April

"Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever."
-Charles Lamb.

My Mistake (Looking Back)

My Mistake !    -why are these two words so hard to say?

All programmers, when they fix a bug, are implicitly saying exactly that.
And the process of building a piece of software involves the constant fixing of bugs. When I write a piece of code, I write it knowing it has bugs. The first time I use it, I notice things I didn't see when I was visualising the software before it existed.

I remember the first time Wolfgang tried out one of the first versions of Pers-Info DOS I had written in 1982, lots and lots of errors! I was surprised, angry, disappointed, troubled, felt inadequate, all these emotions - but after I calmed down, I fixed as many of the problems as I could. Later, we hired people to write these reports for our programmers. Everyone has to face the reality of what their software looks like to people who use it, who don't know how to avoid all the traps. And Kai now does this so well he can do it for a living.

When I was young there were a lot of foods I didn't like: cabbage, certain fish, paprika, olives, to name a few. When I was 23, I made a conscious decision to try to eat all these things and find out if it was still true. It wasn't.

I tried the same thing, later, with apologizing and admitting mistakes. Like a lot of people, I didn't like to admit mistakes. I think this was the way I was brought up. In my mind, if you admitted a mistake, or even changed your mind, this was a sign that your thinking was wrong. The feeling was, if you were wrong once, you're probably often wrong.  So better not admit it.

That was a mistake. I got it wrong in 1972. I'm sorry, my mistake.

Try it some time. See what happens. I bet most people they will respect you more for it.

I know I will. No harm in making a mistake.

We all do it.

Time waits for No One ..

by the Rolling Stones, 1974, -ein schönes Lied und schöne alte Fotos! 


Am Ende eine tolle Gitarrensolo von Mick Taylor, der anstelle von Rory Gallagher in 1969 dazu kam und allzu früh im Dezember 1974 die Gruppe wieder verließ.

Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac!

Geboren am 12.03.1922, Jack Kerouac's sportliche Erfolge brachten ihm 1940 bis 1941 ein Stipendium an der Columbia University in New York ein, wo er zusammen mit Kommilitonen wie Allen Ginsberg und William S. Burroughs die Zelle der Beat Generation bildete.

On The Road (1957), auf deutsch Unterwegs war Kerouac's Durchbruch und der Höhepunkt seiner Karriere. Auch in Januar 1957 schrieb Kerouac eine bewegende Brief an seine Ex-Frau Edie, indem stand:

"I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die."

Die Filmemacher Sergi Castella und Hector Ferreño haben daraus für Dosnoventa Bikes (in Barcelona) eine wunderschöne Werbefilm gemacht, mit Musik von Pink Floyd und Johnny Cash.




Vielen Dank dafür nach Spanien!