http://www.markstaples.com Ruminations and observations about software, technology, and beer. Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:47:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's been a cool summer in Sydney this year, and recently we've had a few particularly cool days , which I've taken to be the first stirrings of Autumn. This prompted me to get a batch of beer ready for Winter - a Cooper's Dark Ale, with their Brew ... http://www.markstaples.com/2008/03/02/dark-ale/ I've written an article for the latest edition of the CM Journal at CM Crossroads, on Four Lessons about Company Standards and Procedures from Build Management. Writing in a practitioner's forum is very different to writing academic papers! I'm not sure I've completely got the hang ... http://www.markstaples.com/2008/02/19/lessons-on-standards-from-build-management/ A lime cordial last night - back to basics. It was based on the generic cordial recipe - 2kg sugar, 1.7L water, 18g citric acid, and 0.3L of juice and pared rinds from 8 limes. This batch had the most intense lime flavour. My working hypothesis is ... http://www.markstaples.com/2008/02/19/lime-cordial/ A colleague forwarded to me a pointer to the current issue of the ITMPI journal, on Best Practices in Configuration Management. They make an interesting contrast with the best CM practices in the November issue of the CM Journal on "What Best Practice Is Best?", and specifically the article ... http://www.markstaples.com/2008/01/30/cm-best-practices-two-lists-and-one-of-mine/ Another cordial this weekend, this time using bulk white nectarines from the grocer. They were too hard to be eaten, but made good cordial. I used a nectarine instantiation of my father's generic cordial recipe. He created this recipe based on Matt's recipe for orange cordial, but tweaked ... http://www.markstaples.com/2008/01/29/generic-cordial/ Our paper "An Exploratory Study of Why organisations Do Not Adopt CMMI" has started to be cited in the literature. It's been in the "hottest 25 downloads" for the journal since it became available 3 quarters ago, so I'm hopeful the number of citations might grow. On one hand, it's ... http://www.markstaples.com/2008/01/22/why-not-is-not-can-not/ The recent announcement by Somasegar at Microsoft that F# is being "productized" has now started to be picked up by various news agencies. Being productized means some future version of the F# language and its Visual Studio integration will be officially supported by Microsoft. However, I see a couple of ... http://www.markstaples.com/2007/10/24/f-being-productized/ All good things come to an end, and so it is with my Dark Chocolate Ale. My stores are generally getting low - now I'm left with only a couple of bottles of Spicy Ghost and a crate of Chilli Lager. Time for another brew. Next week I'm off ... http://www.markstaples.com/2007/08/27/orange-coriander-ale/ "Web services" has been a buzz word for so long you might wonder if there's any buzz left. I'd known in principle about how web service technology was full of goodness, especially for achieving interoperability, but I'd never really taken the red pill. However, recently I had an ... http://www.markstaples.com/2007/07/15/a-web-services-epiphany-accessing-confluence-from-f-using-soap/ Today, version 7.04 ("Feisty Fawn") of Ubuntu Linux was released. Yay! Earlier this week I installed the Feisty beta release, and rediscovered Linux happiness. I first started using Linux at home in the mid/late 90s, installing Redhat Linux 4 on a second-hand PC. I faithfully followed the Redhat releases, ... http://www.markstaples.com/2007/04/20/feisty-fawn/