much more mature (about two centuries more mature) than most other teenagers.  I remember the hunt as I searched the city for my old self, following a blip, using satellites to find myself. I remember the old, crumbling apartment – similar to the one I now find myself in – where my old self had gone to... What? To die or to hide? It doesn't matter any more, he died. I shot him.  I felt disgust and ...

A spare corner room. One bed and en-suite bathroom. Previous owners. Disinfectant. Smells. Those of urine and hand gel. Squeaky, lino floor. A beeping next door. People coming to and fro, But not this room here. This room eats people. It swallows them whole, I've heard. And spits out fam'ly. Other rooms. More light. People go, able to fight. Happier places. Here's just an ending. A locked door hides suffering. Others, ignorant.

A greed agreed. It's what I want, who cares what I need? Stand in my place at the shop door, and I'll stomp your face on the shop floor. Braced against cold and credit since midnight, wondering who of these others I will have to fight.  No one will look down on me, with my brand new, 50 inch TV.

There are times when it flows. Carving curves into the tarmac track, mirroring the trails of planes as they streak the sky. Banking left through Battersea Park. Emptied of the day-trippers, the joggers, the dogs and filled with the breeze, the quiet, the dark. Street lamps shape the runway ahead. Inviting and free and mine for a while. I switch up gears and I fly.