Paul Grenyer

Charlotte and I went to see the new St Trinian's film at the Hollywood cinema at Anglia Square in Norwich on Wednesday night. The last time I was there it had just become a multiscreen cinema and was owned by Odeon . I can’t remember what I went to see but I have a distinct memory of someone saying Reservoir Dogs was on in one of the other screens and there was a bloody torture scene. From what we saw the Hollywood cinema is a hole. We were in the tiny screen 4. It was cold and there appeared to be no surround sound . I’d like to say the film was good clean fun, but there was nothing clean about it. It was a lot of fun and obviously shouldn’t be taken seriously. I was particularly amused by a group of goth girls who preferred to be called Emo , but there’s no accounting for taste!

Desert Island Books is a new series I'm writing for the ACCU : Desert Island Disks ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs.shtml ) is one of Radio 4 's most popular and enduring programmes. The format is simple: each week a guest is invited to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. I've been thinking for a while that it would be entertaining to get ACCU members to choose their Desert Island Books. The format will be slightly different from the Radio 4 show. Members will choose about 5 books, one of which must be a novel, and up to two albums. The programming books must have made a big impact on their programming life or be ones that they would take to a desert island. The inclusion of a novel and a couple albums will also help us to learn a little more about the person. The ACCU has some amazing personalities and I'm sure we only scratch the surface most of the time. Each issue of CVu will have someone different. If you ...

Embracing Agile I started eXtreme programming back in 2003 with the usual manager skepticism, but I had a small team and we demonstrated results very quickly and were allowed to continue. After I left Communisis I didn’t have much of an opportunity practice eXtreme techniques again until I worked with Allan Kelly (Allan's blog ) in the summer of 2007. Allan is a bit of an Agile nut and I expected to feel a lot like Trent Reznor learning my trade under the watchful eye of Al Jourgensen . Unfortunalty I only got to work with Allan for a few weeks. However, in that time I got up to speed by reading Lean Software Practices and watching Allen in action. At the end I felt like Reznor ready to take on the (industrial) world. It is now early 2008 and I have joined another company and had no trouble convincing my new boss of the advantages of agile development. In fact he has fully embraced the idea of stories and cards. We have our first stories and a set of blue-white-red cards pin...