Jorgensen.org.uk

Often, the English language relies on implied knowledge. References to something unspoken, or words/phrases that are left out because it is assumed that the listeners know the reference. Often, this assumption is correct. But when it is not, the consequences can be at best baffling, and at worst aggravating and infuriating.

For some phrases the listener stands no chance of deriving the correct meaning:

I grew up with mixer taps. You know: the sort where the tap will mix hot and cold water, so water comes out at a humane temperature?

This does not appear to be common in the UK. They seem to prefer separate hot and cold taps. Why? Don't ask me.

I never figured out how I'm meant to wash my hands without either freezing or boiling my hands, and yet not waste lots of water. Don't forget that we do suffer from the occasional water shortage, despite the large amount of rain....

Perhaps this can explain why it is not common to wash you hands after visiting the toilets? Or perhaps the pubs/restaurants are trying to save water by cunningly discouraging us from washing hands? Or perhaps mixer taps are that much more expensive? Does it matter how much more expensive they are, since the two-tap system is clearly unworkable?

I'm Danish. And I still wash my hands after visiting the toilet. If I have cold hands, think of it as a good sign.

There are two basic approaches to deploying application releases:

• Full Releases: A release contains the whole application
• Incremental Release : The release contains only changes since the previous release.

If implemented correctly, both can work in any organisation. And since very few organisations actually bother tracking releases, most choose incremental releases, because they are easier to implement. And this is where things start going wrong.

The most basic ethos in configuration management is to keep track what is installed.This is extremely important for several reasons. Basically, if you do not know what is installed, then:

• how can the test environment be relied upon? This needs to be as close as technically possible to the live environment to have the same bugs/features as the live environment.
• how can you predict how the application will behave? You need to. If not, then your documentation is unlikely match the application...
• how do you know what has changed in a release?