Cruel and Unusual Geography

Here are a few tricks to play on your own brain in your spare time: how to induce a variety of hallucinations in yourself, courtesy of the Boston Globe.

It’s all very well to have a feel for how good your code is, but knowing and proving that you’re producing quality code is another matter. Catherine Powell tracks code quality, we don’t but should, and probably will be soon.

On the Abakas blog (a good read if you’re concerned about or responsible for software quality) she writes about what is perhaps the most useful metric that software developers can track: defect leakage. It’s the measure of the number of bugs found first in the field by the client (or users). There are a number of ways of reporting defect leakage: raw numbers is one, but one that is probably more useful is the ratio of bugs found by the client to bugs found by us. That gives an indication of how thorough our testing processes are.

A side effect is that to report this metric we need to track bugs in some detail, and this gives us the ability to break the metric down and pull more information out of the reports. Which areas have good coverage (as shown by a low leakage ratio)? Which areas have a high defect leakage ratio and need more attention before release?

Catherine Powell writes:

… measuring defect leakage requires you to really consider every customer incident, and that kind of introspection helps me see patterns in problems. It really points out where our coverage is lacking and, conversely, where our product is pretty good.

I like that!

MIT geeks have all the fun. Here’s a talk from this year’s TED where grad student David Merrill demos the coolest toy blocks ever.

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror has posted a very well thought out piece on the perils of taking web site validation too seriously. Concerning XHTML validation he quotes James Bennett:

The short and sweet reason is simply this: XHTML offers no compelling advantage — to me — over HTML, but even if it did it would also offer increased complexity and uncertainty that make it unappealing to me.

and goes on to voice his own opinion:

The whole HTML validation exercise is questionable, but validating as XHTML is flat-out masochism. Only recommended for those that enjoy pain. Or programmers. I can’t always tell the difference.

He knows us too well.

His advice at the end is:

1. Validate your HTML. Know what it means to have valid HTML markup. Understand the tooling. More information is always better than less information. Why fly blind?
2. Nobody cares if your HTML is valid. Except you. If you want to. Don’t think for a second that producing perfectly valid HTML is more important than running your website, delivering features that delight your users, or getting the job done.

Ah, perspective, that rare and valuable thing.

Read the whole article yourself; if you create web pages it might give you a new perspective and is certainly worth 5 minutes of your time.

The Resurgence roastery

On our Christmas break I was very pleased to come across a small coffee roastery I’d previously never heard of. I was going to call it “boutique” but that sounds terribly pretentious. Nevertheless, Resurgence Riwaka Roasting is run out of a converted garage on the outskirts of Riwaka (just out of Motueka) and does seriously good coffee.

The roaster — that’s William on the right — has a long history of roasting in Christchurch, and has now set himself up in Riwaka. His beans are all good quality Organic and Fair Trade. He knows his stuff and roasts them well. There’s a (very) small café run out of the roastery where he can make you the best short black you’ve ever had. Seriously.

You can find their coffee in some of the local stores or buy through the web site (like the rest of the web site, the online shopping experience is nothing to write home about, but it’s there). However, if you’re anywhere near the roastery it’s well worth dropping in and seeing for yourself. They’re on the North side of Riwaka, on your right as you leave town heading for the Takaka Hill or Kaiteriteri.

If you’re coming some distance just for the coffee it might pay to call ahead — they’re not always there, and there is talk that they might be moving soon — but it’s worth the trip. I’m always keen to support the small business taking on the large faceless corporates, and in this case it’s an easy choice — the coffee is some of the best I’ve tasted in a long time.

Following on from my last two recipe book recommendations, here’s an Australian book that’s proving really popular.

Although it comes from the West Island, this cookbook is popular in New Zealand.

The Friendly Food cookbook is well laid out, and comes from the folks at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Allergy Unit where they know a thing or two about food allergies. Alongside the recipes there are helpful tips on living with food allergies, making this a good resource for the newly-diagnosed and a nice gift for parents of allergic children.

I don’t reach for this book as often as I do for the Edmonds and the NZ Food Allergy Cookbook, but that’s possibly more through force of habit than anything else.