Went to hear Schwern talk on Advanced Testing. Schwern arrived at the conference with only minutes to spare and had to set his machine up whilst the audience watched. Taking the whole audience interaction thing to extreme he asked members of the audience to present him with problems they had faced when testing with Perl. Only a mad man would write Perl code samples at a conference full of pedantic Perl geeks!

He also got Marty and Greg to give short presentations on Mock::Apache and Mock::Object. Marty also spoke briefly on Test First Programming. The things Marty will do for an invite to the speaker’s dinner!

Tony quotes Tom DeMarco. I would like to be able to say that crafting the right team is always my main priority, but I would be lying. I have found that the software manager’s other role of interfacing with the customer is considered to have equal importance and in some cases is given more priority than looking after your own staff. The administrative tasks that need to be completed are sometimes given priority over the people on the team. And of course there is all the time spent trying to do the team’s job for them – writing software is not management.

Why do I spend time doing the wrong things? Looking after people is difficult. Filling in forms, organising meetings and working with databases are safe activities that I understand.

The wind from Mt. Fuji
I put it on the fan.
Here, the souvenir from Edo.

Basho Matsuo

There are two kinds of toilets in Japan, Japanese style and Western style. Many of the Western style toilets are just like the ones I use at home. However the Japanese have developed a new generation of technologically improved toilets controlled by touch controls. In Starbucks they had a toilet which had a heated seat, bidet and dryer. In the Sony building and in Disney they had “stream music” which played loudly whilst you were using the loo…

I have been told that one of the most beautiful sites in Japan is the reflection of Mt. Fuji in Lake Ashi, Hakone. What I wasn’t told was how rare a sight this is. I’ve been to Hakone three times now and I’ve never even glimpsed Fuji. This time Typhoon Phanfone was to blame.

Tonight we went to see the Daimonji Okuribi Festival (Farewell Fire Festival), which is a traditional o-bon event in Kyoto. Five fires, shaped as kanji characters and symbols, are set on five mountainsides. They burn from east to west in the shape of the characters, “dai”, “myo”, “ho”, a boat, and a torii gate. The event cannot be seen from the streets because of the number of high-rise buildings so we watched the fires burn from a roof of a nearby hotel.

Tonight the people of Nara had lined the streets with candle lanterns to guide the spirits of their dead ancestors.

We went to see Todaiji Temple today. I took loads of pictures including some in black and white using Fuji Neopan 1600. It’s quite dark inside the temple and tripods are not allowed. Andrew was quite surprised at my choice of film. But then I was quite surprised at his attitude towards using high speed black and white film. He doesn’t like grainy pictures and thinks that since we can now get colour film why bother with black and white? Philistine!

We were served dinner tonight by a grumpy waitress. At home this wouldn’t be considered a strange thing but it is the first time that the service we have received in Japan has not been excellent. The waitress still served us quickly, brought us iced water when we arrived and even tidied up our shoes (we had to take our shoes off before we could sit down at the table and we still haven’t worked out where we are supposed to set them) but she looked like she wanted to be somewhere else.

I haven’t been able to work out why the service in Japan is so good compared to the service we receive at home. In some places it has been even better than the service I have received at expensive restaurants in America. Maybe by the end of the holiday I will have worked it out.

We spent the morning at Osaka Castle. Andrew wasn’t impressed but I thought it was quite beautiful and I was glad that we had taken the time out to go and see it. On the way back to the train station I spotted some very large insects. I had been listening to them for days (they make more noise than some birds) but I had never seen one before. Think I could do without every seeing another one again.