Paul Grenyer

Surrounded by Idiots: Entertaining, Thought-Provoking, but Don't Take the Colours Too Literally Thomas Erikson's Surrounded by Idiots is one of those books that's easy to see why it became a bestseller. It's funny, engaging and full of memorable examples. It starts well with a sense of humour - the "keep the receipt" joke immediately sets the tone - and throughout the book Erikson has a knack for making behavioural psychology feel approachable rather than academic. One of the first ideas that struck me was his challenge to the Golden Rule. Rather than treating others as you would like to be treated, he argues you should treat people as they would like to be treated. It's a simple shift in thinking, but one with obvious implications for communication, leadership and relationships. The core of the book is the familiar DISC model, expressed as four colours: 🔴 Red – task-oriented extroverts who focus on results and action. 🟡 Yellow – relationship-oriented ex...

In June 2026, a new HTTP request method, or verb, was introduced. RFC 10008 describes Query as: A QUERY requests that the request target process the enclosed content in a safe and idempotent manner and then respond with the result of that processing. This is similar to POST requests, but QUERY requests can be automatically repeated or restarted without concern for partial state changes. But what does that mean and why do we need it? What’s Wrong with GET? When we want to retrieve a resource from a RESTful interface, we use GET. It’s simple. It’s easy to use. A GET request has no defined request body, and it should be idempotent. That means we can make the same request over and over again without changing any state in the service. The response itself might be different if the resource has changed, but the GET request shouldn't be the thing that causes that change. Sometimes we need to add query parameters to a GET request. Perhaps we want to specify the maximum number of resources ...

I’ve been doing a kind of tour with my Beyond the Code: Designing Services That Stand the Test of Time talk. I’ve given it in Oxford, Norwich, Cambridge, London and York*, between February and August this year. I’ve really enjoyed giving it, but what I’ve loved the most is the feedback and the energy (sorry for the cliche) of the audience.  In Oxford they ripped my logging examples to shreds. In Cambridge I couldn’t convince anyone of the merits of sharing data - so I reframed it in terms of caching. In Colchester they were convinced that it was fine to return a success indicator in a HTTP response body - this resulted in me writing, Should HTTP Status Codes Reflect Business Outcomes? . And in London someone started arguing after just the second slide, but they, and the rest of the audience, went on to ask rich and engaging questions. In Norwich, my home city, and off the back of me describing what had gone on in Colchester a few weeks before, a couple of different people asked me...

The Machine Crusade is mostly another middle of the road science fiction story, like The Butlerian Jihad , however what saves it are moments of brilliance from time to time and the ending, which accelerates considerably and keeps you wanting more. There are many characters, and I wish I’d made a note of who was who and where they came from and how they were related at the start. However, the characters are quite rich, making this a more enjoyable read. This felt a bit more like a Frank Herbert story, as most of the characters were selfish, narcissists driven by power and wealth. The robots are more believable than before, but the story is starting to date when you consider it in the context of modern AI. I’m pleased I read it. I’m looking forward to the third and final instalment. Let’s see where this goes. Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1848943414

I don’t usually enjoy ‘art’, however I’m often in museums as my wife enjoys it. We’re on the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) mailing list - mostly because my wife wants tickets for the David Bowie exhibition - and an email about the new Bharti Kher (https://bhartikher.com/) exhibition: Hybrid forms and lived realities: the sculpture of Bharti Kher  looked like her sort of thing, so we went. It consists of four sculptures, one outside at the front of the museum and three intermingled with other sculptures in one of the main concourses. My initial thought was that we’d gone all that way, and it was just four sculptures, and I should have read the V&A article properly. The thing is though, they were really good, imaginative and right up my street. I particularly liked Warrior with Cloak and Shield: and even though Ghost looked like a statue that had got out of the shower and taken the shower curtain with it, I really liked it: Animus Mundi: and Gaia were equally impressive....

There’s something about Software Crafters Cambridge - and it’s not just that I can never remember the order the words go in the name. They’re a quiet group of software professionals, but the talks and workshops are always interesting, and it quickly becomes apparent that there’s a lot of knowledge and experience in the room. I’ve known Carl Farmer for several years. I helped him set up SyncIpswich back in the mid-teens. However, I hadn’t seen him for ages, so I was keen to come along and hear what he had to say. I wasn’t disappointed. Carl works in AI at Microsoft as an AI Solutions Engineer - sales, basically - so he’s seen it all. He took us expertly through how to measure the real ROI of AI. It turns out it’s the same way we measured it with human engineers; we just mustn’t forget to keep doing it that way. Carl then explored ways of working with AI, how to get the most out of prompts, and how to minimise costs. I came away with a lot of notes and useful tips. The part that resona...