Actually I'm from a rather idiosyncratic little village in Yorkshire. There is absolutely nothing I can do about this. There's nothing I can do about the fact that for the first 18 years of my life I lived in a village called Skelmanthorpe in what used to be the West Riding, now West Yorkshire. Skel Man Thorpe. Now there is this posh thing that they do isn't there where you have a really long name and you shorten it. And it's really posh. You know like, you see the name written down and it's “Cholmondley” - but actually it's pronounce “Chumley.” or “Beauchamps” but it's pronounced “Beecham” or even “Featherstonehaw” and it's pronounced “Fanshaw”. So, what did the good people of Skelmanthope come up with as their shortened version? Something visionary and aspirational? Skape? Scope? Or even something airy, bleak, mysterious and Scandivanian like “Sklaw”? Ah yes, if they'd called it Sklaw, we'd probably have lesbian couples downshifting there now.  Cappuccinos, ciabattas. No.

You know what they came up with - “Shat”. That's right, lets just savour that for a moment “Shat.” You can pretty much guarantee no marketing people were consulted in coming up with that name can't you. Shat, the past participle, sorry if I'm getting grammatical for a moment, the past participle of shit. I mean you can imagine the Marks and Spencers advert with Samba Pa Ti in the background “This isn't new shit, this isn't good shit. This is OLD shit.” You might not be surprised that the word “Shat” doesn't turn up on any maps. You might be surprised that it does turn up on shop signs. No word of a lie, there really is a business called “Shat Travel” it's in the village and it has a big, proud sign. What do they specialise in “Scary roller coaster rides and budget trips across India?”

And this experience, growing up in Shat, in West Yorkshire, well, lets just say it's coloured my view of the world somewhat. One thing being from Yorkshire has given me though. A Yorkshire accent. I mean, I don't mean in Yorkshire of course. Most people I know these days are budding actors, and you never know when you might get cast as one of the servants in Downton Abbey. And this is the trouble. What they want to say is “Down t'pit.” what they say is “Down pit.” Can you here that? “Down t'pit”. It's not a consonant, it's a pause. A stop in fact as in glottal stop. I think, possibly the best way to explain it to a sophisticated metropolitan crowd is – think of it as a very brief period of auto asphyxiation. And I know that this isn't going to bother you much. But if I don't hear that – when I fail to hear tiny bit of excitement and strangulation I think to myself - “Rada wasn't really worth the fees, was it love?” and I also lose all respect for you as a human being. OK. I'm glad we cleared that up.

And just one final thing. What should you say if you're in Yorkshire? Attempting glottal stops and stuff like that – that's just for the telly. For fuck's sake, whatever you do, don't actually try that IN Yorkshire. No. What should you say when you're in Yorkshire? What you should say when you're in Yorkshire, whenever anybody addresses you on any subject, is “Arh”. That gets you by in most situations. How did I learn to say the right thing? By saying the wrong thing of course. I was in one of the pubs in “Shat.” Actually the only one of the four that's safe to drink in (there's only three now, I'm guessing the one that's turned into a kitchen design centre isn't such a problem any more). I was in there. And I'd been having a few pints with my schoolmates and so of course I went to the gents. And while I was in there. One of the other pissees. Decided to strike a conversation and said to me “Tha looks 'appy!” Now, what I worked out later, I should have said is “Arh!” That would have got me through. That would have made me sound companionable and also non-committal and got me through the piss and back out into the pub. But what I did say was “yes indeed I am.”

I'm fat.

OK – you might think that I could change this. But I think I might have a fat brain. No, you scoff, one day this is going to be a recognised medical condition. Fat Brain. I mean the way I think about the world is like a fat person thin people don't think like this. Let me give you an example. I used to work at Cambridge University – always try to get that in. And I used to work next door to the physics department. What was great about the physics department from my point of view is that it had a wonderful old workers style canteen – big shovels off chips. Pies. Lasagne. Sponge pudding, god the sponge pudding, you know with that special institutional custard that you just can't mimic at home. Anyway. Those physics bods, when they weren't having lunch, turns out they were doing some of these particle collider experiments, you know like the large Hadron collider in Switzerland where, it's probably going to be OK, but one of the theoretically possibly outcomes, just might be that half of the universe is destroyed as a result of the collision.

And of course, this was in the local paper – I mean it would be wouldn't it? As local stories go, it's a pretty big one. But here's the thing. When I read this, working right next door to the physics department, what was my first reaction? Was I concerned for the universe? No. Was I concerned for my personal safety? No, my immediate first thought was “THE CANTEEN!!!” And then my second thought was, I'd love to see the look on the face of those physicists when half the universe just disappears into their fucking cloud chamber. It would be even better than the look must have been on my face when I came home to my new flat and found out you had to put the washing machine exit pipe in the sink.

Yup, so I think like a fat man. I'm so fat now. I snore really badly. I snore like someone attacking a trombone with a chainsaw. So I go to the doctor and he takes my body mass index. I don't know exactly what this is – some fucking number that skinny people have come up to make sure that fat people pay gym membership. Anyway, my BMI is 37. And what should it be? For health, happiness and no snoring? 20. 20. So what are they saying to me? What is the entire western medical establishment saying to me? Half of you has to go. And do you know what the fat part of my brain was thinking? “Maybe if you give them a leg? Yeah, chop off a leg, that'll do it” Seriously. That is really what came into my mind. Not “Fuck, from now on, you'd better count those calories. Stick to whole grain cereals, give up the bacon butties.” No. My fat subconscious is saying “throw them a leg!” and the rational part of my brain is saying “how is that going to even solve the problem? I mean, aside from the basic problems of not being able to fucking walk – how will it stop the snoring?” and the fat part of my brain says “Dunno, maybe when you've only got one leg you'll roll over on your side, won't be a problem – have another fucking muffin.”

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Humming hey Jude

It's difficult to get down in just a few words how fantastic my life has been so far. I think it started when I was a little boy, still in shorts. I think as soon as I saw that queue of kids at the gates of the school at home time who were helpfully informing me “We're going to fucking arse hole you Stringer”. I knew that I had a great effect on people. I touched people and they wanted to touch me back – really hard!

Well, that little schoolboy hasn't got much taller but has grown really, really fat.

But a lot of other things have changed in those years. The content of the spittle that's carelessly thrown in my direction has changed from Tizer to Special Brew to cider. But sometimes its been champagne. Sometimes the people who've abused and take a swing at me haven't been in kebab shops, they've been drinking the finest Bollinger champagne.

When I think of it like that it puts the disappointments, the decades of prolonged undergraduate penury the largely-single-handed sex-life they drift away like diaphanous, oversized condomns.

I view the world with open-eyed wonder and the world looks back and snarls “What are you fucking looking at?”

WE'VE trod the maze of error round,

Long wandering in the winding glade;

And now the torch of truth is found,

It only shows us where we strayed:

George Crabbe - Late Wisdom

"It's a steep learning curve" you hear that a lot don't you.  It's the most basic kind of business speak.  A nicer way of saying - "this is actually very difficult to understand." Or - "We don't give our staff any training."

But how often do you see a real learning curve?  How often do you get to see any kind of graph that shows you how people actually learn?  I can't actually remember ever seeing one and I was in full time education for 20 years - supposedly all that time I was learning stuff.  Nobody ever showed me any way, realistically, of checking my progress.  Nobody ever told me what to expect.  I do remember about how to actually remember the kinds of things that you get taught at school, including the importance of "overlearning" in Kenneth Higbee's book on memory.

I produced this learning curve by playing a video game.  Quite an old video game which I've been having a lot of fun playing recently - Gran Turismo on the Sony Playstation.  GT has a series of what I believe are called "Challenges."  These are various courses that you have to drive around under a certain qualifying time.  They start off easy (once you're realised the difference between the hand brake and the footbrake - which took me a while) and guess what? - they get harder!

I've briefly been reading about the idea of gamification - I'm only starting to get the basics.  But one of the things that I think is really important is a fast-feedback loop.  In a racing game like GT, you definitely get this, because at the end of each attempt, you get your time - as well as a nice friendly message (until you get the qualifying score) - "You've failed"!

As a trainer, I am very interested in learning.  So, out of interest, I thought I'd keep track of my progress from being an absolute novice on a particular course to the point where I qualified.  Here are some of my thoughts looking at this graph.

I think in future, this graph is the final slide I'm going to put up in my training courses.

In my day job, when I'm not playing games, I'm an Agile project manager.  Looking at this graph makes me think that I've probably done sprint/iteration planning (a crucial part of Agile project management) about 89 times.  I'm starting to think that maybe after another 89, I'll really have the hang of it.

1) Even when you're getting better, a lot of time you're doing badly.  Even when you're doing badly, you're getting better.

The graph is showing an overall pattern of improvement, but you can't necessarily see this from the individual scores.  Even when things are getting better, and I'm getting nearer the qualifying time, there are a lot of scores that are nearly as bad as when I started.

2) After periods of progress, for a while, things seem to (and actually do) get worse

Learning for this task seems to come in three phases.  There is an initial period where performance seems to be mostly getting better, this carries on until around turn number 29 and then, for about another 31 turns up to about turn 60, things don't really improve, in fact, at some points, they seem to get worse.

3) Conscious use of techniques comes later (and doesn't necessarily bring immediate improvement)

Even though I've driven a lot of the other courses and come up with a technique, which I'm certain everybody comes up with, for getting around corners really quickly (I won't go into detail, but it involves breaking and turning at the same time) I didn't really use this in the "first phase" up to about turn 29.  The second phase, up to about turn 60, I spent trying to consciously apply this technique, which I knew would be quicker, if I could only get it to work.

The final phase - from about turn 60 to turn 85 I'd pretty much "got" the simultaneous breaking and turning technique and I was trying to add on to it a refinement - aim for the apex of the corner as you brake and turn.  Again, this refinement too about 25 turns before I got it to pay off.

4) Recording poor performance is embarrassing - even if it's only a game

When I was driving around the course and I knew it wasn't going to be a good time, I was tempted to crash (I didn't record that crashes - maybe I should) so that the score wouldn't show.  And this was just in a game.  Imagine what it would be like in a real work environment!

5) It takes longer than you think it's going to do, and there's a lot more variation

How often are you going to need to do a moderately complicated task before you "get it" - before you can do it to the required standard? Would you have thought 89 times?  How often before you can reliably do it to that standard?  My guess now, after doing this task and recording it, would be another 89 times. 

6) When you get things right - you're not quite sure why, and you're certainly not sure you could do it again

At around turn 60, I had a turn that took 2m 14.5s.  I was please, but I also had a queasy feeling that I wouldn't be able to replicate it.  And I was right.  It was going to take another 25 turns to get near that again, let alone better it.

7) Failure has to be an option (otherwise there's no success)

You have to be able to make mistakes - crash into things, spin round, set off in completely the wrong direction, this is part of having lots of goes.  If I had been too scared to make mistakes, I literally wouldn't have gone anywhere.  Almost all the time when I made those mistakes, I had a genuine, positive intention.

Harlow llamas in the drizzle.

These would be my llamas.

Grayson Perry - The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman
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I wanted to capture what it felt like at the fag-end of this contract, having worked for the same company (as a consultant/contractor) for nearly 2 years.  There are some things I feel very annoyed about but also, I want to remember  this.  Sometimes it sang.  I spent most of this week complaining about military analogies for software development, and quite rightly.  So here's a sailing analogy.  Sometimes, when the wind is all over the place, or when you haven't got quite right in your mind where the wind actually is, it feels like you can't get started.  You start to sail, and then you're suddenly becalmed. It's messy, scrappy. But sometimes the wind keeps it a predictable direction and you can head into at an angle.  The boat leans over and it really starts to shift.  And when it starts to shift, the wind gets in the ropes and the boat starts to sing.

Don't mention Mrs Slocombe.