Almost all software, whether it be public domain, open-source, or commercial, is not just released once. Typically it goes through many versions, changing (and hopefully improving) each time, sometimes adding features, sometimes removing bugs or problems, sometimes introducing new ones. This change is normally managed (at least for larger software systems) using two or three elements:

• Version control systems (also called source control or library systems). These are typically used to keep track of different versions of source-code, enabling previous versions to be retrieved, different parts of the software to be merged together, and so on. CVS is a well-known open source example.

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I sent a parcel to Sweden on Friday - some binoculars I’d sold on Ebay. Because I sent them International Signed For, I got a tracking number to use on royalmail.com. Entering this number on Friday resulted in a message saying that the parcel hadn’t yet been entered into the system, and to wait to the next day. Fair enough - this isn’t exactly Fedex or UPS, and I posted them at a rural post office in Hursley.

If you’re in the Fulham area and fancy a good breakfast, you could do a lot worse than the Fulham Cafe on Fulham Road. Full English Breakfast including coffee for about 5 pounds. Can’t say fairer than that in London.

(head out of Fulham Broadway station, turn right onto Fulham Road, and it’s on the left-hand-side of the road after two corners and about 300m).

Disclaimer: I have no connection with this cafe apart from being a client.

This film is about: fine wine, weddings, car crashes, relationships, broken noses, sex, and road trips. It’s an entertaining watch, and an emotional one. You can despise both the main characters and also admire them. Paul Giamatti in particular is good as the neurotic one of the pair.

Sideways is definite entertainment, and the two hours don’t lag. But, ultimately, there’s nothing very demanding for the viewer in it, so it’s probably a once-only deal.

eXistenZ is David Cronenberg’s The Matrix. But the layers of reality and existential indirection are far more complex and interesting than with The Matrix (although both films are of high quality and have plenty to hold the interest). With eXistenZ, we quickly get into this ’now, is this the real world?’ questions, and keeping track is half the fun. The twists and turns of the plot are pacy and well-thought out. Reality layers are built on computer games, and there are many entertaining in-jokes: anyone who has played simple role-playing games such as one of the Monkey Island series will quickly recognise the style of interaction with the games characters, and it must of been great fun for the actors to play with this.

As promised, my photos from Barcelona, including the Sagrada Família and Park Güell.

To sum this film up in one sentence: sex, business, love, and racial segregation in 50s Baltimore. The problem is, I’ve pretty much just covered it all. Sure, there some are charming scenes, but fundamentally this film doesn’t cover topics that haven’t been covered better elsewhere, doesn’t include anything spectacular, and although it holds the interest for a while, is ultimately unfulfilling. A worthy effort, but not a classic.

Let’s say you’re setting up a restaurant. How large should the menu be to encourage potential clientele to believe in your food?

Put another way: is there any correlation (real or perceived) between the size of a restaurant menu (measured in number of dishes) and the quality of the food that restaurant sells? For some time I was under the impression that there was an inverse relationship: for the best food, avoid those with large menus. This was based on the premise of combining: the kitchen can cheaply combine a number of pre-prepared meal components (meat, sauce, vegetables, carbohydrate) at the last minute to give the potential for a large number of dishes: but the components are not made freshly: and so the quality suffers.

Working with WebSphere ESB recently has got me thinking about synchronous and asynchronous communication mechanisms. I began to wonder about a mechanism that’s more familiar to most people - text messaging - and how it plays a dual role in usage. Let’s recap first on two other communication mechanisms that more obviously fit into one category or the other (perhaps ironically, a modern mobile phone can do all of these, including text messaging):

I don’t own a car, and so don’t drive often. This means I usually avoid the passionate debates about speed limits, speed cameras, etc. But I think I’ve come up with a speed limit question that’s less contentious (famous last words). I almost missed a plane the other day when the coach I was on to the airport was held up in a traffic jam on the M25. What made it more frustrating, though, was the temporary speed limit signs (the ones that light up with a speed above the motorway). Either: