Processes

The Love Factory is still in Dublin, on the move today to another place in Ireland which name is still forgotten. God I need a new digital camera. I have been rethinking my bag recently, to make it more efficient. What do I really need? Painting material, Digital camera, my nokia, my ipod, pens, notebooks and don't forget the tobacco. The painting material is now composed of 5 tubes of color. Red, yellow, blue, black and white. I should move to 6, 2 tubes of white would never be too much. A painting knife, a tape of sticky paper to create margins and structures, a pencil to paint symbols, scissors... And carton canvases. I need to buy a lot of them :-) I am listening to the new album of Led zeppelin. The mothership. The song remains the same and indeed it makes sense and does not matter. As in any process, the sequence of the 3 things does not matter. Even the numbers do not matter, it depends at which level of abstraction you feel more comfortable. What is this article about, oh yes, processes. Let me roll a cigarette from outer space.

Done. I now take my pocket weekly notebook. I need to buy a notebook of the same size for longer notes. Does size matter? Yes and no. In painting, I have been searching long time for the right size, my mother always asked me : "What size is it?". Now I know it does not matter. Same thing with signing. Do I need to sign paintings? The one I finished this morning, displayed here, is not signed. The one from the day before, I signed it and then, oh sacrilege! I changed it after signing, a lot. The first painting of the Love Factory, which I did the 13th is not signed. What does that tell me? I went further than signing, it is not important anymore. What about the size? neither it is. You create with what you have, the settings are always different. A whole lotta Love. I want to give you my Love. Oh! As in writing usage scenarios in a European project. A sentence from Rosa: "we describe the feeling of something happening" and as in anything, the explanation comes afterwards. Why? This question is a question of the future. You explain, combine, assemble the past by answering why something happened. What is the present, How, the past. What is my question? my research question? for my thesis?

Last Saturday I wrote the first page of my thesis, at the time I entitled it : "Teaching How to Teach Yourself". Is that good? Yes and no. What does that mean? Well How is a typical computer science question. And in software engineering, the main ability you need is teaching yourself. The settings change so fast, new programming languages, new frameworks, new projects. Always need to learn. Difference between learning and teaching, well it only depends where you position yourself. I consider to be always teaching and learning during fruitful discussions. As in the one of yesterday. A What question? That's where I am heading to right now. To figure out what it is I am questioning about. I got a clue by discussing the state of the industry of software maintenance and development with Clement the flatmate of Thomas. Clement is a french friend from Biarritz. He works in a large software company here in Dublin. He just comes back from vacation in Thailand and plans his next trips to Rome, Amsterdam and la Bretagne for the new year's eve. We spent the evening together with Pyer, a friend from high school who when he came to Lugano in September was coming back from a year of traveling in Asia, China, Mongolia and many other places.

Fellow travelers. Immigrant song. We are nomads. Traveling, what is that? Finding a process, connect people, learn, discuss, adapt, discover, who am I? Who are You? What do I need in my bag? Stones, jewels, paper, a razor, a tooth brush and a piece of soap. And or Or? And and Or? What is the question? To be or not to be, that was the question of Shakespear. What is mine? Now for my thesis? What is it I spent the most time doing? Working in the Nepomuk European project. Analyzing the methodology of developing systems. Is that it? Yes and no. In Nepomuk I recently conducted developers interviews, when months before I attended to Rosa's interviews of users, clients. Who are our clients in the project? Hewlett packard, IBM, SAP, Mandriva, the institut Pasteur, the PRC group. Who are the developers? NUIG in galway, FZI, L3S, DFKI in germany, EPFL in Switzerland. Who are the architects? myself at USI and Gerald in UNIZH in Switzerland, Tudor and Siegfried at NUIG and Gunnar at DFKI. Am I writing this article about Nepomuk? Yes and no. It is so cold here in Ireland. The sky is all gray, reminds me of the town where I was born, cherbourg, the sea.

So what is it I am doing? A methodology to analyze the system development methods? An Analysis of the System Development Methodology? System Methodology Discussion? It is not an analysis, I use the dialectic method of Socrates, asking questions, looking precisely to different point of views to synthesize the truth? What is the truth? Ther is no method? Plato's truth in the Republic where he analyzes the nature of Justice, there is no Justice, each point of view is right and they all contradict themselves. Living on the paradox, that's what we do. What is Art? Transcribing the paradox. When you find the paradox, open the door and step in. I want to be free and I love women. There is no such thing as marriage for me. I want to be free and people do bad things. There is no such thing as Justice. I want to be free using my software and my needs change with time. There is no silver bullet. I want to be free and write a good thesis. There is no question.

The last paragraph is certainly a synthesis of the discussion so far. I have so much more to say though. The Painting process is a 2 side cycle in which you must do in whichever order construct, uniform, assemble and destroy, differentiate, divide. Is that the painting process or the creation process? I am quite confident you can apply this to many domains. Software development? For sure. Oh I have drawn a cycle for Nepomuk. It was a what cycle, I'll do a how cycle soon. And speaking with Clement I understood the cycle in industry is the same, they listen to customer request by answering calls on the hotline, what they call level 1 in terms of job; figure out processes to solve the customer's requests, that's what they call level 2; creating. adding functionalities, deciding, they call level 3. The other side, the development side of the cycle, I don't know yet, but I believe there are 3 levels of abstraction understanding and learning abilities. Interviewing people, that's what I do. Transcribing reality. It makes me wonder, there is a feeling I get. Led Zeppelin, the mothership has landed, the 10th December in London. I want to be there, that's where I am going now, and it does not matter if I go or not as the road my change. Who am I looking for? The painting from yesterday told me a Libra. Enjoy! Thanks for reading, thanks for sharing. I found what I'll offer to Thomas. A pipe I took from home. oh Woman, Climb the stairway to Heaven! Heaven and Hell. It depends how you look at it. Always look on the bright side of Life.