author: @sleepyfox
title: Yang vs. Yang
date: 30-Sep-2025
I was recently asked why I practice violent, aggressive Tai Chi!
author: @sleepyfox
title: On Shu-Ha-Ri
date: 25-Oct-2024
So, fairly regularly something turns up in my inbox relating to ShuHaRi (守破離) often quoted as a Japanese model of skills aquisition. These articles, blogs etc. are all problematic in some way or other, and inevitably as both an Aikido instructor and a career IT professional with deep experience of Software Development Methodologies, I will get asked what I think. Hmmm...
So, let's start with the Wikipedia article:
sleepyfox
/ sustainable-development.md
Last active
December 28, 2024 17:29
Notes and links for Sustainable Development presentation
This gist https://gist.github.com/sleepyfox/61d4375aa1fcfad8cb0338edb4151546 URL shortened to https://tinyurl.com/fox-sustainable-development
- Hello, I'm SleepyFox, Fox to my friends
- Mastodon: @[email protected]
- You don't care who I am, you care about the content, so let's get straight to it
- All the content is online, and will be linked on every slide, so there's no need to take notes or screenshots, you can just relax and pay attention to the material.
author: @sleepyfox
title: Taiji Tennis
date: 08-Nov-2024
So I read a bit about Tennis, and thought 'Hey, that sounds cool, I'd like to learn that', and looked around to see if there is a local Tennis club, and if there is a learners' group. Great news, I find a 'Learn Tennis' session run by a local instructor. They appear legit, are certified and insured by the Tennis Union of Great Britain, so I go down on Tuesday evening to the local sports centre and give it a go.
sleepyfox
/ 2014-04-05-the-corruption-of-critical-thinking.md
Last active
October 29, 2024 08:50
The corruption of critical thinking
author: @sleepyfox
title: The corruption of critical thinking
date: 05-Apr-2014
preamble: An open letter to Mr. Binstock and Dr. Dobbs addressing their recent editorial entitled "The Corruption of Agile" and its follow-up article addressing feedback from the community.
EDITED: 2024-10-29 in order to fix broken links and to use the Internet Archive in order to make available material which commercial publishers have egregiously removed - see Fox's 8th Law[^7]. Sadly it appears that my closing hope was not upheld over the intervening decade by the recipients.
Dear Mr. Binstock,
sleepyfox
/ 2024-10-15-obfosscation.md
Created
October 16, 2024 11:36
ObFOSScation - why FOSS means more than you think it does
author: @sleepyfox
title: ObFOSScation
date: 15-Oct-2024
The problem with #FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is that everybody thinks they know what it means. I once spent a couple of years working on and off with Ross Gardler, a VP of the Apache Software Foundation and Manager of OSS-Watch in Oxford.
sleepyfox
/ 2023-04-23-expertise-and-interviews.md
Created
July 3, 2024 15:48
Expertise and interviews
sleepyfox
/ 2016-05-12-microservices-day.md
Created
July 3, 2024 08:54
Microservices Day conference review, May 2016
author: @sleepyfox
title: Microservices Day
date: 12-May-2016
On Tuesday NearForm put on their 'Microservices Day' free one-day single-track conference, which was actually better than many paid-for conferences that I've been to in the past. Not only was the quality of the presentations overall very good, but all of the (very professionally produced) videos are available on YouTube:
sleepyfox
/ 2013-01-04-the-rise-of-foxy-thinking.md
Created
May 29, 2024 12:35
The rise of foxy thinking
author: @sleepyfox
title: The rise of foxy thinking
date: 4-Jan-2013
Now that we've survived the Mayan Apocalypse I predict that 2013 will see the rise of the generalist over the specialist.
This article last year from Harvard Business Review by Vikram Mansharamani, lecturer at Yale and author of 'Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst' references Isaiah Berlin's 1953 essay "The Fox and the Hedgehog" which contrasts hedgehogs that "relate everything to a single, central vision" i.e. specialists, with foxes who "pursue many ends connected...if at all, only in some de-facto way" i.e. generalists. Berlin's essay is itself based upon the Greek poet Archilochus who wrote that "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
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