The progress of chicken pox is small spot, large spot, fluid filled blisters, scabbed, or in medical terms:

On the Sunday I had a few small spots, the symptoms weren’t too bad in the morning but by the afternoon my joints all started to hurt and the fever took over. It was at this point I hit the Ibuprofen. People seem to think that the spots are itchy, the real problem is that they are painful. It’s like having your face tortured, I just wanted to remove my skin.

The worst problem was some spots that were infected in my scalp and on back of my neck. Following a phone call to my doctor I was giving anti-biotics, this cleared the pain and the infected spots very quickly. Before this having a shower was agony.

By the second day of the spots erupting I hadn’t eaten anything much for three days. This is because you lose your appetite and the spots develop inside your throat meaning it’s painful to eat. I ended up fainting and scaring the crap out of my wife who had to revive me.

By day 3 I had hundreds of spots all over my head and body. You can see my looking unhappy above. The days after they spread to my lower body and hands. The more annoying spots were on my eye lids (leaking into my eyes), ear canal, inside throat, armpit, soles of feet and on my fingertips.

This is me today (below), 7 days after the first spots appeared. It’s a lot better as at this point as the pain has subsided from the spots, now it’s a constant battle to stop from scratching all the scabbed spots leaving a scar:

At this point my 4 hourly cocktail of drugs includes anti-histamines, cocodamol and an anti-biotic. That’s what keeps me smiling (as not seen above).

In Australia, the US and Canada every child is immunised against chicken pox. If you have a kid, do everything you can to make sure they get the mild version when they are a child; you really don’t want this as an adult.

From the official site:

I would encourage any developer, web designer, student, ideas person or artist to go along and get a feel for what it takes to get a simple pitch built up into a minimum viable product with a team over a high intensity weekend. I’ll be attending as a coach at the event. I’ve enjoyed plenty of these events before as an attendee and organiser so I’m looking forward to trying out the coaching role.

See more details for the Glasgow event here, which is being organised by Michael Hayes of Rookie Oven fame

Ingredients

• 4 cans of cider (Scrumpy recommended)
• Spices: 6 cloves, 3 star anise, ¼ nutmeg (finely grated), 1 cinnamon stick, 1 vanilla pod (halved, or ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract)
• Juices: 1 orange, 2 clementines, 1 pomegranate (with seeds)
• To taste: 4 or 5 tablespoons of caster sugar

Method

Add the cider to a large pan. Heat it on low heat for 3 minutes.

Add the spices and the juice of each fruit.

Then crank up the heat to boiling. Once boiling turn the heat down and simmer for 6 minutes.

Grab a spoon and take a taste of your wonderful concoction. It probably needs sugar. Add two tablespoons of sugar at a time until you get a good balance of sweet and spicy.

Once the sugar is mixed you can enjoy your creation immediately. Grab a ladle and put it into a mug or glass.

Result! Have a very merry Christmas!

This recipe is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe.

The event itself was exceptionally well run, timing was like clockwork and you didn’t see anyone running around trying to find the right video adapter for their laptop. It’s incredible that such a well run event can also be free. The only minor problem was the lack of air conditioning, which meant enduring a tropical climate for popular sessions.

Personally I haven’t had to code for .NET for anything serious since 2007, so I’m not overly keen on attending sessions on ASP.NET or about the latest library being reproduced for c# programmers. This has proved tricky at previous DDD conferences I’ve attended where you have no choice but to attend a .NET based session. Thankfully this conference proved to accommodate with sessions where the programming language wasn’t important.

I started the day off at an open discussion event hosted by Craig Nicol on “Professional Development”. There were only a few of us at the session but it was a wonderful way to wake up at 9am while discussing what we all considered traits of a professional developer. Craig guided the session by using a mind map already containing the BCS definition of professional development. Colouful anecdotes were retold by the session attendees and it was good to hear about the working environments of others.

Feeling inspired, I then headed along to Gary Short’s presentation on “Asymptotics and Algorithms”. Gary himself was part of an ongoing Twitter drive-by that ended up with a satirical twitter profile being created in his honour. Not that I want to feed inflated egos’ but this session was brilliantly done. Gary clearly knew his stuff and had that knack of taking something complicated and making it simple to understand.

After lunch I attend the BDD with F# session. I was under the impression that F# was similar to Clojure, but I couldn’t of been more wrong; there wasn’t a single piece of parenthesis in the entire talk!

The final session for me was Chris McDermott’s introduction to Kanban development. In the session Chris went over the important parts of Kanban and then discussed how he could have used the methodologies practices in his past. The idea of evolutionary change over time, rather than using a change everything approach is very compelling. I’ll keep this talk in mind next time I have to introduce an agile change in an organisation.

I met up with Chris, Rob Lally and a few others at Thai Lemon Grass for a post conference meal. The meal like the conference was excellent. I can’t thank the Scottish Developer community enough for making this day happen.

There’s 6 tracks on this year which were voted on in a free vote, and there’s still a strong .NET theme. Here’s the sessions I’m planning on attending.

09:30 – 10:30 :: Colin Gemmell
From .NET to Rails, A Developer’s Story

10:40 – 11:40 :: Gary Short
Asymptotics and Algorithms – What You’ve Forgotten Since University

12:00 – 13:00 :: Phillip Trelford
Behavioural Driven Development (BDD) with F#

14:30 – 15:30 :: Nathan Gloyn
Is your code S.O.L.I.D ?

15:40 – 16:40 :: Chris McDermott
Introduction to Kanban

I should of prepared a grok talk myself. But I’ve just started a new business, which will be the subject of one of my next blog posts!

The talk covered an eclectic mix of topics ranging from the mathematical reasons for Puff Daddy becoming P Diddy to pre-electronic calculators designed to be used in rally cars.

I’m going to talk about the three parts of his talk that I found most interesting.

Tallying systems

Tally marks are a form of numeral used for counting. They allow updating written intermediate results without erasing or discarding anything written down. The system Europeans are used to seeing is the 4 single 1s with a strike to represent a 5.

This system is pretty simple and often used:

However, in South America they use a system where you build a box:

And in China they use the 5 lines that make up the parts of their number 5:

I’m going to switch to using the the South American system!

Japanese Abacus counting system

Alex also showed a video of some Japanese kids who excel at adding numbers together. They are using an abacus system in their mind which makes counting a visual rather than an arithmetic problem.

In this video the participants are playing a game called “Flash Anzan” where they have to add up numbers that are being momentarily displayed on a screen without the use of paper.

As if that wasn’t scary enough, the abacus system doesn’t use the part of the brain which we traditionally use for counting, meaning that we are free to use it to perform word games.

In this video the 10 year old girls are counting the numbers displayed to them while simultaneously performing a word game where you have to start a word with the last syllable used by the previous word.

Chimpanzee Math

During the 1980s (in Japan again) they trained a few Chimpanzees to be able to recognise the numbers 1 to 9 and be able to answer questions about which one is higher and lower.

Then they decided to see if the chimps could remember sequences shown to them for a short period of time and then use a touch screen to select the numbers in order after they have disappeared. The scientists were suprised to see find that the chimps could perform to the same levels as humans in a control group.

Then they thought it would be interesting to reduce the time the numbers are shown from 0.6 seconds to 0.4. The human group only managed a 50% success ratio when shown the test. The chimps still managed 100%. Amazingly, they were able to reduce the time to 0.09 seconds and the chimps still have a 100% success rate.

Alex has a book about his discoveries if you would like to know more called “Alex’s adventures in Numberland”

Here are the events for which I’ve bought tickets so far…

• 6th March: Alex’s Adventures in Numberland
• 8th March: The Future of Capitalism
• 9th March: Who Are We – and Should it Matter in the 21st Century?
• 10th March: Civilization: The West and the Rest

I’d recommend anyone who will be in Scotland to check out their listings as there’s something for everyone.

To have a rewarding Whisky tasting you should line up 3 or more different drams that allow you to experience the differences between them.

Equipment

It’s important to have a correctly shaped glass to taste the Whisky, don’t go in for the crystal tumble numbers you see in films, go for something Tulip shaped like a Champagne glass. These allow you to take in the aromas of Whisky a lot better.

Good!

Bad!

Serve a single shot (dram) of each Whisky in a room temperature glass.

The Process

My process for tasting Whisky is:

• Selecting Whisky
• Eyeing the Whisky
• Smelling the Whisky
• Tasting the Whisky

Selecting Whisky

To get the most out of a Whisky tasting you should try to have a number of differing styles available to try. You can do this by region or by selecting based off tasting notes.

Try to have one Whisky from Sherry casks, a smoky Islay and two lighter Whiskies. Maybe even a sweet one. You can consult my guide to help you here.

Eyeing the Whisky

Start off by having a look at the colour of the drams you have. You will be able to see a difference in colour which reflects the sort of oak barrel the Whisky was aged in.

Whisky is matured in previously used barrels from American or Spain. The American barrels tend to be from Bourbon so they add a light colour to the Whisky. The Spanish barrels have had Sherry in them which creates a darker, reddish colour. If the Whisky is reddish in colour you can expect a medium-sweet fruity Whisky.

Smelling the Whisky

Cover your hand over the glass and swirl the Whisky around a bit. Open up part of your hand and take a sniff of the Whisky. Don’t try to smell it like Wine as the alcohol will burn your nose. Move the glass towards and away from your nose to get used to the smell of the first Whisky.

Don’t taste the Whisky yet! Pick up a second Whisky and do the same. Notice the differences between the two, then go back to the first glass. There are many different aromas present in Whisky but they tend to fall within a few major styles.

Try to notice if the Whisky seems Sherried, floral or peated. You might be able to detect traces of honey, spice, nuts or fruity notes. The more you do this, the better you will be at detecting the subtleties between drams.

Tasting the Whisky

Finally, you are ready to taste the Whisky. Take a small drink and hold it in your mouth for as many seconds as the Whisky has spent years in the barrel. Move the Whisky around your mouth and draw in a little air to enhance the flavour.

Once the time has elapsed; swallow and take in some air. This will finish you off with a warm and slightly burning sensation.

In between trying Whiskies be sure to cleanse your palate with some water or an oat biscuit. Enjoy!

I’ve even been lucky enough to get down to Liverpool for a holiday and many LFC games. It’s a lot like Glasgow and I love how they’ve developed their dockyard post-empire.

Benitez, like Houllier before him, spent a lot of time developing a paranoia against the board and the media. He won many public battles with the club. Though without new ownership coming he lost the war.

Here is my favourite Benitez moment:

In his parting words from the club; he has says everything you need to know about the man:

I leave you with my favourite Liverpool moment under Benitez. 1 minute left to go and 1 goal needed to progress to eventual Champions Leagure glory:

At this point the baby is the the same size as an Apple pip or a Marble.

Fast forward 6 weeks and we are talking Baseballs and Avocados:

The baby (we don’t want to know the sex) is due on the 26th June. Right during the knockout stages of the World Cup. Alison says she’s going to wait for an England game to give birth!

Baby Instructions

To help me not make some common mistakes I was helpfully given this picture guide.