The Personal Website of Michael Foord

The art of the science is the science of the art A short preview of an article on software engineering that I've started. I hope I make the time to complete the article. The title is "The Craft of Software Engineering: Abstractions and Processes". Note: there are two follow-on articles from this one:   Abstractions and Processes  and Software Engineering Abstractions: Design and Testing Abstractions Programming is about abstractions. We sometimes say that the language that computers speak is ones and zeros, binary. In fact representing the most fundamental level of computer operations in this way is an abstraction to enable humans to understand. The language computers speak is the electromagnetic dance across silicone and wires precisely choreographed by the vibrations of quartz crystals at the heart of the machine. Sequences of ones and zeros are an abstract representation of that dance. But ones and zeros, each stanza representing data consumed by the m

"I will let my heart break. I will try and let my heart be broken." Love you are more precious than silver, love you are more costly than gold. Love you are more beautiful than diamonds, and nothing I desire compares with thee. A slight modification of a song by Lynn DeShazo from 1982. " The rushing of the wolves. What if the wildness, the savagery, isn't dark just chaotic. What if it can be good."

You probably have to die, but no-one says you have to go quietly I watch my son grow Learn to think. How speech comes from thought And thought is growing. That he loves to communicate. To really be known and understood. How precious that is. And how words grow inside him. And how his soul burns. How he flames with life. So rough. So loving. My friend. Benjamin is rough, too rough. I played with him last night, whilst waiting for him to fall asleep. Every time I stopped playing with him he'd wait for his opportunity and then poke me in the eye to get my attention again. Little git. I tried to be cross but it was too funny. One of the most fun aspects of teaching him is teaching him to be gentle without squashing the life and roughness out of him. I teach him it's ok to be rough with me, but he must control it. He must learn to control himself. He's not allowed to be rough with Delia at all, and he knows it (he doesn't always stick to it, but he kno

Life is hard, but love will help. Love is on our side. If your understanding of poetry is that it is the expression of the beautiful, then by any reasonable measure love is poetry. Therefore it is only possible to express any deep understanding of love in a form that is pure art and reveals pure beauty. Therefore the best philosophy of love must be poetry, and this to me is the essence of the language of spirituality. Truth expressed in beauty, revealing love.  This is how we're able to say that truth is beauty. Not that mere appearance of beauty ensures truth, but that anything that claims to be a deep truth about love, if it is not beautiful it simply cannot be true.  Not that all of reality is beautiful. To claim that would clearly be false. It's just that I think love is better and I believe that because it is better, love wins. Truth can be painful, whilst still being beautiful. Truth is able to remain beautiful through the pain, because it carries hope. We can