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A day in the AI life of a CTO
Let me take you through a typical day in the life of a Chief Technology Officer in the age of AI and how it has woven itself into every aspect.
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How to handle yourself at a student career fair
When first starting out at university you don’t give too much thought on what job you will eventually land. However as time moves on, there will be opportunities that you need to grab with both hands. Career fairs, company campus visits, guest lectures are just some of the chances for you to get in front of a perspective employer. Being an employer that has gone to many a career…
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Who is looking at your code?
We’re software developers and we take our art form seriously. Our palette is the editor to which we lay down our beautifully crafted code. How we name variables, how we shape methods and how we format code, leaves its own unique DNA sequence that can quickly identify the owner. Even after running code through a standardized formatter, the author is not immune from detection. Software development has always been a…
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How’s your Software Insurance Policy?
Ask any software developer a list of things they dislike doing the most and chances are testing and documentation will make the top 2. Testing is one of those necessary evils that every software developer must wrestle with. Software developers have a unique confidence (read arrogance) that the code they write is error free and production ready as soon as their fingers leave the keyboard. We don’t need to test…
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“Scotch: The Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story” by Robert Bruce Lockhart
If you are mildly interested in the history of Scottish whisky then you can go no wrong with this book written by Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. Lockhart, died 20 years ago, and was from a completely different era with a word play that you would expect from the upper-class snobbish of an old boy that can only bring a smile to your face. To give you a hint of…
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“Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip Heath, Dan Heath
This book was recommended by my trusted colleague, Stefan Bauer, as a bit of light reading over the weekend. Weighing in at only 291 pages, it was a book that proved very hard to put down once started. The authors take a look at what it takes to make ideas and messages resonate and stick with people. By using lots of case studies they illustrate just how easy it…
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“Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation” by David Robertson
We all know (and love?) the humble LEGO brick – that 4 pegged indestructible plastic cube, that come a nuclear attack, along with the the cockroach will be the only things that will survive. I have always been intrigued in the history of this company and how it got a foot hold in the lives of children and adults alike. This book takes a look at the history from…
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“Sam Walton: Made In America” by Sam Walton
I’ve recently finished a fascinating book on the history of Walmart, as told by its founder, Sam Walton. Written in the last year before he died in 1992. At that time Walmart was a $53billion turnover company, and for some context, if you had bought $100 shares at its initial IPO in the early 1970’s, they would be worth $3.8million today (the shares split so many times over the years).…
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“Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think” by: Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Kenneth Cukier
This book was recommended to me by a colleague and after a few days it was read cover-2-cover and only now am I reflecting back on its message. First thing, the title is completely misleading. Yes the authors talk a lot about “big data”, but that I feel misses the message of the book as a whole, which is the historical look at how data has shaped our society and…
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Yahoo ‘to buy Tumblr for $1.1bn’
Yahoo’s board has approved a deal to buy New York-based blogging service Tumblr for $1.1bn (£725m), US media reports say. The acquisition is expected to be announced as early as Monday. Once more I have done it again; signed up for a service and in a matter of days learn it is to be acquired. I did the precise thing with posterous just before Twitter purchased them and ran it…
the leg-end that is, Alan Williamson.
For over 20 years, I’ve shared my thoughts whenever the muse strikes. It’s unpredictable, honest, unedited, and occasionally witty. I’m living the best years of my life, working harder than ever, and enjoying every second.
Alan Williamson 