Catching, reviving, and releasing my first ever fly caught salmon (from the River Tay at Dunkeld) :-) A huge thank you to my spey casting instructor and guide (who took the videos) Gary Scott, a world champion caster and a fantastically good teacher.

Some days you remember all your life :-) Labels: fishing

amplify & dampen You know how sometimes the universe seems to be trying to tell you something? I had one of those experiences the other day. I was looking through my notes from the ALE2011 conference keynote Dave Snowden gave. I wrote

You know things differently in ordered-systems compared to complex-adaptive-systems. In complex adaptive systems you need discipline, you need safe-to-fail probes. You won't know the effect the probes will have. If the probes have a good effect you need to amplify them. If the probes have a bad effect you need to dampen them. Your strategies for amplifying and damping need to be planned ahead of time.

A short while later I was reading Surfing the Edge of Chaos and I came across this on page 93

The olfactory cells, which provide mammals with their sense of smell, delicately tune receptors to dampen out familiar smells and rapidly amplify receptors with new smells. This is the way the brain is alerted to new dangers or opportunities.

There it was again, amplify & dampen. I was sure this was a theme Jerry Weinberg had written about somewhere but try as I might I couldn't track it down. About an hour or so later I spotted a small red notebook on my bookshelf. I hadn't looked at it in over a year but for some reason I decided to pick it up. On the second page I looked at I'd written the following quote from Quality Software Management, vol 3, Congruent Action on page 95

A basic law of perception is that we tend to minimize small differences (tendency toward assimilation) and to exaggerate appreciable differences (tendency toward contrast). Thus, our perceptions make the world more sharply differentiated than it is, and we're a lot more alike than we are different. Labels: complexity, jerry-weinberg surfing the edge of chaos Feedback is the means by which a system talks to itself. progressive fly fishing for salmon This just caught my eye at breakfast in a hotel. I had to look up xeriscape. Wikipedia says it means "landscaping and gardening in ways that reduce or eliminate the need for supplemental water from irrigation". local optimization, global pessimization A well known UK company, let's called them B&O, sells bidgets and odgets. B&O sold me a bidget a few years back. They did a good job. I like the bidget they sold me. It works well. B&O rings me know-and-then to ask if I'm thinking of buying another bidget or my first odget.

Recently B&O rang me and I mentioned I was indeed thinking of buying an odget to go with my bidget. The B&O person on the other end of the phone sounded very pleased and arranged for a B&O salesman to visit me to provide me with an odget quote. On the designated day, at the designated time, the B&O salesman, let's call him Stan, arrived.

Stan didn't know that someone at B&O had spoken to me on the phone and arranged for Stan to provide me an odget quote. So I explained, for a second time, the odget I was thinking of, and where it would go and how big it would need to be. Stan said that he could quote for the odget, but, being honest, there was no point. Since the odget I was after was not a regular odget B&O would simply subcontract the work to a builder, and then charge me the builder's cost plus a fat markup. Stan said I'd be much better off hiring a builder myself.

Stan explained that the people at the B&O office get a cash bonus each time an odget quote is made to a prospective customer. Stan further explained that they got this cash bonus regardless of whether the customer actually bought the odget. Predictably, the people in the B&O office work hard to get quotes out. They send B&O salesman out to any and all jobs regardless of how likely the job is to result in actual work. Stan said if a B&O phone-handler phoned me to ask whether I'd received a quote, he'd very much appreciate it if I said no I hadn't because I'd changed my mind and didn't want an odget.

Top marks to Stan. No marks to B&O. Labels: failure, feedback, le chatelier, systems thinking

the house at pooh corner

is an excellent book by A. A. Milne (isbn 1-4052-1117-2). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages: 'Now,' said Rabbit, 'this is a Search, and I've Organized it - '
'Done what to it?' said Pooh.
'Organized it. Which means - well, it's what you do to a Search, when you don't all look in the same place at once. So I want you, Pooh, to search by the Six Pine Trees first, and then work you way towards Owl's House, and look out for me there. Do you see?'
'No,' said Pooh. 'What -'
'Then I'll see you at Owl's House in about an hour's time.'
'Is Piglet organdized too?'
'We all are,' said Rabbit, and off he went.

Pooh was sitting in house one day, counting his pots of honey, when there came a knock at the door. 'Fourteen,' said Pooh. 'Come in. Fourteen. Or was it fifteen? Bother. That's muddled me.'

Pooh hadn't thought about it at all, but now he nodded. For suddenly he remembered how he and Piglet had once made a Pooh Trap for Heffalumps, and he guessed what had happened. He and Piglet and fallen into a Heffalump Trap for Poohs! That was what it was.

And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything.

it suddenly came over him that nobody had ever picked Eeyore a bunch of violets, and the more he thought of this, the more he thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.

Rabbit came up importantly, nodded to Piglet, and said, 'Ah Eeyore,' in the voice of one who would be saying 'Good-bye' in about two more minutes.

and the big one came out first, which was what he had said it would do, and the little one came out last, which was what he had said it would do, so he had won twice... and when he went home for tea, he had won thirty-six and lost twenty-eight, which meant that he was - that he had - well, you take twenty-eight from thirty-six, and that's what he was. Instead of the other way around.

'They always take longer than you think,' said Rabbit.

'And I was here myself a week ago.'
'Not conversing,' said Eeyore. 'Not first one and then the other. You said "Hallo" and Flashed Past. I saw your tail a hundred yards up the hill as I was meditating my reply. I had thought of saying "What?" - but, of course, it was then too late.'
'Well, I was in a hurry.'
'No Give and Take,' Eeyore went on. 'No Exchange of Thought. "Hallo - What" - mean, it gets you nowhere, particularly if the other person's tail is only just in sight for the second half of the conversation.'

Christopher Robin was telling them what to do, and Rabbit was telling them again directly afterwards, in case they hadn't heard, and then they were all doing it.

'And what about the new house?' asked Pooh.
'Have you found it, Owl?'
'He's found a name for it,' said Christopher Robin, lazily nibbling at a piece of grass, 'so now all he wants is the house.'

He had to write this out two or three times before he could get the rissolution to look like what he thought it was going to when he began to spell it;

'Don't Bustle me,' said Eeyore.

The fact is this is more difficult than I thought, Labels: book review, Brain, communication, listening

the silent language Culture is saturated with both emotion and intelligence.
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