Admittingly, I suppose that Star Trek Voyager is not usually referred to when talking about Christian leadership.

USS Voyager, commanded by the strong-willed Captain Kathryn Janeway, becomes trapped on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, and with no other options left to them, embarks on a 70-year journey home. Their journey becomes filled with dangers, discoveries, and both conflict and personal growth. Step by step, they put the light-years behind them as they travel ever closer to their destination, Earth, in – quite literally – the journey of their life.

I think it parallels, in many ways, the kind of pilgrimage that we as Christians face on this earth, nowhere better exemplified than in John Bunyan’s famous book “Pilgrim’s Progress”. Our life is one of conflict, danger, and with many trials and temptations to face, before we ultimately, one day, look towards the final destination of our life: our Heavenly home, where friends and family await. In the meantime we grow – adapt, as Seven of Nine would say – in our changing environment and become stronger, wiser – and more humble.

My hero in all this is Captain Janeway. Never once flinching, never hesitating – though personally haunted by past decisions, future uncertainty, responsibility for the crew, and the burden of command – she leads the starship though these dark, dangerous waters. She is the embodiment of a Federation Starship Captain. This is her ship, her crew; and whether she makes right or wrong decisions, it is hers to make. An investigative scientist at heart, she rarely misses an opportunity for research; but when the role of the scientist conflicts with that of the captain, the captain will crush the opposition (internal or external) by sheer dominant will.

I find it amazing how a fictional character can become so real. I wonder if perhaps both I and the actor, Kate Mulgrew, are standing and looking at this character and pondering what an effect she’s had on perhaps both of us. Even if I myself find myself perhaps at the comparative rank of sergeant in the grand scheme of things, I still admire the position of captain. I know there is no way that I could handle that job if suddenly put there; I have neither the experience, nor the commanding personality or character to go with it… But I can dream about it.

Until further notice, Captain Janeway is my personal hero. Thanks, Kate, for bringing her to life.

The team over at Borland have started blogging about the next release of Delphi, code name Highlander.

It’s no longer BDS (Borland Developer Studio) 2007, it’s RAD 2007. Ok.

Delphi’s got generics now. But only in the .NET personality.

There’s some kind of SQL server enclosed too, called Blackfish. And they’ve got some bugfixes and better help, supposedly.

Whohoo.

I wonder if they’ve included a command-line build tool that updates .res files?

It’s 09:10 and we’re already out of coffee.

This is absurd.

I am an introvert.

I say this with some kind of trepidation, because I know the world looks at us introverts with strange and sometimes unforgiving eyes. We do not always rise to the social standards held in common. We do not flash our big smiles, show off our success, our fancy cars and pretty girlfriends. We are a different group, sometimes ill-understood and disregarded, and as a result stick mostly to ourselves. Some call us nerds; in my case specifically, “computer nerd”, which is a label that is ill-fitting and hurting, and it tells me only that you do not care enough in getting to know me and find out who I really am.

It isn’t always easy to be an introvert. People wonder with amazement how I can spend so much time alone. And I’m probably a rather depressing sight at most parties, sitting with a silent, courteous smile on my lips as my eyes flicker bewilderingly, searching hopelessly for something interesting to come across my path…

It is, of course, a gliding scale. Some people are very extroverted people, some are very introverted, but most people tend to fall somewhere in between. Ultimately – and this may be a generalization, but, I think, a working one – it is a question of where you derive your energy from. Extroverted people enjoy social gatherings because they are energized by people. They get energy and strength from talking to people and socializing with them. Introverted people do not; they draw their strength from within, from their own thoughts, ideas, dreams and desires. To an introvert, socializing consumes power, and it needs to be regenerated, most likely by spending time away from people; once again retreating into that quiet, solitary place, where nothing stops you from the dreaming and exploration of inner worlds. I guess this is why we like to read books so much.

This is also why I like my job so much. I am a software developer; and designing software gives me a lot of time to sit down with thoughts and patterns, delving through ideas, pondering new designs and exploring that world of mathematical beauty I carry within myself. I am probably immensely boring sometimes (especially to extroverted people), but that is only because I go deep, so very deep, in my search for truth and meaning; much like a miner digging for gold or diamonds, thousands of feet below the surface.

Extroverts try to change the world, introverts seek to understand it.

This desire to understand and to know sometimes comes in conflict with the setting. My single biggest fear is a mingle party, where people casually glide around, chatting and doing small talk a whole evening. I could not imagine a more horrifying social context. Having to spend an entire evening, talking to people about amazingly unimportant things, and hearing the same stuff repeated a thousand times over (only in different wording), is to me the intellectual equivalent of assembling engine parts on a factory floor, five days a week, with no end in sight.

And it does get awkward when I try to talk to someone at these parties, because just as much as I derive my strength from my inner world, I also derive my interest from hearing about yours. So I care deeply about your feelings, your ideas and thoughts, how you see the world and the accumulated wisdom you have learned from your life. I care little for the things you like; but I care very much about what you love. It takes me a step deeper somehow, and I get to explore what makes you unique, and what sets you apart from everyone else here at this boring party. And suddenly it feels less like a party and more like a date; and that makes me nervous, should I have trodden unintentionally across a line somewhere between you and me, within this social context.

Most people don’t go this deep, and I don’t understand why. It is as though they like to flitter like butterflies across the surface, when amazing treasure, rich and glorious and plentiful, lie in abundance in the depths below.

So if I may hazard a guess, most people shrug me off as boring, which, in all earnest, I probably am — just another computer nerd, standing in the corner. Perhaps that is because just right then, I am strolling through fields and meadows of thought, between marble columns of ideas and dreams, under a starlit sky filled with everything that is possible … inside.

Chamomile tea is very good. I started drinking chamomile during a slight Chinese period of mine (it wasn’t anything as extensive as my military period). It’s a pity I don’t drink it more.

Tea holds the same properties over coffee, as cats do over dogs. It’s more subtle, quiet, distinguished. It doesn’t make a fuss, it’s got its own gentle character, and it bristles with class. Chamomile, while technically not a tea in itself – herbal teas are sometimes included among teas, sometimes not – exudes that same kind of distinguished charm.

There are two kinds of teas that go very well in a specific circumstance; and that’s when you sit on a balcony, or front porch, and watch the gentle summer rain. It’s warm, and there’s a quiet, sad tap-tap-tap on the roof from the rain drops, and a quiet splashing of the water trickling down the sides of the building and gently falling on the surroundings. And that’s when these two teas shine in all their glory. Number one, the chamomile; and number two, the lapsang souchong.

Chamomile has a rather sharp, distinct herbal taste, and it is countered very well by the smoky, heavy flavor of the lapsang. As both have a very organic feel to it – very earthy, natural somehow – they are, in my opinion, ideally suited for this kind of activity: To gently sit and watch the rain fall while you’re immersed in quiet thoughts about life.

I’m sure you’ve all read the funny tandem writing story where chamomile tea figures briefly.

Probably one of the more romantic ways to propose. At least if you like cats.

Check out the thread on Stuff On My Cat when Jeff proposed to Heather… through a cat. The posting generated an unbelievable amount of comments, with people staying glued to their screens all day to see if Heather said yes or not.

She said yes. And the congratulations poured in from the U.S., England, Denmark, China….

And pictures from the wedding.

I’m starting to use a new method to understand how to write software. It’s something I’ve starting doing just by myself, so I don’t know if it’s an established practice. I think it isn’t.

I close my eyes and imagine that I’m looking at the running software. I see the main form as it is on the screen, and then I rotate the view slightly, so I can see what’s behind… and what I see is a lot of little objects hanging beneath. Little services that dangle from the main form, and that are tied in to a complex engineering structure. Like this:

What is so cool is that when I imagine myself looking at this, I can change the little objects as much as I wish. I can see them tied in to each other, I see how all the calls are made and which lines are activated. I realize that object A must speak with object B, which in turn needs to speak to object C, and I ponder in the silence of my bedroom what software design patterns to apply.

I can also walk in between them, dragging the objects apart. I see what services they provide, and I ponder how they are tied into the main form, and what the main form needs to do to work. I examine the objects instanced by these services. I pat them quietly on their head, signing my approval. “Carry on, little objects”, I say.

I don’t know if it makes any difference that I examine the running system in my mind or not. I think that personally it’s a vast improvement from just trying to observe the class design, because now I don’t just see the classes, but I see how they run together, where they grind against each other, and if the design has any problems in running.

Imagination is powerful.

Following on the success of the last picture essay from Skärhamn, here are more pictures.

When I leave my house and walk down to the harbor – which really just starts a few hundred feet from my house, and stretches for a long, long way all into downtown, this is what I see. This is sort of the north harbor, and the exit to the sea is just through that narrow passage away in the distance. Beyond that is open sea. And this is what is looks like on a sunny day – just sunshine reflecting into the waters.

As I head downtown, I pass by this little houses, like this one. I wonder who lives here. It looks so small and so old, and yet is it very typical for the quaintness of houses around here. Not long ago, I was driving around Stenungsund looking at apartment blocks, and I felt like I would suffocate – who can live in these huge chocolate boxes in the city? Out here, every house is unique, custom built, and just take a few steps and you’re breathing in the air from the open oceans.

Believe it or not, but this is the main street through Skärhamn. It’s a strict 30 km/h road – and tourists often drive slower, even stopping in the road – and along this little street lies everything. Over to the right here is the downtown square with a few banks and stores, and the main harbor starts just beyond the bend in the distance.

This is what you see when you proceed. Among these red and white houses lie little restaurants and other cozy shops. The main harbor lies here – although the guest harbor, which is much bigger, starts just to the right (and perhaps a little further). The scene sort of reminds of the scottish fishing village from the movie “Local Hero”. Sometimes I hear a moped drive by my house and I think “ooh, t’is just Ricky out driving again” (it’s funny if you’ve seen the movie).

The small boat harbor is, of course, the main attraction. Hundreds and hundreds of boats show up every summer, some from Norway, Germany, France, the Netherlands, all over the place. Germans hike up and down the streets, Dutch tourists drive around in RV’s, French families toast with wine on their boats, and Poles walk around the harbor taking pictures.

…and strange and frightening things happen with church here during summer.

The Swedish Coast Guard have a few boats here too, in case of emergencies, difficult weather or similar. Although, I’ve noticed that there is one distinct difference between the U.S. Coast Guard and the Swedish: The American ships usually have a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the deck.

• Why aren’t computer systems alive?
• Why can’t I add fields at will to a database without also changing mapping xml, classes and other stupid definitions… and then having to recompile?
• Why can’t I add methods to classes while the program is running?
• Why is data so locked up in proprietary formats?
• Why is XML the best (and saddest) alternative we have?
• Why can’t I treat my database like a living, breathing thing… and visualize the data, make changes to it, and watch the changes affect the running system as I change it?
• Why can’t I hand over responsibility of my application’s data to some local data storage, without first installing an 80 MB RDBMS behemoth?
• Why can’t I move my application (code and data) to another machine without reinstalling and migrating?
• Why is there no natural grouping of data over disparate data sources?
• Why can’t I track ownership of data between systems, so that database just naturally belongs to one application, while another database belongs to another application, and is treated as such?
• Why does it matter if I use Oracle or MySQL?

And more…

• If I could make changes to a program, live, and press a button and watch my changes propagate through the code and alter it in real time, how do I know I haven’t made any syntactical errors? How can I be sure that it works?
• How can I work with objects from different applications without also linking together an infrastructure of classes and frameworks?
• Why is code and data so frozen? Transforming source code into binary code, and persisting objects into data tables, is like etching the fine nerves of a green, living leaf into a stone tablet, where it cannot be changed. Like putting the lifeblood of the universe into a freezer and storing it in a dead, fixed state; when actually it is the living thing we are interested in.
• What unseen paradigms of software development and systems interaction do we have to unravel before any of this can be made reality?
• Is it worth it?

Just questions in the night…

It’s 11:43am and I haven’t had my coffee yet. I’ve just barely made it out of bed – yes, I’m on vacation – and I haven’t quite yet had that crazed urge for coffee. I’m waiting for it before I make coffee, because I sort want to hit that sweet-spot, that moment when you want a cup (but yet not need it badly) so the feelings evoked from drinking it will be the most rewarding. It’s like, just a few minutes before the first signs of headache.

I think the ideal time to have coffee is about an hour after getting up, when you’ve come to your senses and really start looking for something to sip. It makes it so much better.

The second cup of coffee is more difficult to time. If I make two cups in the morning, the coffee-maker usually turns off (it’s on a two-hour timer) before I get the craving for the second cup. That means I usually drink it whenever the coffee-maker turns off, so it doesn’t get cold, which is usually slightly before I actually want my second cup, so it’s not as good as the first one.

If I can learn to just wait until the moment when I look at the coffee-maker, and say to myself “Was glaubst du, Hans? Eine Tasse Kaffee, ja?” (yes, I say so), that’s the ultimate sweet-spot for the second cup. But it doesn’t always follow a rigid schedule so it’s hard to time.

The third cup is increasingly difficult. Sometimes I take that around 3pm – 5pm sometime. As a rule, I don’t drink coffee after 5pm, so if I haven’t had it before 5pm, it won’t happen.